Mushrooms and Oregano

The oregano is out, the thyme is in bloom, and the summer savory is waving in the wind. I always buy up big bunches of the oregano to hang in the kitchen to dry. Some herbs, in my opinion, are better dried than fresh. Sage is like that too, for me. Summer is close at hand. These last precious days of spring also brought us a nice batch of assorted mushrooms.

The other day at the market the walnut lady said she was thinking of me. She is such a nice sweet woman. I'll be taking her a bottle of last year's vin de noix that we made with chocolate. This coming weekend is walnut weekend, St. Jean, the coming of the equinox, and thankfully Mercury will be coming out of retrograde. Can you say big sigh of relief?

Here is a typical Mercury in retrograde event. I bought a LARGE CAST IRON BELL from a seller in Germany. I was looking for wood burning stoves, trying to see what was out there, you know. I logged on and saw this bell, and there were two minutes left on the sale, and the highest bid was something like a buck fifty. What luck! The bell was so pretty. In the picture, it looked small and cute. I upped the bid by a few centimes, and it was mine! Then I realized maybe there was a reason why people weren't bidding on this item? Leave it to common sense to kick in after the button is pressed. The postage on this thing was mind blowing. Reading the fine print in German and I discover that this seller only accepts direct bank wire transfers. Trying to talk my way out of admitting I'd really flubbed up that time, I thought, oh, we'll do it on line. But no. I spent a morning at the bank, explaining that yes, I did want to make a wire transfer for €17.09. They kept saying, "Oh no you don't." And I kept saying "Oh yes I do." But in all I will take it as a lesson learned.