Once again, my friend sought out the peace that only the Bayou can bring. "Can I come to the Bayou? I need a little Bayou Therapy." she said when she called. Sure, come on over. All afternoon, we fished and she spilled her feelings. The Bayou seems to be the ideal place to throw things out there, mull them over and then put them back in a decent order.
Long about 6 o'clock in the evening, I felt a hunger pang and decided that fishing needed to cease for a while. I was hungry! But...I had forgotten to thaw anything from the freezer. Well, we would just have to make do with what was on hand. As we wandered back up the board path from the pier, an idea hit me. Pizza! We would make pizza! Darlene looked a tad confused. "I thought you can't eat meat. How are we going to make pizza?" Easy enough! We would make a garden pizza! She looked at me a bit dubiously and shrugged her shoulders. My friend is not one that experiments in the kitchen much....I do. So, I grabbed tomatoes, onions, fresh basil and fresh oregano from the garden and set her to work chopping. After the pizza dough was spread on the pan and lightly baked, I started layering on the veggies and herbs. "No sauce?" she queried. Nope. No sauce. Once again, I caught her with a puzzled look on her face. After assuring her that it would be tasty, we added seasoning and loaded on mozzerella cheese! The pizza was popped back into the oven for about 15 minutes. Oh, my goodness! The kitchen started smelling delightful and Darlene's expression started to change from doubtful to eager.
Once our supper was on the table and we gave thanks, the sampling began. Yep, that was one tasty pizza! In fact, we almost did not get a picture of creation! It was disappearing fast! Fresh garden style pizza....that is supper! Yum! Good friends, good food....doesn't get much better!
Son, like any young man, eats a lot of pizza. He loves the stuff. His favorite is just plain old pepperoni pizza while if I had my way, everything would be piled on top! And, even though I have quart jars of assorted herbs and spices, his favorite is what he calls "Pizza Spice". The rest of the world evidently uses the wrong name of "Oregano". Since he likes oregano so much, my stash is always being depleted which is why I took to growing that along side all of the other herbs. Since oregano is easy to grow and reseeds itself, at least I shan't go broke buying the stuff.
While out picking figs this afternoon, I noticed that the oregano is in dire need of clipping. Tomorrow will find me out with the scissors snipping the stalks for drying. My harvesting is a bit late, though, as the herb has already started blooming. While this will not hurt the flavor of the herb other than making it a mite stronger, I am a bit hesitant about going wild with the scissors. Bees, namely bumblebees, have taken a liking to the blossoms! Hundreds of the tiny bees were busy harvesting their own part of the oregano! It seems as if the herb gardens are full of pollinators this year!
The bumblebees that are busy in the herb garden are not truly out to make honey with the pollen and nectar they gather. Since their colonies are tiny compared to honeybees and since only the queen bumblebee overwinters, there is no need for a mass amount of honey. The bumblebees fill tiny "nectar pots" with the stuff they gather. This is to feed the larvae that hatch in the spring and to feed the queen. The queen sort of overstuffs herself to prepare for winter and then hibernates. She awakes in the spring to tend to her new brood but unlike the honeybee queen, she has no worker bees. She tends to the larvae herself and, once they mature, the cycle starts again.
The bumblebees, today, were quite busy on the herbs. As they gathered food for the nectar pots and for the queen, I could not help but giggle. I sure hope the queen likes pizza!
I have been blessed with the Mother's Day gifts from my kids. My oldest son and his lovely wife a got a subscription to a delightful magazine for me. It is full of pictures and articles about antiques. The magazine has information on shops, collectibles and even recipes from days past! While this is all interesting, my favorite thing about the magazine is the fact that each picture shows organized collections. I need this. I want this. I have stuff...stuff that is stuffed....stuff that is stuffed in any nook and cranny and not organized in neat collections. With the inspiration of the magazine, I shall now have collections! I, hopefully, will remain inspired long enough to get the Little Bayou House in some semblance of order. My collections shall be properly displayed! Maybe...hopefully.
Then there comes the gift from my daughter and son-in-law. Since Darling Daughter usually chooses the gift for me, I receive some rather unorthodox gifts. This is fine by me as I find quirky things fit me to a T. The gift from these two?....oh, she chose a zoetrope! Yep, I am the proud owner of a zoetrope! A lot of folks have no idea just what this contraption is but I have to admit, I am tickled pink with it. Just so you will know, a zoetrope is a nineteenth century toy that has a cylinder containing a strip drawn with a series of figures. When the cylinder spins, the figures appear animated if you peer through a slot in the cylinder. The zoetrope is sort of a pre-film animation system. So, I can now have endless hours of fun watching a little guy riding a unicycle or a bird flapping its wings!
My youngest son has decided that once all the hubbub of the holiday dies down, he will treat me to the traditional "Mother's Day Pizza" that he always gets for me. This tradition is a grand one as usually the pizza is ordered when I am just too tired to cook. He figures that a meal is something that is useful and, therefore, will be appreciated. It is....and did I mention? I will not have to cook!
This evening as I sat with magazine in hand and the zoetrope on the desk next to me, I had to giggle a bit. That magazine came just in the nick of time! I will now know just how to display my zoetrope and all of the other quirky items all while eating pizza! I love my kids! I hope each mother out there had an equally adventurous Mother's Day!
