Fruit Farm Dilemma

The spring haying is done (thanks to my neighbors, who have hungry cattle). In exchange for mowing my field, they get the hay. And I get the leavings to mulch my garden.

Now, the race is on to see who will get the fruit this year, Pam or the Deer!

Last year, the deer got ALL the pears, a bumper crop decimated in the night. They ate every pear and even parts of the tree, the exact night before I planned to harvest. This year, I am watching both the apples and the pears with a gimlet eye, hoping to beat the ruminants at their gustatory game. Let's see how they feel when they go to eat that bounty and find that the humans harvested a day early!

Bill commented that it must have seemed like Juli was living at home again. That girl could go through fruit like lightning. Yes, just like a herd of deer.

Happy Birthday, Alex!

My little boy Alex is 24 today! Happy Birthday, son!

Rural Summer : I've been noticing some interesting new bugs around this year. Last night, while accompanying Bounder on his night perambulation, this scary moth was hanging out by the front door. The "eyes" are to scare away predators that might eat it.

At 6:30 this morning, it was cool and overcast enough (only 80 degrees! Cooler than inside the library!) to go pick blackberries down at the pond.

Here is what they looked like a week ago:

Give these puppies a week of 95+ degree heat and a rain shower last night, and they plump up and jump into my bucket. Well, not quite. There are the thorns and the bugs and the frogs croaking in the early morning light. And there was some major thrashing about in the sumac up on the south slope, followed by some indignant snorting and snuffling. Deer, bedded down in the brush, resentful that my presence required them to get up early and move. But free food, yippee!

Days Melting Into Each Other

The unrelenting heat continues. We are on Week 4 of no A/C at the library. Working there is exhausting and sweaty, and I am cranky. Tuesday, a couple of strapping young men brought in a window unit -- for the Geneology Room, to protect the documents. In the meantime, the patrons and staff will continue to wilt. I suspect that a whole bunch of people are now going to exhibit a sudden interest in geneology...

But I go and do my time in the sweatbox and then come home to my lovely air-conditioned house. Brother Jerry is due for a visit this weekend--I hope he doesn't burst into flames or collapse in a sodden puddle.

Meanwhile, the garden is growing, the forest is encroaching, life goes on. Four more weeks and Bill is due home.

Blackberry Tyranny

Purple fingers, purple stove. Blackberry juice EVERYWHERE! The berries are ripening down by the pond, which means that I had to do something with the eleventy-billion ziplock bags of LAST YEAR'S blackberries. It's hard to pass up free food, but I do hate the process.

I took about 20 quarts of berries, cooked them down to a mush, smooshed it all through a food mill, then sieved the guck through a fine-mesh screen, scraping and shaking and smashing, and ended up with about 5 quarts of blackberry puree.

Now you're thinking "yeah, and what does that get you?"

I'm thinking sauce-flavoring for venison, blackberry vinegar for salad dressing, blackberry sorbet in the ice cream maker, and as a last resort, blackberry jam. It's almost even seedless. Sort of. As much as I could stand. Then there's the washing up of the stove, the counters and all the pots and pans and sieves and spoons. My fingers will be purple for a week. I look like I had a fight with an old-fashioned ditto machine.

While the blackberry project was going on, I took inventory of the freezer. Given my penchant for buying any meat that's on sale, I don't need to buy meat for about another year. And I did the laundry in between the puree-making. And I even sat down and watched some episodes of Smallville and knitted a few rows of the never-ending sweater.

Not a bad weekend at all.

I can't remember it ever being this hot and humid in June. August, yes. It's 9 am, and about 90 degrees out there. Time to go exercise the lunatic canine, before it gets even hotter...

Knitting & Blogging Lapse in the Summer Heat

When it gets hot, I lose energy. I am enervated to the height of sloth by a slight rise of the thermometer. Add in sultry humidity, and I am the human equivalent of a floppy, wet rag.

Eating is a problem in the summer for me. I have no appetite, even though my stomach grumbles along. At this point I reach into my past and make my mother's bean salad. It's cold, delicious and once I make it in the cool of the evening, I have breakfast, lunch and dinner made.

Mom's Bean Salad (with my variation)

1 can each, rinsed and drained:

Garbonzo Beans
Cut Green Beans
French-style Green Beans
Cut Wax Beans
Dark Red Kidney Beans
Light Red Kidney Beans
Black Beans
Whole Kernel Corn

Add:
1 Red Onion, sliced very thin
1 Cup Cider Vinegar
1/4 Cup Red Wine Vinegar
1/2 Cup Olive Oil
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. sugar

Marinate overnight. Serve as main dish or on lettuce for a hearty salad. Keeps well in fridge for 1 week.

Jeez, try to do the environmentally conscious thing, and...

Compost.

We have a compost bin, not that we babysit it with any regularity, or worry about the ratio of brown-to-green material. I simply take whatever kitchen scraps I have in a bucket down to the bin, hold my nose, and dump it in, trusting that nature will (someday), turn it into fertilizer for my garden.

So there I am, emptying the bucket into the bid, when I was attacked by a fly-by wasp. He or she didn't even bother to land on me, it just stung me on the wrist as it flew by. Within the hour, my hand was the size of a softball, and by evening, my arm had swelled up like a toad. I took the steroids, iced it down, and still this morning it's hot and red and swollen and itchy.

Try to do a good deed, and what does it get you? More stupid injury.

Harrumph.

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Happiest of birthdays to you, my darling Bill. You're 52, but forever young in my eyes!

A Distinct Absence of Coldness...

I had a heart-stopping moment this morning when I got up. I opened the refrigerator door, and the light did NOT come on. There was no hum, there was no chill. My new refrigerator (well, almost new, definitely on the backside of the warranty) had failed. I puttered and pondered. The easiest thing would be if the circuit breaker tripped in the night. So, clomping downstairs, peering into the depths of the grey box, I found a breaker labelled "Kitch Out." The breaker was spongy, so I reset it and returned to find the fridge on and cranking away. Presumably, the same thing that had all the clocks in the house blinking had surged my icebox into conniptions.

I have not been blogging for the same reason. When it rains, my satellite internet connection has a spazz-out, making working on the computer a frustrating and annoying chore. Dial-up back-up is just as tedious. So I watch movies and read books instead. And it has been raining torrentially for the past week. Yesterday on my lunch hour chores for the library (bank, post office), I was soaked to the skin and had to go home and change clothes. I was so wet I felt like shaking like a dog when I walked in the door, dripping from head to toe.

Speaking of dogs, Bounder continues to improve, though his puppy-energy gives me pause at times. We're working on "not biting" as everything goes into the mouth, including my toes, my elbows and my nose. It's like having a toddler all over again.

As adorable and charmingly funny as he is, his presence makes me realize that I am still heartbroken over Echo's demise and death. It's not that Bounder suffers by comparison, it's simply that he is "not Echo." He is not familiar, we don't have years of shared games and routines, and he doesn't understand my ways--nor do I understand his. He may grow into a treasured, beloved friend, but right now, it's as though I am keeping my emotional distance to protect my heart, and keep Echo alive in my memory.

But really, how could you not love that face?