Category Archives: Gardening

My Garden’s Grassroots Plan to Poison Me

Posted in Farming, food, Gardening, Health, Humor, Medicine, Nature, Nutrition by

I grew up in Wisconsin in a family that gardened.

Correction—I grew up in Wisconsin, birthed by a woman who is a gardener but who did not have as many hours in the day to tend to the gardens she created and, therefore, I was compelled to garden like the rest of my siblings.

It’s not that we were gardeners; we were the labor force of the head gardener.

Her gardens were beautiful. Flowers with spectacular colors and scents, shrubs that displayed more varieties of green than Sherwin Williams could ever creatively conceive on their swatches, grasses that were feathered, plumed, tufted, and willowy, and young saplings planted for following generations to enjoy. Truly beautiful.

And I hated them.

But then there was the vegetable garden.

It had all the bog-standard roots, tubers, vines, and greens. It had berries and herbs, beans and sprouts. It had a seasonal design. It had function. It served purpose and gave back more than you put in. Anything ornamental was likely a fluke of Mother Nature who had leftover bedazzling supplies from the other “just for show” pretentious gardens. Everything was strictly edible.

And I loved it.

It’s not that I couldn’t appreciate my mother’s other gardens, it’s just that I like functional art. I take no issue with fruits and vegetables who display flowers at first, but once they move out of that stage, they produce secondary gifts that serve more than the purpose of simply being eye candy.

Because their task is to be stomach candy.

My mother has also been proclaiming the same statement for years: Just wait, one day the gardening bug will catch up with you too.

The gardening bug has never caught me, but it has done plenty of other things. It has bitten me, wacked me, stung me, and left me with skin diseases that are akin to that of a biblically impressive, untreated leper.

I get it. I am not meant to be gardening. In reality, I think the whole physical kingdom of the outdoors is threatening me with warning shots off the bow the moment I step foot into the open air.

Three weeks ago, I ventured outside to tame just one small area around a tree—one small area within one small garden surrounded by myriad other gardens my mother had meticulously, painstakingly, exhaustively established over the nearly two decades when she lived in the house I now occupy and must tend to.

I was armed to the teeth, as I always am, when finally overwhelmed by the guilt of not tending to her Eden properly. I was covered in tick repellent, sun repellent, and enough fashion repellent clothing to deter any misguided compliments should another human make eye contact.

Alas, surely nefarious nymphs were afoot and saw me as their springtime fling, for shortly following the grueling three hours of bending, digging, pulling, and yanking then gathering, dragging, piling, and swearing, I stripped off my clothes and dashed to the shower to pummel sore muscles and purge myself of sweat.

The first thing I saw in the mirror was a bullseye mark on my elbow, and as I leaned in, as anyone with eyes north of forty will do, I squinted and scowled to identify the interloper. A deer tick, of course. And apparently one who defied years of scientific research and the chemical laboratories in which they discovered how to thwart the appetites of blood sucking creatures.

My luck. But not surprising. I dug him out with freshly cleaned nails and likely took a patch of much needed elbow padding flesh with him just to be safe.

The next morning, I woke up with a bump and then two, and then ran out the house to work with the quick “must have gotten a spider bite on my arm during the night” type of assessment.

It was only while I was knee deep in a field of barley—well waist high actually—and listening to a professor of small grains lecturing about just how difficult it is to deal with covered smut, downy mildew, and net blotch that a farmer standing next to me kicked my toe and said quietly, “Whoooeee! Looks like you just had a tussel with some sumac—just like a dog rollin’ in a big ol’ cowpie patty. What happened?”

He was looking at my arms.

I looked down at my arms.

Oh, dear god, these were not arms. Surely, they were in truth barley stalks with covered smut, downy mildew or net blotch, right? Had I caught the blights the professor was talking about? I glanced up to the sky.

What have I done to piss off whomever is in control here? I muttered.

I drove home and tried not to notice the new symptom of itch.

