Civil defense sirens, also known as tornado sirens, are pretty much the most useless warning devices ever invented. You hear the wail, and it means: Something Very Bad is happening, but we can't tell you where, when, or what. Enjoy!

I mention it because during this week's severe weather, I heard one of the aforementioned sirens going off across the lake in New York. I had no idea what it specifically meant. Was it just an alert about the coming storm? Does it mean tornado possible? Tornado sighted? Tornado in my back yard? Osama bin Laden at Aubuchon Hardware? Hellfire and brimstone raining down over a soon-to-be post-apocolyptic Lake Champlain?

I have an unobstructed view to the Adirondack mountains, and all weather comes from the west, so I gathered emergency supplies and watched the sky. In the year 2000, I'd like to see an automated IM, text message or twitter service to supplement the siren and tell me exactly why it's being sounded so I can decide whether to hunker down in the basement or play in the rain.

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A friend recently gave me her collection of PTO, 4-H, and community group cookbooks. There are some neat books in the box (the Good Morning America recipe newsletter) and they span a few decades. I flipped through the 75th Anniversary Oklahoma 4H'ers Favorite Recipes book (1984) this morning and found this puzzing recipe.



At the title, I thought it was going to be some kind of nuts and lettuce salad, but the first ingredient is a tub of Cool Whip. All right, I said to myself, it's a dessert salad. And I went with that theory until I hit the last ingredient: 1 cup of grated cheddar cheese. Pineapple, marshmallows, pecans... and cheddar? For real real? I have half a mind to try it this weekend to see if it really works.

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I thought I had rhubarb in my garden, but I have nothing compared to our neighbor Neil.

I found some spindly little red stalks with broad leaves poking out of a woodpile last year and determined (via Google) that they were rhubarb (which I love). I harvested just enough to make a pie and I rearranged the wood pile to give them more room to grow. This year, the stalks are more robust and I might be able to get two pies from them. I was so excited... then I stopped by Neil's garden.

He asked if I wanted some rhubarb and I agreed, thinking I'd accept a couple of stalks to add to other fruit so I wouldn't make a dent in his harvest. Oh, how wrong I was. I got out to the garden to find that Neil has a fifty-foot row of waist-high rhubarb plants packed tightly together. Enough to seriously feed the entire island with some left over.



I took a hefty bunch, then Neil came over and asked what I was making with them. When I replied, he said I surely didn't have enough and handed me a bunch more. They're gorgeous stalks, and they made a lovely rhubarb crisp that afternoon. There's still some in the fridge. Be right back.

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Here's the flip side of living in the most beautiful place on Earth.



What is normally a dollar at your local grocery store is three times as much at mine.

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Cherries were on sale this week, and that's as good a reason as any to stay up until midnight pitting tiny fruits that stain your hands brown and waiting for rounds of dough to chill.



I've never made a cherry pie from scratch -- usually the canned cherries and Pillsbury pre-rolled crust is sufficient. But after pitting all of those cherries, it just didn't seem right putting them into a store-bought crust that's been in the freezer for a month.

I attempted a real cut-cold-butter-pieces-into-flour pastry crust. A real feat considering my fear of all flour-based foodstuffs that aren't cakes. It smells good. We'll tell you how it tastes after supper tonight.



In other news, Trevor was up sick every two hours last night. So I was also up every two hours last night. And though I thought I'd recovered with a little extra sleep this morning, I just realized I've been walking around for the last few hours with my button-down shirt on inside-out and thinking to myself, I thought this shirt had buttons...

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There are eight black chicks locked in my downstairs bathroom and I'm not letting them out for two months.



The cats are making sure that none of them get out.

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We had another large snapping turtle in the field this weekend. He was fairly calm and primarly wanted to avoid us and our curiosity. We watched and took photos until he decided to climb up the embankment (those claws were better than crampons) and cross the street. At that point, Trevor and two neighbor children escorted the turtle across the street to the open field, and presumably back to the marsh.

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I awoke this morning to the smell of burning. There was no smoke immediately visible, so I walked through the house, sniffing.

The smell wasn't quite like an open fire; it was more like smoldering plastic. I checked every plug in every outlet... nothing.

At that point, I decided that unless I saw smoke or flame, I was probably hallucinating. I went over to the dishwasher to get out a clean spoon and found this on the heating element inside.



I had no idea it got so hot in there. Scary. Kittehs need a new can cover.

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