Sungold Tomatoes

Put on a skewer with bocconcini and basil leaves, drizzle with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar e voilà, caprese sticks!

The field next to ours is clearly the staging area for the repaying project as I learned at 7am when all the pickup trucks and workers began assembling there. They were followed by the dump trucks which began their carefully choreographed advance, accompanied by constant beeping  as they reversed up the hill. I think a special place in hell should be reserved for whoever it was that decreed that a noise to warn someone standing behind a vehicle should be able to be heard for miles. In Japan, our tour bus had a neatly uniformed, white gloved young lady who jumped off the bus whenever it had to reverse and blew a whistle…so much more civilized.

I never know who I'm going to find in or around the house these days when I come home. A couple of days ago I was greeted by a very pleasant young man in overalls with booties over his shoes who told me he was vacuuming out the furnace/air conditioning ducts. Later I asked OIlMan if we had ever, in the 45 years we lived in the same house in Berkeley, had the ducts vacuumed…nope. never…

Today I came home to the sight of two men with hoses on the roof. Turns out they were cleaning out the rain gutters. We never did that in Berkeley either, but we didn't have woodpeckers stashing  acorns in them. Tomorrow, RatMan is coming back to 'check on' his traps. OilMan, who has toiled for days plugging and cementing and nailing closed every hole into the crawl space or attic space of this house is going to tell him to take his traps and go home. He already has his own traps lined up on the porch railing ready to go….

Ah, life in the country. At least we have home grown tomatoes….