More June Birthdays plus Martha Stewart

My mom's name is Claudia, aka Martha Stewart.

I joined a homeschooling group for two years. This past school year we took a break from it. My kids loved it, but I felt like I needed to be increasingly involved. I organized field trips and taught classes, and was becoming increasingly busy. Always seems like I have to say "no" to good things, but something has to go otherwise I go crazy.

One class I taught was a gardening class, and the theme for the day was all about harvesting and storing the food from your garden. My garden was quite small at the time,(as a matter of fact it still is.Does a sweet potato patch with more weeds than sweet potatoes count as a garden?)so I asked my mom to give me some items from her harvest to show the kids.

Well, Martha had only these things in her pantry: Chocolate bon bons made from her own Cacao tree, Cacao for the kids to sample, passion fruit lemon marmalade,passion fruit syrup, guava jam,mango chutney,dried bananas,papaya,pickled lemon,pickled mango,Banana mac nut muffins, and various herbs and vegetables I can't remember. Oh, I do remember mom had banana wine and lemon mead, but I thought the nice Baptist moms would not appreciate the art of wine making so I did not bring it.

Several moms, from other classes gathered around and they were all generally amazed that all of this came from one person. I would explain that my mom harvested and prepared all of it, and then the question would be asked again as if I had not said anything."Did you say your mom did all of this? "No, that kid over there with chocolate on his face brought it." "Yes, my mom harvested and prepared all of this."

Yes, and she paints,crochets,sews,writes award winning plays,is a traveling pantomime, and manages a real estate office too.

Happy Birthday Mom!