Take Joy!

Earl, Napping

Just Before Dawn . . .

we had visitors! Mama has been eating here for a few months; the three babies must have just gotten big enough to  bring to the buffet. The third is up on the rail, eating. They're no bigger than small cats, and just as cute . . . but they already have nice sharp teeth, I can see.

Got anything else good to eat in there? Huh?

Then I opened the screen door and went out to refill the bowls, since they had eaten everything in all three . . . Mama scooted off down the steps, but the youngsters decided to wait. And were duly rewarded: Purina Cat Chow, the choice of discriminating raccoons everywhere!

(Ignore the state of my back porch, which is currently serving as a repository for canning jars, mops and buckets, cardboard being saved both as boxes which might be needed to mail something sometime, shoeboxes—does anyone who ever watched Captain Kangaroo throw away a shoebox? I think not—and just pieces that will be handy to start fires with this winter. Also, I tried to get better pictures, but both my little camera and its operator have their limitations; and it was still darkish outside. It didn't help matters, either, that I was lying on the floor taking pictures through the cat door.)

Lunch

Independence Days #9

For Sharon's Independence Days Challenge.

1. plant something: Set out several tomato plants, also pepper plants in pots. Not planted yet, but we have seeds for winter greens—also perennial greens if we can get a place prepared, now that it's quit raining every single day.

2. harvest something: A tomato! I have a couple of pots of patio tomatoes, and one was ripe (and very good, too); several more should be ready this week. Also some tiny grape-ish tomatoes, eaten straight from the plant. Squash—yellow crooknecks, yellow straightneck, zucchini, pattypan, and one that looks like zucchini, but isn't. And cucumbers; regular ones, some lemon cukes, and something else that isn't either, but is very good. (I really must do a better job of saving seed packets . . . ) Mint, oregano. Leeks. Eggs (both chicken and turkey). Catnip.  Garlic scapes, garlic. Parsley, cutting celery. Sour cherries from a friend's tree—bears had been in it, and she wanted the cherries gone before the bears came back and broke all the branches. A few Northland potatoes; the vines were dying back, so we decided to see what was under there . . . and it was good. One lone turnip, apparently the only survivor.

3. preserve something: Dried more oregano, but it's beginning to bloom, so I'll leave the rest to the bees. Canned 8 quarts of sour cherries.

4. reduce waste: The usual: recycling (plastic, cat food cans, milk jugs). WEEDING/feeding to goats and chickens. Continuing to use clothesline (or wooden drying racks) instead of dryer. Sorted through my stash of plastic trays/6-packs/cups and other miscellaneous planting stuff, and managed to salvage almost all for seed starting next year. Saved styrofoam egg cartons someone gave us for more seed starting.

5. preparation and storage: Replenished flour buckets, bought more yeast. Added to food storage: rice, beans, canned tuna. An extra box of cat litter. Extra vitamins. Olive oil. Bought yarn and began making Christmas gifts. (After all, doesn't everyone want a new hat for Christmas? No? Too bad.) Cleaned and reorganized my sewing space (again) in a probably fruitless effort to be more efficient. Purchased a vintage cherry pitter on eBay so we don't have to borrow John's mother's every year. (It's cast aluminum and should outlast us.)

6. build community food systems: Shared summer squash with a friend of John's.

7. eat the food: Bread. Squash fritters (squash from the garden, and onions from the produce stand). Cucumbers, and the lone tomato. Many grape tomatoes while weeding . . . Dirty rice—rice from storage, chicken livers and hearts from freezer (they came from a friend of John's last year), garlic from the garden, and peppers from the local produce stand. Turkey eggs.

Notes: I have a bottle of sunflower oil, and plan to get out early tomorrow to begin picking St. John's wort blooms to infuse. Mulleins are blooming, too, and I need to infuse them in oil with garlic for earaches this winter.

Okra will be blooming soon. Little tomatoes on the vines, and many many squash and cucumbers. Potatoes are going well. We need to get out there and clear space for winter greens, turnips, cabbage and broccoli, and maybe another planting of some odds and ends, just to see what will happen.

