Trilliums were in bloom for Mother’s Day. It rained; and the grass shootin’ was putting a thousand bucks onto my May milk cheque.

I bought the Missus a saucepan—Wearever Aluminum, and here’s the story:

She was away at the Salmon Point Ladies rummage sale and that afternoon I got a longing for a dish of rhubarb. (In spring, it beats sulphur and molasses for a tonic.) I emptied a bag of cut up rhubarb out the freezer into the saucepan, added a cup of water and a cup of sugar then set it on the stove. The rhubarb was nicely cooking when the hydro quit.

Me, I figured it would be on in a minute. After a while, I remembered the fan over at the barn. (The place is airtight.) So I went over. It was a muggy atmosphere already so opened doors and windows to clear out the fog. The milk trucker had collected the two-days milk so I figured I’d wash out and sanitize the bulk tank. Then I figured I’d brush out the mangers, lug in the feed and there must have been a dozen little jobs I’d been walking past for days. Then I figured I’d eartag the heifers on account they would soon be shipped out to pasture.

The fan kicked on when I’d been working for half an hour. About three hours later I headed to the house to catch a cup of tea and hunk of bread and old cheddar before night milking, I went in the porch door, opened the kitchen door and was hit in the face by a blue black cloud of smoke. Then I remembered the rhubarb.

The whole mess with sugar and syrup had boiled up, run over onto the stove. The aluminum saucepan was enamelled with carbon. I spent a half hour trying to get cleaned up before chores and the Salmon Point rummage sale finished.

Now the Missus has a beautiful shiny new saucepan for Mother’s Day. That’s wot you get when you are appreciated the rest of the year.