Color Inside and Out

My lovely hibiscus continues to bloom and provide color in the kitchen ~

The view from the porch gets more colorful every day ~

The coast of Maine is feeling the effects Hurricane Kyle as it heads for Canada. For my area, that means copious amounts of rain and flood warnings for my county and counties north and south of here. One very wet August followed by a very wet September.

My house is on enough of a hill that we are not worried about flooding. My daughter may get home to find water in her basement, but she has a hose and sump pump at the ready. We learned years ago to keep everything up off the cellar floor.

It has been a gray, rainy day here at the homestead. We watched Charles Osgood this morning to catch up on the news, which I enjoy because he keeps the positive tone that I crave after the events of the previous week. It no longer takes very long to work our way through the Sunday paper because it gets thinner with each passing month. Today we supplemented our hunger for current events with a viewing of The Daily Show that we hadn't seen yet.

To satisfy another hunger I cooked up a special snack. Last week I bought a huge bag of chocolate chips at Sam's Club. While I put a few things in the cooler in the car and remembered to refrigerate a few more items when I stopped at my daughter's house, I neglected to remove the chocolate chips from my car...for about three hours. It was a beautiful day outside, but it got hotter in the car than I realized until I got home. About a quarter of the chips melted into a solid block of chocolate. I stuck the whole bag in the freezer and promised myself I would make homemade peanut butter cups so the melted mass did not go to waste. Today was the day, and there is a pan of potentially delicious candy just waiting to be cut into squares. If they turn out as I hope they will, I will provide a photo and recipe tomorrow.