Okay, be honest. Who here is loving this early blast of cold air? Raise your hands if you are. I certainly am. This is awesome, in the most easily amused, tween girl sort of way. I think the cold air is great. It even snowed in the higher elevations here, in the Deep South, including over at my parents' cabin across the state line. (I have before and after pix from yesterday and today.) After having all the cats and dogs stare at me, like they were desperately trying to psychically convey a crucial message to me, I finally clued in that they were cold, and I shut the four windows I had open until about noon. It was maybe forty degrees outside, and according to my thermostat when I finally caved and turned on the heat on low, it was sixty-one inside. After a sticky southern summer, and an extended warm fall, I am thrilled to death to have this cold snap.
I have been trying to keep a few plants alive that I brought in a month ago, using an aquarium and plant grow light. It's not going well. The marjoram is completely dead, no survivors. The lemon verbena, catnip, and parsley are trying to cling to life, but they don't look very good. Same with chives. And I tried to sprout some basil to replace what died at the end of the soggy summer, but the light didn't seem to do it any favors. Now with this cold snap, I have to think about what could keep my lemon tree alive, if I choose to bring it inside. I put it in a pot on purpose, so that I could take it with me when we decide where we want to live after here. It has taken the entire season for the four remaining lemons on it to turn vaguely yellow, and now I am concerned that the freeze warnings for tomorrow night will spell doom for those slow-ripening fruits. I will try to move things around just enough by the grow light in the kitchen to keep it warm, but I have my doubts that I will be successful, after watching everything else turn brown and shrivel up.
What is it about the cold that has made me crave dairy products all evening? The colder it gets, the more I wish I had ice cream, or equally delicious-sounding, spiked hot chocolate. I don't even have a carton of milk in the house right now, with my experiment to reduce my dairy intake, so I can't make chocolate milk of any temperature. Unfortunately for me, by the time I thought I should just give in and get some sort of sweet dairy product, I'd already had a couple solid glasses of red wine, one with dinner and one to block the craving out of my mind, so driving to the store was out of the question. I'm one bad decision away from using the last of the heavy cream, some old chocolate syrup, and a whisk to cure this impulse. I wonder which would be worse, the cream, or one more glass of that wine. A little of both might make this cold evening that much more pleasant.
No comments:
Post a Comment