More contest winners!
It’s been a murky sort of day, both exteriorly and interiorly. Interiorly neither my brain nor my digestion is returning my phonecalls.* Exteriorly it’s been another dashing-among-the-raindrops day with slitty-eyed and grumbling hellhounds. This morning I eventually said All right! Fine! But if you think we’re going to play throw the tennis ball up/downstairs just because of a little rain** you are sadly mistaken! —And stomped back outdoors myself to stand with the rain running down my neck to deadhead petunias. Especially that frelling hanging basket at the foot of the front stairs, with the nonhanging petunias: gone-over petunia flowers are among the least attractive anyway, and even more/less so when sodden, and these are so awfully dranglefabbing conspicuous. Since the wretched plants insist on growing UP they are also getting harder and harder to deadhead. Even my gorilla-length arms eventually reach their limit. And getting smacked in the face with falling smeary wet ex-petunias is one of those remind-me-why-I-like-to-say-I’m-a-gardener experiences.***
I was lurking around the cottage in a restless and unable-to-concentrate manner because the Aga Man was due. Herself† has been cold for over two months because after a hot spell severe enough for me to decide to turn her off I couldn’t get her back on again and thought, never mind, it’s summer, we can wait till her annual tune-up and shampoo and get a refresher lesson on the proper ritual.††
My Aga is now on. I have an oven at the cottage again.
So what better day for an announcement about baking?
Anyone who’s been keeping an eye on the contest thread will already know that mayasings’ Bloody Doomsday Chocolate Raspberry Swirl (Vampire) Muffins won the recipe contest. Huzzah mayasings! Huzzah Vampire Muffins!†††
I also promised you‡ a random winner among the voters. And that winner is Stephanie, who very properly lists ‘baked goods’ among her interests, and while I will not breach her privacy by quoting her email address here, I wish to remark that it has a very pleasing and suitable Green & Black’s atmosphere about it.
Congratulations, you two! And now if you would please contact a mod—Ajlr, perhaps, since she’s done the actual work on the contest—with street-mail addresses and instructions for dedications, if any, I will go fish out two more glittery gold SUNSHINEs from my dwindling hoard and prepare to dispatch same.
Contests are good. Thanks, you lot, for making them good.
* * *
* Not that I have (i)Phones on the (missing) brain or anything. I had a seriously bad night last night. Sleep? What would that be again? And then the phone rang at 8:30 a.m. KrzzzznARRRRGHblhhhhhhhnnggg. I decided to go back to bed afterward anyway, despite the re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings apparently going on across the road and the four-part dog chorus^ at the top of the hill, no doubt in response to Devil Cat sitting just on the other side of the (closed) iron gate from them and washing his paws thoughtfully. I could seriously do without Devil Cat. I could probably even more seriously do without the 1,712 vehicles belonging to his owner, who has one parking slot on our cul de sac and therefore has to be creative with the other 1,711.
Anyway. I went back to bed. Whereupon Pooka started erupting with sound effects. I’m sure it’s very clever and thoughtful of the programmer to give different ringtones to email, voicemail, texts, twenty-one gun salutes and elephants, but it’s not at all popular when you’re pretending to sleep. I have noticed that there’s the odd ping, pong or trill overnight in Pooka’s live and lively company, but it hasn’t been a big deal. Maybe I’ve had the pillow arranged over my head better. Maybe I had been sleeping lately. Maybe I suddenly became fabulously popular overnight. But this morning it was the Chinese water torture only with dings, chirrups and gibbles. So the first thing I did when I finally gave up the unequal struggle with the Normans^^ was figure out how to turn the sound effects off.
^ Three dachshunds and a Labrador
^^ Norman arrows caroming off the English shield wall sound remarkably like messages arriving on your Apocalypse.
** It’s more to do with almost losing four shelves of books and china that hang at the bottom of the stairs, the last time we played this interesting game.
*** At least there were no earwigs involved. Ewwwwww. There are almost always earwigs involved when you deadhead dahlias. Note: if you are harbouring any seven-foot dahlias this year, stand at arm’s length when you deadhead.
† You’re right, I’ve never named her. Shameful. I think it has seemed impertinent since she was here long before I was. But I hereby declare that five—no, wait, six years, big yeep—six years is enough to presume upon the company of a nameless Aga, and address myself to the lack.
†† No, no, no, not a black goat. A bowl of virgin popcorn, and don’t forget the butter^.
^ Which I’m sure ought to be from a virgin cow, but this might be a little hard to arrange, milk being tied to the non-virgin end of things.
††† I’m convinced it’s the fang holes that did it. Although as Ajlr says: . . . which, as a title alone, may be one of the most all-encompassing collections of ‘Words Likely to Appeal to Readers of Robin’s Books’ that we’ve seen here.^ Add that to the end result of the recipe and we have a very worthy winner. And I may say that the recipes assembled through this competition are probably one of the best gatherings of foodstuffs with few socially-redeeming features^^ that I’ve seen for some time…
^ I wish to observe that on the contrary, this is a SUNSHINE specific recipe, and very appropriate too. A truly all-McKinley-encompassing recipe would have to include something about dragons, swords and horses, at very least. Which might prove challenging even to this reservoir of forum members.
^^ Few? You mean there are any? Oh dear.
‡ That is, I promised after I had double-checked with Blogmom
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