Mr. Schmoodge has been poorly the past couple of days; he'd been favoring one front foot, but I couldn't get a good look at it until yesterday. He's got a cut in the big pad on his right front foot, and it was oozy and sort. So we cleaned it out with peroxide and anointed it with rosemary oil (as an antiseptic), and he seems to be feeling better today. (He was very good, too; he didn't scratch or bite, unlike some people I could name . . . but he did go under the bed afterward and refused to emerge until he decided we had been sufficiently deprived of his company, and had learned our lesson.)
So he is recuperating in a cardboard box on my worktable, and Ocie is keeping him company on top . . . at least until the box collapses with them both.
It's raining today, that slow autumn rain that soaks into everything. Including the chicken lot, which most emphatically does not need any more water on it . . . I expect the chickens to begin developing webbed feet any day now. We need to clean the chicken house out, but I hate to put clean shavings down with the weather like this, for they'll just get muddy in a couple of days. John put the light in their house, so it's fairly dry inside, but of course they don't want to stay inside all day . . . unlike William and Henrietta and the goats, who seem content to just kick back in their shed and doze when it's raining. We are supposed to go over to Mom and Daddy's this afternoon so John can scope out the lot across the street where Mom wants him to Roundup the kudzu, but if it doesn't stop raining, I may call and tell them we'll try to come over tomorrow instead. This is not the sort of weather for visiting in . . . it would be a good day to stay home and maybe do a little cooking, maybe gather up all the cardboard boxes on the front porch and cut them up to start fires with, maybe read a bit, or work on my shawl . . .
Sunhats are duly delivered and paid for (in cash, no less!) at the tailgate yesterday. We had a decent day, sold all the apple butter I had with me and some other odds and ends, all the eggs, a couple of other odds and ends . . . Then we came home and unloaded the truck before it rained (and, of course, then it cleared up and was beautiful and sunny the rest of the day); went to the post office; went to get some lunch; went to the big farmer's market where we bought three bushels of apples to make this year's apple butter, some okra, some fresh lima beans (I love limas, but I've never seen fresh ones before; this ought to be interesting), some late peaches, and a bag of Wolf River apples to make a nice big pot of applesauce. We still have plenty of canned from last year, since I'm the only one who eats it very often (unless children are visiting), but I do love fresh homemade applesauce. That might be a good project for this afternoon: then we can have fried potatoes, and okra, and streaked meat, and applesauce, and biscuits for supper. . . and sit around this evening and digest happily.
Mr. Schmoodge, I hope your little paw is MUCH better soon! I know with Anita & John caring for you, and Ocie watching over you, you're sure to heal quickly! Three BIG cheers for a successful tailgate day! And oh, yes indeed! A cooking, eating, relaxing, digesting type of day sounds wonderful! Let me know how the fresh limas are. I've never had fresh ones either! And what, please, is streaked meat, she asks?
Posted by: kai naconi | Sunday, 24 September 2006 at 12:05 PM