Take Joy!

Wordless Wednesday

Mine, Mine, Mine!

Mr. Poozle may have eaten the catnip, but the pot is mine!

Independence Days Update #2

Not much going on yet, other than the usual spring cleanup. (I'm usually finished by now, but I kept waiting for things to die back . . . ) John is progressing on the new shed—frame is up, rafters next. (I think. I'm not a builder.) Otherwise, the big excitement lately has been going to Wal-Mart (I know, I know) to buy new underwear and a couple of curtain rods.

There are all sorts of crocuses, coming up in places I've not seen them before; John says Cynthia planted them before she left, and they just haven't bloomed until this year. Perhaps the Jacobean lily by the grapevine will bloom this year? Or have the voles eaten it, too? I have one bed cleaned, and  have discovered that the thrift is already blooming, and that my flowering almond and something else (spirea? the tag disappeared over the winter), both bought last year, are full of buds. The iris we transplanted last year are looking good. Dayllilies are coming up; so, alas, is garlic mustard. I wonder if we can eat it?

Oh, and a bear came by the other night; he demolished several birdfeeders and carried off the suet feeders. We think it was the smallish one who appeared one night last fall, scarfing up sunflower seeds on the side porch, but rather unfortunately he was there before I got up so I didn't see him. Or her. Whatever. (Bear season—One of John's friends at Ingles walks to and from work, down toward the library; she saw a mother and two cubs the other night on her way home.) Some feeders have been put out again (though I am bringing in the suet at night, just in case; he probably doesn't much like finch feed) and the others are in a box by John's chair, waiting for new handles (must get wire, next trip to the hardware).

The geese are beginning to fly north. The wrens are nesting, somewhere (I suspect on the front porch, sigh); they're flying back and forth with wads of nesting stuff. The hawks are courting, though I have only  heard and not seen  them so far. The squirrels are still chasing each other about, but I think the ladies have retired to their nests and this is only the squirrel equivalent of locker-room towel snapping.

Plant something: Once again, not yet. Seeds are coming in, though. Bought woodland bulbs to plant in the shady part of the garden. Need to go to Charlie-and-Betty's to pick up several reserved flats of pansies, and possibly some lamiastrum (sp?) to go with the now-identified plant Mom gave me last  year. (Someone gave it to her and she didn't remember what it was; it had lived happily in a pot on her porch for a couple of years. I saw some with a tag on it when we went to look at pansies, and I want some more plants! It's decorative and hardy, and doesn't appear to be a vole appetizer.) Chives and garlic chives that have existed unhappily on the kitchen windowsill (north exposure, mostly good for spiderplants) over the winter are now deciding that spring is here, or at least very close, and have begun to grow again. The nettle  patch is coming to life, which means I need to get out and move the ones that are still in the old patch (not in a good location. My bad.) and only minutely prickly.

Harvest something: Many, many eggs. Currently 18 dozen in refrigerator (in a week's time), two dozen in kitchen waiting to be boiled, two more dozen in bucket from last night. Garlic is coming up; soon I can harvest tips to go in stirfrys.

Preserve something: More jam. Sharon at Foreign Affairs (Pacific Rim foods) gave us a bushel, more or less, of lemongrass and another of Thai hot peppers. John cleaned and boiled the lemongrass to give us . . . juice? nectar? . . . whatever it's called, there are half a dozen quarts of it canned and waiting to be added to things. We spent the better part of two days destemming hot peppers (and frequently washing hands, and mostly remembering not to touch any body parts without said handwashing), and then John made some dipping sauce, some hot jam, and some pepper jelly, and there is still a bowl of peppers in vinegar in the refrigerator . . . and the stems and bits, plus a couple of handfuls that were too far along to use, went to the chickens (who jumped gleefully and promptly devoured them, stems and all). Made a batch of apple butter with the last of the apples.

Waste not: The usual feeding of scraps to the chickens, and using assorted saved cardboard boxes as firestarting materials, along with trash mail. See above heading for peppers/lemongrass—she was getting ready to dumpster these. John is reusing some old lumber for the new storage shed; we've had to buy most of it, but he has a few boards, a panel that will make a door, and a bunch of odds and ends of nails left from other projects.