How did this happen? How was I now breaking out in blistering bumps of poison ivy?

The next morning it was not just my arms, but my trunk and eyelid, and earlobe, and the bridge of my nose that sported the hot pink pustules. It was hideous. And unbelievable. And unbearable.

I called my dermatologist.

You must have had a gap in your clothing. Urushoil likely got between your gloves and your shirt, then you sweated, then that sweat carried the oil all over, and of course you tried to wipe off your face. You’re an idiot.

This is how my dermatologist speaks to me. She knows my luck with anything epidermally- related. Every year I’m forced to pay for skin scrapings and disparaging rebukes. In fact, even my insurance company knows my ill-fortune with greenery and sunshine, and they have announced they will no longer support my relationship with the outdoors. They’ve given me an ankle bracelet that sets off an alarm when I’m within two feet of a window.

I have managed though, and I’ve come across a motherlode of hazmat suits leftover from the pandemic’s PPE phase of fashion, so I’ll likely invest in one of them befor my next gardening venture.

But I seriously must truly reconsider any “next gardening venture,” as if there’s one thing I’m tired of being categorized as, it’s someone who makes rash decisions.

~Shelley

For the time being, the blog is closed to comments, but if you enjoyed it, maybe pass it on to someone else. Email it, Facebook it, or print it out and make new wallpaper for the bathroom. If it moves you, show it some love and share. Cheers!

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

The Benefits of Not Being Born a Blue Blood

Posted in authors, blogging, Books, Education, Excercise, Gardening, Health, History, Holidays, Humor, Medicine, Nature, Pets, Science, Storytelling, travel by

There is nothing I love more than suddenly getting the undeniably gleeful itch to go on a trip, and then, just as suddenly, coming to my senses and feeling around on my head to see if I’ve developed a large lump that would suggest some sort of tumor or disease, or maybe even discover the whole thing is absent.

I think I’m like a lot of people in the world—those who can envision the excitement of an exotic location, a change in weather, or discovering new cuisine—but it’s right thereafter I have those dreamy notions, all perfect and picture-worthy, that I remember every trip is actually three trips built into one.

And then I also suddenly remember how much I hate to travel.

Usually, everything comes to a screechingly swift and mind-clearing halt.

Except this time.

This time I got caught up in all the romance of it: I’d travel alone, create a schedule based on only my whims and interests, and I’d not have to share a bed or bedroom with anyone that spent a good portion of the night farting, belching, snoring, or hacking up large chunks of lunch or half their body hair.

Solo travel.

The other bonus is the whole fly by the seat of my pants kind of planning.

Except … I am a total planner. And planning is the heart of part one in a three-part trip.

Those three trips inside every adventure away from home?

  • The planning phase – the trip as you build it and see it in your mind
  • The experiencing phase – the trip as you live it hour by hour and moment to moment
  • The remembering phase – the trip as you want yourself and others to recall it

Two out of three phases require some mind gamery, and in some cases, therapy once complete.

So, I leaped into the planning phase—the dreaming, the scheming, the OH-MY-GOD-I’M-GOING-TO-USE-AI-FOR-THIS phase.

Yeah, I had a serious sit-down chat with Artificial Intelligence and after asking it the wholly boring traditional questions whose answers I always first seek out like: What should I do in this town? And What should I eat in this town? And Where will I find a place where the people are allowed to pour scotch?  I then grew tired of traditional and began asking questions that a five-year-old might ponder.

Where would you go if you had legs?

Where does it smell the best in this town?

Can we meet for a drink and use your credit card to pay for it?

After soaking in a few weeks of the blissful planning phase and creating my seriously-this-will-be-amazing itinerary, I did the one thing that always makes every highly orchestrated schedule implode on itself: I embarked.

I somehow suffer from amnesiac qualities that are in full gear during the planning phase—I forget how much I love historic markers and cannot stop from pulling over onto the side of the road to read every one of them—even though most of them are simply pointing out yet another place George Washington had slept. Truly the man should have been tested for narcolepsy.

