On the Saturday that he left, his Mom and sisters were also having a Tea Party shindig that gets as many wayward family members together as possible to laugh, do crafts, spend time together, and of course drink Tea.

While I was sitting at my desk doing who-knows-what, I happened to look out the window and saw something large and black move around the fence towards the tree that I hang my bird feeders on (which by that time were empty and I just hadn’t taken the 2 seconds that it takes to put them away).

Thinking it was just one of the neighborhood dogs, I didn’t give it much thought and started to give my attention back to the oh-so-important-whatever thing I was doing before.

That was until the black something appeared to be getting larger.  But it really wasn’t getting larger.

It was climbing the tree.

Hi there young fella! Nope, no goodies in the feeder for ya, off ya go, ‘k?

No damage was done and I was super proud of myself for getting a somewhat acceptable photo of the little dude, so I shot it out to Facebook to share with others.

Now here’s the part where my husband knows me all to well.

Not more than 4 minutes later I get a call on my cell from my husband, and it went something like this:

Me:  Hi Honey

Rick:  Where are you at?

Me:  Umm… sitting at my desk… why?

Rick:  *breathing a sigh of relief*  Phew, I thought you were outside taking a picture of the bear.

Me:  How did you know about the bear?

Rick:  My sister was on Facebook and told me about it.

Me:  Honey, I’m not stupid enough to go outside and take a picture of a bear without you around.

Rick:  ……………

Me:  OK, I did it once, but it was pretty far away and I wasn’t in danger.  I promise I won’t go outside to take pictures of bears unless you’re with me.  Feel better?

The rest of the conversation was pretty much reminding me how I pissed off the bear who got into our garbage by it thinking I was in the mood to fight with it just because I was crouched on the deck.

Good thing he forgot about how camera happy I got with the one that was playing in the dumpsters at work.

Come to think of it, maybe he did have good cause to be worried.

To know what is on the horizon, you need to keep your eye to the sky and see what the trees have to tell you.

And you have to listen, because those trees are going to give you the first indication that there is a bugger of a storm coming, and it’s coming fast.

Just like the one that hit us last night, punching this tree in the stomach and making it kiss the ground.

When you start hearing those cracking sounds in the woods you don’t know which direction they’re coming from and pray to a higher power that they aren’t anywhere near you.

Once again our property looked like a disaster area with 20 to 30 foot branches scattering the yard.

This little darling landed on the rock garden that I had spent 4 hours cleaning all the winter leaves and branches out of just a few hours before.

As you can see the woodpeckers have been using it for personal reasons.

Here is one of the reasons I don’t like to be out in the yard when that wind starts whipping up.  When those branches fall and hit the ground they dig in about 8 inches from the impact before they bounce out and litter our yard.

And don’t even get me started on how high my paranoia can go if I had been riding around in a car when this storm hit.

Naturally Rick loves this kind of weather and was standing on the deck the whole time it blew through.

I stayed close to my desk in case I had to dive under it.

All that insulation that he put in last fall is now being covered with poly so I’ll be roasty toasty next winter.

As with all well-laid plans, he got 3/4 of the way done and ran out of material.

But there’s always little pesky things that can be done in the meantime, like running the wires for the security cameras.

Oh yes, I will have many comforts of home in this little building:  Cable TV, internet, pellet stove.  That man pulls out all the stops for me.

And to think I only wanted a little box building to make my jewelry in.

What was I thinking?

And in our house that comes in the form of Chocolate Chip Cookies.  But even I get tired of the same old tried and true recipes once in a while and I need to throw caution to the wind and try something new.  Fortunately I didn’t have to throw it too far.

Last Summer Nichole passed along a recipe that she found on Allrecipes, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

:::

Chocolate Chip Pudding Cookies

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 (3.4 oz) package butterscotch pudding mix
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine the flour and baking soda.  Set aside.

Mix the butter, brown sugar, white sugar, pudding mix, and vanilla.  Beat until creamy.  Add the eggs and mix well.  Gradually stir in the flour mixture.  Stir in the chocolate chips and the chopped nuts.  Drop from teaspoon onto ungreased cookie sheets about 1 inch apart.

Bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes.

:::

Oh. My. Gawd.  You will not believe how fantastic these things are!  These bake up nice and soft with just the right amount of sugary sweetness that you expect from a chocolate chip cookie.

Naturally I did a few substitutions (as if you couldn’t tell from the picture) like using chocolate pudding mix and milk chocolate chips, and I omitted the nuts.  Really watch these babies when they get to the 8 minute mark because you don’t want to overcook them (I pulled mine at 8 minutes).

I’ve since made these with vanilla pudding and they were delish!  I’ve got a box of pistachio pudding in the pantry, so I wonder what that would taste like with Ande’s mint pieces?

You can bet that I’m going to find out!

This branch is about 15 feet long and came within inches of smashing into my greenhouse.

And the trees weren’t the only victims.

The fencing around my garden took more weight then it could handle.

Now that the snow is off of it, I can see that we will have a little work ahead of us if we want to keep any unwanted critters away from the plants.

And speaking of plants, they’re spouting nicely thankyouverymuch.

These cucumbers will be ready to move into bigger pots in the next week or so.

The rest of the plants haven’t made as much headway, but I’m optimistic that they’ll start poking their heads out of the dirt this week.

If they don’t, I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it.