Picture me, driving along my rural highway toward home, windows down, June jabbering happily from her car seat. The spring air smells of honeysuckle and freshly cut grass.

A loud, high pitched whirring sound becomes audible over the din of the engine…a strong, omnipotent whine that is actually louder than the engine of my Passat going 45 miles per hour.

It’s the cicadas, millions and millions of male cicadas, madly vibrating from trees, fence posts and telephone polls lusting for amorous attention from their lady counterparts.

The road bends and the sound recedes, indicating an exit from the whistling pocket of enchantment.  We drive on and that sound, that crazy noise envelopes our car again, and eventually fades.  Why cicadas choose one pocket of trees over another, I don’t know.

When we eventually pull into our driveway,  I can’t resist scanning my vocabulary, trying to come up with a word, a phrase, an analogy that accurately describes what it’s like to experience this otherworldly noise.

June and I get out of the car to a deafening roar. The very air is under seige.  A description comes to me.

Standing in the vortex of mating cicadas is like what you’d hear if you looked up and saw a giant, terrible alien spaceship hovering over your house preparing to take you home against your will:  it’s spooky and terrifying.

The fifty birds we’re raising for meat are growing very quickly….so quickly that space in the chicken tractors is already becoming cramped! Twenty five chicks per sled is proving to be a little too cozy.  So we already ordered materials to build two more chicken tractors this weekend….give these gents some elbow room!

We have a Kindle that hasn’t been much used.   Jake received it from friends as a going away present to Afghanistan.  For some crazy reason —  like, being stuck in a war zone — he rarely got around to using it.

He recently handed it off to me, thinking I’d get more use out of it.  I still haven’t plugged it in.   All of my friends who own one say the screen is crystal clear and unobtrusive yet I’m hesitant.

I’m so conditioned to reading on-screen that I find it impossible not to speed read, not to scan, not to skim wide swaths of digitized text.  I can’t tell you the last time I sat down and read-read an online newspaper article.  Whereas there are few things more pleasurable than reading the same article in print form.

I’m concerned e-books will be the same; reading without really reading. Besides, I’m not wild about the prospect of staring at another screen.   That’s all I do!  I stare at my laptop screen, iPod, iPhone and most recently,  an iPad screen (Jake WON a brand new 16GB iPad at a BEEF EXPO, of all places,  two weeks ago).  Sometimes I feel like Apple is rewiring my brain.

E-readers out there, what do you think?  Do you find you reserve your e-reader for a certain type of reading and paper books for other kinds?   As for me, I like that Kindle books are less expensive and less wasteful than paper books (assuming you don’t throw your Kindle away for the newest model every other year).  I can see the merits of using an e-reader for research; books I don’t necessarily want taking up precious space in my already cramped shelves.  But I dislike that you can’t write in the margins, fold down pages and, most importantly, lend them.

What do you think?  Or is this another example of my encroaching decrepitude?

The publicist for my book Rurally Screwed gave me a great piece of advice for planning a book tour.  ”Don’t have one,” she said.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Only go to places where you have a built-in audience.”

I thought about this. She’s right. For an author of non Jodi Piccoult-like status (yet!), there is nothing more distressing than showing up for an event to find three people in the audience, two of whom are there for the complimentary cubed cheese.  I’ve heard horror stories from authors — even good authors — who spent thousands of dollars for plane tickets and other assorted travel costs only to sell around thirty books.

With that in mind, I’ve put together a few regional events where I know — or I should say — strongly hope friends and blog readers will stop by and sample the cubed cheese say hi.  I’d love to meet you and autograph a book or two…or ten.  We can share a laugh, talk about good times and swap stories and generally look at each other awkwardly.

I’ve got a few more events in the works — I’ll keep you posted — but here is what is planned for now:

**

4) Friday, June 22, 5-7 p.m.

If you’re in and around Virginia and Baltimore, hopefully I’ll see you there!  Can’t wait!

This little girl.

Homemade waffles topped with fresh whipped cream, blackberries and huckleberry syrup. (Like the kind my mom used to make for me when I was a kid!)

A leisurely stroll with my family.  (Jake looks so….domestic in this photo.  I hardly recognize him.)  The day was pretty much perfect.

I love being mom to this little nut ball here.

Enjoy your special day, all you mother’s out there!

My mint-infused bourbon for mint juleps was such a success, I’ve teamed up with my good friend, clinical herbalist Chin Velasquez of Soothing Herbals Apothecary to concoct a few more delicious, organic herbal infusions for drinks, both alcoholic and non.

Chin’s property is an established Botanical Sanctuary in the United Plant Savers network and is home to beds of all variety of edible and medicinal herbs she grows and harvests herself — everything from rose hips to hibiscus, from marshmallow to wild ginger.  The woman knows her herbs!

This weekend I’ll be devising a tasty warm weater cocktail using the organic herbal vodka infusion above.  I’m thinking a little simple syrup, a twist of lemon, maybe a splash of fizzy water….the possibilities are endless.

Can’t wait to share the results!

As Jake and I ease back into the daily routine of marriage, I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a union last, really last….not five years, not seven years, not twenty years….I’m talking for the long haul!

Here,  a couple who has been hitched an impressive 43 years — also the parents of my good friend Paula — weighs in on Paula’s fantastic blog It’s Not You, It’s the Dishes, also the title of the accompanying book, due out in paperback this June.

The takeaway:  It’s not rocket science, people.

See, marriage is easy….IF you a) be nice b) don’t overanalyze it and c) pick up your crap.

Our fifty new meat birds will be nice and fat and ready to process (slaughter) end of June.

Here, Solha inspects her new charges.  I thought she’d become a frothing lunatic at the sight of these feathery morsels of goodness, but she has surprised me with her sanguine ‘tude.  That dog will make a refined Virginia lady yet!

As for June, well, she is tickled by the new birds.

Me: “June, what does a chicken say?”

June: “Deet-deet-deet-DEET!”

Not exactly a peeping sound, but close enough.

“Wait up, dad!”

Jake unloads the feathery cargo into the barn, the birds’ temporary home before transferred again to the outdoor chicken tractors.   Please note Solha’s calm demeanor.  Seriously.  Note it.

“Deet-deet-deet-DEET!”

As we begin another cycle of raising animals for food, I have to wonder — when is it too early to expose a child to the “glorious circle of life?”  (That’s my fancy way of saying, “slaughter day.”)

An omnipresent hiss pervades my backyard.

The hissing sound comes from a genus of cicadas called the magicicada that emerge from the ground in massive numbers once every 17 years.  Males make that noise to attract a mate.

They’re everywhere! On the fence, the plants, the barbecue, the gazebo…I even found one on Solha.  Ordinarily, I’d think the infestation was gross, but the fact that they only come around once every seventeen years makes them seem kinda special.  Am I turning into a bug nerd?

One of the more fascinating aspects of this bug is its ability to shed its “nymph” skin and emerge as a mature adult.  Here, a mature cicada rests alongside its shorn nymph shell.

I was lucky enough to catch this super rare metamorphosis in action.

Best of all, our fifty new chicks love, love, love the way they taste.

The chicks' temporary holding pen as we move them down to the barn.