A Really Good (Wood) Day

Yesterday Roy and I hooked up our high-sided trailer, loaded the truck with wood cutting tools and headed out to our daughter and son-in-law's place to work for the day with them gathering some wood for their woodshed.

A large area had recently been logged less than five minutes drive from their home where the loggers left their usual pile of "tops" (the tops of trees which are too small to take for saw logs). They told W and T they were welcome to take any of these for firewood. So this is the area where we set up to cut wood.

The guys first cut the wood in appropriate sized pieces and then threw them out into a pile close to where W and I could back up their pick-up. The guys would take a break from chain sawing to help us load the pick-up. W and I would then drive to their place and unload the wood into a pile right outside of their woodshed where T will do any more necessary cutting or splitting and stack the wood inside the shed.

Of course, their two dogs and our one were part of the work crew, mostly getting in the way and making a general nuisance of themselves. Sometimes W and I took them with us in the truck on our many trips back and forth, and sometimes they stayed to "help" the guys.

The day was gorgeous. Beautiful fall scenery everywhere you looked. Perhaps a smidge warm for that kind of physical labor, but not too bad. But what was bad was (hear music from "Jaws" here) . . . the Gnat-Hatch. Wouldn't ya know it. 'Twas an odd happening that none of us could figure out, especially for this time of year. There were millions of the little, super-irritating things all over the place. The only saving grace was that they weren't of the biting variety. But they did persist in flying into our eyes, mouths and up our noses. Gak, gag, ugh, yuck, eeeuw! I even had a couple sneak down into my bazoom area. W swore she had one . . . well, I shall refrain from describing where she thought she had one.

Here are T (son-in-law) and W (daughter) at the cutting site. T seemed to be especially attractive to the gnats. They went after him with a vengeance.



What was going on here? Perhaps a moment of marital strife?


T in action with the chain saw.


Roy bends down to pick up wood he's just cut.

Roy tosses wood out to pile.


T, me and Roy loading pick-up.



This is Tucker, a Cardigan Welsh Corgi, one of my granddogs. You can't tell so much from this picture, but he is built like a brick sh . . . well, never mind. I call him a German sausage stuffed with concrete. He weighs as much as Maisy, his sister, who is a Golden Retriever. Corgis are know as being couch potatoes who get fat from avoiding exercise. Tucker is like the Energizer Bunny and is SOLID muscle from the tips of his perky ears to the tips of his toes at the end of his tree-trunk 6" long legs.

I never managed yesterday to get a picture of our dog, Zoey. She's a huntin' dawg, ya know, and she, as usual, went crazy in new territory exploring all the great smells. When we went back to the house for dinner, she wouldn't come inside. (Okay, she's a little afraid of Annie Blue, W and T's tiny cat.) She stretched out on the gravel driveway in the setting sun and looked for all the world like road kill. Exhausting day. Great day, but exhausting day.

Uh-oh, this does NOT look good.


W finally resorted to a head net because she was swallowing so many gnats.


Maisy in truck with us taking a load to woodshed. She's pouting. She's saying, "I didn't want to ride back home to the woodshed. I wanted to stay with the guys to help. It's more interesting out there."



This is a sign W and T put up on the drive into their place. You may not be able to read it, but it says, "Go Away." This is their tongue-in-cheek way of wishing for a simple, uncomplicated life which is rather oxymoron-ish as they are both charismatic, fun-to-be-with people who have a multitude of interests and busy social life.


W took this shot of the colorful leaves lining their driveway.


Here I am standing in the bed of the pick-up unloading a load onto the wood pile outside the woodshed.


And the pile grows higher, and higher, . . . and higher!


Here are Roy and T unloading the very last load from the high-sided trailer. When W saw this picture, she said, "Which one is the dumb one?"


Ah-ha! T is definitely wising up; notice his log is hollow.


Okay, we're inside, our hands are washed, and the gals are making pizzas for dinner.


Okay, they're inside, their hands are washed, and the guys are . . . relaxing. That's fine as they definitely had the more taxing jobs of the day.

Even though W's birthday was 2-1/2 months ago, she had never received her Coconut Creme birthday cake. (Don't ask; things have just been too crazy this summer.) I managed to get the cake baked and took it out with us yesterday so after our truly yummy pizzas, we had birthday cake.

I was taking pictures, and the guys were anxiously waiting with forks in hand so she had to light her own candles.

I like a gal who can really get into singing "Happy Birthday" to herself.