Want Not: Picked up four pairs of military-surplus pants for John; they're wool blend twill and only need hemming up. Good dress pants, for those few occasions he needs some. Along with the suit coat and dress pants from Goodwill last month, these will live in the closet in a suit bag with cedar chips. (Now, if I can only find an inexpensive black dress . . . we are, after all, reaching the age when periodic attendance at funerals is inevitable.) I an converting an old Indian gauze skirt (elephants!) which has a huge, unmendable hole in one of the panels into a set of curtains. There's so much fabric I just cut out the panel with the hole, cut off the elastic, and still have significant pieces left. This will cover a window that doesn't open but does get afternoon sun, at least before the fig leafs out, and I will enjoy looking at it. Still working on John's mother's house: he reclaimed a recliner, and passed another on to a friend, along with her dining room table and chairs.

Eat the Food: Eggs and more eggs. Oven roasted pot roast (James Beard—3-4 pound piece of beef chuck, bottom round, etc. Top with onion soup mix [this is a 60s cookbook] and sliced tomato, wrap in foil and set in a pyrex dish. Cook at 300 degrees for five hours or so. I use Penzeys fines herbes or spice mix of some sort, onions, and dried tomatoes preserved in oil.); we don't eat this so much except in winter, when it's good to keep the chill off the [north-facing] kitchen. Pot roast sandwiches, with mustard and onions on homemade bread.

Build community systems: Not this week, though I am planning to take a dozen eggs when I go to the yarn shop this afternoon . . . 

Skill up: Working on my knitting . . . have produced a striped hat with no jogs! and a colorwork headband, on which the bindoff was really awful and I couldn't figure out why. I studied on it for a couple of days and then the light dawned: knit and purl ribbing bound off in only knit does not work. I suppose this qualifies me for "older and wiser now".

Health Notes (my own addition): Blood sugar up this week, I suspect due to allergies, which have made their appearance with warm weather. (Do not attempt to part me from my Kleenex!) No walking last week, due to (1) yardwork, (2) arthritic knees, again with warm weather and every-other-day rain, and (3) catching up the ironing, which required most of one afternoon. My knees function normally, more or less, if I take enough aspirin, but  . . . so there's aspirin for when I need it (i.e., trips to huge stores with concrete floors), and the rocking chair and knitting when I can stop every half hour to rest them. I really hate having to cater to an aging body, but what's the alternative? Anyway, feeling pretty good otherwise!

The old ladies approve this chair . . . and John only thinks it's his.

Wordless Wednesday—Magic Butter, obviously

Cat and Mouse

Dreaming

I dreamed last night.

Well, I almost always dream, but I usually don't remember anything other than that I dreamed (and over the days of Yule, the liminal time, all my dreams were unremembered but I knew that I'd dreamed something wonderful, a tiny jewel in my mind. Now they're back to their usual mixed bag) . . .

Anyway, I'd been working on a  piece of stranded knitting before I went to bed, and I was very tired. I could feel myself entering the dreaming state, a bit at a time, like walking into the ocean; deeper with every step. And I dreamed of myself knitting, stitch by stitch. (I used to do that when I worked as a typesetter, eighteen or twenty hour days sometimes; I'd dream of myself setting type and feel my fingers moving, letter by letter, all night long.)

I was knitting a piece with a forest and animals in it, jaguars and wolves and wild horses and some smaller unidentifiable things, and as I knit them they came to life . . . I worked their heads first (which is not the way of it; you usually work from the bottom up), and their eyes came to life; they watched me work my way down their bodies. When I finished their mouths, they purred or growled or just breathed; their ears pointed and their tails twitched; and when I'd knitted them completely, they walked out into the room, leaving only their shadows among the knitted flowers and vines.

A Casualty

of last night's high winds:

Note that Sam is on the job, checking out just what has happened to his yard . . . there was also much exploration by squirrels and Ysabeau (though not at the same time).

This was the tree with all the bird feeders in it; it died several years during a droughty summer, and we've been expecting this for some time. Fortunately, it missed the beehives; it did fall over the fence around them, so John will probably have to cut the top out before he can get into the beeyard to replenish their sugar water. (We were hoping not to have to feed them, but after losing two hives last year, and talking to other beekeepers, feeding is the only reliable way to keep bees here . . . the temperatures are erratic and—this winter in particular—they're [the bees, not the temperatures] out and about when there's nothing much blooming. Last week, for instance, it was in the high 50s here. . . though we do have some things blooming: there are daffodils and crocuses, and the rosemary is in bloom, and there are even a few blossoms on the thrift, but none of it is enough to supply six hives in the dead of winter. I think the highway department has planted daffodils along some of the medians, too, so that helps.)