Added another small cheap plastic bird feeder to the Cafeteria Tree (as it has become known), and two corn cob feeders for the squirrels . . . I'd really like to have a nice feeder or two, but the last two times we had any, a bear came and destroyed them. Cheap plastic is, in this case, my bear insurance. Also a metal sunflower-and-peanut feeder. (I liked it so well I went back to Lowe's to get another, and they were all gone . . . )  Bought materials (nails and some wood strips; we already have a roll of metal screening—used to periodically replace the back door screens after the cats ruin them) to make a hanging platform feeder to entice cardinals, a "Backyard Birds of the South" book that is easier to find things in than the big bird guide, and a hanging basket (marked down a good bit, thank you very much) to hang on the other side of the hummingbird feeder. I haven't seen any hummingbirds using the feeder; the crocosmias are in full bloom, and those are their first choice. But I like knowing that they have back-up feed. (So do they, apparently; frequently when I'm sitting on the porch crocheting, one will come over, buzz round my head in a companionable fashion, and fly off.) Also, cleaned and repurposed a handle-less steel frying pan (no, I have no idea why we were saving it, other than that we are both hopeless pack rats) as a bird bath down in the rock garden. I've got it up on some rocks until I run across one both on a pedestal and on sale.

I managed to get most of the big pokeweeds out—I always leave a couple outside my workroom window, because I enoy watching the mockingbirds and titmice eat the berries—and they are lying by the path waiting for someone (me, unless I'm very lucky) to haul them to the compost pile. Also did a bunch more weeding, but I'm not getting ahead—only almost-even.

Other than that, not so much. It's been hot, of course, but also terribly humid—I've spent a lot of time sitting in front of the fan, or on the porch when the sun isn't on it. I've gotten some work done on Christmas gifts (doll clothes for Eliza, hats and scarves for others) and some clothes made for the doll I'm dressing for Mom's church bazaar to raffle off, but that's about it.

Today's cooler, less humid, and nice and breezy, so I'm going back out, fill some pots and plant some more things.

Independence Days #8

For Sharon's Independence Days Challenge.

1. plant something: Potted up ginger mint for Mom, then forgot it when we visited. Next time . . . Lemon basil in pots, also regular basil. Umm . . . nothing else, really. It's been raining. And raining. I have more shiso seeds to replant, since it never came up—I think I'll try it in pots this time. Moved a couple more feverfew plants out of the weeds. Found some cleome which has come up in the garlic bed, so I weeded around it. Also, when weeding in the back, discovered several epazote plants.

2. harvest something: Mint, oregano. Leeks. Eggs (both chicken and turkey). Catnip. A few more black raspberries. Garlic scapes. Parsley.One bed of garlic will be ready soon; the tops are beginning to fall over.

3. preserve something: Dried mint and catnip. Started various tinctures and infused oils. Black raspberry sauce.

4. reduce waste: The usual recycling (plastic, cat food cans). WEEDING/feeding to goats and chickens. Continuing to use clothesline (or wooden drying racks) instead of dryer. Used salvaged cardboard boxes to transport young chickens to their new home.  Gathered up several bags of oddments to go to Goodwill.

5. preparation and storage: Added more wooden clothespins (left from tailgate market displays; I'd forgotten about them). Added metal funnels, heavy stainless measuring spoons and cups. Bought a rice cooker! My new favorite kitchen toy . . . small electric appliance, I know, but it has separate settings for white and brown rice, and a vegetable steamer, and is altogether more efficient than my old tiny one. Or so I tell myself. Added more vodka for tinctures.

6. build community food systems: Bartered extra baby chicks for goats milk. Gave my father two loaves of homemade cheese bread for Father's Day. Arranged with Mom to relieve her of some ground ivy next time I'm there. (No, I am not crazy—well, not about this, anyway—ground ivy tincture is supposed to help allergic rhinitis, according to my herbals, and I suffer from it during the winter, so I'm experimenting.)

7. eat the food: Bread. Slaw from local cabbage (not ours, unfortunately; the wet weather did ours in. We shall try again this fall.). Goat liver, pork chops, ground lamb from freezer. Lots of odds and ends from refrigerator . . . every couple of days we've been having rice with whatever bits and pieces I can round up, some soy sauce and garlic and gomasio (I wonder if I could make that myself?).

