Eggplant, Zucchini and Rhubarb Pie

Actually, I’m surrounded by zucchini and eggplant art. I ate the rhubarb pie. More on that later. The big news of the week was the completion of vegetable chunks for my large format ‘Ratatouille’ piece. I turned my attention to the giant hand that will pull a giant carrot from the ground in my ‘From the Garden’ piece. I’m not sure that’s the final name, but it’s the companion piece to ‘Ratatouille.’ I spent considerable time adding a layer of skin to the hand as we traveled to and from Michigan over the boy’s spring break. I’ll start creating the herbs and fleshing out the tomato slices this week, which means the light at the end of the tunnel is in view. I just have to work around the mountain of vegetables in my art studio.

The weather this week has just been beautiful. The boys decided to till and weed their garden bed, and I ordered three yards of hardwood mulch for Jim to use on the flower beds. That’s the grand metaphor explaining why our marriage works so well—I buy the mulch and he spreads it. As of today, the front yard is pretty well under control, but there’s still a big pile of mulch in the driveway. The warm weather even lured us out to May’s Greenhouse this afternoon. We ended up buying some lettuce, onions and a few pansies to brighten up the garden. Tommie and Jacob leaped into action and planted everything in their garden space. I have the salad spinner standing by and a new bottle of Ken’s Light Ceasar salad dressing in the fridge. Grow little leaves, grow!

The other big news of the week was our trip to Michigan last weekend to visit Jim’s mom. Grandma still had snow on the ground, ice on the patio and a frozen river behind the house, so we got to re-live winter. We stayed inside and had a delightful time. We ate too much good food and laughed for all we were worth. We rented a van and brought back a bunch of treasures she wanted to get rid of, including a tattered blanket from great grandma Drummond. I opened it up to discover a huge piece of wool batting in a gauze cotton cover. It’s perfect! I don’t know what its perfect for, but I’m certain it will be great. And it fits my motto: recycled wool is good, free wool is even better! The best news from the trip was that Jim made a rhubarb pie. By some odd coincidence, Monday the 14^th was national ‘pi’ day, as in the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. Could I help it if Jim thought it was national ‘pie’ day? Pie, as in, here’s two pounds of rhubarb, my sweet husband! (Think ‘mulch’ here, hee hee hee)! It was delightful! I wonder if he’ll get suspicious when I tell him about national pie day?

Until next week,

Martina Celerin