Take Joy!

True Colors

 

 

 

Victoria, Sunning

Independence Days Update

For Sharon's Independence Days Challenge.

1. plant something: Nothing this week. Need to get the garlic in the ground, but I doubt it would be improved by my sneezing all over it . . .

2. harvest something:  Only eggs this week—new small ones, so the new hens are beginning to lay. Which is good, because nearly all the old ones have gone missing. A fox has been seen . . . not good. Also a turkey egg a day!

3. preserve something: Froze bananas for later banana bread. Dried lemon verbena leaves from plants I brought inside, which promptly dropped 99% of their leaves. Dried the last few hot peppers.

4. reduce waste: The usual: recycling (plastic, cat food cans, milk jugs). Continuing to use clothesline instead of dryer. Emptied the rest of the pots and piled dead plant material on compost (sort of) heap.

5. preparation and storage: More wood on porch (handy, since it's raining buckets today—not cold, but damp, and a little fire in the stove keeps our collective arthritis at a bearable level). Bought a bottle of Sambucol and a packet of Oscillo in case of future flu attacks. (I'm thinking that flu is what we've had, but who knows?) Will buy more as soon as the SS check gets here . . . also another bottle of Echinacea/Goldenseal capsules. Dried elderberries to tincture are here, as is boneset for tea. Elderberry concentrate on order (we have jelly orders, but I plan to use some to make syrup. I really wish we could grow elderberries, but we've tried and they just die. Pooh.). Need another bottle (or maybe two) of vodka, when check arrives. Bought several bales of shavings to rebed chicken houses during the winter, and straw to put underneath for them to poke around in when the weather's bad. Added rice (white) to storage. I try to use brown, but it never hurts to have some that will keep forever.

6. build community food systems: Still staying home with our germs (other than my lab appointment last week, for the semi-annual A1c). Making plans to give homemade food or one sort or another for Christmas this year.

7. eat the food: Homemade bread, as always. Chili we made a month or two ago and froze in 2-person lots. (I think there is one more in the freezer; time to make another batch.) Organic chicken from grocery store sale—roasted one night, then chicken casserole another (comfort food; the recipe starts with a can of cream of chicken soup . . . but my grandmother used to make it, and the mental effect outweighs the ingestion of commercial soup and mayonnaise. I think.), and there's a big jar of chicken stock in the refrigerator for soup this week. Beef liver from the freezer, home fries from our potatoes. Waldorf salad using Honeycrisp apples and walnuts from storage (I regret to admit that John didn't get any of this; he wasn't quick enough).

Notes: I've spent the week making costumes, which I'd intended to do the week I got sick . . . everything is boxed up and ready to mail today. Right down to the wire, as usual—thanks for Priority Mail! I took pictures, but they aren't the sort that photograph well without a child inside. Hopefully I will get pictures next week (yes, Karolyn, this means you!) . . . And since I was paying for Priority boxes, there are various candy goodies (a gummy coral snake for Emma, a gigantic rubbery-gooey tarantula for Riley, Peeps and wax lips for everyone), light sticks, plastic bat-and-spider rings, and Riley's giant plastic dinosaur, that I never got mailed for his birthday (in June), and Eliza's pink and white skirt that has been languishing here since May, and a pile of Ramona books for her, and a couple of story books I've been saving for Emma, and a beanbag Halloween cat  . . . might as well get my money's worth!

We bought straw yesterday and spread a couple of bales under the chicken house, a couple of bales under the turkey house where the goats winter, and a bale in the hovel for them to poke around in. Also put another layer of shavings in both houses and more in the nesting boxes, now that a few hens have begun to  lay. All the old hens that were still laying have suddenly disappeared, and there are no bodies, so we suspect a fox (or possibly foxes). One of the neighbors said he saw a fox down in the back lot during the summer. Could be coyotes—lots of people up here have coyote trouble, but we haven't so far, and I've not heard any. At any rate, all the young chickens (and the turkeys) have been moved into the garden for the winter, and the big door to the lower house shut, just in case. One of hen turkeys has been laying out in the garden under a bush, as turkeys are wont to do when left to their own devices; we've put a wooden egg in her 'nest' and so far it's working. An egg a day this week!

Persimmons are getting ripe; there are half a dozen on each of our young trees, and last time we checke the tree at John's mothers it was loaded. A good frost and they should be ready—persimmon pudding! Persimmons in the freezer!

