Mrs. Hillbilly Mom Goes Out On A Limb

I'm going out on a limb here. A sturdy limb, not too far off the ground, with a nice ramp built around the tree to get me up there, and a handrail once I step out on the limb itself, with a cushioned bench there, neither too high nor too low, for me to rest upon prior to and after this announcement:

IT'S TIME TO CLEAN OUT FRIG II WHEN YOUR ONION LOOKS LIKE THIS:

The Pony would delight in such a discovery. He STILL recalls fondly that time he found a block of sharp cheddar looking back at him. "It had EYES, Mother Dear! Don't you remember that cheese with the mold that looked like eyes?"

Yes. I remember it well. But cheese isn't cheese until mold makes it cheese, in my opinion. Anyhoo...today I bought two bags of onions (only 4 per bag) at Save A Lot, since the onions I buy at The Devil's Playground are already rotten the first time I cut into them. Obviously, the onion in the picture did NOT come from The Devil's Playground.

I keep my onions in the bottom bin of FRIG II. I know. You're not supposed to keep onions in a FRIG, I think. Because I'm pretty sure they should stay nice and dry. But my onions do better in FRIG II. So I put a big aluminum pan in the bottom, like you might used to serve up a vat of potato salad or baked beans to a Solar Car Team. When my little Pony was here, as my grocery-shopping helper, I cut open the bag and he stowed away the onions. Now I have so much else (though less than when The Pony was strapping on the feedbag here at the Mansion) to put away on my own that I simply put the net bag of onions in the bin. We use a lot of onions.

Every now and then, the pile of onion skins in that bin becomes excessive, so I just pull out the pan and throw them off the back porch. Sorry, Poolio! Today's batch was picked up by an eddy of wind, and floated all the way over there, where they swirled for a bit before settling onto Poolio's surface. He's just had his top removed, too! But these skins were small enough to be picked up by the filter.

I had a whole bag of onions in the bin already, and a few loose singles. I saw that one in the bag was rottening, so I took out that whole bag and tossed its contents off the back porch deck. The Devil isn't going to outsmart me again, when I have everything else ready, and go to dice my onion, and then have to discard it and get another. And discard that one and get another. And discard THAT one with an itsy bitsy bit of complaining, and get another.

When I picked up that bag to throw away, I found THIS lengthy fellow on the bottom. Not rotten, though. I went out to show Farmer H, who has been working on a Poolio project that will be revealed ELSEWHERE! Put down your pitchforks and flaming torches, people, and stop being so mobby. You know you read ELSEWHERE. You'll see it.

Farmer H said of the giant sprout, "Huh. If you plant it, it'll grow." Because, you know, a career biology teacher wouldn't know such a fact. Notice that Farmer H didn't say, "If I plant it, it'll grow." No siree, Bob! AS IF Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has time to till a garden and sit watch 24/7/120 to keep deer and rabbits from dining there. And let's face it...planting a single onion is a bit...um...shall we say...Farmer H-ish.

So I took a picture of it, and flung it off the back porch deck into the woods like a grenade. I meant to, anyway. But it got caught up in a tree between the deck and the woods, and kind of pinballed from limb to limb to the ground.

That's why I'm picking that tree to use for my limb out-going.