Country Mouse Monday: endings, beginnings, sweetness

One week ago today, my youngest sister passed away after years of cancer and illness. She was a brilliant person who changed dramatically in the final years of her life, away from the person we knew into some other creature with a different family and a desire not to know us.

To say the last four years have been painful is an understatement.

And so her death, finally, was a relief in many ways -- relief that she no longer suffers, relief that her 6-year-old daughter no longer witnesses her wasting away, relief that my family at last grieves in earnest instead of wracking our brains for how to fix the broken.

For me, the Country Mouse, naturally on that day a week ago, I found solace in the dirt.

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Country Mouse Monday: good eatin', no effort

asparagus now, apricots laterAs much as this Country Mouse loves to work (and boy, do I), there is also something so wonderful about the food that just re-appears, year after year, without us doing a thing.

Just walk out, take a bite.

So it goes with the asparagus, generally the first tasty morsels of the spring, and so it will be again this summer with what looks to be another bumper crop of apricots.

And while we're in the As, the artichokes aren't far behind, either!

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