I forget how I am so giddy being on break from the “every day” that I will engage in conversation with cashiers at the filling station, or women in any restroom, or every stray cat lying in the sun on the sidewalk for hours.

I forget that I am a total sucker for every notice and signboard request to “please snap a photo of this landscape and send to our club/organization/county offices so that we can chart the progress of our cleanup efforts/garden growth/bluebird house project.”

I forget how I can be halfway through a trail hike and come across a somewhat hidden chemical manufacturing plant that, upon pressing Google for information, harvests horseshoe crabs for biomedical research. I then discover that Horseshoe crabs’ blood is collected to support the production of LAL, or Limulus amoebocyte lysate, a clotting agent that aids in the detection of human pathogens in patients, drugs, and intravenous devices. And then I finally discover that a horseshoe’s blood is blue! Feeling very Erin Brockovich-like, I realize I have uncovered absolutely nothing except a creepy photo of how these crabs go through the bloodletting process.

Altogether though, these activities completely obliterate any timetable I’d painstakingly crafted, and my days are filled not with seaside lounging, wine tastings, garden walks, and museums, but rather rusty highway markers, indifferent alley cats and camouflaged fowl, and the eyeroll-worthy wasted pursuits of seafood cruelty.

This … is how I spend my time.

Finally, of course, I come home, and being the well-practiced fiction writer that I am, must craft a slightly racier version of the truth. An embellishment here and there, a tale grown taller where height was needed, a yarn spun with a rainbow of color where it might truthfully have been categorized as beige.

The historic marker may have a map taped to the back of it which leads me to a dilapidated governess-in-training school, where a tattered and overlooked diary reveals the daily abuses suffered by schoolgirls whose once wealthy families fell on hard times, forcing them to offer up their female issue for future employment—if they could make it past the cruel headmaster’s daily taste for vehemence and depravity.

The footpath placard’s request for an uploaded snapshot unleashes a deluge of texts and phone calls not from The Nature Conservancy, as advertised, rather an arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency stating that my latest photo reveals I am the closest individual to the Lesser Spotted Great Ebony Igris which is believed to be used by certain foreign countries as a spying device, and what ensues is a day-long chase to gather closer proof to their suspicions. Clearly, Citizenry Science working at its full potential.

And the blue-blooded horseshoe crabs whose vital liquid is drained from their heart until it ceases to flow? What more could I add to that really. It’s perfect already.

This is how it goes. The trilogy of one trip. I look back and wonder at its success. I wonder if I am rested and sated with tasting a week of different living. I wonder if it was money well spent. I wonder if I will remember the true details and recall them with fondness over time.

I wonder if anyone will buy the new book I will start penning tomorrow—the one about an illicit ring of runaway governesses who harvest horseshoe blood for mountains of cash and open an elite spa and recovery center for repatriated creatures involved in avian espionage.

Perhaps it is better to travel hopefully, than to actually arrive at all.

~Shelley

For the time being, the blog is closed to comments, but if you enjoyed it, maybe pass it on to someone else. Email it, Facebook it, or print it out and make new wallpaper for the bathroom. If it moves you, show it some love and share. Cheers!

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

If I Truly Loved You, I’d Treat You Like Dirt

Posted in Cooking, death, Farming, Feasts, Festivals, food, Gardening, Health, Humor, Nature, Nutrition, Science by

One of the best, most desired gifts I received this year during the holidays was a box to hold garbage.

I know, you’re all wondering if I’ve accidentally held my head in the oven too long whilst last cleaning it or, if finally, all those heavily scented, potentially carcinogenic candles from Bath and Body Works that I sniff on an hourly basis to keep me meditatively peaceful have created some cognitive disorder, but I assure, neither have occurred.

That said, my new container truly has me skipping about with a euphoric outlook because Rumpelstiltskin—my big new bucket—turns garbage into gold.

