cherries, once again

 Did you know that January 3rd is National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day? As my granddaughter would say -- for real! I called Gail Ambrosias -- a renowned local chocolatier and a friend from the days when she and I used to bake at L'Etoile together. No one in her chocolate shop had ever heard of this, but they're bookmarking it for next year! In the meantime, they reminded me that they do make chocolate covered cherries for Valentine's Day, but that's just not the same. 

I called a few other chocolate shops -- nothing. Now, it so happens that we were gifted this winter a small sack of dried chocolate covered cherries (Harry and David sells them) so all is not lost. We will feast. But I'm getting to be suspicious about National Days, where the parties closest to the celebrated item themselves don't know about the special status of said item. For example, does anyone in the pasta making business even know that tomorrow is National Spaghetti Day?

So much to learn, so little time to do it!

Why bother with these odd invented celebrations? If you think about it, somewhere, sometime, for someone it really mattered. I can't locate the source of this tribute (I admit, I did not try hard), but I have to think that some people with a lot of cherries on their hands and a batch of chocolate melted and on the ready, were jubilant that their never ending work of pouring delicious chocolate over possibly spiked with alcohol cherries was being recognized with this designation. It's rather sad that we tend to take note only of things that matter to us. Sometimes it's good to step back and give a grateful nod to something so seemingly trivial as pouring chocolate over cherries.  

Here, at the farmette, January 3rd is turning out to be a very drippy day. It's the kind of weather that the chickens like more than us humans. Indeed, when I go out to feed them (a little late, because drippy weather makes you really drag yourself up and out in the morning), the six active girls are already foraging, happy to be able to claw at the unfrozen soil. (The seventh, Peach, who is granny-aged in chicken years, never ventures out beyond the barn anymore. Every morning I look to see if she has kicked the bucket, but no, she keeps on going in her very limited orbit.)

We feast on a breakfast of oatmeal (not tempted by croissants at our local bakery! no way! oatmeal all the way!).

I tell Ed that if we are to walk it should be in the morning, because the showers will only intensify by midday. But the guy doesn't push himself in the new year and I can tell that he is too immersed in some late stage of his machine design, so I leave him to his Zoom calls and head out alone. To the New Development, which is perhaps a tad boring, but if you skirt the edge of it, at least you get a good view of the farmette in all its glory looking in from the north. (This is the way we appear to all those multitudes living in the new houses that have cropped up. Between us and them -- a field of prairie flowers.)

It's the last of my quiet days. The kids are back in town tomorrow and there will be a host of events, appointments, trips and celebrations to attend to. Which, of course, is as it should be. Still, I did like the gentle start to the New Year. A slow ease rather than a raucous plunge. Shoring up the energy for what's ahead.