A Quick Fix for the Signpost

/ eponine3 / 2 Comments

Some things take a long time. It’s true. The general rule of thumb, I’ve found, is that things take about twice as long as you think they will. But not always.

When my great niece was here, we started a project at the end of the driveway. I wanted to surround the signpost with some plantings, but the area is steep on one side. Something to hold the dirt in seemed like the ticket. See what I mean?

I know. It’s a mess. When it’s this messy, you don’t even feel motivated to mow! Good heavens, how did I let it get like that!?

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There was a time when it looked way nicer. Maybe even last year. All right, this photo is from 2015. But I’m sure it looked nice last year too, for a little while anyway. When there are flowers and it is all neat and tidy, it’s very welcoming. And it is the entrance, and I do have guests coming and going…

Golden Hill sign summer 2015

The way I see mess is this: When it’s a little messy, I take care of it and bring it back to standard. When it’s past a little messy and will require some time to remediate, I can somehow more easily overlook it. But then it gets to be a lot messy, and I can’t stand it anymore. That’s what happened with the signpost.

Busy with chicken coop, successfully ignore signpost, busy with garden, successfully continue to ignore signpost, busy with stream bed, no time for signpost. But then one day it happens, like the butterfly effect. All the pieces come together – it’s looking really terrible now, I have nothing else pressing that I can justify ignoring the signpost for, it’s not raining, there’s a ten-year-old here who says she likes to dig! – so out came the shovels (and the elephant ear bulb that would find a new home soon).

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Kaileena’s enthusiasm to dig put me over the edge, got us out there, and put the project in motion. She discovered quickly that Virginia soil is the next best thing to concrete, but she hung in there a while before suddenly her book, waiting patiently for her next to the couch in the house, called out loud and clear, which Kaileena heard from the end of the driveway, and she had to go see what was happening next in Immortal Reign (by Morgan Rhodes, who had a ten-year-old fan in Virginia that week).

This is as far as we got the first day. I played with making it three high, but I think you’d agree it’s too high.

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So I moved those top ones over and left it. There are other things to do when you have a ten-year-old in the house. But the wheels were turning, the gears were in motion.

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Mom said, “Looks good, but you need another block on the first level on the left. Looks like a hole there.” Thanks, Mom. She was right. Moms usually are.

This past Saturday was the day to keep going. The challenge was not only that the blocks are heavy – they are about as heavy as I can manage, any heavier and I couldn’t do it – and of course you need them to be reasonably level, which they were, despite how it looks in the photo, trust me. But also these are the kind of blocks with angled sides so that when laid edge to edge, you will get a circle. But how big is the circle? And did I start in the right place so that the post will be in the middle? And what happens if the last two don’t actually meet edge to edge? Then what? How can you cut one of these things?

Hoping for the best (I seem to do a lot of that), one block at a time went down next to the one before it. Lo and behold, two wonderful things happened that meant a lot less time would be needed to get this project done.

  1. The last two blocks had about a half inch gap between them, easily rectified by nudging the adjacent blocks a smidgeon over until they all had a slight gap but none too noticeable.
  2. The post was not quite in the middle when the circle was complete, but allowing for the sign that hangs from it, the post-plus-sign was plenty centered for my satisfaction.

Whew! Now for the plants and bulbs. I had bought a load of rudbeckia for the berm along the driveway by the chicken coop when they were on sale for $3 each. I bought 18, wild guess as to how many I’d need. I needed 18.

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But before I had planted them, Sandy was going to Lowe’s and asked me if I needed anything. “Maybe get three more of the rudbeckia, just in case.” I then didn’t need them, so I put them in the garden box that had had peas in it. The peas had passed their prime and I’d pulled them.

So three rudbeckia were just waiting for usefulness, and where better to show their stuff than at the entrance? So far the deer hadn’t bothered the ones by the coop, so I was confident these would not be mowed down the next day.

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The little things you see strewn on the right are bulbs of various kinds including echinacea and a smaller variety of elephant ear. The huge one I was holding earlier is planted where a fourth rudbeckia would be. We’ll see what happens with that.

We were done before lunch, and notice that gap on the lower level is filled in.

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Maybe grass will grow on the slope leading to the road. Do you think it will do that if I just hope?

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Tea and Thatch

/ eponine3 / 1 Comment

When you have your ten-year-old great niece staying for a week, you think about what activities might be fun. On Wednesday we drove to the Science Museum in Richmond especially to see its “Animals Inside Out” exhibit. Kaileena said the best part of that outing was, you guessed it, the tightrope!

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I asked her what else she liked that day and she did not hesitate in the least: the cartwheels on the back deck that she did when we got home! This reminds me of a family I knew who took their two daughters on a special trip to Disney World, and the thing the girls liked best was – yup – the pool at the hotel!

You do what you can. You hope for the best.

