Filling in

Today I made broccoli soup for lunch. But I didn't quite have enough broccoli to satisfy my tastes, so I dug around in the veggy drawer and there was about a quarter of a head of limp cabbage, so I chopped it up and tossed it into the chicken broth with the onions and potatoes. Tasted fine--maybe even better than usual. We had home made blueberry pie with that. And that's another filling in story.

Yesterday I was taking one of my barefoot walks and noticed a group of people, adults and children, down by the creek on the east side of our property. And I use the term "our" loosely since we live in a gorgeous grove of trees surrounded by a sweet little creek owned by an association of 30 residental condominiums in five buildings. If this community were to be built today instead of 1977, the builder would have tried to cram 60 units or more in the same space. When I got to this group, I saw they were building a bridge across the creek. I asked what they were doing, and the man told me building a bridge for the children to cross the creek. "Maybe you should check with our association before you continue," I said. "This is our property and if your children get hurt playing here, we'd be held responsible." The little boy, maybe 10 years old, said, "Oh we cross here all the time; it would be safer to have the bridge." "Maybe you could play on your side of the creek," I observed (their home and property could buy and sell mine several times). "Why don't you talk to our condo president," I said to dad, and I gave him his name. I returned to our unit and called him; the family continued building the bridge (and I use that term loosely--it was two timbers stuck inside four cement blocks wedged into the ground with short planks between the timbers).

Later I looked out and two couples (one the president) were standing down there. Apparently, they'd come to an agreement with the family not to proceed until it could be brought to the association meeting this month. We had missed our Friday night date, so I invited the two couples to go to the Rusty Bucket with us and to stop by after the restaurant for blueberry pie which I'd just taken out of the oven after my walk.

When I made the pie I was using the first decently priced blueberries I'd seen this spring--2 pints for $4.00. But you do get what you pay for and they were a bit scrawny and I must have pulled off 20-30 stems and thrown out some squished berries. So when I sprinkled them with Splenda, flour and cinnamon, they looked a bit shy of a full pie. So I looked in the frig and found some strawberries about a week past prime, sliced them up and tossed them in with the blueberries, although not sure how that would turn out. Actually, if I hadn't announced to my four guests last night that there were strawberries in the blueberry pie, they would have never known, because they just turned purple and blended right in. So if you're ever a little short, think cabbage with the broccoli and strawberries with the blueberries.

About that little law suit attraction--the bridge. I really hope the bridge idea gets voted down. You hate to ruin a little guy's fun, but there's a good reason why by age 13, little girls outnumber little boys (boys start life with a numerical advantage of about 106 to our 100). Boys/men are risk takers. I raised a son, and had many trips to the ER. This moves them way out in front in law, politics, economics, science and inventions of all types and fills up our prisons, but it shortens their lives. When we get a big rain, that sleepy little creek becomes a raging torrent, up over the banks by about 6 feet. Not only would the water sweep children off that flimsy bridge who snuck out of the house to get a closer look, but it would act as a dam stopping everything that Turkey Run Creek would pick up as it moved through the golf course, and roared under Kenny Road onto our property, further flooding our lawn, and possibly the lower level of the units. Many serious floods in Ohio have been nothing more than sleepy creeks that got dammed up during storms by building debris floating down from construction sites, couches from someone's yard back in the hills, and a few tires from the farmers' fields.