Choice Morsels

  My Mama Kat topic is, "Something that surprised me." And that happy surprise was finding this baby tomato plant, pictured below, growing in this bit of dirt outside my front door a couple weeks ago. How it came to be there I don't know. The other part of the surprise is I have no idea what sort of tomato it is. Cherry? Roma? Regular? Red? Yellow? Heirloom? So I moved it to my r aised bed: And here it is, but the surprise won't be finished until I see the fruit.

Today's Mama Kat is brief fiction based using the word "enough." It's based on a writers prompt from  my Pinterest   board of "Interesting Writers  Prompts."  Enough by B Nickerson He waited until dark to approach the small brick house and knock tentatively on the door. This was his last hope. He winced as the porch light blinked on and she opened the door the width of the security chain to peer out. He wasn't sure she'd even recognize him. He had a beard now and wore a slouchy hat to help conceal his face. They used to work together a few years back in the same office, both journalists. They'd been friendly co-workers back then---before the Purge.   He hated to involve her, but he just had no where else to turn. Her eyes widened with recognition. "Clay?" He nodded. "Can I come in?" She unlatched the door chain and widened the door so he could walk in. Clay quickly scanned the living room. The window...

Today, I'm going to share a few amusing quotes from my Pinterest "Good Quotes" board: The fate of all crafty hobby people. ******* Even on bad days, something good can be found be happy about. ******** You know this is true when you see people are driving around town  alone in their car wearing a mask. ******** Any one who gardens knows this is true. *******

      The Mama Kat prompt I chose today is to write a post using the word: final. For this one, I turned to my collection of writers prompts in Pinterest: "the last entry of an explorers journal" and thus this short  fiction was born: The Final Report by b.nickerson. Allen turned on the logbook and rapidly began tapping keys, composing his final report, quite certain he would not survive the night.      “ Of the seven of us, I alone am left,” he typed, then paused to reflect on events since they landed on this planet. Ethan had been the first to disappear. Right after they landed and were hacking their way through thick jungle. Ethan had been in the rear, but then suddenly he wasn't there at all---and they hadn't heard a sound.             They called for him and scanned around, but nothing. The Ship wasn't due back for four days to pick them up, so the Captain ordered they proceed. They had surve...

The Mama Kat prompt I chose today is to share about a favorite read. My absolute favorite book is, "My Blue Castle" by  L.M. Montgomery, the same author of Anna of Green Gables.  It's a yellowed, worn paperback that I re-read from time to time. I like it because it's  a classic ugly-ducking-turns-into-a-swan story. It's set in Canada around 1920 and is about a young woman named, Valency. She's almost 29, an old maid by social standards of the day with no hope of any marrying prospects She's an introverted, meek girl who feels stuck succumbing to every whim of her domineering Mother and her Mother's cousin as well as having to endure all the eccentricities of all the local high-brow relatives. Her's is a drab life and to make-up for it, Valency lives an imaginary day-dream life in her mind where she is the princess of a beautiful blue castle and can do what she likes and is courted by every handsome prince of the land. Valency als...

Today's chosen prompt is to share a memory from 12th grade and of all my years o f high school, 12th grade has some nice memory highlights. Probably one of my best memories of 12th grade is writing fanfiction  with my friend Cheryl. We became friends in 9th grade and I got her hooked on my interest in it. There was a masked-hero show called "The Green Hornet" in re-runs then and I fell in love with writing script-like fanfiction for that show. Cheryl liked the idea and started writing similar fanfiction for her favorite show, Mannix. We both even had an original character we added into the mix.  I remember many a study hall period, us sitting side-by-side, talking in hushed whispers about whatever we wrote the night before.  Having someone to share a common interest with was super cool. The other highlight of 12th grade was having a boy actually ask me to be his experiment partner for a Psych class project. I'd known him since 10th grade, but I was just ...

The Mama Kat prompt I chose to day is, "Something that made me laugh," so here's some clever meme's from Pinterest that gave me chuckle: When Every Day is Casual Friday... Not So Far-Feteched Anymore... Here's An Idea... Sounds like a deal... When the "Have Nots," Finally Catch Up to the "Haves."