On Thursday we drove west. The destination was Beverley’s summer home where Kaileena got to slide down a natural water slide in a rushing mountain stream (a highlight of the week, to be sure). On the way we stopped for lunch at the Anne Hathaway Cottage Tea Room in Staunton. The interior was elegant in an old-world way – stone floor, dark wood fireplace, fine old china decorating the walls – utterly charming. My beet and strawberry salad, with feta cheese and a creamy balsamic dressing, was divine. Mom’s and Kaileena’s sandwiches were equally impressive and delicious: cream cheese and sliced strawberries on one, and ham salad with pineapple on the other. If you want sugar in your tea, you use the small tongs to pinch a lump and drop it in. You can see the tongs hanging off the sugar bowl on the table.

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Set back from a fairly main road, almost hidden, the cottage itself looks as authentic as it is. That roof is thatch. In addition to being the most common roofing material worldwide, thatch is apparently making a comeback in higher-end circles on account of being lightweight, versatile and waterproof. A great variety of wild and cultivated grains, including wheat and rye, can be used. The wheat that makes the straw that was historically used for making roofs is the same wheat that gave grain for making bread.

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The owner proudly told me that the roof of this cottage in Staunton is likely to last 30+ years.

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When I was a child in grade school, we got a little Scholastic Books catalog every now and then, and Mom allowed me to make some choices. One of the books I picked out, which probably cost 25 cents, had a story that included a thatched roof. I could not help but think of that story when I saw this thatched roof. Lines of dialog were etched in my mind. The story affected me hugely and I remember it well, though its title escaped me.  Its message undoubtedly helped shape the way I think about wisdom and age to this day.

The book itself did not survive my childhood. As I had children of my own, and they got a little bigger, I reflected often on the part that story had played in my life. Finally, sometime in my thirties, I wrote to the Library of Congress to see if they could help me find it. This was back when you wrote longhand letters on real paper and waited weeks for a reply. This was way before search engines.

I wrote to them what I remembered from the story, a summary as well as some lines of dialog. In less than a month, they sent me a photocopy of the story from an anthology of folk tales. How thrilling it was for me to read the story again, twenty or so years later. Some of the lines I had remembered verbatim.

This is how I remember the story. Maybe it will be as powerful for you as it was for me.

Long ago and far away, there was a rural village where the people had always done things a certain way. They followed their traditions strictly and kept close tabs on each other. For the most part their way of life worked very well.

One of the expectations of life in this village was that you must be productive and useful. When you got too old or feeble to be able to contribute your share of the work, you were put on a sled and brought to the woods in the middle of the winter and left there to die.

In one family, the grandfather was no longer able to work. His legs hurt and he was not strong. His son knew the day had come to follow the tradition of the village, even though he didn’t like the idea. He put his father on the sled and strapped him in. The grandfather said nothing because he knew and accepted the custom. But all the while, the grandson was watching.

“Daddy,” said the little boy. “Are you taking Grandfather out to the woods?”

“Yes, son.”

“Don’t forget to bring the sled back.”

“Why?”

“Because someday I need it to take you to the woods.”

This gave the man pause. The idea of his father – or himself – freezing to death in the cold, dark woods made him want to defy the custom. But he knew that if he did not take him, someone else in the village would do it. The only other choice was to hide the old man.

From that day forward the old grandfather lived in the attic. He could not risk being caught, so he did not make a sound and he could no longer take walks in the street or sit in the full sun. But he lived. His grandson brought him food and drink.

This went on for several years. One spring, the boy began to bring less and less food. When his grandfather asked him why, the boy said, “The crops were so bad. We have only a little food left and we have no seed grain for the next crop. It’s terrible. We all will starve.”

“Something like this happened when I was a little boy too,” the old man said. “Tell your father to take the thatch off the roof and thresh it again. There will be seed in it yet, and that seed will produce a crop.”

The father did what the grandfather suggested, and sure enough, there was seed for the next crop! When his neighbors saw what he did and saw his success, they said, “How did you know there would be seed yet in the thatch?”

The man knew he had to confess. “I didn’t know, but my old father did. How fortunate for all of us that he is still alive. His memory and his wisdom have saved us all.”

After that, the people changed their ways. They did not take their old people out to the woods any more. Instead, they cherished them, honored them and took care of them because now they knew that “useful” is not just about how much you can work.

The little boy was especially proud of his grandfather. Sometimes they would sit together and enjoy the full sun.

In a Pickle

/ eponine3 / Leave a comment

Some things ask to be done, and it’s best to just do it. I had not planned to make pickles this week, but it’s the middle of the summer and five more cucumbers in the garden were ready to be picked (with more to come!) and there were already nine in the fridge, so it was time.

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I started with 14 cucumbers, sliced them up and layered them with salt in my big bowl (which is 7” high and 12” across the top). If you want to make these yourself, you let that sit about an hour. You could add sliced onions or green, yellow, red or orange peppers, or cauliflower cut up into florets, but I had so many cukes, I’m stopping there this time.

Part of cooking, part of life, is knowing where to draw the line.

Kenny Rogers doesn’t know it, but he really helped me a few years ago. I had a difficult decision to make and I kept hearing him singing in my head: You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run… Kenny knew. Sometimes you are just in a pickle about what to do and there are reasons for this choice and reasons for that. Should you hold on or let go? Stay or move? Buck up or give in? Hope for more or settle for what you have?

