Red Hot and green

This has been SUCH a good morning. I sat down at the keyboard to put the finishing touches on a St. Patrick’s Day post, and found an email from Jeanne at the Record-Eagle: Hi Gerry, I reposted “In the Sugarbush” on our blogs today. Thank you! By the way – I noticed you’re in the running for MyNorth.com’s (Traverse Magazine) “Red Hot Best” blogger.

I did not know this! Naturally I trotted over to the MyNorth website to check it out, and sure enough, there I am on the list. PJ Grath of Books in Northport is on the list, too. Decisions, decisions. My mother told me it’s not polite to vote for yourself. After we got through laughing, Miss Sadie, the Cowboy and I all went over and voted for me. Miss Puss-well, you know how she is. Sorry PJ–I hope you and David and Sarah voted for you, too. I, um, suspect that neither of us is going to be one of the top Red Hot Bloggers of Northern Michigan, on account of we are more like Cool Bloggers, but what the heck.  Thank you to whoever it was who nominated us.

Voting closes tomorrow. Just in case you feel like stuffing the ballot box for PJ or me. Or for your favorite restaurant, bar, beach, writer, songwriter–Louan! You’re on that list! Somebody spelled your name wrong but I voted for you anyway! Anyway, the link to the ballot is Right Here. If we make the top three the Cowboy will be insufferable.

OK, that was only the first good thing. The second good thing is that Canon has replaced the little camera! The Clone arrived via FedEx moments ago! Now I am going to take the Disreputable Duo for a good walk and try it out. Oh–here’s the St. Patrick’s Day post I had planned:

Here it is St. Patrick’s Day again and me without a leprechaun!  [That was, of course, before I knew about being Red Hot and getting The Clone.] But I have some excellent suggestions for you.  First, something to look forward to:

Green fields, strawberry fields

If you’ve been reading Torch Lake Views awhile, you know all about CSAs and about Ryan and Andrea Romeyn’s Providence Farm.  You will know that this is a busy time on the farm, planning, ordering, making ready.  If you are puzzled about all this, I recommend you head over to the Providence Farm website, where Andrea will explain it all for you.  This is a very good time to become a CSA member, or to renew your membership, thus assuring all of us of a ready supply of excellent local food, not to mention excellent local views.  If you are from Around Here, Providence is a mere mile up (and I do mean UP) M-88 from Eastport.

By the green sea

I did not know that it was possible for butterflies to over-winter at this latitude, but over in Nova Scotia Amy-Lynn of Flandrum Hill has a wonderful post about the Mourning Cloak her grandson discovered.  You will like it.

Evergreen memories

There is a meeting of the Grand Traverse Area Genealogical Society this afternoon, and that reminds me that one of the loveliest ways to cultivate a family garden is to tell family stories . . . and to listen to them.  Make your grandchild a present of one of your memories.  Make your grandma a present of listening, and writing down, and remembering.  (If some of your family stories are from Around Here and you would like to share them, I would be honored to post them and to archive them on the Ourstory page.)

Sigh.  Not such Red Hot material, is it!  But . . . it’s who we are.  Thanks for reading.  Back tomorrow with new pictures.