That’s right you clever clogs, I finally got a compost bin.

For the last two months I have been studying everything for its C/N ratio. It’s a beautiful formula for anyone growing closer to ditching their tax ID and social security number to live off the grid, or serial killers studying John Wayne Gacy and making mental notes as to how to improve on his form.

Decomposition can be deadly, but also beautiful. Therefore, for true success, one must know any material’s carbon to nitrogen proportions.

I promise this is not a lesson in organic chemistry, but who doesn’t love the idea of your old food making your new food?

Apparently, most people coming to my house.

Yes, I know, a good chunk of folks visiting my little log lodge leave less than stellar reviews when they begin to realize that a stay with me means you’ll likely be too cold or too hot, there’s a fair to middling chance you may get a teeny touch of dysentery because comestible manufacturer’s expiration dates on packages in the fridge are bogus, and you’ll need to memorize a list of things that go into a) the recycling bin, b) the compost bin, and c) the landfill bin.

The latter is highly discouraged and comes with a free set of annoying questions wondering if we might find another use for that object and an array of facial expressions that clearly cast doubt on whether you’ve truly watched any documentary of Greta Thunberg like you promised you did.

No judgement. She’s not for everyone.

But it’s plain to see I’ve now upped my game in the kitchen. A massive stock pot sits on the counter and is the receptacle to all things that will fortify my soil, enrich my diet, and likely cure cancer. The timeline is somewhat futuristic with each addition, but I’m in it for the long haul.

Basically, I have a new job. I now tell people that I am a terra firma farmer. A sod shaman. A ground grower. An anthrosol alchemist. Maybe the last one goes a bit over the edge, but you get my point. I’m harvesting dirt.

Into the stock pot go greens and browns. Everything from vegetable peels to coffee grounds are tossed in with delight. Egg shells, fruit, tea bags and olive pits. Pumpkins, tofu, peanut shells, and potato eyes. Old paper napkins? In they go. Q-tips and chopsticks? Join your friends. Pencil shavings and Ugg boot fluffage? Step right up and dive right in. Once that pot is chock-a-block full, they’re dumped into that beautiful new spinnable bin outside.

These are just your Joe-Average bits and bobs that fall under the category of acceptable, but Google appears to understand that nearly every day I start a fresh search with my standard question of “Can I put (insert questionable item) into my compost bin?”

So along with the above, I’m tossing in lint and dust bunnies, old match sticks and house plants (RIP, I swear I tried), holey wool socks and burlap sacks. I’m drawing the line at nail clippings. Just can’t do it.

Of course, there’s all the outdoor additions—the leaves, the grass, the weeds, and twigs. Pine cones, and bird’s nests (once they’re done with them), sawdust, and straw. I am finding it all. Picking it up, shoving it in, and swirling it about.

I’m sure my family thinks I’m losing a few more marbles because it then appears that I’m having a conversation with my compost pile, but obviously, they have no idea that I’ve popped in a handful of hardworking worms and are simply offering a few words of encouragement. It’s not like I’m talking to the bacteria or fungi, as that would be ridiculous.

We all know that fungal intelligence is geared more toward spatial recognition and memory, so I just leave them Post-it notes as reminders of where they are and what to do. Duh.

And now I churn, I peek, I poke, and wait.

I check temperatures, humidities, pH balances, and take weekly requests for movie night.

If I find a worm on the ground, I give him a noble Roman name and introduce him to the giant Saturnalia party where all his soon to be friends are closely gathered in the vomitorium.

This huge metropolis is teeming with life and death and decay–microbes, mites, nematodes, and invertebrates.

I encourage gluttony, as they are only doing their job.

I nurture meaningless affairs because reproduction is critical.

I tell heroic stories of their ancestors—those who have cleaned up polluted spill sites and made communities safe to live in again, or of those who went into medicine and actually became medicine.

