Only Four More Sleeps!

Until my good friend SMM and her Sweetie arrive for a visit!

Can we say excited boys and girls? We haven't seen SMM and Sweetie since we left Calgary over two years ago. They fled what they now refer to as the OC shortly before we did, leaving a dreadful hole in my social calendar. No more sushi lunches, trips to the Farmer's Market or raids on the Calgary Herald's annual booksale.

On other fronts, I am house and cat sitting for neighbours who are off to Newfoundland for a couple of weeks. Their cats are a large fluffy grey and white boy named Elvis and a sleek black female named Priscilla. They are the official park mousers, and are allowed to roam, while all other pets must be leashed or inside a fence.

Elvis and Sal have become good friends, Sal insists on visiting Elvis a couple of times a day, and Elvis drifts down to visit Sal several times a day. He's the one who recently left Sal a dead mouse as a gift.

Elvis and Pris are as attached to their Mama as Sal is to me, and they are a bit put out that she has gone off and left them. Elvis is so desperate for love he rolled over and presented belly for rubs today, but until last night Pris wouldn't let me anywhere near her. She finally gave p and let me scratch her ears. But she still had a bit of a whine about her mama's absence.

We are covered up in fruit, which is a good spot to be in. I have the dehydrator full of nectarines now, and yesterday I bought a gizmo which peels, cores and slices apples in one operation. I have a big box of apples waiting to be dried, courtesy of our friends Pat and Claude. Tomorrow I will try that new gadget out.

Then we have two kinds of plums, big purple ones and smaller pear-shaped reddish ones which look something like a ripe fig. Both are yummy but - well - you know why old folks drink prune juice. I made the error of eating about a dozen plums a couple of days ago. I no longer need a colonic, thanks.

I'm thinking of making a plum cobbler for the potluck which is coming up tomorrow. No way can we eat all those plums fast enough to keep them from going south. I could dry some, but plum cobbler sounds better. I just have to figure out how to make a pastry dough with no gluten, so Tony can have some too.

Oh, then there is a big box of purple concord grapes, about the only kind of grapes I like. These remind me of the wild grapes we picked when I was a girl, and when our boys were small. They are scrumptious, but another case of too much to eat in a hurry. They are seedless and freeze well, so I will probably pop a bunch into the freezer.

There's a big spaghetti squash, ripe field tomatoes, sugar snap peas, cabbage, summer squash, tiny red potatoes and portabello mushrooms, all waiting to be cooked. No wonder we are a bit on the plump side.

But we better enjoy it while we can. The weather has been wonderful the last couple of weeks, but tomorrow the temperature is forecast to fall like the stock market. Cool days ahead. Apparently summer is not endless.