Miss Scarlet

I have scarlet fever. Someone I know said to me, "How very Little House on the Prairie of you!"


You don't often hear of people having scarlet fever, but it's really just strep throat with a rash. It usually affects children, but I read that that's because 80% of children have developed immunity to those strains of strep by the time they're ten. Well, to my knowledge, I've never had strep throat, so maybe that's why I could get this as an adult. My daughter has regular strep throat right now; we seem to have contracted it the same day. She is truly miserable, but I'm mostly fine. It's like a cold that's not bad at all, but then I have these slightly itchy spots.

I decided to take a picture of my arms and hands, even though they aren't the worst of it and it's hard to see the spots in the picture. I'll spare you the sight of my belly!

Antibiotics are a wonderful thing. I shouldn't be contagious anymore by this afternoon.

Mud

You know what's not fun about living in the country? Mud. Especially when your driveway is new and your yard isn't completely seeded or sodded. The weather turns warm in the spring, the snow melts, but the ground isn't fully thawed.
Mud. I'm sure some people would say it is fun, actually. But I am not one of those people.

Flowerlust

It's spring, and my thoughts have turned to landscaping. I need some more flowers about the place. I want one of these:

And I need one of these:
Photo by Liz West

And, of course, one of these:


And I've never had one of these before, but I really want one:

Hope Springs Eternal

The weather's getting warmer; the snow's going to melt this weekend, at least for the time being. And I'm getting excited to see what my flower garden will do this spring. Right now it looks like dead weeds sticking up out of the snow, because I didn't trim down the transplanted perennials last fall. I hope, I really hope, that I'll have tulips and peonies and lilies and coneflowers and a variety of other flowers (or at least plants) coming up this spring.

Rest in Peace, Sven

Sven was a Norwegian fjord horse. And, like we need to cry more...but I had to find a cowboy song, even though he was a draft horse: Gene Autry's The Last Roundup

My sister has the beautiful pictures of him. But I had to find something in tribute to my dad's gentle giant.

Venison Can Be Good

We've been eating a lot of venison this winter. My husband got a deer last fall. It was young enough and farm-field-fed enough to be quite tender and mild-tasting. I know vension can be gamey, and I can taste that this isn't beef, but this meat is good.

This was an economical way for us to get meat, too. My husband went deer hunting on our land, so there were no travel costs. And he and his brother processed the deer themselves, so we didn't have butcher shop costs. We didn't even have any sausage made. But he and I still need to thaw the bag of scraps and grind it into hamburger.

Christmas Decorations

Do you suppose I should take my Christmas lights and garland down from my porch yet?

I didn't do it right after Christmas, because it was so cold throughout January. The light strands would probably have snapped. So then it was easy to put it off to doing "some day when it's warmer." And my extension cord was frozen to the ground. I think I might be able to get that out now. It's March, for heaven's sake.

No, I haven't plugged them in since New Year's.