Color, finally, all in a week—the maples and oaks have turned, the weeping cherry is a rusty red and orange, and the hickory tree behind the house is a glorious gold, and so is the big chestnut in front. Everywhere I look is color! Today it's raining, hard sometimes, so probably all the leaves will drop abruptly, but I've enoyed them this past week or so. I spent some little over the weekend out in a chair in the side yard, watching the birds and squirrels pillage the feeders and the leaves spiralling down . . . I justified it by claiming to be convalescing and getting my dose of Vitamin D, complete with cat-on-lap. 

I do love fall. It's so beautiful, and over so very quickly. As Frost said, though in another context, "Nothing gold can stay." So we had best enjoy it while it's here, no matter that the country—and the whole world—is descending into god-knows-what, that our world is changing rapidly and not for the better, that life is becoming more uncertain by the day . . . all we have is this moment, right here, right now, and it's a shame to let it pass without acknowledgement.

Especially when the kettle is hot, the cats are draped sleeping over every possible flat surface (and a couple that aren't), and there is a handful of [forbidden] leftover candy corn . . . 

 

The Costume Studio is in Operation

 . . . complete with help.

 

And look, one of them matches Emma's panda costume-to-be! Now I guess the cat hair won't show so much.

I am running several days behind, due to being stove up with the flu-or-something last week. However, everything will be in the mail on Tuesday, come hell or high water. I went out today to get Halloween goodies for their boxes (you know, the usual—candy skulls, wax lips, gummi snakes, candy corn, that sort of thing) and was mightily depressed at the state of the stores. Wal-Mart (which I hate, but I needed a bathmat and thought I could get Halloween stuff there too) had nothing. Zilch. Usually I get little holiday tchotchkes there—bendy scarecrows, stickers, Halloween Peeps, candy bracelets—the kind of junk I only indulge them in on Halloween and Easter, but there was nothing like that this year. Only sad-looking costumes, and giant bags of Snickers bars, and some plastic pumpkins. Not many shoppers, either. (And no bathmats. I want the ones that look like square towels, woven cotton without that rubber backing that shreds off in the washer. Doesn't anyone make them any more?) So, since I had to go and buy yet more elastic and Velcro (apparently there is something in my sewing corner that devours fasteners of all types, since I never seem to have any no matter how many I buy), and the fabric store is next door to it, I proceeded to AC Moore, which did have some interesting goodies at 50% off. Unfortunately, they also had only two cashiers working, with a 10-person line at each one, and after standing in line for 20 minutes (during which time one line moved not at all, and the other moved up by one person) to buy three packs of stickers, a couple of Pez dispensers and a glittery cats-eye mask, I opted to put everything back and go away muttering to myself. Then I tried CVS (across the street. I was trying to avoid a stop at Rite-Aid, which is closer to home but requires a weird left turn across traffic and just up the hill from a bad stoplight to get out of unless you're going down the hill to Ingles, which I wasn't. Not today, anyway.) and finally found some candy things—no Pez, though—but no little goodies. Maybe I'll stop at Rite-Aid tomorrow when I go to the post office to pick up the mail. Or maybe I won't. I'm sure they'll be very happy with whatever I send.

One thing's for sure—shopping isn't what it used to be, even last year. I've never enjoyed it (unless, of course, it's books or CDs or fabric/yarn/beads. It's the necessary shopping—for bathmats, clothes, food—that I abhor.), but now it's just depressing.  I think I'll just stay home; it's nicer here.

Back to the costumes . . .

Morning Squirrel

End-of-Summer Poem

The little songs of summer are all gone today.
The little insect instruments are all packed away:
The bumblebee's snare drum, the grasshopper's guitar,
The katydid's castanets—I wonder where they are.
The bullfrog's banjo, the cricket's violin,
The dragonfly's cello have ceased their merry din.
Oh, where is the orchestra? From harpist down to drummer
They've all disappeared with the passing of the summer.

—Rowena Bastin Bennett

Cat on a [Hot?] Tin Roof

Victoria, near the hole by which she enters the attic every day to nap.

Before the Frost

Pineapple sage (one plant!)

Pokeweed, just waiting for the birds

 

The Cabbage Experiment

 

Chrysanthemums

 

Goldenrod

Now that we've had a couple of nights of frost, things look a bit different  . . . except for the cabbages.

Independence Days Update

For Sharon's Independence Days Challenge.

1. plant something: Nothing this week.