I inspire futuristic dreams of outrageous proportions. Fungi? You are capable of becoming buildings and replacing concrete. Bacteria? You can become biofuels or gobble up greenhouse gases. Worms? A growing number of people find that it is equally as important to save one of you as it is to save a panda.

I tell my new friends who are feasting on these precious scraps the same thing: You is kind, you is smart, you is important.

I’m hoping they will remain as down to earth as I know them all to be. I am rooting for them because I know them all now. I be-leaf in them, and I feel like we are soil-mates.

Okay, maybe, just maybe, I have held my head in the oven too long.

But even if everyone around is begging me to stop with the wordplay and move away from the compost, I will only agree to drop the puns because I’m keeping my ground.

Happy dirt season!

~Shelley

For the time being, the blog is closed to comments, but if you enjoyed it, maybe pass it on to someone else. Email it, Facebook it, or print it out and make new wallpaper for the bathroom. If it moves you, show it some love and share. Cheers!

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

Kindness Costs Nothing, but Tomatoes are a King’s Ransom

Posted in Farming, food, Gardening, Humor, Nature by

I am a procrastinator.

Although my explanations for delaying any decision or activity are crammed with reasonable details, I am also fraught with unreasonable guilt for the pile up of decisions left unmade and activities left undone.

One day I’ll get to that bucket list which is now a barrel list.

One day I’ll see to that niggling pain I’m hoping will disappear (obviously, it’ll definitely disappear by the time of my funeral, so I’m kinda covered on this one).

One day I will discover how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

For the last couple of years, on my one hour and fifteen-minute route into work, winding through farm fields, cow pastures, and five-house towns, I have passed a little wooden shack—a farm stand selling vegetables. I remember thinking, One day. One day I’ll stop and check it out.

Finally, the excuses of I need to get home, or I need to get to work were put aside because one of those John Deere combines that claimed 620 horsepower but only 6 mph speed stopped traffic on my tight and twisty farm road. Coincidentally, in front of that farm stand. I now had absolutely no excuse not to investigate that which has been a colorful blur out my window. Countless bountiful months—those spring through fall harvest seasons—simply whizzed by for years where my only excuse was “not enough time.”

Farmers have a way of putting the advice of “stop and smell the roses” (or the newly mown hay, or the freshly dropped cowpie patties) into crisp and unignorable perspective. It is not so much advice as it is a forced bit of guidance.

I pulled off onto the semi-circular dirt road that advertised the large hut with a few wooden shelves full of tomatoes, green beans, shallots, and corn, okra and peppers, potatoes, and beets. Each bin held a price, and I stared dumbly at them for a full two minutes. I glanced up to see a dry erase whiteboard with an entire menu and coordinating costs that matched the bins’ prices.

Ten cents for any tomato larger than your fist. Five cents if it’s one you can shove wholly in your gob.

No way, I thought. That’s got to be wrong. Or maybe they all tasted like they should sell at a K-Mart Blue Light Special event.

I found a five-center to test, overestimated the size of my mouth as I crammed it in, and then experienced the delayed response of one who realizes just how determined tomato innards are to gush past the house of their skin and any other boundary one feebly tries to embrace them within. Juice, seeds, and an exclamation of surprise came flying out my mouth.

But this is a farm stand in the middle of nowhere. Who’s watching, right? Who saw me splatter the wall and the front of my shirt, and the whole whiteboard menu?

Umm … maybe the fifteen cars idling on the road waiting for the great green beast to give them passage around him. Apparently, my faux pas was entertaining enough to produce a couple of honks and one “Nice work!” from the audience.

I trudged back to my car and found an oil rag, hoping I could erase some of the whiteboard’s woes I’d crafted. Word by word, and price by price, I replaced the tomato splattered menu with fresh listings, thanks to the dry erase marker on a ledge beneath it. I was mid-way through my work when I stopped to marvel at the taste of something so magnificent and a price so unmatched. I can’t believe I’d been missing out for years on this vegetal treasure chest.