She's a happy girl. She finally got her birthday cake, and she has a big pile of firewood outside her woodshed.

What a great day we all had. Putting up wood may be hard work (and we won't mention The Gnat-Hatch again) but with four people all working together, laughing (and moaning and groaning about body aches and pains) and enjoying themselves, it made for a really good day.

What Can I Say?

Sometimes it just seems like the best thing to do is to get into your bed, scootch and roll around until you find just the right position, forget everything, and take a nap.

I think I could learn something from her.

(Is she smiling?)

Fall, Fall, Beautiful Fall

This morning Roy did his last weed whipping session of 2008. (Not that he's real broken up about that.) Low temp overnight was 38°. Outside, that is, of course. Inside it was 66°, a smidge better. This inbetwixt and inbetween time of year is too warm to think about having a fire in the wood stove overnight, but getting up and going mornings is not as comfy as we might wish. Does kinda make you move fast from jammies to dressed-for-the-day though. Now if I were organized, I'd have oven breakfasts planned so I could pop on the gas stove upon arising which would spread some warmth through the house first thing while providing us with a yummy first meal of the day. (Sure sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?)

After lunch today, Roy was putting the date on a jar of kefir he made. September 15th. The lovely month of September IS HALF OVER! Wait. Stop. Just hold on a dadgum minute there, pardner. How did that happen? Easy. I just have to look at my schedule for the rest of this week, and I know in two shakes of that little lamb's tail, it'll be the weekend already. If someone could just figure out how to slow down time . . . .

Slow down time so fall would last until, say, December 1st? Fall is my favorite time of year. But my bio-rhythms may be a little whacky. I always feel energized in the fall the way most people do in the spring. And most of the good things that have happened in my life have taken place in the fall. I met my husband, got married, got pregnant, moved to Minnesota. No, no, no, not all in the same fall!

Having just said the above (me with all this energy running rampant), I have to admit, I'm having trouble getting out of bed these mornings. I don't know if it's the change in temperature (so warm and comfy under the flannel sheets), or that I need some rest and recuperation from a physically busy summer, or the change in time of sunrise. I suppose I should relax and not be concerned. It's just that hiring the crane to come in every morning to haul me up and out is getting expensive.

There is such a different feel to life when the fall season arrives. Waning light dictates a change in our daily schedule, we wear different clothing, I cook and serve different foods this time of year. Even my summer beverage of choice, Mike's Hard Lime, doesn't have the appeal it did for the past three months. Now it's on to the shots of straight bourbon to keep me going. Where do you think I get the energy? And why I have to sleep in mornings?

Pickles - The Old-Fashioned Way

When I was a little kid, my grandmother always made a big crock of pickles each summer. The crock was kept in a closed room off the back of her kitchen that was called "the cold room." For the most part, it was used to store out-of-season clothes and it was off-limits to me, my brother and our eleven cousins that frequently spent time at Grandma and Grandpa's. None of us were allowed to go into the cold room and dip into the crock ourselves, but as a special treat we would ask Grandma for a pickle, and she always found a nice, big one for whomever asked.

I have a vivid memory of taking my pickle, going out to the cool, front screened-in porch to lie on the swing there, staring up at the beadboard ceiling while savoring that oh-so-good pickle, and thinking whatever thoughts and dreaming whatever dreams a 7 or 8 year old in the 1950s did.

Why, oh, why didn't I get Grandma's crock pickle recipe? Most likely, she didn't have a recipe, but I could have gotten the basics from her so I could try my hand at making them.

Roy has frequently suggested it would be nice to do some old-fashioned pickles in a crock but I've kinda ignored him and continued to make our pickles in quart jars using the water bath canner method because I knew that worked. This year, with our abundant crop of pickling cucumbers, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

Earlier this summer, he did a little light-weight researching and came up with a method for making crock pickles. Here's a shot of the crock sitting in a corner of the cool basement.

He said they would be ready to taste after fermenting in the brine for about 1-1/2 weeks. This week the time was up so we sampled.

Well, I'll be horn-swoggled. They are really good. Now they'll continue to ferment and get even better tasting, he assures me. With this success under his belt, he was encouraged to try yet another batch.

I volunteered to help by gathering and washing the dill and preparing the garlic.

Here's a bunch of cucs in the sink ready for washing.

And washing. And washing. And washing.

Finally, cucumbers and garlic ready for the crock.

Into the crock they go.