2. harvest something:  A few chicken eggs—the hens don't like fall so far, and have pretty much ceased laying in protest—and one turkey egg. The last of the peppers. Texas tarragon leaves. Seeds from various flowers. A few green onions that had somehow gotten missed. Two carrots the size of my thumb. (The carrot crop was a bust this year, due to all that rain, but those two sure were good.) Leaves from pineapple sage. What was left of the field corn, after raccoons and windstorms—two buckets sitting on porch waiting to be shucked and turned into hominy.

3. preserve something: Dried a few more peppers. Saved seeds from cushaw mentioned in the last update, as well as flowers and herbs that had gone to seed. Making hot vinegar with the last of the hot peppers, a few onions, a few shallots, a couple of heads of garlic. Making, also, faux-tarragon vinegar with leaves from Texas Tarragon. Infused pineapple sage leaves in apple juice, which is now residing in the refrigerator, waiting to be made into jelly. Was given three big bunches of ripe bananas, which will be ready to freeze for banana bread in a couple of days.

4. reduce waste: The usual: recycling (plastic, cat food cans, milk jugs). Continuing to use clothesline instead of dryer. Frostbitten peppers plants, etc. all piled on pile of fill dirt I'm working on turning into productive soil, to rot over the winter. Discovered a jar of pecan pieces was infested with some sort of moths, so fed them to the chickens (pecans and moths). Pulled up millet growing under the bird feeders and fed it to William, who was highly appreciative, even though he would have preferred alfalfa cubes. Turned chickens into the garden (no fall garden this year; nothing came up, so we opted for fertilizer instead) where they can eat what greenery is left and all the weed seeds they can find.

5. preparation and storage: Bought a bushel of Honeycrisps despite the price. We did better than expected at the festival, so I spent some on apples. :) Began stacking wood on the porch, just in case bad weather comes early. (Frost last night, which is pretty early for us.) We've both had nasty colds for about a week and a half, so nothing much has gotten done. (Well, nothing much other than whining . . . ) Restocked cat food, oatmeal, raisins. Finished hauling books to used book store (for credit, not cash—they give more that way), and now have approximately $275 book credit. 

6. build community food systems: Nothing in particular. Unless, of course, keeping one's germs at home and to oneself counts . . .

7. eat the food: Homemade bread, as always. Pilaf made in the rice cooker—brown rice, dried apricots, chicken stock, slivered almonds and red onion. Baked apples. Lots of odds and ends, since no one felt like cooking . . . or eating much, either. Slaw, which I ate most of when I was sick. 

Notes: We took John's mother to a reunion Sunday before last, and then all three of us came down with nasty colds. (I knew I should have stayed home . . . ) I'm mostly over mine, John's is still icky, and Iva's is worst, but she's old and it always takes her forever to get over things. I have pictures—it was up in Madison County, and the color was pretty—but I have to get them out of the camera and saved . . . maybe this week sometime.

The Great Chicken Drive is over—fortunately, it happened the day before we got sick—and the chickens are happily installed in the garden, while the goats and William are not-so-happily barred from the chicken lot for the winter, but are making do by eating dead leaves all up and down the back hill. There are still, I think, three chickens in the goat lot, but they refuse to be driven or caught, so I suppose they can just winter there.

Finally finished the doll wardrobe for Mom and Daddy's church bazaar raffle. (Album of photos on the left-hand sidebar.) Here is Emily:

 

I've begun the Halloween costumes: Eliza's black cat hood is finished, her tail is waiting to be stuffed, and I have orange satin and black ball fringe for a little circle skirt. Riley's pumpkin is cut out and waiting to be sewn. I need to wash the white velour part of Emma's panda—someone slept on it and it's rather hairy—before I cut it out, but the black is OK. My aim is to get them all sewn and ready to mail (priority) on Monday next, along with some books and whatnot.

And now I suppose I'd better go stack some more wood. There is a chicken in the oven—I'm using ames Beard's long-cooking method, wrapped in foil and roasted at 250° for 4-5 hours. I filled it with a quartered lemon, some thyme, and half a dozen cloves of garlic, and it smells very good indeed. And I think, when it's finished, I'll make a custard, since we have too many eggs to eat but not enough to sell until the young hens begin to lay. But, for now, wood . . .

Wild Geese

I heard the wild geese flying

   In the dead of the night,

With beat of wings and crying

   I heard the wild geese flying.

And dreams in my heart sighing

   Followed their northward flight.

I heard the wild geese flying

   In the dead of night.

—Elinor Chipp