Returning to my work, I’d turned to hear the squeaky hinges on a truck door slam. An elderly man in grass-stained overalls tottered toward me on legs so bowed they looked like parentheses rather than appendages.

“You changing the prices, young lady?”

“No, sir,” I answered as he stared at the marker and rag in my had.

He snorted and pointed to the vegetables, “You city folk come by here lookin’ for a bargain and still aren’t happy with what you find. I’ve told Beatrice that her prices are too low anyway, but she’s just a good-hearted woman easily taken advantage of.”

“I’m not city folk, and I promise I’m not changing the prices. I’m just redoing the whiteboard because I accidentally splattered tomato all over it. I was trying to do the right thing.”

He pointed toward the empty see-thru plastic bin with the sign above it displaying the words Money Box – Honor System. “The right thing round here is to pay before you consume, and most people—city or farm folks would know that.”

I felt like I was back in school, chastised by the principal for some second-grade misdeed. And I also felt a little bit miffed that I’d been unfairly accused of said misdeed, but I knew what it must look like to this guy, so I unzipped my purse and searched for my nickel.

Of course, I had no change. Of course, I had no dollar bills—no fives or tens.

I pulled out a twenty. “Do you by chance have change?”

The farmer slapped a hand to his thigh and cackled. “Do I look like an ATM machine to you?” He shook his head and moved back toward his truck, mumbling, “You city folk.”

Except I wasn’t whatever negative version of city folk he had in mind. And I was about to shout that out when I saw the old guy returning. He held up a silver coin, dropped it into the plastic box, and then said, “This one’s on me.”

I nodded with my humble thanks. “Please tell Beatrice her tomatoes are amazing.”

He shrugged and snorted. “I have no idea whose farm stand this is actually. I was a couple cars behind you in the line and was getting grouchy with the wait. I saw what happened and just had some fun while stretchin’ my legs. You drive safe now.” He got in his truck and pulled back onto the road, the traffic now cleared.

With a face likely as red as the tomato I’d mostly eaten, I finished off repairing “Beatrice’s” whiteboard.

When I was done, I pulled out my $20 bill and dropped it into the “Honor Box.” The way I looked at it, I was half paying a fine for all the wasted time of never stopping by and purchasing the best tomatoes ever, and I was half paying for that exceptional fruit.

Some life lessons are a little pricier than others, and somehow, I felt like it made sense to purchase a twenty dollar five-cent tomato.

Next time I’d bring a pocketful of change.

And a change of clothes.

~Shelley

For the time being, the blog is closed to comments, but if you enjoyed it, maybe pass it on to someone else. Email it, Facebook it, or print it out and make new wallpaper for the bathroom. If it moves you, show it some love and share. Cheers!

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

Life’s Luck: From Lemons to Sour Grapes, Mine is Weirdly, all Fruit Related.

Posted in authors, Books, Cooking, Folklore, food, Gardening, Health, Humor, Medicine, Nature, Pets by

Last month sucked. I mean really, really came out looking like an ugly puckery lemon.

I smashed a finger in between two 75lb boulders (yeah, while trying to do that rock wall myself—from last month’s blog).

I got a wicked thrashing from a wrathful, hell-bent-on-sparing-no-one poison ivy plant.

I got diagnosed with a second basal carcinoma (treatable skin cancer that plagues many pasty white Midwesterners who are unfamiliar with this thing local people call summer).

I broke my lawnmower.

I was stung by a wasp whose last dying wish was to leave a flesh wound and memorial to himself the size of an award-winning walnut.

And I got a UTI.

Okay, none of this stuff actually happened last month. That was a lie.

It happened this month.

Month and candor aside, the reality of so many calamities all at once did not bode well under the “Thank God, I got my Covid vaccine—it’ll sure be great to get back to normal” mindset I was cultivating.

