Kittens: A Retrospective in Cuteness

We took the kittens home in November, and now in January they are old enough to be up for adoption. They went back to the shelter last week and I think I handled it pretty well. I didn't cry, though I was a bit upset when little Thistle had to be in a cage by himself (lucky Poppy and Chicory got to share a cage). But it's ok, because soon someone will adopt each of them and love them tons and Thistle won't even remember that for a few days he had to be in a cage by himself.

We got to see them change from little babies with fat baked-potato bodies and wobbly legs into animals that could play and jump and climb up legs with their clever claws.

So here they are, from beginning to end... the Kittens: A Retrospective in Cuteness.

Poppy:

~2 weeks

~5 weeks

~9 weeks

Chicory:

~3 weeks

~5 weeks

~9 weeks*

Thistle:

~3 weeks

~5 weeks

~9 weeks

We were lucky to have them and I can't wait to have more!


*Chicory has his third eyelid pulled up in this pictures, which can be a sign of illness. He was eating and behaving normally and the proper people have been informed of the symptom, so don't be alarmed!

Christmas fun

OMG you guys it's Christmas!!!


Well, it was Christmas. Several weeks ago. Ahem.

Before Christmas, it was a complete lunar eclipse!


I am rather proud of this picture I took with my little digital camera of an object 200,000 miles away. Although naturally the camera ran out of battery just before the total eclipse actually happened. But I couldn't get too worked up over that since at least I could see the eclipse, unlike a lot of you. We had a beautiful clear night and hot chocolate with marshmallows in it. Leland did whine quite a bit about getting up in the middle of the night, but I bullied him until he was semi-awake.

A full lunar eclipse of the full moon on the winter solstice? Now that is something worth getting up to see.

Later in the week, Leland's parents Mark and Phyllis showed up and they brought Christmas with them. Literally, they pulled bags of presents and food and booze from their car. It was like the Cratchits being visited by Scrooge. You know, at the end of the story when he brings them the goose.

Merry Christmas to us!

This is what they brought for a 6 day visit, mind you. And I think we had already opened one of the bottles by the time the picture was taken.

Phyllis sprang into action to fix us the traditional Italian Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes. In our case, squid, shrimp, smelts, clams, squid again, and shrimp again. Oh my goodness was it good. I forgot to take pictures of it all, it was so good.

Leland, weeping because he is physically incapable of eating more fish.

But Phyllis was not done yet, because she pulled out all the stops for Christmas Day.


Oh. Yes. Prime rib. Now, Leland and I don't eat a lot of meat normally. We try to get the meat we do eat from a local farm where the animals get to do things like, you know, walk around outside and eat grass. So when we do eat meat, it is a special thing. The holidays were several glorious days of meat consumption.

Phyllis finally gets to sit down and eat some of her wonderful food.

I wasn't a complete lazybones failure as a hostess. I set the table. Isn't it pretty?


Five minutes after I took this picture I spilled my red wine on my. Grandmother's. White. Linen. Tablecloth. The very first time ever that I had used it. But thanks to some more of Phyllis' instruction, the stain came out!

So I was a total failure as a hostess but at least the house was spotlessly clean when they arrived, for about five seconds before all of the animals caused little fur explosions and then we returned to our normal state of fur dust bunnies in every corner.

On December 26th we had big plans. We were going to check out the fancy Whole Foods knock-off in town, go to the coffee shop that Leland works at, take in a movie, and finish out the day with dinner at a nice restaurant that we haven't tried yet. But we woke up to this.

Snowpocalypse! 6 whole inches!

Some of you reading this live in areas where it snowed more like 20 inches. Well, six inches for Greenville is sort of like 20 inches for Minneapolis. Everyone commenced to freak out. Without any problems we drove through the unplowed roads to the grocery store, only to be informed that they were closing in 15 minutes "for the safety of the employees". At this point there was only about 3 inches and it was still snowing. We went to the coffee shop. Closed. We went to the movie theater. Closed. Flabbergasted, we headed home.

We did end up going out later to see "True Grit" when the theater finally opened at 2 in the afternoon (very good, by the way, and it was nice to see a little girl get to have the adventure for once). On the way home, our thoughts turned to dinner. Leland called every half-decent restaurant we could think of, and then moved desperately down the list to less and less decent restaurants. Everything was either closed or closing within the next hour. The pizza place was closed. The grocery stores were closed.

