Honey, Honey

We call my backdoor neighboor "The Farmer." All year long, The Farmer has a full garden in our adjoining backyards. My family and I often partake in this cornucopial bounty, as The Farmer is very generous with his crops. Corn, green beans, snap peas and-my fave-fresh homegrown asparagus. Oh man, the asparagus. Homegrown asparagus tastes so much better than the half-dead grocery store stuff. Straight from the ground, aparagus is sweeter, crisper, and it's color is a much more vivid jade green even after cooking.

It was recently revealed to us that The Farmer also has bee hives "out in the country." A few days ago, he graced our family with a jar of honey, just culled early that morning from his hives. I was so excited, I requested Brian make a fresh batch of iced green tea (he makes it so much better than I do). Gillian bounced into the kitchen as we were drizzling the glorious golden goodness into the tea maker.

"What is that?" she asked, her brown eyes full of curiosity.

"Honey." Brian and I said simulatneously.

"What is that?" She repeated.

"Honey." I said as I played with the spoon in the jar, making pretty patterns w/ the syrupy strings as I added more to the tea maker.

"Momma. What. Is. THAT." Gillian pointed to the jar.

"Hon-ey." I said slowly and directly.

She sighed and tossed her back in frustration.

"Momma. What is in THAT jar?"

I stopped and tought about my answer. Seeing no alternative I once again stated simply and slowly,"Hoonnneeeeyyyy."

Gillian stared at the jar in consternation. Then she turned those huge, soulful eyes to mine (which are hazel and not brown, I would like to point out). "Honey, what is in that jar?" she finally asked.

Brian and I just burst out laughing, which made her laugh, too, although she didn't know why.
I guess she thought that Brian and I were correcting her (as we sometimes do), making her address us as "Honey," before we would answer her. Much like we ask her to remember her pleases and thank yous!

I abandoned the spoon in the jar and scooped up my silly, funny almost-six-year old little girl. When I stopped laughing, I explained to her that in the jar was HONEY from a bee hive and that the farmer had given the jar to us a few mintues ago. Gilly knows that bees live in hives and make honey (probably thanks to 'A Bee Movie'). She had just never seen it in a jar before!!