Cookbooks are like anything else that someone might enjoy - as every golfer with an assortment of tee-bedecked ties or second-grade teacher with a cupboard full of apple-shaped coffee mugs knows - in that, once one's interest in cooking and cookbooks is found out by friends and family at large, one invariably receives as well-intentioned gifts all manner of odd, duplicative or even plain old icky examples right alongside the true treasures. And so it has been for me.

Recently I decided to cull my cookbook collection, both as a cookbook-specific effort to retain only those with true personal value and also as part of a broader intent to reduce the amount of stuff in general that we're currently carrying. Culling required me to engage in the thoroughly enjoyable task of rereading many books I hadn't cracked open in some time to decide where they fell in the culling sweeps. Some, once special favorites, were no longer right for my kitchen, but I knew another cook who might enjoy them. I felt good about these knowing that they'd remain in my world even if under different ownership. Others I could see no clear use for - they were either too strange, too narrow in subject, contained too many errors or were just in some other way unkeepable. (Aside: Why do cookbooks seem to be the least edited of any genre of book? I swear that some people believe that writing cookbooks involves nothing more than slapping some recipes on a page.) These were put into the free box at a neighbor's yard sale and then moved onto a local thrift. The collection remaining consists of cookbooks that I feel comfortable will carry me through another decade of cooking. They are solid, practical, well-written, instructive and, in more than one case, sentimental.

In August of 1992 my youngest sister and I traveled to San Francisco together to visit family and celebrate our graduations, hers from high school and mine from college. We visited with our father's sisters and our grandmother, skulked around the city, and thoroughly enjoyed being so far from our typical routines. Our grandmother had moved to the Bay area when we were very young and visits were few and far between (in those days, even calling long distance really meant something - remember when you'd get off the phone to take another call if it was long distance?).

Grandmommy, as we called her, was a home cook in the best sense. We eagerly awaited her Christmas box every year, not so much for the knitted scarves it inevitably contained (although now I treasure those I still have) but rather for the jams and jellies, candies and nuts they contained. She dried apples picked from her apple tree - years before Ron Popiel tried to get us all to buy dehydrators off early morning television. And on our visit her kitchen talents did not disappoint. Her peach tree was producing well and we enjoyed homemade peach daiquiries before dinner and her famous, memorable peach pie after.
Less than three months after the trip, Grandmommy was dead. In retrospect, it's clear to me now that she had been dying even as she served us dinner but I'm still not sure if she knew it herself. No matter, really, I suppose.

My only request of my aunts handling her estate was that I might have some of my grandmother's recipe files. A few weeks later I received in the mail an accordian file full of clippings, scribbles and pages torn from magazines along with three community cookbooks from her near four decades of living in and around Pittsburgh. The cookbooks remained unopened by me all these years until just the other day. Each of them, for different reasons, remained in my "keep" pile. And one has original recipe, enhanced by my grandmother in her characteristic loopy script and customary green ink, for peach pie.

Isn't it funny how a book can sit totally unreferenced and unconsidered for, oh, 13 years before all of a sudden becoming an heirloom? Peaches are still more than a month away for me but I can say with some certainty that my kitchen will offer forth at least one pie this summer, with many thanks and much love.

Well, that turned out to be a lot more complicated than expected. Why was it the modem and not something I'm trying to get rid of anyway, like our ancient and probably leaky microwave? With Brainiac's attachment to that thing a lightening strike is my only hope of ridding us of it once and for all. Ten minutes to steam green beans, indeed.

Since the modem fried much has happened and nothing has happened. Brainiac, lovely and wonderful though he is, forgot Mother's Day. I wasn't upset, really, since the whole day is nice when it comes off but nothing to get really bothered over, you know?. And I had the best giggle when driving to church and the guy on the radio said something about it and, out of the corner of my eye saw my beloved swallow hard and make a sound that seemed as though it might have been "earghfphma".

Even better was the laugh I had a few days later when, with an utterly straight face, he began a sentence with the words, "If you've been thinking about Father's Day I have an idea for you."

"An idea," I responded, "Does it look anything like the Vera Bradley bag I'm looking to buy myself for Mother's Day?"

It was not.

In other news, the Boy Wonder has four loose teeth. His special treasure box is all set on his nightstand, ready for offerings to and receipts from the Tooth Fairy, although he has also left her special instructions that under no circumstance is she to wake him up. "Fairies are cool," he said, "But I don't ever wanna meet one."

The Boy also fell into a pond on Friday. It was very hard to keep my mothering cool with that one but all is well. He was merely very wet, somewhat cold and only a little algaeish, and dried off to find himself in possession of a renewed commitment to swimming lessons. As a bonus, we taught him the meaning of "commando" when our friend whose house we were visiting was able to produce fresh socks, pants, shirt and shoes in his size, but no underwear. On balance, I'd say he regards the entire event positively.

And Entropy Girl. My sweet, beloved "primpress" (uh, that's "princess") of the sapphire eyes. Yes, her. E.G.'s speaking more in the last week or so. More in the sense of quantity of words said, although she's actually repeating the same words over and over (and over and over). "No way. I not." Based on today's conversational output, that means she's not going to 1) eat breakfast, 2) take a nap, 3) keep her shoes on her feet, 4) refrain from hitting her brother with a piece of laminate flooring or 5) stop saying "No way. I not."

I tell you, sometimes it's a very good thing she's cute.