Luckily we had enough leftovers to choke a pig. And we spent the rest of the day doing things like this.

See Fletcher the cat cleverly camouflaged there? Fletcher lived with Mark and Phyllis for a year so he was excited to see them again and their relationship, as you can see, picked up right where it left off.

The snow-related comedy continued the next day. Things were open, including Super Mercado El Rancho (the best Mexican place I've ever eaten in, aka the most wonderful place in the world, more on that in a future post) where we ate lunch. The temperature warmed up and the roads were cleared with no snow on them at all. Yet the University was closed to all but "essential" staff. This is a University that will close pre-emptively the day before snow is forecast, after all.

My favorite thing that happened was a road closure just beyond our house. As far as we can make out, the road for about a block was closed because of a slight hill. We're talking about a 20 foot rise over 200 feet. Maybe a 5% grade? Too dangerous to drive on in the snow! The road was closed for three days.

Somehow we all survived. We bid a sad goodbye to Mark and Phyllis a few days later. But we did enjoy their Christmas gift on New Year's Day.

We have a shiny new grill! Isn't it cute? Note how all the snow is gone, just over a week after Snowpocalypse.

And after these delicious ribs it's back to meat once a week for us. We have to enjoy it while we can.

We're in the post-Christmas blahs now, and it's made even more blah by the fact that we have to give Mama and the kittens back to the Humane Society tomorrow. :( We had lots of fun with them, and it was neat to watch them grow. And now some lucky people get to adopt them and love them for life!

I asked Leland if we could get some more kittens. He said, "we'll see". I kind of want to do a post on the devastation the kittens caused our spare bedroom. How such little kittens can make so much noise I will never understand.

Animal House

Ah, being busy. I began a new job in October, so now I teach for Phoenix and work for the Butler Hill Group as an independent consultant. Both jobs are part time, both are internet-based jobs I can do from home. This means that I rarely put on real clothing. Pajamas are my work uniform!

So now I am seriously busy. Remember when weekends used to be for doing fun things instead of cleaning the house? Yeah, that kind of busy. And cleaning the bathroom should not really be a major accomplishment, and yet...

And there needs to be a lot of cleaning right now, because we have a house full of animals right now. Leland and I both started volunteering for the Humane Society. We're part of the animal enrichment team, which means that we work with dogs that need a little extra help to become more socialized, learn self-control, become better walkers, or whatever. Between us we spend anywhere between 5-10 hours per week at the facility.

We're also a foster family for the Humane Society, and we have two animals of our own. I thought I'd introduce them to you all.

Fletcher

Fletcher is a two-year old cat and can you see the tiny puff of white on the end of his tail? So cute. We have had Fletcher since he was about 2 months old. He was a "free" kitten. Yes. So free. So free, the vaccinations and the neutering.

Fletcher has Irritable Bowel Disease, which is kind of like Crohn's Disease in humans. Basically, the digestive tract from the stomach through to the - uh - other end becomes inflamed, leading to vomiting and diarrhea. The condition can be life-threatening due to dehydration or poor absorption of nutrients, but it's easily controlled with corticosteroids and sometimes by diet alone. We think Fletcher might have a chicken allergy, but it could also be an auto-immune reaction.

You don't want to know what we had to pay the vet to figure this out. Fletch's first episode happened about two months ago and it culminated in a bout of renal failure, a multi-day stay at the emergency vet, and stomach surgery. But he's all better now!

NovaNova is our brand new doggie, a two-year old Chocolate Lab (with something else thrown in there, but she looks almost purebred) that we adopted from the Humane Society three weeks ago. She is, shockingly, normal! Sort of. She is a glutton for attention, which is why the picture is so crappy. Normally she looks like this if you have her attention:

She loves attention so much that it becomes a bit overwhelming. Like, please, please just leave me alone for one TINY SECOND. We don't know much about how she got to be at the shelter. One report was that she was a stray whose owners were contacted but didn't want her back (!?), another was that she was being persecuted by the owner's other dogs and so the owner surrendered her to the facility.

Whatever the reason, she has a permanent home with us now.

TrustTrust is our foster dog. He's a 1 year old lab/terrier mix, and he has floppy ears yes he does. Trust and his three sisters were found as strays before the litter was a year old. Unfortunately, none of the litter had any contact with humans before they were brought to the facility, which for Trust was at about 9 months old.