Then down to the basement and we patiently wait while they do their thing, turning into tasty, crispy, crunchy pickles like Grandma used to make. ('Cept I think this batch has more garlic in it than Grandma ever thought of using!)

Another Good Day on the Homestead

After our welcomed rain yesterday, today was a beautiful late summer/early fall day full of sunshine. The temp made it up into the mid-60s although working out in the garden, it felt warmer.

I picked a little over seven pounds of cherry tomatoes, my huge colander full of lemon cucs, another of green slicing cucs, and one, plus another medium bowl, full of pickling cucs. This colander holds enough pickling cucumbers for seven quarts of pickles so that was quite a good harvest from the garden for this time of the season.

Before coming in to make dinner, I went to check out the apple trees.

These would look good if the tree bore yellow apples. But it doesn't. They need to be totally red to be ripe 'n ready.

This one is coming along a little better.

And these even better. But we aren't holding out much hope for a good harvest this year. They just got too slow a start in the spring. In September, we often get a frost around the time of the full moon. And we're facing a full moon this coming Monday. I'm just very thankful we're not trying to make a living up here with an apple orchard.

I love this Virginia Creeper vine that grows up against the house to the right of this window. Not only does it grow up to the roof of the house, but it grows to the right across our bedroom window and to the left across the bathroom window that you see here. When it dies down in the late fall (after turning a deep, deep red), the window seems so open and exposed. But it also let's more light into the bathroom again which isn't a bad thing.

Another good day on the homestead.

No Dirty Pictures

There will be no pictures with this post. I'm embarrassing myself enough by writing about this topic.

During the summer/gardening months, do you know who works inside my house keeping it clean, neat and tidy? Nubbuddy, that's who. And it drives me nuts. Don't get me wrong; I am not a neat-freak when it comes to housekeeping. But I do like things to at least look organized, tidy, and surface cleaned. Right now, my house is so deep-dirty, it would give Mr. Clean heart palpitations.

And I don't know how it happens. Roy and I are both relatively clean people. We check our shoes before entering the house. We both bathe regularly and put on clean clothes every day. I manage to get dishes done at least once a day and we immediately clean up any real messes we make. Honest, we do.

Can houseplants die from a really thick layer of dust on their leaves? When was the last time I washed the kitchen floor? Well, let's see . . . if this is September and I started working outside in early May . . . .

There is a corner of the bathroom ceiling that has a network of delicate gray fibers stretching from one wall to another. And there seems to be little . . . things . . . caught in the fibers. Not big things . . . just little, black . . . gnat-like things.

And can somebody tell me what is all that stuff in the bottom of the compartments of the silverware tray? And where did it come from? By my guesstimation, it looks to be about 1/4" deep right now.

I moved the toaster yesterday morning. Screeeeeam. Holy Batman. Crumbs, yuck, greasy-dirty-dust, a dead spider and a dime. (Haven't been hitting the corners much lately, have you, Mama Pea?)

When I designed our small kitchen, I opted for white cabinets because I thought they would give a light and airy feel to the minimalistic space I had to work with. Let me tell you about white cabinets. Don't EVER put in white cabinets. Do NOT do it. A big, bad, STUPID mistake. Every fingerprint and smudge shows Every little drip shows up like a flashing neon light. Every teeny-tiny indentation or lip or piece of molding holds dust, grit and grime with glaring visibility. At this moment, they have never been dirtier. Their only redeeming quality is that by having them I've come to realize that all other-than-white cabinets are most likely just as dirty; the lucky homeowners just don't know it. But I do . . . neener-neener-nee-ner. (Oh, that is so petty.)

I live in fear that someone will casually take a book from one of our shelves to peruse . . . poof . . . cough . . . sneeze . . . splutter . . . gag.

I could go on but this is getting too depressing. And let's face it, it could be a lot worse. (Oh, really?) I have a friend who was boiling down maple sap in a big pot on her kitchen stove, she walked away and kinda sorta forgot it. Yup, it boiled over and she had sticky, icky, gooey sap down in the burners of the stove, all over the counter, down between the stove and counter, covering the knobs of the stove, in one drawer and cabinet, all over the floor. Now THAT would be a real cleaning project. (When I related this incident to my daughter, she looked at me with a deadpan expression and said, "I would move.")

I did vacuum and dust this afternoon. Darn near filled the vacuum cleaner bag, I think. And one of these days, after a good, hard frost has zapped everything in the garden, I will start spending time inside getting caught up on all the housekeeping chores I've let slide all summer. I should be done just in time to put up the Christmas decorations.