Today we opted to head over to Albertville to check out the organic grocery store, Cardinal Rose. I can't imagine making it part of our bi-monthly grocery runs, but it was really nice to get over there and check it out. We bought some Blue Sky soda and gf graham crackers for camping, we picked up a couple snacks and drinks for today and came home with brownies, sugar cookies and snickerdoodles, all gluten free! The snickerdoodles were dry, but the brownies were SO good. The sugar cookies were quite delicious as well and had a dollop of muscadine jelly sandwiched between them. Oh yeah. And, I still have a chocolate chip banana bread loaf tucked away. Squee I may not make the drive regularly, but I will be back over there again!
From there, we went to walk at Guntersville because we have not walked in what feels like weeks. We did about 3.5 miles, just over 10k steps in one haul along the lakeside trail. It would have been lovely if it had been even just 10 degrees warmer, but 40 degree grey sky day and that wind coming off the lake, eeeee! I was QUITE cool and I was not dressed for lake weather. Matt assured me I was burning loads more calories in the cold, and I did warm up pretty quickly.
On the way home, I saw a sign for local honey, so we whipped around and followed the signs and discovered a little road-side stand that had an assortment of local-grown and market fruits and veggies and local eggs and jelly. The jelly was made with strawberries, pectin and cane sugar and that's all. I wanted blueberry too, but they just had blackberry. We made it out with 2 pounds of huge black grapes, a pound of strawberries, a dozen brown eggs, jelly, 2 pounds of honey, a big basket of tomatoes that smelled like summer sun, I have no idea how they were grown locally in the winter and still smell exactly right, but I had a hard time not just eating them in the store. Oh, and cucumbers! Matt's in there now making tomato cucumber salad, I have to stay in here to keep from eating things as fast as he can slice them. I am like a little vacuum today. It's all that cold, I burned so many calories. ;)
I'd like to share some lovely photos I took, but my camera lens jammed and it ate my batteries. By the time I got it working again, the batteries were totally dead. This is the 2nd time in a week that has happened. I will beat this one until it's totally dead, there are so many things I would rather spend my money on that are not ANOTHER point and shoot camera. Though Woot had a Nikon with an 18x optical zoom for under $100...
Here, I will tell you what I tried to get pictures of. A pear tree in bloom, some of the blooms had not opened and were that pretty pink blush color. The other thing was a statue of an angel, but she was tattered. You could see bone and driftwood, her wings were ragged and she was very wind-blown. She was made that way, though it fit the lakeside surrounding very well, as if she had weathered and worn down over the decades.
After I got home, Nia was in the yard and had managed to dig 4 huge holes that involved getting her front legs and whole head as covered in mud as possible. I
Speaking of Nia, she did not go with us today because she has a little limp in her rear leg. She's getting around fine, still thinks she part gator and eats and plays and even runs, but as she runs, she couples her back legs together and holds the one off the ground and rabbits around. She won't jump on or off any of the furniture. This all started yesterday, we think the dingbat pulled a muscle squeezing through the fence to play in the sink drain. Or maybe Kuma landed on her or she fell off the porch, there are so many things that could hurt a growing baby, even landing wrong jumping off the bed, she's not even a foot tall, but she is built like a brick, she's freaky heavy. Matt toted her around and was teary-eyed all afternoon yesterday, he went in to call the vet and she started moving more easily. This morning, she was about 85% back to normal, this afternoon-after marathon digging all day-she's moving with nearly no trouble. So I hope by this time next week, it will be all but forgotten as she bullets around like a crazy thing again.