In the end, back then, I knew it was time to walk away. Not run, not bolt. Just walk. The voice in my head – his voice in my head – guided me not only in what choice to make, but also in the best way to do this thing that had to be done. Funny, the song doesn’t tell you what to do. It just tells you there are choices and you have to pick one. You can’t waffle, and you can’t pick them all. You think it through, you pick a route and you take it. It leads to new scenery and new experiences that you would not have on another route.

I picked the route tonight that included 14 cucumbers and it led me to nine jars of pickles! I made the dog happy too. Within seconds of opening fridge and beginning to bring the cucumbers out, she was out of her sound sleep, off the couch and at my feet. She LOVES cucumbers!

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Carrots too, in case you’re wondering, and the heel of the romaine lettuce head, and peppers (the guts or the outside part with skin that we eat), and watermelon!

But we are on pickle-making now: Here are my cut-up cukes, resting, sweating (the salt will cause them to do that, really), relishing (hehe) their final unpickled moments.  cut up and salted.jpg

As soon as I am not being distracted by how many cucumber chips a small black pug can eat, or watching her adorable begging, I go get my jars. Everyone has a cabinet with jars in it, right? Mine contains the ones I’ve been saving because they are just too pretty to put in the recycle bin. Or too potentially useful down the road. If you have not been doing this, you might have to buy mason jars, which are great also, but if you had been saving jars all along…

You laugh, but jars come in very handy. You just ask the 35 or 40 jars in my basement how useful they have been, how many times they have been called to action, how integral to the operation they are, how versatile, how easy to clean, how good looking – the list goes on. If jars had feelings, mine would feel good!

Make sure your jars are clean, inside and out, and that the lids are good. By good I mean they have that rubbery ring along the inside edge which provides the seal. I keep my pickles in the fridge, and I give them away, so I am content with this kind of seal. The yummy pickles are not going to last that long.

While the cukes are sitting with the salt, and once you have your jars clean and ready, you can prepare the brine. I like a sweet-sour taste, also called bread and butter pickles. The brine is basically vinegar and sugar and spices. You can put together your own combination of spices (recipes abound) or buy something called “pickling spice.” The one I got at Yoder’s includes mustard, allspice, coriander, cassia, ginger, peppercorns, cloves and bay leaves. I am happy with this one, but you might have particular flavors that you like or don’t like or want to include more of. That is the joy of cooking – you make it the way you like it!

The basic method is

  • Cut up the cukes/other veggies
  • Layer with salt and let sit an hour
  • Prepare jars
  • Prepare brine
  • Pack salted cukes in jars
  • Pour brine over top
  • Close up jars and refrigerate

The basic proportion is for every 3 cups of cukes/veggies, make a brine with 1 cup sugar, 1 ½ cups vinegar and about a teaspoon of pickling spice. Figure out how many cucumbers you have and do the math. I find the easiest thing is to let the cukes sit in the salt for an hour or so, then stuff them into the jars. Put as many as you can fit in there. That tells you how many cups of cukes you have, so it’s easier to do the math. Then measure out your vinegar, sugar and spices into the pot and turn on the flame.in jars waiting.jpg

If you don’t have a garden or access to a farmer’s market, you can use cucumbers from the store just as well. I would use the European cukes because they simply wrap them in plastic instead of putting a waxy whatever on their skins. You don’t want that waxy stuff.

You can use brown or white sugar. A combination is good. With this batch I used up a bag of brown sugar that had gotten too hard. It dissolved in the vinegar over a flame just fine, but the proportion of brown to white sugar made my pickle brine darker than usual. If the amount of sugar seems too much for you, use less. The pickles will just be more sour and less sweet. It’s up to you. You can use white or cider or rice vinegar or a combination. The flavor you get — just like the scenery you see and the experiences you have! — comes from the choices you make. Have fun! Every time you make pickles, make them a little different. Why not?

Combine the sugar, vinegar and spices in a pot and bring it to a full boil (making sure the sugar is dissolved). The slight fuzziness you see in this photo is not blur. It’s steam rising from a fully boiling brine.

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Use a 2-cup or 4-cup glass measuring cup that has a pour spout to get the brine from the pot …

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into the jars filled with cukes. Be careful. The jars are so full of sliced cucumbers, it could make a splashy mess otherwise, and still might.

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Oops. It did make a mess. I poured too fast. Bother.

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You can see that the pickling spice likes to collect at the top of the liquid. If you end up with a lot of the mustard seeds or whatever sitting on the topmost cucumber in the jar, you can spoon some of that off. You don’t want your pickles that spicy. Or maybe you do?

As each jar is filled, use a damp cloth to clean the outside of the jar and around the rim where the lid will seal against the glass. Put the lid on and set aside. Keep going until you have filled and closed up all your jars. Set the jars in a nice place and take a picture of your collection to show your friends! When they are cool, put them in the fridge.

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Finally! Eggs and Crape Myrtles

/ eponine3 / 2 Comments

When you know something is going to happen and you really want it to happen but you’re not quite sure when it’ll happen, you get really excited when it finally does happen! It was a good week for things that have been in that almost-zone to get into the it-finally-happened zone. First the starter eggs. Then the crape myrtles.

