So - this evening my husband returns from school with half a dead cow in a cooler in the trunk of his car. (Okay I am being economical with the truth it is not really HALF a dead cow). Anyhoo, sirloins, t-bones, rib-eyes, chuck steak joints. It would appear that as my mother (a vegetarian) would say "someone just murdered Daisy!" So with my belief that if an animal has to die then every part of it should be used for good right now the chuck beef, fat and suet (which was tons cause of course the beef was not "for resale") is rendering down in the oven right now. The suet will be drained into containers and mixed with bird seed and made into treats for my insect eating birdies, the beef and the bones will be dinner for my dogs. As for the rest, well my husband is having a t-bone for dinner. Most teachers get given apples, my husband (teaching in a hunting/farming community) gets half a cow! (oh and strawberries, and beans, and field peas, and corn and sweet potatoes and venison etc., etc.,).

Spring. It is spring here in North Carolina. (Or at least in my little acre of it). The daffodils are blooming, as are the jonquils and the forsythia. The Carolina Jessamine has buds on it and very soon will be bloom with its intoxicating scent.


Thankfully the flocks of grackles and red wing black birds have headed north and have left the bird feeders to my regulars and some overwinterers who are still hanging around, the Juncos, the Purple Finches and the Gold Finches. Soon the Gold Finches will change into their brilliant breeding plumage and head east to breed. Of course you all know how I feel about that. I head out into the garden in the evenings to see what surprises are poking their brave heads above ground. My daylilies are going gang busters as are my asiatic lilies. I have yet to go out there and "waken up" all my beds, a process where I go and remove the heavy cover of dead leaves and clip back all of last years dead stems and leaves but when I do I am sure I will find more surprises. The crocus have already bloomed and died



and I am next waiting the brilliant purple of my miniscule Dutch Iris. The other night I sat at a stop light and watched in wonder as a flock of birds miles long flew overhead heading North. I have seen several flocks of Canada Geese fly over the down town area but they are our local flocks. I am waiting for that flock flying through, honking as they do, heading back to Canada. Then my heart will leap, and I will like a mad thing head to the garden center and begin buying plants like I don't have a budget. When I will be setting out tomato plants and hoping that there isn't a late frost. I love this time of year, it is a time of hope, of new beginnings, of surprises and my favorite "I don't remember planting that!". Spring, my favorite time of year the world awakes!.

As most people will know that Youtube is the best way to waste absolute hours of ones life. Nevertheless I typed "Osmonds" into the Youtube search engine and set myself onto a trip down memory lane that was absolutely stunning to be honest. What I discovered however is that while everyone gave the Osmonds absolute tripe in the day (when I was fourteen, stupid and in looooooorve with Donny) the new boy bands, you know these new "throw four good looking guys together and get them to release a single" are actually recording Osmond singles, I have been looking at the videos on youtube and so far there is a cover of "Love me for a Reason" and "Let me in" so I guess the Osmonds were not so stupid back in the day. In fact they could be thought of the first "boy band" and they were way before their time. Ahhh I was there, I waited in line for three days outside a theatre in Manchester to see them live in Concert. I am now :)

If it takes more than 20 minutes to go through the drive through it no longer qualifies as "fast food."

Honesty does not pay. When I go grocery shopping on a Sunday my husband asks me to go to the Circle K by the grocery store and get him an Icee (Slurpee). I always get him a large one and I know that it will come to $1.70 so that is the money I take into the store with me, usually the correct change. Two weeks in a row now the clerk's behind the register have charged me the wrong price $1.38, for a medium. The first time I politely said "I'm sorry this is a large not a medium" The girl looked at me, looked at the drink, tutted and changed the price. I shrugged. It happened again last weekend, different clerk, but this time she got really quite snitty about it. So much for being honest. I shall just let them screw themselves in the future.

Hopefully by the end of the day the entire nation will be able to sing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead."

I was cooking dinner on Sunday and had just put a saucepan on the stove to heat up some chicken stock. Lari, my darling Queen cat decided to jump up onto the stove top to see what I was doing. (It is a ceramic stove top). So she sat there watching me chop some potato when all of a sudden I could smell burning hair. Sure enough Lari had draped her tail on the edge of the burner and it was merrily smoke, she of course was oblivious to it. Now I don't know about you but I would be quite grateful if someone pointed out to me that my tail was on fire but Lari however did not take kindly to being removed from the stove top and having the smoldering fur removed from her tail. Talk about ingratitude.

The continuing diary of Ms. Peaches.

This week I decided it would be fun to be a dog so I have been doing "doggy" things. Normally us cats would be awake during the night, checking out stuff with our feline night vision but I retire to bed in the evening now, my bed being a towel that I pull of the towel rail every evening. The female of course always puts it back when I am not looking but I always manage to retrieve it. When the female rises in the morning I trot to the back door with the dogs and go out for my morning walk with them. It has been quite fun being a dog however seeing as dogs don't do some of the best cat things I have been switching back and forth between being a cat and being a dog. For instance dogs don't like chasing birds, well other than Cueball of course, but then Cueball isn't really a dog, he's more like a large polar bear but with much bigger feet, anyway much to my female's disgust I caught a sparrow this week. I supposed she wouldn't have minded quite so much but I decided it would be great fun to put the dead sparrow in the bath tub and play with it. Personally I like it when there are feathers all over the place but female was not pleased. She tried to take the sparrow off me and got even madder when I growled at her, I really shouldn't do that I suppose but it was MY sparrow and she took it. I shall bite her toes when she is not looking to get my revenge.