Note, too, that all the feeders are still intact! So I can still leave them here for the time being; later I plan to move the feeders over under the maple, so John can till up this plot for a flower-and-select-vegetable garden expansion. I'd planned to get him to anyway, but now I'll have more space in the sun. More peppers! And bee- and butterfly-plants. And I can move my struggling rudbeckia plants from the part-shade spot in the back, where they don't like it, and replace them with astilbes and a heuchera; and more daylilies. And did I mention more pepper plants? And the two dward cherries John's ordered, trusting that we'd find somewhere to put them.

My knees are complaining already . . .

(And now, back to our regularly scheduled Sunday afternoon, in which I do nothing useful: I should be doing the ironing, which has been languishing in a chair for many days now, but instead I am sitting in what's left of the sun, eating dried apricots and knitting monster ears.)

Mr. Poozle and the Demise of the Catnip

Independence Days Update #1

(Sharon has reinstituted the Independence Days posts this year!  The first week's update is here.)

Plant something: Not yet, but we did finally finish the seed orders . . . (In our defense, the hooplah surrounding John's mother's death late last year has set everything back somewhat.)

Harvest something: Eggs, mostly. Last year's new chicks have begun laying (there are curently 8 dozen eggs on my kitchen table waiting to be cartoned); the cold weather forecast for the weekend will retard them a little, but not much. I didn't plant any winter greens last year. (See previous excuse.)

Preserve something: Jams—Ginger/galangal, mango, garlic, orange marmalade. Not positive whether this counts as "preserve," since these are for sale; also, I realize these ingredients aren't even remotely local (except the garlic), but they were bought at the local oriental foods shop.

Waste not: The usual feeding of scraps to the chickens, along with those apples too far gone for us to eat. Using assorted saved cardboard boxes as firestarting materials, along with trash mail. Burned the last of the crappy old firewood this winter, since it's not been terribly cold. Raked leaves from site of new shed and tossed into the garden for the chickens to spread. Using the winter's accumulation of orange peels to make the year's supply of degreaser.  (Put peels into jar. Cover with vinegar. Let sit 6 months or so, then decant into spray bottle.)

Want Not: Acquired many, many canning jars (some from John's mother's house, some from my brother's thrift-store forays, plus what we've emptied over the winter), plus three new canners (one pressure, two water-bath) and two bags of lids and rings. Canners were John's mother's; we don't need them (we have three already), but no one else wanted them and . . . Also: half a dozen small plastic buckets suitable for egg gathering, a new-to-me colander, two sprinkler tops for ironing (remember those? My grandmother used one stuck in an old glass Pepsi bottle.), a wooden ironing board (still sturdy after 50 years, and at a better height for me than my current newer metal one), assorted pyrex dishes. Four lawn chairs.

Eat the Food: Eggs, various guises. The last of the stored apples, which didn't keep too well in this warm winter. Potatoes, also not keeping too well, and needing to be eaten. Working on eating down contents of the big hall freezer. Made a big bowl of Waldorf salad with apples, stored raisins and walnuts. Many pots of applesauce, and apple pies. John successfully rejuvenated the sourdough starter, so we've had sourdough raisin bread.

Build community food systems: Keeping our mechanics supplied with bread and eggs (we drive an old car and an older truck).

Skill up: I learned to knit over the last summer, and have produced many hats and scarves. Now learning to do stranded colorwork.

Health Notes (my own addition): Lost 7 pounds (only 43 to go . . . ). Blood sugar is down closer to normal range. Also, bleeding gums have mostly stopped; apparently the bushel of oranges consumed over the winter has helped. Walking 5 days out of 7, at least thirty minutes per day. (Managed an hour yesterday, but none today as it's snowing, windy and below freezing.) Taking tulsi capsules, which help with blood sugar; have begun spirulina. Arthritis in knee and foot have mostly subsided for now, but one hip hurts when I get up. It's always something, isn't it?

Wordless Wednesday