It’s super exciting that the hens, now about five months old, have started laying! Kaileena found the first one in the brooding box when she was here and came running to tell me. “You have to come see!” Starter eggs are small and have soft shells. To find one unbroken is quite something. I think the hen can hardly stand up from laying it without cracking that shell. When we picked this small one up, it was broken underneath. See the size difference? The regular size egg on the left is a fake, placed there to train the birds where to lay.

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The second starter egg that came was just as soft. I got it into the house intact, but before I could take a photo of it next to a real, regular size egg, I had cracked the shell. You can see how the soft shell is also dented.

starter egg2

It won’t take long before the eggs that come are normal size and filling up my bin (fast!). In the meantime Coco gets a treat. They say eggs make a dog’s coat glossy. I don’t see how hers could be glossier:

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but she is so happy for an egg, however small, that I don’t care about gloss.

I have been in this house for more than seven years, and from the very beginning I have wanted to have crape myrtles somewhere on the property. If you are not from Virginia, you might not be familiar with this glorious tree. When mine are fully mature, they will look something like this. Crape myrtles bloom all summer and remind you that even when things look dark, there is beauty in the world.

crape myrtle mature.jpg

It will take years for my trees to gain this height, but rain was in the forecast. When rain is in the forecast, it can be very motivating. When you have a trip coming up and will not be home for a few days, and there’s rain in the forecast, it’s super motivating. Especially for planting things. Crape myrtles were on sale this past week. Guess what I did.

Yup. The trees will be great in front of the garden fence along the driveway. Here is what that space looked like at 7am when it was already misting.

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I can dig in the mist. Bless my children for having churned up this soil six or seven years ago to make the garden. Because of their work, I encountered no roots when digging. Just clay, but I expected that.

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You can’t plant a beautiful young tree in this stuff. Well, you can, but you don’t want to. It’s best for the tree if you dig each hole about each twice as deep and twice as wide as the tree ball. I cut pieces of cheap landscape fabric to put the clay on (it’s hard to call it dirt!) so I would have it to mound around the tree later.

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I dug three holes. As digging goes, this was not bad, nor did it take very long. Spacing them was easy. The fence posts were the right distance apart to allow for the 15-foot canopy there will be, and I dug the holes about eight or ten feet out from the fence posts.

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Into the holes I put chopped up leaf matter and some good compost mixed with the red clay. The leaves will break down and add nutrients later, the compost will add nutrients now, and the clay was there in the first place and can’t be all bad. How the early farmers in Virginia managed with this stuff, I have no idea.

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I broke apart the roots that were bound up in the pot (no wonder these were on sale) and introduced the tree to its new home.

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In the rest of the hole I put more leaf matter and compost and finally all that clay that was on the landscape fabric waiting patiently. This made a good mound around the tree but as the leaves decompose, it will settle.

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One at a time, till all three were in. Then mulch. Then water from the hose because all the while it still just misted. Then finished! Not till an hour or so later did the rain come. And I smiled. I think my crape myrtles are going to love their place of prominence. I didn’t get these in seven years ago (imagine how big they would be by now!) but they are in now. You have to start somewhere.

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Just One Rhubarb Cobbler This Year

/ eponine3 / 2 Comments

I love rhubarb. If my plants gave me lots, I would use lots. But they haven’t been doing well the past couple of years. We planted them five years ago among the strawberries because strawberries and rhubarb go together, right? The second year and the third year I had lots of rhubarb – oh, the cobblers we had! Now I wonder if possibly the combo works in baking but not in planting?

All I got this year is this amount. It’s not much. But it’s something, and something is better than nothing.

stalks

When you have only a little time, you spend it doing something you really like. When you have only a little money, you spend it on something you really want. When you have only a little rhubarb, you make the recipe you think is the yummiest! I will get enough rhubarb from my garden to make cobbler just once this year, and I will enjoy every bite!

My version of rhubarb cobbler is quick. A lot of the food I make is quick. It had to be, back in the day, and still has to be. When you walk an unboring path for a lot of years, every single day, you figure out that if you spend too much time on one thing, there is not enough time for another thing. There are always other things to do! And I want to do them too!

This many stalks of rhubarb made about 2 cups all chopped up.

cut up

I put it in a small bowl and poured about ¼ cup of my strawberry jam (the one that came out a little too runny) on it and mixed it up. I put it in my baking dish. You can see the bits of strawberry jam in there. As you might realize, the jam adds not only the strawberry flavor but also the sweet balance to the tart rhubarb.

mixed with jam

My topping is oats, flour, sugar, butter and cinnamon. It’s going to go right on top of this, so I opened my oats tin (I love my oats tin….

oats tin.jpg

…You can see it’s old. I think it was a promotional item 20+ years ago or so. I have been using it ever since. One of these days I’ll show more of my various beautiful tins.)

I took a handful of oats out of the tin. I’m afraid I’m not one for measuring much. The amount that fits in a handful is about right. I put that in the bowl that the rhubarb and jam had been in, and then looked down at the rhubarb and jam in the baking dish and realized I forgot to butter the dish.

