Split Pea, Ham and Ladybug Soup!

I cooked a ham on Sunday, and had a lovely big bone with lots of meat left on it, so decided last night to make a pot of soup for tonight's supper.  I got the bone boiling and when it was time to add the other ingredients, I removed the lid off the pot so I could chuck the ingredients in as they were ready.  In went the chopped onions, shredded carrots, and I turned my back for just a second to go and get my dried spit peas from the cupboard. 

I had the container of them in my hand and was just going to pour them into the broth when I noticed a ladybug sitting on a piece of onion floating in my soup!  I couldn't believe it!  Firstly what was a ladybug doing in my house, and then I thought, who cares if the ladybug is in the house, what's she doing in my soup? Well not IN my soup, but on my soup.  It struck me awfully funny, and right away my imagination went kinda weird.

In my mind came a story of a Mommy ladybug - frazzled beyond frazzled.  The kids are driving her nuts, Daddy Ladybug is all hung up on a new family of moths that have moved in down the street.  They are such a noisy lot - keeping the neighbourhood up all night... "Enough!" she says.  "I have to get away."  But no - she has always been told that Mommy ladybugs shouldn't stray far from home in case the house starts on fire! 
Well I did she she was frazzled, so off she flies out in to the cool fall air.... shiver, shiver... she spies a cute little yellow house, all lit up from inside, the lights beckon, and just as she flies towards the light, the door opens as someone lets some kind of black monster into the house.  She slips inside unnoticed and heads to the warmest spot she can find... Ahhhhhh.... now this is the life.  Warm steamy air, oh that feels sooooooo good under the shell...  She settles back and closes her eyes and dreams of bright flowers, pools of clear blue water and blessed peace and quiet.

I couldn't kill her, after all she does have a family of young ones, and a hubby who loves her, so I scooped her and the onion she rested on, out of my soup, and went to the door and sent her on her way back home to them.

And that's how I happened to make Split Pea Ham and Ladybug soup, last night....