Sunday, August 3, 2008

Weeding Cake

Son2 and his bride were hosting a cookout in celebration of their recent marriage. Wanting Cousin Annie to know what time I thought we'd arrive at the event, I'd mentioned needing to make a travel stop for fresh flowers, which I would use to decorate my piggledy little stab at creating a pineapple upside-down kindasorta wedding cake. "Aren't any of your flowers still alive?" she'd asked.

Brilliant! But Cousin Annie is like that.

So mid-morning on the day of the cookout (because I'm always running behind on everything), I plucked a leaning-ugly black-eyed Susan and set it in a dry ramiken to see how quickly it might or might not wilt. I didn't dare choose a nice one, because a quick survey of God's flowers that He tends revealed that not so very many were looking small, perky, and bug free. When my specimen still looked like a flower an hour later, and I hadn't even showered and dressed, and we still had a two-hour drive ahead of us, I decided these weeds flowers would serve my purpose. I could mark off one travel stop.

Son3 and Son4 helped me choose and fist a modest number of the blooms, while I whined incessantly: "I dunno. These kinda look like weeds. Do these look like weeds? This is awful. I'm putting weeds on their wedding cake. I don't know about this. Are there any more? We don't have very many. Keep looking. Oh man, I'm putting weeds on a wedding cake. Is this bad?"

I did it. With lots of love, good intent, and trepidation I poked straws, then weeds, into the wedding cake. It wasn't the sumptuous offering I'd envisioned when I hatched the flowery plan, but we were out of pristine weeds, and I still needed to powder and puff self before we left, so it would have to do.

Photobucket
Photobucket

*brushing sticky hands*
Kinda looks like a stack of biscuits in the photo.
It's a cake; if'n' it was a biscuit, I'd own up to it.

As if to taunt me, when we exited the freeway onto the street which would take us to the newlyweds' home, we were surrounded by islands planted with weeds black-eyed Susans. "Look at that! Look! All that time we spent hunting for perfect specimens and worrying about whether or not they would wilt before we got here, and we could have just pulled over and gotten basketsful, a few blocks from their house." Of course, we might have been arrested. At least someone thought they looked enough like flowers to purposely adorn the city with them. Whew!



Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. ~I Thessalonians 5:21

2 comments:

Annie T. said...

LOL!! I, for one, can attest that the cake not only looked good (much better than the picture turned out of "stacked biscuits"), but it tasted scrumptious. It took me a while, CarolineNot, to figure this out, but that cake tasted exactly like my mother used to make. Well, she didn't stack it & stick weeds in it, but it really took me back. I hadn't had that heavy, moist, sweet, pineapple-y, brown sugar-y flavor on my tongue in years. It was wonderful!! (And it was very pretty, too!) Nice work, mother- of-the-groom!!

CarolineNot said...

Aww, maaan. *scuffing toe in dirt* I was a-feared you drop by and make me blush. You always have a kind and very generous word to share. Thank you.

And thanks for not bustin' me by telling about my momentary lapse in judgment, when I asked for needle nose pliers to aid in removing those straws. For the record, I rescinded that request and kept plucking at them until all were out, and we could serve the silly cake.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, (((Annie))). And I was eating another serving of your Frog Eye Salad at 11:30 last night. Choosing salad over a cookie says it all. ºÜº Thanks for sharing!