Two choices now:

  • Put the rhubarb and jam in a clean bowl. This would mean I would have two bowls to wash.
  • Put the rhubarb and jam in the previously used bowl. This mixes the oats with the rhubarb and jam. But that’s ok too. So that’s what I decided to do. The oats will take up some of the rhubarb’s moisture when it cooks down.

I buttered the dish and put the mixed-up rhubarb, jam and oats back in it. By the way, these are “old fashioned” oats. I like them a little bigger – those finely chopped “quick” oats get too mushy.

mixed with oats too

Now for the topping. In the same bowl, which is now empty, I put a couple heaping tablespoons of sugar, same of flour and maybe about 1 ½ tablespoons of soft butter. My butter sits in a covered glass dish in my cabinet, not in my fridge. It always has. I have not died yet.

Oh, and another tablespoon or so of oats, just so some oats are mixed in with the topping. And a couple shakes of cinnamon. Mix this up with a spoon until it’s reasonably well blended, like “coarse crumbs” as they say in recipe books.

with topping

Put the topping on top and bake at 375 until it’s done, which means golden brown on top, probably about half an hour, maybe a little longer. My nose is telling me it’s almost done. I just checked it. Not quite. I like my baked goods a little more golden brown. This is what not quite looks like:

not quite

For someone else this might be perfect, and that’s ok too. I’m sure the rhubarb is cooked down already. Just waiting for the topping to brown up. I am just thinking: I could have added dried cranberries to this. That would have been terrific too.

Now, Louisa, if only we could sit down with this cobbler and a cup of tea together…

done

The Flip of a Toad

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Can a dog hear a toad through an exterior wall? Can she smell it? I wonder about that because last night Coco jumped off the couch around 10:15 and gave me the let’s-go-out look. She does not normally do this. Normally I tell her It’s time, c’mon and she gives me the do-I-have-to look.

I oblige when she asks because she knows her own needs. I soon realized that if she had a need, it was not a need to do business but a need to play. Either that, or the need to play immediately commandeered the need to do business.

Right outside the door, in the inner corner of the front porch against the wall of the house, was Mr. Toad. We can safely assume it was the same fellow as last time when we found him next to the planter box, which from a toad’s point of view is just as much a wall. He likes walls.closer eyeing (2)

Coco did not waste time but went right up to him and began the whole domination thing again. Do you see who’s bigger, Mr. Toad? I am bigger. Make no mistake about it.

domination (2)

Poor Mr. Toad. Trapped and timid, he stayed glued to the spot for a few moments, then did a remarkable thing when Coco leaned in a bit too far. He flipped himself over! (Okay, maybe toads do this routinely and I am as clueless about them as I am about backhoes and biscuit joiners, but it seemed pretty remarkable to me!)

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Coco couldn’t stand it of course. She had to get closer.

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In case you have never seen what a toad looks like upside down, up close and personal, this is it. Complete submission. Please don’t hurt me. I’m just a little toad. I mean no harm.

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This toad got me thinking about submission. Generally it gets a bad rap, but we do it all the time.

Submission: the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.

Life doesn’t work unless we yield to forces and authorities beyond ourselves.

  • Someone else designed and built the vehicle you willingly drive. You trust that it’s not going to fail or crash. Driverless cars will add another level of trust.
  • Someone else grew, harvested, transported and prepared the food you willingly eat. You trust that it’s not going to make you sick.
  • Someone else built the house you live in. You trust that the roof isn’t going to cave in and water won’t leak through the window seals and the electricity is safe.
  • Someone else guards your neighborhood or steps in when there’s serious trouble. You trust that you and your family can sleep safely at night.
  • Someone else cleans your teeth, prescribes your medications, oversees your medical situation. You trust that they will not hurt you.
  • Someone else watches your children, your dog, your elderly parents. You trust that they will take good care of those you love.

We are all a little like the flipped-over toad. His eyes are open, as ours should be. He is protecting himself as much as he can (limbs drawn in to cover his soft belly), as we do in our own way (whether we have soft bellies or not!). Why he chose to be on my porch instead of a potentially safer spot in the first place is another point we could ponder, but since we cannot ask him, and maybe it’s none of our business anyway, we will assume he exercised his best judgment at the time and that’s just where he landed.

Clearly this toad also understands that despite his open eyes and shielded belly, he is still highly vulnerable and, if toads can hope – a big if, I grant you – must hope for the best when the situation is precarious. So must we and should we, for we know that we in turn are watching someone else’s children or prescribing their medications or making their food or building their houses, and we know that we are doing it to the standards we would want for ourselves.

Remember not to be like the master builder who was at the end of his career and couldn’t wait to retire. His boss said to him, “I just need you to build one more house for me.” Reluctantly the builder agreed but because it was the last one, he didn’t care anymore. He went as fast as he could, took all kinds of shortcuts and did sloppy work. He knew there would be major problems with that house, but he didn’t care. It would be someone else’s headache. All this time, his boss did not see what was going on – he had always been able to trust this builder to do outstanding work. When the builder told his boss he was done, his boss reached into a drawer and handed him a key. “Enjoy your new home,” he said. “My gift to you for all your years of service.”