I usually describe Trust as semi-feral. Before we began fostering him he had never been in a house before, or encountered things like stairs, TVs, fans, dishwashers, or any of the other pieces of normal human life. When I first met him in September at the facility, he wouldn't even look at me. When we first brought him home he didn't eat or go to the bathroom for three days! Now he eats from my hands and comes up for affection. He's got a ways to go, but he gets a little more confident every day.

Trust's Petfinder page

Trust's sister Hope is also up for adoption. Hope's Petfinder page

The Kitty Family

Rounding out the circus are Meadow and her three kittens. They live in our spare bedroom, making it the cutest spare bedroom you've ever seen, I'm sure. We haven't introduced them to Fletcher because the steroids he's on suppress immune system function.

Mommy Meadow was discovered late in pregnancy, and she delivered at the shelter. We got the kittens when they were about 3 weeks old, old enough to really begin moving around and pestering Meadow. We'll keep them until 8 weeks (I believe?) because it's not legal to have animals up for adoption prior to 8 weeks, and this gives them more room to play than a small cage at the facility.

Meadow
I don't know how old Meadow is, but I doubt she's more than a year or two. When she arrived at the shelter I've heard she was pretty feisty. Pregnancy makes many female cats friendlier (ah, hormones), but we still weren't sure how she'd behave in a home. Shockingly, she is one of the friendliest, most outgoing cats I've ever encountered. Two hours after we brought her home I went into her room (we'd been leaving her alone to get used to the space), and she came up to me purring and wanting to be fed.

As the kittens are in the process of being weaned now (she still nurses, but they also eat dry food), I'm hoping her sweet nature doesn't vanish along with those hormones!

Meadow is a good, but strict mother. I've seen her pin one of the kittens down and give it a bite on the belly (not hard, and not enough to keep the kitten from getting right back up and going after her tail again). The kittens are clean and everyone uses the litterbox perfectly! Go, Meadow! She talks constantly, chirruping to us and to the kittens. Meadow will be up for adoption when the kittens are, in a few weeks.

Thistle
Because we're fostering them, we got to name the kittens. All three of them have plant names because Meadow is their mom. Of course their little personalities aren't really that developed yet, but there are hints of how they will behave as they grow up.

Thistle is the biggest and boldest kitten, and doesn't he have pretty eyes? He's always the first kitten to be physically able to do something - drink water, climb the scratching pole, balance on the windowsill... he is a handful.


Chicory
Chicory is the second boy in the litter, and he is entirely black with green-blue eyes. Chicory is a scaredy-cat. He took longer to become used to us than his siblings, and he is always cautious in checking out new things in his space. However, I suspect he may be an evil genius. He just looks like an evil genius in this picture.

Poppy
Poppy is the only girl in the litter, despite her white mustache. I think she's smarter than either of her brothers. She's smaller than either, but she is so curious. She's the first to do everything that doesn't require particular strength - the first to come up to greet me, the first to dash into the hall, even the first to figure out how to climb up on the bed. She also loves to eat camera cords, as you can see.

And finally, I have to mention our foster kitty Butternut. We found Butternut in someone's garage and thought he was our missing cat Pumpkin (still missing). But when we took him to the vet, he didn't have a microchip and he did have testicles. Whoops. Butternut is 8 months old and he is up for adoption! Here's his petfinder page

It's a lot of animals. A lot of filling water bowls, handing out food, scooping poop, and sweeping up hair. It certainly keeps us busy! But who wouldn't want to take a kitten break during work? Or spend their evenings watching this?

In Non-Cat Related News...

Lest this turn into "The Cats of Anna and Leland", I'll just give a quick Pumpkin update: still missing. We've repeatedly searched the yards around us and gotten to know our neighbors better, which I guess is good. We've even set up an all-night kitty stakeout to watch for her, but nobody showed up. Leland crawled around under our neighbor's house (bless his heart), in the best kitty hiding place of all time. No Miss P.

We have been setting out food at night, and we think she's been eating it. Next step is to set the food on the porch and set up my computer to film all night to see if she is actually the mystery cat. I hope we don't have to trap her but I fear that's coming.

In non-cat related news, I have become quite the little community member. I'm now in the Greenville Choral Society and it's nice to be singing again.