Those thoughts ultimately tanked, and in their place crawled splints, bandages, skin grafts, physicians, lab techs, prescriptions, pills, ointments, potions, and spark plugs.

It was often hard to keep track of what went where, and on one miserable afternoon I found myself visiting the library to pick up a book I was hoping would take my mind off my miseries.

I was in line, waiting in the lobby for my turn to come in and approach the desk, when I heard someone triple tsk from behind me. I turned to see a woman as wrinkled as an old crabapple, her white hair braided and wrapped into a bun, held together with what looked to me like a couple of birch twigs and a meat thermometer.

I smiled, nodded politely, and turned to face forward again, only to hear her sigh and utter, “Dear me,” under her breath. She tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned, pointed to one of the many bandages wrapped around my arms and said, “You really should let that breathe.”

“Let what breath?” I asked.

“Your poison ivy.”

I looked down at the book she was holding in her arm. Kitchen Witchery: Spells, recipes, and rituals for something something magical something enchanted something something. I narrowed my eyes at her and tried to ascertain how this witch had discovered one of my ailments. “How do you—”

“You haven’t quite covered all your blisters,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, I really got walloped this time.”

She shook her head. “What did you do, roll in it like a dog in a cowpie patty?”

“No, I was weeding, but I bet my dog had a hand in spreading it.”

“Do you hug your dog?” she asked, pointing for me to move forward in line.

“All the time. He’s the best dog I’ve ever—”

“Stop doing that.”

“Exactly. I know. The oils on his fur transfers to my skin …”

“Not where I’m going. Stop doing it because dogs hate to be hugged. It makes them feel like they’re being devoured, and they’re helpless in that arm lock of stupid humans.”

“Oh.” I stared at the floor for a second before catching sight of her book again. “Well, I’d have to say that I truly feel like I’ve been cursed with something these last few weeks. Just one thing after another.” I looked up at her with a crooked smile. “Any hex breaking spells in that library book of yours?”

“You’re hoping some magic wand will wave away your poison ivy?”

I shrugged. “And my rock-smashed finger, wasp sting, skin cancer—anything that can alleviate those scourges?” I pointed out the ailments around my person.

The old woman studied me for a second or two, opened her book, thumbed through a few pages, and then slammed it shut with a crisp snap. “The book suggests not so much any incantation or elixir, but it is very precise on one specific action.”

“Oh?” I felt my eyebrows raise with hope.

She rolled her eyes. “Stay inside.”

I felt like an idiot.

She looked at me like I was an idiot, so I suppose my feelings were justified. “Ah, well. I suppose most of those wonky spells are simply drivel and gibberish. Are you just reading the book for fun?”

She glanced down at the book again and then spread it wide open to a page with a black iron caldron holding a bounty of vegetables from the garden it sat within. “Nope. I wrote this little beauty—there’s only one copy, and I convinced the librarian to put it here on the shelves. The problem is, I lost the original recipe for my mother’s tomato soup, and every time I want to make it, I have to come back and check out the book. Now that,” she pointed at the page, “is a cure-all for just about everything.”

I gave her a wary look. “How about a urinary tract infection?”

She cracked a smile and spat out, “Ha! That, my friend, is just a curse on all womankind. And no amount of kitchen witchery can make much of a dent in its presence.”

I shrugged. “I guess sometimes we’re just unlucky.”

“As I see it, your dog is going to get a bit luckier with no more hugs. Although sadly for you, I’d say it’ll be some time before anyone is going to want to wrap their arms around your bandaged body.” She searched the ceiling and then said, “Maybe try a bottle of wine.”

“Hug a bottle of wine?”

“No. Drink it. It won’t cure anything, but it’ll sure keep you from being cranky while Mother Nature deals with all your ailments.”

~Shelley

For the time being, the blog is closed to comments, but if you enjoyed it, maybe pass it on to someone else. Email it, Facebook it, or print it out and make new wallpaper for the bathroom. If it moves you, show it some love and share. Cheers!

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.