Morning Musings

I've been a terrible sleeper for years, so it's not surprisingly that I woke up at 3:30 this morning, and other than a brief snooze, was still awake at 6am. Since it's going to be a real "scocha" today, I figured I might as well get up and enjoy the coolness of the morning, then take a nap later on when it's too hot to get any work done. So I made my inaugural cup of coffee in the new house (we went to Dunks yesterday) and I am sitting in my beautifully cool family room, watching my hummingbird feeder through the window.

This room has a beautiful view in two directions; to my left, I can see the pool and the thick woods beyond, and directly in front of me, I can see the open part of the backyard, with several sections of stone wall, and also the woods beyond. Our property is wedge-shaped, with the widest part where it meets the road in front of the house, and then gradually narrowing as you go deeper into the woods behind the house, extending quite a ways into the woods behind. I'm not even sure how far it goes; the property is about 2-3/4 acres, and doesn't seem terribly wide to me, even at its widest, so I assume there must be quite a bit of undeveloped woods out back. The previous owners told us there's quite a bit of wildlife, including deer, rabbits, foxes, coyotes, fisher cats, owls, and the usual assortment of groundhogs, chipmunks, and squirrels. I'm kind of excited to see deer, although that does make me re-think my original thought of planting my herb garden on the terraced area outside this window. I have a feeling the deer would enjoy the fruits of my labor more than we would - they'd probably consider it their personal snack bar! But a large container garden inside the pool fence might be a good alternative, with the added benefit of being more easily accessible from the kitchen.

I also got to give the stove top a test run this morning. My son had requested pancakes, and since I had not yet found the big bag of Krusteaz mix, I opted to make a recipe for fluffy buttermilk pancakes from scratch. The center burner on our new stove has double rings; a large outer one and a small inner one (which seems like a simmer burner to me). I first tried using the outer ring, setting it on a fairly high setting, both because our old stove required a good bit of heat for the griddle, and because the pan sits quite high over the flame. I discovered quite quickly that the high setting on this stove is indeed, high, so I got to eat the first test pancake, which although slightly blackened, was still very tasty. A few more tweaks and I think I've mastered it. By that time one child was awake but both Child #2 and Husband have yet to make an appearance. so I'm leaving the rest of the batter for later and sitting outside to enjoy the coolness a little longer.

Tomorrow perhaps I'll try sitting on the front porch in the morning. The house faces east, although there are a lot of trees so I'm not sure what kind of sunrise view I'll have, but perhaps I'll see some bunnies out for breakfast on the front lawn. I've heard there's a great blue heron that lives in the big pond across the street, so perhaps I'll catch a glimpse of it soaring overhead. We saw a huge raptor of some kind over the house yesterday that might possibly have been an eagle, so maybe I'll get a glimpse of him again as well.

I look forward to many, many beautiful mornings in my beautiful home.