Also, I've started volunteering at the Pitt County Humane Society. I'm working as a general volunteer and on the Animal Enrichment Team, which is a couple of us volunteers who work with a dog trainer to give extra help and attention to the dogs that have the worst behavioral problems. Right now there are only about five or six dogs that I'd love to adopt, so that's pretty good.

We're working with two feral puppies that are skittish but adorable, some high-energy dogs with poor impulse control (including one who's been sent back to the shelter twice, poor thing), and a few cases of "kennel crazy" - repetitive, compulsive behaviors due to the stress of being in the shelter environment. These dogs would be wonderful in a home, but don't show well to visitors. One dog has been in the shelter for almost three years - his entire life. He is terrified to leave the grounds. When you approach his kennel, he starts to leap five feet into the air, over and over. When you get him out on the leash he is so calm and gentle, he is very smart, and he does that adorable thing some big dogs do of leaning into you while you pet them. He is clearly a special dog that would make a great pet.

So if you're in the Greenville area and you want a dog, let me know!! I want a dog. I've been looking for another job, and if I find one maybe then... but I don't want to bring a strange dog into the house while Pumpkin is still missing. So you see, we've come full circle to the cats again.

Stupid Cat

LOST: My idiot cat

Dashed from our new house on her second time ever outside here, immediately ran to a tree in the backyard, scaled it, and leaped over our fence. As if she had been planning it. Last seen two days ago, calmly trotting towards our neighbor's back porch.

Does not answer to the name of Pumpkin.

Does not have a collar because she takes them off in five minutes flat and I am not made of collars.

She does have a microchip - PetWatch has put out an APB.

Most likely is hiding somewhere, probably in our rear neighbor's house because their doors were all hanging open the day she vanished.

Now I will spend my day knocking on strangers' doors and asking them if I can crawl around their backyards looking for the little moron.

Stupid cat.

Anna and Leland vs. the DMV

I started teaching last week, and Leland started his classes. Now I have a (metaphorical, it's an online course) pile of papers to grade, so naturally it's the best time to procrastinate with another entry.

Hey, I've graded 9 already. Time for a break.

I may not have graded all 9 today.

I may have only graded 3 today.

Break anyway!

We finally were able to bring our kitties down from where they've been living for the past year - Leland's parents' house. Mark and Phyllis acted like they were happy to see them go, but I know better... who wouldn't want animals that eat food off the counters and bring half-dead chipmunks into the house, claw the furniture and shed hair everywhere?

They're pretty good, but, you know - they're cats. You can teach them what wrong behavior is, but when you're not looking all bets are off.

Fletcher and Pumpkin did not enjoy the 9 hour trip from Pennsylvania to Greenville. Pumpkin let us know this in no uncertain terms by making the most pathetic little squeaky cries for the majority of the ride. Pumpkin weighs about 6 pounds and most of that is fur. The rest is eyes. She's pretty cute, and when she cries it is the most heartbreaking sound in the world.

Don't believe her. She's manipulating your sympathy.

When we got here, we shut the cats up in the spare bedroom, where they promptly burrowed under the blankets on the bed. Very sneaky - what could these cat-shaped lumps possibly be? Eventually we got tired of this and made them come out (what every website on moving with cats says you shouldn't do) to explore the house. They're fine now at night and even behave like normal animals, but during the day Fletcher hides under the couch and Pumpkin hides under the bed.

You can judge Pumpkin's mood by where she is under the bed. You see, Pumpkin isn't scared of things. I used to think this, but I don't anymore. She just hates to be messed with. There are five possible positions she will take up, depending on how certain she is that someone is going to come and mess with her (i.e., make her go into a crate).

1) Strolling freely about the house. Threat level - low. Low risk of being stuffed into a crate. This happens in the middle of the night when the potential crate-stuffers are trying to sleep. "Pumpkin jumped right on my face." Leland complained yesterday morning. That's it, Miss P. Get all that cat hair right up his allergy-prone nose.

2) Hunker position. Threat level - guarded. General risk of being stuffed into a crate. The strategy here is to keep low to the ground and sort of slink around, startling to an unnecessary degree at anything that moves, or makes a noise, or doesn't move, or doesn't make a noise. Not entirely sure what the hunker position is designed to accomplish.

3) Under the corner of the bed. Threat level - elevated. Elevated risk of being stuffed into a crate. You see, she's protected by the bed, but can immediately move to a more secure position should anyone try to, you know, touch her.