Coco would have stared at and possibly pawed at and tormented that toad for a long time, but at 10:15pm we are not out there for playtime. I tried getting her attention, but she just looked at me like Hey, busy here.

looking at me

I picked her up and brought her to the grass. She did her thing and back up on the porch she trotted. I was a little disappointed in her nose because she did not head straight for the toad that, same as last time, had not used his window of opportunity to make a mad dash for a place of safety.

Where is it? I know it’s here somewhere!

looking for it

There is no place to hide in the inside corner of my porch (unless you are a blue-tailed skink of course, in which case you have all kinds of options, plenty of cracks to slide into). The toad was still there, but had gotten braver in that half minute, had decided to forget the whole upside-down, evoke-pity thing.

He had flipped himself back over and was going to stand up to the giant.

right side up

Coco got closer. Here we go again. What is it?

The power (domination!)?

The smell (yum!?)?

The intrigue (hmmm….)?

The weirdness (what the…??).

closer eyeing (2)

Coco doesn’t know it, but sometimes she’s the toad. So she better watch out! (And I had better watch her!) Just yesterday morning, my Airbnb cottage guest said to me as they were leaving, “Look, I have to show you what we saw last night.” And she pulled out her phone and showed me a photo clearly showing…

owl 7.29

… an owl in a tree just next to my house. It is not a small one. It has a powerful grip and very sharp eyes. I suspect it would not dominate Coco in the toying, tentative way that Coco dominates the toad. It would simply eat her.

Is it altogether safe in the country? No. Is it altogether safe in the city? No. It is altogether safe nowhere. Are we always strong? We are strong only sometimes, and often only for a little while. Do we always have to yield to forces and authorities beyond ourselves? No. Like the toad – even when we are upside down – we keep our eyes open and our self-protection mode in place, and usually things work out. We do our best. We eat well, stay healthy, put our best foot forward, make good choices, associate with good people and contribute our bit to the well-being of our family and our community. We believe that (and for the most part it is true that) others are looking out for us as we are looking out for them. Like the toad in his vulnerable position, we sometimes just have to hope and pray for the best. I don’t know if toads pray, but I’m sure they would do that too if they could.

“C’mon, Coco. Leave the poor toad alone! We’re going inside.” Given the choice of staying outside by herself in the dark (not that I would leave her there!) or coming into the house with its cushy couch pillows, she made the smart choice. Good dog.

Pizza Pile

/ eponine3 / 6 Comments

The title does not contain a typo. It is not supposed to say Pizza Pie. I said Pile and I mean Pile. You’ll see.

One day last week – I don’t remember which day except it was the day that included Dog-opoly – Kaileena and I wanted to make pizza. She is ten and so eager about learning to make good food. During the earlier part of the week that she was with me, we had made yeast dough twice, once for cinnamon-swirl bread and once for calzones. Now we would make it for pizza.

Until very recently, I have been making pizza the same way for my entire adult life.

  • Make dough. Let rest.
  • Roll out dough and put on prepared pan.
  • Spread tomato sauce on dough.
  • Sprinkle basil, oregano and garlic powder (one at a time) on sauce. Back in the day all of these came in little jars, dried and broken into very small pieces. Thus the sprinkling. Fresh is much better if you can manage it.
  • Top with grated mozzarella, parmesan and possibly asiago (one at a time).
  • Top with whatever else: spinach, salami, peppers, pepperoni (one at a time).
  • Bake in a hot oven.

In all these years it never once occurred to me to combine ingredients. Here is the way Kaileena and I made a pizza pile together.

First you gather all the ingredients for your pizza other than the crust, which is separate for obvious reasons. We decided to make our pizza with just two cheeses, mozz and parm, and also to use salami, spinach and a half of a yellow pepper that we found in the fridge. Of course you can put whatever you want on your pizza.

pizza ingredients

You see two cheeses (mozz wrapped in plastic and parm in a jar), spinach between them, a few slices of salami next to fresh basil and garlic cloves (we used just one clove), fresh oregano next to the garlic, and a piece of yellow pepper next to the can of all-important Don Pepino pizza sauce.

Kaileena grated the mozzarella while I cut up the rest.

pizza ingredients 2

We are getting closer to the pile. All of this stuff, except the sauce, goes in a bowl. Don’t forget a little salt and pepper. I would say not quite a teaspoon of salt for a pizza this size. But the amount is up to you.

pizza ingredients in bowl

Then you mix it up and either use it right away or put a plate on it and put it in the fridge until later when you want to make the pizza.

pizza ingredients mixed in bowl

Easy peasy.

Normally I would make the dough first, then grate the cheese, cut up the rest and mix it in a bowl while the dough is resting. But we knew we had to go get my mom and had only a little time, so we reversed the normal order. When we came back home with Mom, we made the dough.

First put one cup lukewarm water in a bowl along with a tablespoon of yeast. Stir. Add a cup of flour and a teaspoon of sugar. Stir. It will look like this.

dough

Add another cup of flour and a teaspoon of salt. Add flour about a cup at a time until the dough pulls away from the side of the bowl (about 4-5 cups total I think). Transfer to your countertop and knead about 10 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Kaileena got pretty good at this. In the kneading, you push with the heels of your hands, then pull the dough back toward you. Put some umpf into it. You’ll get a better dough and strengthen your arms at the same time. Who needs a gym when you can knead yeast dough like this?

dough1

After your dough is smooth, let it rest about 20 minutes before you roll it out. Just put a little flour on the counter and let the dough sit there.

dough resting

I swear we did not try to make a smiley face in the dough!

