Day 149, Year 7: Strawberries, Apricots, and White Eggs
Date: Thursday, April 5, 2012
Weather: Partly Sunny Day with Temps in the 40’s
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, MA
It’s strawberry picking time on the border between North and South Carolina.
My sister who lives just north of the border and our friends Lee and Lynda
that live just south of the border have both reported that the strawberries
are in early this year. We were picking strawberries the first of June when
we arrived there last year, so this really does seem early. The photo of
the apricot blossoms in Justin and Jo’s yard in New Mexico that I posted
yesterday made Lynda wonder why she never sees fresh apricots in the
farmer’s markets in the Carolinas. Obviously apricots can withstand very
cold winter temperatures like they have in the mountains of New Mexico, but
they have a harder time growing where there are alternating warm weather
periods and freezes. This is because they, along with cherry trees, tend to
bloom much earlier than other fruit trees when there are warm spells during
the late winter. They bloom and then they get hit with a frost and the
fruit is lost for that year. When I searched on the internet I found that
apricots grow in Armenia, China, India, Egypt, Japan, Iran, Southern
Australia, and in the US in California, Washington, and Utah-but not North
and South Carolina, at least not commercially. So that covers the
strawberries and apricots mentioned in the subject line, but what about the
white eggs? This afternoon I was coloring eggs with Sam and Jonah.
Actually, Sam and I started the process and Jonah joined us when he got up
from his nap. When he joined us, Jonah wanted to see the boiled eggs. He
opened the carton, got this big-eyed look on his face, and exclaimed,
“They’re white!” We all got a good laugh out of that one. Obviously, he
thinks eggs should be brown since that is what Heather and Jed buy. But he
sure did enjoy dipping the white ones in the coloring solutions and ending
up with green, blue, orange, yellow, pink, and purple. Tomorrow night we
will have a Passover Seder dinner with Heather, Jed, and boys. The modern
day mixing, matching, and melding of cultures and religions within one
family makes for very interesting holiday celebrations. So we are going
from coloring eggs for Easter to the required hard-boiled egg at each place
setting for the Passover Seder dinner. I’m sure Jonah’s only concern will
be whether the eggs are white or brown or colored!
Poor Mark. Last night when I wrote the log, he felt so good and was hopeful
that he was going to skip having the really down day he has had after the
first three chemo treatments. Unfortunately that was too optimistic. He
was unable to sleep much during the night and felt just awful this morning.
All hopes for caulking the deck today went out the window. Maybe next week
he’ll be feeling better and we can do that. In the meantime, he is supposed
to work at West Marine tomorrow and Saturday. He is still not feeling good,
but he will go in to work in the morning and see how the day goes. If the
pattern of the past treatments prevails, he might feel just fine. He just
seems to have the one really bad day. But we’ll just have to wait and see.
One day at a time . . .
