THANK YOU !!!!

My friends, I have returned from the postoffice with another brown box filled with another bounty of surprise!

A box mailed all the way from Tennessee!

A box carrying a well-wrapped jam jar of Chocolate Covered Strawberry Jam made by April of Abby Sweets. There was also a very sweet note from April. It all left me just a bit giddy - ok, I was giddy like a school girl! It's just so much fun to get gifts in the mail! And so much fun to swap homemade goodies with folks in far places. Ahhh, yes.....rest assured, dear April, there are two excited people out in rural Alaska eagerly anticipating this weekend's opportunity to celebrate your Chocolate Covered Strawberry Jam with some homemade biscuits! I'm actually off, as soon as I finish this post, to see if the good ole AC has some fresh buttermilk for us.

I shouldn't have been surprised to find April's gift. But I was. Several weeks ago, I signed up for a "Jam Exchange" hosted by Molly, an Alaskan with a beautiful food and sights blog. (I have a secret suspicion that her moose stew post might just be my secret trick for persuading Christine to visit the Great White North!) And I even learned with whom I would be exchanging jams. But the times, you know how they go, they go changin'. Winter took hold. (A post will be written to further describe that.) I signed up for a watercolor painting class, and have been a little desperate trying to persuade my (lack of) talent to keep up with all the talented people in the class. (Just to embarass myself, I may just post some pictures of the portfolio I'm supposed to hand in on Monday.) There was a local arts auction to raise funds for a pre-school. And then there was a local talent show called Just Desserts. Then suddenly we were leaving for a week in Girdwood. (Yep, a post is being written to describe that further.) And the time just passed faster than I had comprehended. So, truth be told, when I picked-up the box at the post-office, I had absolutely no idea what it could be. For although I knew that my to-do list included the selection and mailing off of my own jams, I had - GASP - forgotten that I would be receiving a gift of someone else's.

Suffice it to say, you know life is good when you are reminded of reality by a jar of homemade Tennessee Chocolate Covered Strawberry Jam!

Thank you, April!

p.s. Winter is here. And with it comes the dark....approximately (round about) 5 to 7 minutes more of it a day. While it is true that our little hovel has radiated at times with the hefty brightness of la vita dolce, it is also true [sigh] that it does not have much natural light. Even at the summer solstice, when one must stretch the imagination to recognize a sunset, our little hovel remains in shadows. And today, rather than muddle my enthusiasm for April's gift with the inevitable haziness of a picture taken from inside our home, I decided to take the gift of Chocolate Covered Strawberry Jam outide and photograph it under the natural light of the river bank. So J. and I packed up the camera and the jam, herded up the hounds, and headed up for a stroll along the river. Would I be too repetitive if I said that a post is being written to further describe that stroll? If so, forgive me. If not, stay tuned!