Pickles

So! Today has been busy. Dad took the car and the boy in to the garage at 8 this morning, and they ended up walking a good distance of the way back from Orleans. They arrived hot and tired.
Meanwhile, I took the girl on a one-hour wagon ride tour of local play parks and to a supermarket. We arrived hot and tired.
We had a snack, and since it was still morning, we all then headed out on our bikes with the girl in the bike carrier, and the boy on his yellow two wheeler with trainers. Armed with water, chips and string cheese. We rode to a local college. It took an hour and a half, and was the longest ride the boy has ever taken on his bike, ever. Toward the end on the way back, he pooped out and stopped and put his helmet down on his handlebars. We put him in the carrier and I walked the bikes home. Then a quick trip to a local fast food place for lunch (since both kids were in the carrier, it could go quickly) and home again. Dessert and sleep. And boy have they slept. It is gratifying to know that we can tire them out this way. I got a 1.5 hour phone call to my mother in.

Pickles are something I really appreciate. Not just pickled cucumbers, although those are the finest. I have had really good watermelon pickles, which were the rind of the watermelon, peeled of skin. How waste-not-want-not is that? Eat the red part, peel the skin off the rind, make the rest into a superb pickle. Pickled asparagus is another favorite. Lately I have gotten lazy and have been buying and noshing on pre-sliced pickles. Extra garlic dills, like my mother-in-law used to make. She would put a grape leaf on top under the cap; she claimed it kept them crisp. She would also laughingly add 4 or 5 cloves of wild garlic to each mason jar when it was intended for me. One great memory I have is singing in church between my mother and my mother-in-law when I had eaten some pickled wild garlic. Both ladies had to wipe their eyes and my mother kept pushing clorets mints, clorets gum, anything clorets on me.

Today I have eaten half a jar of extra garlic sliced dills. I will not eat the rest of the jar. I only bought it this morning. I will not eat the rest of the jar. But I will eat some more. In fact, right now sounds like a good time.

BTW, one of my nicknames was "Pickle" when I was a baby. It's an English term for "trouble", as in "you're in a pickle". My real name got used generally only when I was in a pickle.