4) Under the middle of the bed. Threat level - high. High risk of being stuffed into a crate. This happens if anyone looks at her funny, particularly between the hours of 10 and 2, when she seems to be at high alert for crate-stuffing.

5) Under the bedside table. Threat level - FREAK OUT. SOMEONE IS GOING TO STUFF YOU INTO A CRATE. I'm amazed that she can even wedge herself under there. She does this when people come into the house, or if someone makes the mistake of trying to dislodge her from under the bed. In order to extricate her, I would have to literally pick up the table. It's pretty funny to be lying on the bed, with her under it, when someone opens the back door and then it's BATTLE STATIONS, with a lot of skittering claws and rustling, and then two little beady eyes starting at you from under the bedside table.

My cats have emotional problems.

We finally managed to get our driver's licenses (three visits to DMV) and license plates (two visits). The license plates were by far the bigger hassle.

We go to the license plate place (not the same as the driver's license place, obvi), and the lady says, "I need your title and Minnesota registration."

"We don't have a title." Leland says. "We're still paying on the car. There is no title."

"Your registration should say that," the lady says, in a tone that means "you'd better pray that your registration says that."

A brief reconnaissance of our documents shows that we have not brought in the registration. Anna is sent to the parking lot.

"There's no registration in the car." Anna says.

"Just bring everything in." Leland says.

"Fine, but unless our registration is a receipt from Lowe's, a U-Haul rental agreement, a bag of change, or some Sheetz napkins, it is not in our glove box."

"Just bring everything in."

"Okaaayyyy..."

Husband ascertains that Wife is, in fact, not a total moron and gives his own opinion on the situation. "There's no registration in the car."

"Mmm-hmmm."

The DMV lady suggests that we call the lien holder and get them to copy and fax over the title, providing there is a physical title. Leland gets on the phone. He is shuffled through several menus, is hung up on several times, but finally a woman promises to go look for the title. She'll call us back.

"I'll go home and look for the MN registration." I offer.

"It's probably in the cardboard box full of papers, or else in the bag of random crap." Leland offers.

(You know, the last-minute collection of random items that you throw together when they don't fit anywhere else. Ours is in a plastic bag, and contains a paystub, two tampons, unopened junk mail, little wooden disks designed to protect the floors from furniture legs, Canadian coins, and other stuff. It is still packed. Bag of random crap.)

Here is what I find at home:

1) Application for MN registration, with Ohio registration attached
2) Letter from MN regarding incomplete registration application
3) Forwarded letter from MN, reminding us to re-register car in September of this year.

And then I remembered...

We have no MN registration.

Oh, the car was registered. But we have no physical registration card. You see, Leland did not completely fill out the application. He did not include his middle name. The letter from MN (#2), informed us that the application could not be processed unless they received the vital information of Leland's middle name.

Leland has no middle name.

Crap.

"I told you to call them." I muttered as I drove back to the DMV.

It's a heavy load to bear, this always being right.

Fortunately, the story ends far less dramatically. Leland looked shifty-eyed when I reminded him of our lack of registration card. Luckily for him, the lien holder did indeed have a physical title, which they faxed over, thus eliminating our need to show a registration.

And we won the right to pay North Carolina 250$ to register the car.

We - won, right?

The Adventures Continue - Now in Southern Flavor!

About two weeks ago we ended our field season and moved to the south. Now there's an adventure for you. I've never in my life lived below the Mason-Dixon line, and now my accent clearly defines me, identifies me, in a way that it never has before. It's strange.

The people here in Greenville, North Carolina are very nice. They smile and say hello as if they mean it - no, as if they know you, recognize you specifically. Their eyes will light up. "Good morning, ladies." A woman greeted my mother-in-law and I as we sat waiting for coffee. And she meant it. And so it became true. When I was caught in the door of the library by a sudden downpour, a teenage girl offered to walk me to the car underneath her umbrella. I'm accustomed to Minnesota Nice, where people smile and hold doors and are earnestly indeed very nice to you, but this is an entirely new brand of niceness. I can't deny I like it.

Greenville is Pirate country - symbolically and literally. We're on the Tar river (what's the pirate's favorite river? The Taaarrrrrrr. I made that one up), which empties into the Pamlico estuary just twenty minutes up the road. The Pamlico estuary ends up in the Pamlico Sound, which is the Atlantic ocean. Across from the Sound are the Outer Banks, delicate etchings of island that stretch protectively along the coast. The Sound is shallow enough to walk across in some areas. Technically, we're in the Inner Banks region of North Carolina, although we're a bit inland for that.