After 20 minutes or so, roll out the dough. Kaileena did this without help of any kind.

dough rolled out

We let that sit while we prepared the pan. Can you tell I’ve used a pizza cutter on that pan a gazillion times? I poured a bit of olive oil on it.

pizza pan oil1

Kaileena spread it around with her hands, not worrying about getting them oily because she was going right back to the dough, and that won’t hurt a thing.

pizza pan oil spread

I then sprinkled a few tablespoons of cornmeal on the pan. It’s not necessary. I just like the added texture.

pizza pan cornmeal

By the way, my oven takes 15 minutes to heat to 425 degrees, so I would turn it on about now.

Kaileena folded the dough in half and lifted it carefully to place it on the pan.

dough on pan in half

She unfolded it to cover the pan and curled up the edges that hung over the sides.

dough on pan opening up

Then we put half of that can of Don Pepino pizza sauce on the dough. I used to use the little 8-oz cans of tomato sauce, but one time last year we went to make pizza and had none of that in the house. Mom was here at that time, in transition from one house to another, and had stored a few bags of groceries in my basement. “I think there’s a can of pizza sauce in one of those bags,” she said. She had Don Pepino. Samuel deemed it the ingredient that moved homemade pizza to another level. I agree it was an enormous difference. We ordered a case from amazon.

pizza pan sauce

Kaileena spread the sauce. If you have the least bit of an artistic bent in you, this part is quite fun. A little like fingerpainting, only you do it with the back of a spoon.

pizza pan sauce spread2

Out from the fridge came the bowl of mixed-up cheeses, herbs and toppings. When you unload the bowl onto the pizza dough and sauce, you are looking at a PILE. You knew I would show you: Pizza Pile, get it? 🙂

pizza pile

None of this “first the basil, then the oregano, then the …..” Just empty the bowl on top and spread it out. Done! Oven ready in no time!

pizza pie oven ready

To get a good bottom crust, I slide the pizza right onto the bottom oven rack when it is set but not yet brown. This crisps it up and in five minutes or so I can slide it right back onto the pan. A spatula helps.

Voila!

pizza pie done

The Frying Pan Hotel

/ eponine3 / 1 Comment

We all get stuck with things we don’t want. An old bicycle that no one wants to ride any more. Promotional giveaways. Thanksgiving leftovers. Spare parts that might be useful someday but sure aren’t now.

In the excitement of getting new chicks and building a new fancy coop for them, I got stuck with too many roosters. More than zero in my case is too many. A few weeks ago I got really lucky. Pablo answered my ad and wanted my roosters. Come to find out, his wife Andrea especially wanted my brahma rooster and was elated to discover that he is a giant.

My own elation – the roosters were going away to a good home! – did not last long. Shortly after their little yellow truck drove off, I heard the telltale crowing and my heart sunk. How did we miss that there was yet another rooster in the flock? Sly bugger thought he could avoid detection forever perhaps, then was so distraught at the departure of his fellow crowers that he had to cry out. Or perhaps he now felt like king of the hill and wanted to announce it to the world. Better yet, with no competition, he could chase the females. That’s what sealed his fate.

This guy. Couldn’t help himself.

last rooster (3)

Needless to say, the females weren’t interested.

I ended my blog post about the departure of the roosters (and the discovery of this guy) with “Pablo, oh Pablo! Want another rooster?” He made a great comment about his wife showing off her giant brahma to anyone who came over, but he did not respond to my question. Oh dear. In the meantime, two more roosters came out of the shadows and revealed themselves! How did I miss three? The upside (thank you, Claudia) of having this many roosters overall is that when they are gone, I have fewer chickens overall.

There’s no way I’m keeping the roosters, even if they don’t lay eggs. Every morning that crowing, which my Airbnb cottage guests assured me was enchanting, woke me up and reminded me that yet another day had passed and still I had roosters. Two women answered my craigslist ad, but neither followed up. I broached the subject with Sandy, who couldn’t stand the idea of a fate for them other than Pablo’s Chicken Paradise, and offered to drive them to him. When I suggested this to Pablo, he graciously declined Sandy’s offer and said they would come on Saturday so Sandy wouldn’t have to drive so far. Whoo-hoo!!!!!!!! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, God bless Pablo! I will happily add God bless Andrea! because I am sure she had something to do with this decision.

When I mentioned on Saturday morning to my brother-in-law Billy that the last three roosters were leaving, he said, “Where are they going? To the Frying Pan Hotel? You know, the one you check into, but you never check out?” Not my roosters! My roosters hit the jackpot!

