*smile*

I feel a lot better now. Thank you for all of the pets.

I used the letter links to spell out "plethora" for Rhys, and hung it on his playmat. He pulled off half of it and started doing a little wiggly dance. I wsn't sure quite what it was but then I looked in his hand and realized it must be a "hora".

Then I used the links to spell "diaper" for him. bard_bloom came home and looked at the toy and said, "Repaid? What, are you teaching him about finances?" O ye wordplayers and linguists, is there a special name for a word that spells another word backwards? Also, do you know any other good ones (without any duplicate letters) that I should make for the baby to play with?

Come to think of it, that's another one. pets/step. In the area I grew up in there was a store called "Pets Pets Pets" but we always called it "Pets Pets Step" because the sign looked like this:

P----------S
E--------T
T------E
S----P
PETS

Tonight bard_bloom has to go out and do Important Ritual Stuff, so baby and I are home alone. Bwah hah hah. I hope he goes to sleep early, I'm going to eat popcorn and watch a DVD, woo hoo hoo.

Art Garfunkel got busted for pot. That's kind of a bummer, since I was listening to his kids' album at the time I found out. On the other hand, the fine is $100, which is less than I paid for the ticket to his last concert, which had a lot of other people at it, so I guess it's okay.

Um, I think I better stop now.

Cycles of Nature

I finally found a CSA (community-sponsored agriculture) farm that has a pickup location in Westchester, early enough to join for the 2004 season. Roxbury Farm is actually up in Columbia County, but they deliver to Pleasantville, a reasonable once-a -week drive. I am bouncing-up-and-down happy about this.

My first experience with a CSA was up in Ithaca, many years ago; the farmers used to have parties for the 20 or so members, the pickups were from someone's porch, walking distance from my house, but I always drove because the vegetables were heavy. I ate nettles and cattails and green squash that was round for stuffing and kale and more kale that summer, and started my annual tradition of salsa making when I was rewarded for an afternoon of hoeing not only by the sight of a prowling red fox on the edge of the property, but with a 40-lb box of beautiful ripe tomoatoes.

When we moved downstate, I found a CSA which was a moderate drive away from home, and we joined, but I was really disappointed. It was more like a bulk purchase of organic produce, not quite as good as what they had in their farm store, and not with much variety, and there was no community -- I never saw anyone else that was part of it, and it turned out to be much less convenient than I thought it would be.

I tried to join the little CSA they are doing at the Teatown Nature Preserve locally, but it's a tiny project, and all full by the time a friend told me about it.

This should be good. I talked to the local coordinator, and this one feels much more like I remember from my experience upstate. There are fruit and vegetables and herbs, and monthly work days at the farm if I want to drive out and meet people. Maybe there will even be enough fruit for nice organic jam! Rhys will be eating solids by the summer, and the idea of pureeing him up some local, sustainably grown produce that I've got an emotional investment in for his lunch makes me feel like such a good hippiemom.

There's still the problem of the kale, of course. Anyone got any good kale recipes?