Pirates prowled these waters, including the big guy himself, Blackbeard. He was killed on Ocracoke, on the Outer Bank nearest to us as the seagull flies. It occurs to me that I've lived at the beginning and the end of Blackbeard's - Edward Teach's - life. He was probably born in Bristol, England, where I lived for a year, and he died here.

We've been brought here by East Carolina University's Maritime Studies program, where Leland will be working towards his Masters. ECU is currently excavating a sunken wreck tentatively identified as Blackbeard's ship, Queen Anne's Revenge. The school mascot is the pirate, and Greenville has names everywhere that sound like a theme park - Pirate's Point, Buccaneer Bay Apartments, Jolly Roger Convenience Store. The garish school colors, purple and gold, are everywhere.

I've never lived so close to the ocean. The Outer Banks are more than a day trip, sadly - they're geographically near but a long way to drive, as the roads skirt the long fingers of North Carolina that jut out into the Sound. But at Goose Creek State Park there's a free swimming beach. It's on the Pamlico, far enough inland that the estuarine mixing of the salt water with the fresh is quite dilute, but if you put the water in your mouth it tastes salty. And it smells like the ocean, but faded. The beach is sandy and the water brown but free of the slimy guck that makes swimming in rivers generally so unpleasant. The water is warm, and shallow, and calm, and the trees on shore drip with lacy Spanish Moss.

Our neighborhood is quiet and well-located, filled with retirees. We went to a neighborhood association meeting yesterday evening - we saw the signs and thought we should attend. After reading the minutes from the last meeting, the chairman began to move on to old business. "Wait," his wife stopped him. "Don't we need to vote to approve the minutes?"

"Don't see why." He drawled. "Everyone here heard 'em. That's what happened."

The resolution to approve the minutes passed with a chorus of murmurs.

The accent here is by no means impenetrable, but at times the words get so chewed on, so slurred over - like the speaker has a mouth full of caramel - we have to ask two or three times for something to be repeated before we understand it. I went to the Pitt County Farmer's Market with Leland's mother last Wednesday, and we came across a cake-like concoction in a plastic take-out container.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Pih pih pi." The kid working the booth informed me.

"What?"

"Pih pih'ih pi."

"Oh." I said, to be polite. Then Leland's mom Phyllis bent over. "What is this?" she asked him.

It took three or four more repetitions before we puzzled it out - pig pickin' pie. At least, that was our best guess. The kid made no attempts to slow his speech, to sound it out more closely for us ignorant Yankees, just patiently repeated the phrase identically each time.

"There's no pig in it." He said. "It's pineapple and whipped cream and stuff." Then he added, more mysteriously, "Usually the guy who makes 'em makes chocolate, but he decided to make this one today."

"And you didn't buy any?" Leland asked us, incredulously, when we told him the story later.

A week later we learned from a mattress salesman that pig pickin' is what I'd call a pig roast. Roast a pig for hours in a split drum or fire pit, then sit around pickin' off the tasty meat. Pig Pickin' Pie is a traditional dessert at these affairs. I'll have to figure out a way to get invited to one.

Leland and I just got back from our second visit to the farmer's market. We picked up fresh local peaches, shrimp caught this morning in Pamlico Sound, and some other odds and ends we'd never heard of before. "Po beans." The farmer told us. "You know, they grow up a po'."

"Pole beans." I said.

"Yes ma'am."

I've never been ma'am'ed so much in my life, by girls younger than me and by men of every age. And I find myself doing it too, throwing out ma'am's and sirs whenever speaking to a stranger and especially after replying to a question, in either the affirmative or negative.

We also purchased field peas, a kind of bean, and raw peanuts. Feeling dumb, we caught the attention of the farmer and asked her what you did with raw peanuts. The woman laughed, while her daughter and a customer looked at us incredulously. It was the sort of response you might imagine if you held up a tomato and said, "now what do you use this for?", but it was gentle.

"Boil 'em." The daughter said, a girl of about 11. "Then put salt on 'em."

"Is that it?" My husband asked.

The farmer recovered from her laughter and appraised us with the kind of benign expression reserved for the unbelievably uninformed. "That's it." She said.

I'll let you know how it goes.