The Mama Kat prompt I've chosen today is to "Show Us Something Beautiful." My Dutch Iris have been extravagant this year! I have a vase of them in the house. Very cheery. It's the reason I grow flowers---to have a free vase of flowers in the house!  And My Favorite Azalea's This one Azalea in my back yard is the only one that bloomed profusely this year! I love the large these large fluffy single blooms!

I graduated high school in 1975. I took typing class I & II over 2 semesters when I was in 11th grade.  At that time, being able to type and type well was a critical employment skill. For women, a majority of jobs between World War 2 and advent of Personal Computers replacing typewriters ---typing was a required job skill. You were required not only to type fast, but accurately.  Even in the 60's and 70's when computers were beginning to be installed in business offices, they were monstrous contraptions with huge keyboards, so typing remained a high demand skill.  (check this Pinterest picture of the lady with a beehive hair-do at a trendy desk computer!)  The typing technique we were taught was called, "Touch Typing," and you had to keep your eyes on the paper document you were typing while your fingers flew over the keys, each finger knowing which letters to strike. Your typing skill level was evaluated by a timed speed test where you ty...

The Mama Kat prompt I chose today asks the question, "What are you binge watching?" Interesting question since I rarely watch TV, but I didn't binge watch television---instead I did some binge watching of fan made Star Wars movies on You Tube on my computer. I spent several hours watching them, one after another. Mostly I just watched ones that caught my interest and seemed well-made. There are official contests for fan made Star Wars films and some of the fan film fare in You Tube are noted as having won awards.  Pure escapism. I needed to decompress. It's surprising how many fan films there are and how well made. For your interest, if you're a Star Wars fan, I've included a 3 part series I thought pretty good, called, "A Light in the Darkness." It's set in a galaxy far, far away on a mining colony planet. It's a story of rebellion and ordinary people laying down their lives to fight for freedom. The segments are short, about 13 min...

The Mama Kat prompt I'm doing today is, "Share your favorite local restaurant." We have a couple favorite local restaurants, but I'm only going to share one today: The Aegean Restaurant. This one is located in Shalimar, Florida, across the the street from the county administrative building, around 10 -12 miles from where we live. Distance here is kind of relative, since the Air Force base is the center  of everything and the towns are spread out on either side of it, so getting from one to another involves driving around the base; Shalimar is on the West side of the base and we live on the East side. It's Greek and the family that owns and runs it are Greek as well, so it's authentic. Here's an inside view: All the food on the menu is delicious and they have a good mix of Greek specialties as well as entrees, pastas, salads for those who rather have something more ordinary. One thing I like that they serve, if I'm in the mood for ...

T he blog writing prompt I'm doing today for Mama Kat is one from the general list of October prompts. It asks the question, "Have I ever visited a farm?" When I was a little girl of about 10 , while we were visiting Grandma & Grandpa in Minnesota, I remember visiting a farm. It may have been the farm our Grandpa owned that he leased. Or maybe relatives. I don't remember, though I do recall our whole family driving there in the car. With the Grands, too, I think.  It was a working farm with cows and horses and fields. There was the farm house and, nearby, a large barn with a rail fence partially enclosing a barnyard area that was empty, though the ground had the bare and straw-spattered look of having been used at some point. I remember the farm family had a couple young daughters around our age and they guided us through the barn and through the empty barnyard off someplace to show us something. What I remember most vividly, however, is the return tri...

The Mama Kat prompt I chose today was to share a photo that best represents your August so far: This,  because Florida has been hot, hot, hot. So we all want what this Box Turtle found: a dip in the pool to cool off!

Today's Mama Kat prompt option is "Share Your Favorite Summer Recipe!" My favorite is Pineapple Fluff! It's easy and everyone loves it. It's classed as a salad, but can be enjoyed as a dessert!  Our friends rate it as tastier then Watergate Salad (green fluff) and I it's great anytime of year; not just summer, but goes really well with summer grilled meals! (photo is my own) Pineapple Fluff Ingredients: 1 small (3.4 oz) box Instant Coconut Creme pudding 1 20oz can of Crushed Pineapple 1 8oz tub of Whipped Topping 2 cups Mini-Marshmallows 1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped pecans  1 cup shredded sweet coconut Directions: In  a large bowl: add Crushed Pineapple with the juice and stir in the instant pudding. Now add pecans & coconut, stir in. Finally fold in the whipped topping and mini-marshmallows and fold-in until everything is thoroughly combined and the pudding is completely mixed in with the whipped topping. Cover & refrigerate a minimum of ...