Something somewhere near us was struck my lightening and our newish cable modem is fried. A new modem has been procured and we'll be back on schedule soon with (yeah, right) this year's canning tutorial, reminiscing about my grandmother's peach pie, and a review of Renee Pottle's I Want My Dinner Now.

Just as soon as the wires stop smoking, that is.

Today Entropy Girl and I put a few more plants into the garden, another example of hope springing eternal. We haven't had rain in forever and I fear for my ability to keep things watered. Anyway, because hope really, really springs eternal we went out today and bought a few more starts to tuck in and around here and there. I think I've covered most of the local garden centers and a few of the big box places on my way to getting cool stuff I can now say that I am, more or less, satisfied. True, I never did get any okra or tomatillos, and I'm still very interested in trying to grow ground cherries, but for now I am at as much gardening peace as it's probably possible to be.

In addition to the radishes and lettuce planted a few weeks ago (and coming up nicely, I might add), we now have: 3 yellow squash, two zucchini, one eggplant, three purple cabbage, three watermelon, three cuke, one canteloup, three pumpkin, six green bean, six basil, two dill, two cilantro, one rosemary, one thyme and one sweet woodruff. Oh, and about 18 tomatoes of varying kinds and three hot peppers and three sweet peppers. With some luck and attention, at least some of this will result in actual food.

I'm still working on the front patio and the slope of yard that leads down to the house. The front of the house is almost entirely shaded all day long (which makes me very cold now, but which I'm sure I'll come to appreciate in mid-Summer) so I've got a lot of pots of things that can stand the limited sun. It looks as if previous residents have put some hydrangeas and peonies at rather random locations. The hydrangeas I'm not so worried about but the peonies in the shade, while leafing, don't have the large buds that their sunnier siblings have produced. Ah, well. Not much can be done until the fall, I guess. I like the idea of putting a row of peonies along the driveway and if I can divide and transplant the underperformers already on-site that would be grand.

As for the hydrangeas, propogation time is coming (generally in June) and they're so easy to root that it would a shame not to make myself a whole mess of babies. Oh, and I also need to trim around the roots of a bunch of rose bushes out by the barn wall. Farmer Newell (the man who leases the production fields here and who keeps the cows) told me that the roses have been here "forever" but that they took a beating from the last service to maintain the grounds. Well, not on my watch. I told him that I'd trim around them and give them a nice mulch, basically to clean them up and give them a perimeter of protection. I don't see any buds yet, and if they're that distressed I guess I might not. Hopefully a little TLC will carry them through to a bloom next year. What was that about hope springing eternal?

My parents and sisters came down for the weekend to attend my cousin's graduation party. It was a lovely visit, although so rushed and full of activity that I think most of the adults felt very frazzled. I felt crazed before anyone actually arrived just in anticipation of how busy the visit was going to be. Nothing like a little anticipatory stress.

In addition to the graduation party and other family events, Brainiac and I attended his 20-year high school reunion. Now that was interesting, to say the least. Interesting, in fact, in ways I am still processing. I won't say too much about it, because the relationships that were picked up on Saturday, if only for three hours and then to be dropped again, aren't my story to tell. Seeing them presented a fascinating picture of the boy I married as a man some eight years removed from them. The child is the father of the man, indeed.

"Perhaps industriousness will be bestowed upon me tomorrow."

It's not looking too good.

Do something for me, will you? Sometime this summer I will mention - I am sure of it - that I am planning to go buy some canning jars. When I do, yell at me. Forcibly restrain me if necessary. I do not, by any rational definition of the word "need", need canning jars. Lids, perhaps. Jars, no.

I just opened what I'm pretty sure is the third very large moving box filled with nothing but jars. These are in addition to the five or six never-opened boxes piled in the kitchen corner. Where could these have been hiding in the Charlottesville basement? I swear I had no idea that I owned so many. The pressure is on, certainly, to use them wisely and make their ownership worthwhile.

To that end, I contacted the manager of the community garden and asked if would be possible to lease the last remaining 19X20 plot, providing it was still available. No one had come forward with an interest so I now have two plots. This second one I will likely plant up with primarily tomatoes, peppers and herbs. So this may be the first year ever when it will be possible to preserve a year's tomato supply. Plus, the first plot I can now give over to some squashes, which will likely keep on the enclosed back porch quite nicely through the fall.

To add to my food-related joy, I have recently discovered what I am hoping are blueberry and blackberry brambles in the backyard. I've not much experience with small fruits so identification is underway, but if I'm right and we can keep at least some of the harvest from the birds it will be a beautiful thing. I don't need any jam, since I have plenty from last year, but a little syrup and some nectar wouldn't be a terrible thing to have on hand. And I've never dried fruits, although a little experiment might be fun.

So. Onward. Little lettuces are sprouting up, as are radishes. No germination yet on chard, zucchini or green beans. I planted back-ups of the last two but no sign of even them. I don't want to resort to starts, but I suppose I can't rule it out at this point. Why can't I grow stuff from seed? So enormously frustrating...

I was cranky today and invested a lot of time is just being so, time which took me away from other pressing concerns like making cookies for my cousins graduation party, sewing the dress and top for Entropy Girl (both of which have been cut for weeks), changing sheets, conducting research on Optical Character Recognition for a client, and eating anything other than tortilla chips and salsa. Perhaps industriousness will be bestowed upon me tomorrow.