Working With What You're Given

Not very long after I wrote the previous post, in which I happened to mention the SUN appearing after days and days of rain, the sky darkened and - surprise, surprise, rain fell again.

TONS of rain.

Torrential rain.

I ran through the house, climbing on top of furniture to get to windows so I could close them completely because the rain was even spilling through the windows that were only open a crack.

Lightening flashed, thunder cracked, and Julia followed me through the house, wailing.

Oh, yeah, and hail fell.

Last year in late June we had a hail storm - with much more hail than today's batch - that resulted in the creation of the Hail Mary.

This year, when the rain eased, and the sun came back out, and the street was partially flooded,

Bill abandoned the guitar lesson he was giving and dashed outside with a little container to harvest some hail, leaving a puzzled student in his wake.

We didn't get as much hail as last year, but we got some, and of course we had to make a drink out of it (after the lesson was done and the waters had receded and the student had left, shaking his head and wondering if we would rinse the mulch and grass out of our drinks. Bill likes to keep 'em guessing.

Anyway, this time around, the choice was between a margarita or a mojito. We had limes, but we had mint, and so Bill sent Alex outside to harvest two cups of mint leaves...

while Bill squeezed the limes and mixed the juice with sugar and rum and picked some of the grass and mulch out of the hail stones...

(Oh, and no, he's not using the conch you see in the bowl in our drinks - that's another project.)

And then...he portioned the hail into two glasses...

Poured in the lime/sugar/rum/muddled mint leaves mixture...

Mmm...yummy blades of grass...this is why we use organic fertilizers...

Ooh, mulch bits! Crunchy!

And garnished with a few sprigs of mint.

Presenting: The MoHailto:

Cool and refreshing...and inspired today by Mother Nature.

3 Comments

Those are the cutest little hail stones! Ours are usually the size of golf balls here in Texas. We try not to run out into them, they'll knock you out.

My daughter's boat should have made it to Newport sometime today. I'll try to find out what marina they are in. You can take the kids down to see the boat.

Posted by: jomamma | July 05, 2009 at 07:54 PM