The Mama Kat topic of choice today is, "Summer Camp Memories." My sisters and I were in 4-H many years. Our parents were also  4-H leaders for the our local club many of those years as well. A perk of being in 4-H was the annual summer 4-H came held at Lake Shakamak State Park, Indiana.  We'd meet up to board a school bus, then enjoy a jostling hour and a half ride to the park. My memories of 4-H camp are from the 70's. Some things, like the Mess Hall (pictured) look pretty much the same. There's actually a wide circular field of grass in front of this Mess Hall with a ring of cabins that were pretty utilitarian. Just bare cement floors, unfinished walls with 2 x 4's visible  and rows of metal frame bunk-beds. I have two high-light memories of 4-H camp: the Mess Hall singing and evening entertainment at the Vesper Bowl. In the 70's, the Mess Hall was filled with long lows of tables with long wooden benches for seating and every meal in...

The Mama Kat prompt I chose today concerned my experience "being on a boat." My best, most dramatic boat experience happened in 1978 when I was in the Air Force and assigned to Karamursel Air Base in Turkey. It was custom to be assigned a "sponsor" from the future location, who would meet me and show me around. I was a medic and she was an Airmen at the clinic I'd be working at. So I flew into Istanbul. It was near lunchtime and I'd been awake over 24 hours. My sponsor met me along with two friends she brought along, all medics as well. One was a guy and one was girl, who was their supervisor and would be mine, too. They hustled me and my baggage outside to the line of taxi's and haggled with the driver over the fare price, then when they agreed, we got in and drove off. They explained to me haggling over the price of anything was customary and expected---one never just paid the price asked for. So that was new. Then they took me to ...

Today's post is another notably amusing memory from my childhood visits to Grandma Robbins house. Our house in Indiana, where my sisters and I grew up, had windows and curtains and that was it. We'd never seen a pull-down window shade in person, but just  on cartoons where the characters were always pulling them down, then letting them snap up to roll crazily at the the top. (Amazingly, I couldn't find a single window shade gif of Looney-Toons or Tom & Jerry, pulling down window shades, though it was pretty common on those shows.  So I drew one.) But our Grandma Robbins had real window shades on her windows---the old fashioned vinyl draw-down kind with a pull-string. I recall that string had a ring on the end  that was encircled with pretty ecru colored crochet and that the shade had a floral print. I was probably trendy decorating for the early to mid-20th century.  But because my sisters and I had only ever seen window shades on cartoons, w...

Next in my series of memories about Grandma Robbins house is "Grandma's Staircase." Grandma's house in Mantorville, Minnesota was built sometime around the turn of the 20th century. It was a spacious two-story house with stairs: eighteen narrow, good quality hardwood steps that ran straight up to the second floor, with "straight" being a key word. Their upward angle was very steep, steeper then an average staircase. No carpet or covering. Just plain maple or oak wood steps worn  smooth from like 50 years of use. (It was the 60's and early 70's when we were visiting.) It wasn't like the average staircase with rails so you can see the floor below. Nope, this staircase was installed between walls. No hand-rails. I'm not even sure it was a whole 30 inches wide--maybe just 28 and the individual steps were below average width as well, so it was very easy to take them two at at time. If you needed support, you just used the wall.  N...

The Mama Kat prompt I chose today is, "share something you were working on this week," and that's perfect, since what I was working on was putting the veggie garden in. However, putting the garden in led to another decision that will lead to new project in the fall... This is my Veggie bed: It's an in-ground garden. It's in the center of the back yard. I've improved it over the years so now it's walled in with castle blocks and the soil his higher level. There's a bed of garlic chives at the far end and above that, a flower bed. Prepping it every year involves throwing down a combination of garden fertilizer and lime on the soil then digging it in, either by hoeing or turning with a shovel. There's only one major hindrance to contend with: pine roots. Long needled pines are everywhere here and they have extensive shallow roots systems, which means their roots aren't deep, but they have a long reach. I've seen them as ...