Saturday morning, this is what I got at the Farmers’ Market:

Pretty slim pickings right now but pay closer attention to these:

What you see is a praying mantis egg case and a piece of sassafras wood.  The asparagus (in the spring) and gourd (in the fall) farmer was selling the egg cases for $1 and the sassafras wood for $.50.  So I’m planning on making some sassafras tea (which will taste like root beer I guess) and then watching as over 100 little praying mantises emerge.  I’m hoping that I get to see at least a few of them.  There shouldn’t be too many bugs around our house this year!  (Editorial comment:  I really like that farmer.  He always talks to me and remembers that I’m from Alaska.  This time he asked me if we had praying mantises in AK.  I told him that I didn’t remember seeing any.  And next week, he’s bringing me a rhubard plant to put in our garden!  And I absolutely can’t wait until his asparagus comes in. Every year I wait very impatiently until he has it.  And then I buy it every week until it’s gone.  I figure that if he isn’t selling it, it’s not in season.  So I pretty much only buy asparagus from him.)

Then, around 2:00, Nik and I left for DC to visit…Uncle Jim and Aunt Linda!  Of course, I forgot the camera so I can’t even put up a picture to show you but anyway, we had a great time with them.  They were in DC for two weeks and so it was wonderful to spend a little bit of time with family.

After that, Nik and I decided to go to the Kennedy Center for their free 6:00 concert (which is there and free, 365 days of the year.)  It was classical/flamenco guitar and alto sax.  Not as good as we’d hoped but still fun to be there.  (If you want to watch the concert or at least get a taste of what we saw, go here and then search by March 29th.  The last 10 minutes of the concert was the best so go there if you can.))   Then we walked to a kabob place on Pennsylvania Ave. and had some really good food!  Nik is very good at researching on the Internet – he found that restaurant for us to go to and it was a great choice!  It was a great evening.

The whole night, I was a little bit worried because I had forgotten to put the praying mantis case outside.  So I was a little worried that we would come home to 100 praying mantises inside our house.  Never fear, it stayed intact and now it’s living safely outside!

P.S. Nik and I are about half way through the first season of Arrested Development.  It’s really, really good.  If you haven’t yet, you all should beg/borrow/rent the DVDs and watch them!