Notes: John's friend who lets us pick his sour cherries and apples got hit by hail last week, so there will be no sour cherries this year, and if I want homemade applesauce—which of course I do; I only have a dozen jars left—we will have to buy apples from one of the orchards. Fortunately, he still has plenty of lamb and chicken.

Bee balm is blooming: pink in the front flowerbed and red at the edge of the garden. Daylilies, too, in several colors (now that I have figured out the new Photoshop—sort of—and iPhoto, I need to get out with the camera again)—cream with a purple throat, pale yellow with pink ruffled edges, two reds, and the old standby oranges; and a lone purple gladiolus, and Quyeen Anne's Lace and anise hyssop and the little wild St. John's Wort in the jungle that is the back bed. And a chicory plant has materialized in the drive—I have warned John that he is not to back up any further until I get seeds! The rhubarb is holding its own, but is not liking all this water! Got the asparagus bed mostly weeded (damn Spanish needles), leaving several thistles for the goldfinches. Weeded under the grapevine, and found more poison ivy . . . I must go down into the hollow and see about some jewelweed to make poison ivy soap. There are a few more black raspberries, enough to go on cereal (I may splurge at the grocery store this week and buy some Special K or something relatively innocuous; we haven't had any bought cereal in ages and ages), and the blackberries will be ripe soon. There aren't so many as usual; several of the vines succumbed to the drought last year, but there will still be plenty. Tomatoes on the vines, but if we don't get some sun we will be eating green tomatoes . . . bitty summer squash, too, but they also need sun.

We have put the dead spruce tree on the south side to good use (does this count as reducing waste?)—it died last summer during the drought, and we have hung it with a suet feeder, a couple of small bird feeders, a thistle sock, and are planning another feeder or two later this summer (whenever I find some on sale or have more disposable income than at present; possibly after the alternator for my car, and the dentist for both of us, and whatever shows up after that . . . ), and I saw this very cool hanging bird-waterer-bath thingy in some catalog today (both our concrete bird baths are old and cracked with repeated  freezings, and the cats nap in them). . . The side porch is our outdoor living room; I have my tea and John his coffee there in the morning, after we feed the cats and water the plants and throw out some peanuts for the blue jays. The little downy woodpecker comes to the suet on the big feeder (on a post in the yard), the goldfinches come to the thistle sock, the jays steal peanuts out of the blueberry bushes and the rock garden, and the chickadees and titmice come to the little feeders . . . and so does a squirrel or two. They like one of them because they can lift the lid and eat sunflower seeds right out of the top; the birds use the other one. The cardinals don't come around to the side often; they prefer the big feeder in the back. We need a platform feeder on a post for them, I think. And this afternoon one of the chickadees lit briefly on my hanging basket of philodendron, not six feet from where I was sitting (and three cats were sleeping), so I have hung another feeder on an empty hook under the roof. We'll see whether he comes to it.

Yesterday I saw the first hummingbird; he buzzed around my head while I was sitting on the porch crocheting, on his way to investigate the hanging basket of petunias. Today there were two of them . . . they haven't usually come around on the side. The feeder is hanging on the grape arbor, but the grapevines have covered it more than usual, so I think I will attempt to find the unused shepherd's crook I bought a couple of years ago for another feeder, but it was too low and I never used it—I can put it up among the Jerusalem artichokes and hang my hummingbird feeder on it.

Life's pretty good, if a trifle damp t hese days.

Surveying the Territory

Victoria, on the roof . . . that triangular hole is just that: a hole up under the roof, where she goes in. She spends the better part of the day napping in the attic. (Though, in these days of 90+ heat, you'd think it would be awfully hot up there . . )

Front Yard

 or what passes for it . . . speedwell, rose campion, and costmary.

Motherwort

Apple Mint

June is Pagan Values Month

Nurture life. Walk in love and beauty. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering. Take only what you need. Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations. Approach the taking of life with great restraint. Practice great generosity. Repair the web.
—Quote from Carol Christ, by way of Sia at Full Circle