Summer terrarium

I love this idea for bringing nature indoors. Find complete directions (even for the hand-painted gnomes!) here.

And aren't these artichoke stems beautiful?

In other news, I made this sour cherry apple pie for an Irish friend visiting. I used up the sour cherries I picked from our trees last spring. I think I'm just going to stick with crumb topping for my pies, a double crust is so much work. And crumb topping is so yummy! You can find the recipe for the pie here, but I used Martha's recipe for the crumb topping. I accidentally used salted butter instead of unsalted and let me tell you, it was salty, so I ended up adding more flour and sugar to even it out. It worked in the long run, but I had lots of crumb topping left over. I just froze it and used it for an apple pie I made later during our friend's visit. It's nice having pie in the house, don't you think?