My Pink Heaven

This is the anniversary week of the first time I ever saw my house back in 2004, and the huge, pink rhododendrons are blooming now, just as they were then. The flowers are as big as dinner plates, and the huge, fuzzy bumblebees adore them. VZZT! VZZT! That's the sound of a bee inside a bloom.

I remember how beautiful they were back then and how much I wanted this house with the big pink flowers; eventually, it did become mine. I closed on the house the Friday before Memorial Day. So each May, as all of the flowers open, we celebrate.

On this morning, the bees were out, enjoying the pink blooms and sunshine after rain. Above, please enjoy a photo of a happy morning bee in its pink heaven. (I guess it counts as MY pink heaven, too!) Look how shiny its wings are!

The weather for the day wasn't so great, and so we stayed mostly around and inside the house. My husband baked a huge ham that barely fit in our roaster. He wrestled the ham into the oven around 10 a.m. and we feasted on a gorgeous ham dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy and stuffing and cauliflower and corn just before 1 p.m.

But I had MORE ham plans in mind! By about a quarter to two, I had the ham bone and all of the other ingredients for ham and bean soup in the crock pot on high, and I stirred it about every hour or so. I turned it off around 7:30 and let it cool, and we had soup for a late dinner, topped with cheese. (A basic recipe can be found here; a photo is in the extras.)

I let the crock pot cool and then removed the ham bone and diced up the rest of the meat from it and mixed all of that in; boy, was it tender. It was 9:30 p.m. by the time I was all done messing with it. Now that is a LOT of cooking for one day! But it was a great ham dinner and possibly one of the best ham and bean soups I've ever made. And we've got LOTS for later.

Now, as far as my soundtrack song, it is for the bumblebees. I watched as one bumblebee went for the heart of a flower, and it rested its huge, soft, fuzzy body on the flower stamens as it went for the gusto. So my soundtrack song is this one: Olivia Newton-John and Andy Gibb, with Rest Your Love on Me.