HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Valentine Flowers-2008
Originally uploaded by lasassone

If you celebrate Valentine's Day, I hope your day today was full of love and surprises from those you love.

G and I always love surprises and these wonderful flowers came today from our 3 Georgia grandchildren, Joshua, Riley and Lauren. Aren't they just so Spring-eeee?

I love tulips and it's the one bulb I have never been successful in growing at Hydrangea House. I plant them and they disappear! At least my daffodils don't disappear. However even those don't flower much. At the moment out front there is a whole lot of foliage and no buds - not even ONE! In back I think I'm a little luckier this year.

Stay tuned for Spring!

No flowers from G this year, but he made up for it big time with a combo 40th anniversary & Valentine's Day gift that blew me away.. My gift for him of a golf lesson from his club's pro looked pitiful along side, so I just finished baking him an apple pie which is his favorite dessert.

It's a far cry from one of our first Valentine's Days maybe 39 years ago. Money was tight so I painstakingly baked a chocolate cake from scratch in heart shaped pans. After carefully frosting my double layered creation, I put a can of cherry pie filling all over the top. Everyone seemed to love that cake and it was a big surprise for G. It didn't last long. Now that I think back, I probably ate most of it. I was pregnant with our 2nd daughter at the time and I've always been able to eat sweets even when I was having morning-noon-night sickness.

That Easter when I made my usual layer cake with food color dyed coconut grass and candy eggs on top (did I tell you I loved cake?) I noticed that G didn't have any. He finally confessed that he didn't care much for cake; he actually liked pie better. And, "oh, by the way," he says, " I hate cherries."

40 years later I make jokes about cherries and beets, which he also hates. But this year the man deserves everything he loves for dinner: a pasta dish he loves, salad, french bread and apple pie, which I've grown to like too!

Happy Valentine's Day!