My expressions of eternal gratefulness to Pablo and Andrea for their willingness to take them began before they even got out of the truck. They just smiled, clearly having a different take on the whole small-farm thing. Why stop at chickens? They had once again been to a swap. She had a white bunny in one of their cages, which tried valiantly to mind its own business, but the dogs had other ideas.

bunny.jpg

She had a lionhead rabbit. Did you ever see such a thing?

lion head bunny (2)

And in another cage were the most beautiful chickens I have ever seen. Okay, here I am calling chickens beautiful. I am sure my children think I need my head examined. But the design on those feathers – c’mon, that’s beautiful! They are called sebright silver laced.

seabright (2)

As they say though, it ain’t over till it’s over, so we began the coop-to-cage transfer. Can you tell that these three jail birds are anxious to be released from their incarceration? I’m sure they don’t care where they’re going next, as long as it includes time with the ladies.

jail birds.jpg

First the silkie rooster. This wonderful couple is happy to get him!

silkie rooster (2)

The second one out of the coop likely has some mille fleur in him, which makes him think he’s French and, you know, special. You think what you want.

fleur rooster (2)

His “boots” are especially distinctive. You can only dream about having boots like this.

mille fleur feet.jpg

Finally it was time to move Mr. Blue Ears. He decided he did not want to leave.

silkie blue ear (2)

First he evaded capture by hiding at the far end of the coop. Then he jumped out when we weren’t looking! An escapee making his way into the forest! The dogs had a field day.

chase2 (2)

Forest. Yeah, not a good plan. Maybe this (newly widened) stream bed will take him somewhere?

loose silkie

Silkie on the loose! Who can corner the silkie?!

chase

Bah! Up against a fence! Run around to the front! If you have ever tried to catch a chicken, you know it has its challenges. Nonetheless, humans generally prevail.

capture

To express my gratefulness again, I gifted Pablo and Andrea with the silkie hen that matches The Blue-Eared Wonder. Look at this hen look at this rooster. Seriously? I have to go with him?

two silkies (2)

Once again, the sight of Pablo’s truck driving away brought me waves of relief. Dear God, let there be no more roosters!

truck driving away

The true test came at 5am this morning. Let me tell you what I don’t hear – crowing! Yay!!!!

 

The Mushrooms Have Disappeared!

/ eponine3 / Leave a comment

No joke. They are gone!

Yesterday, just yesterday, I shared about the delicate mushrooms that seemed to have colonized the area of my garden near the water pump. They came from out of nowhere, as from outer space. Their lacey cups sat atop slender stalks no more than four inches high – dozens and dozens of these had appeared suddenly two days ago as if that particular square footage of mulch contained their favorite food or just the right conditions for growth. (Never mind the rest of the mulch in the garden complaining Hey! Something wrong with this hood?!)

funky mushrooms 2

Today after dinner, Kaileena reported that they were GONE! Not pekid, not fallen, GONE!

funky mushrooms gone.jpg

Gone, like a moment in time. Gone, like the countless moments we do not take a picture of. Gone. There is no way back to those moments. Most of the time, only our memory holds the record of them, and even that record can be sketchy as time goes by. Will I remember the many moments of today? My mom and Kaileena playing Dog-opoly and laughing because of whose turn it was to go not to jail but to the kennel! Kaileena finding the first egg (the first egg!), soft-shelled and slightly broken, and the excitement in her voice, “You have to come see!!” Mom doing her first mobile deposit. The blue-tailed skink trying to hide under the hand shovel in the onion bed and quickly ditching that plan and heading for a hole.

Gandalf comes to mind, Gandalf standing on the bridge shouting to the Balrog: “You shall not pass!” The image is strong and the analogy imperfect, but the finality is inescapable.

You shall not pass this way again.

The child is only two once, only six once, only ten once. When you pack up certain toys in a box or give away the size clothes that don’t fit any more, you know that chapter is over. Graduation can hit hard. Cross-country relocations even harder.

The lilies are finished, the beets are harvested, the lettuce is gone to seed. I bought a package of romaine today.

But there is a brighter way to see it, which we all know through experience if not verbatim: To everything there is a season. It’s been a long time since I read the first eight verses of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes.

There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every event under heaven –

A time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to tear down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to throw stones and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace and a time to shun embracing; a time to search and a time to give up as lost; a time to keep and a time to throw away; a time to tear apart and a time to sew together; a time to be silent and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.

We could add

A time to play our hand and a time to fold; a time to joyfully greet and a time to tearfully say good-bye; a time to praise and a time to scold; a time to travel and a time to stay put; a time to feast and a time to diet; a time to spend freely and a time to pull the purse-strings tighter; a time to bring chicks home and a time to get rid of roosters; a time to use sheets to make a bed and a time to use sheets to make a barrier between the earth and the mulch; a time to take photos and a time to just enjoy the moment because

You shall not pass this way again.

The beautiful side of this reality is that there are so many wonderful moments. Yes, we have to leave yesterday behind, but in the new day, if we keep our eyes open, new flowers will bloom and be glorious, new friends will come into our picture and brighten our world, new chances will arise for forgiveness and reconciliation, new gifts will be given and received, wrapped or unwrapped. There will be new restaurants to try, new books to read, new recipes to make, new babies to hold, new pets to nuzzle, new places to explore, new songs to sing, new words of kindness to be sure and say, new ways to remind those we love how much we love them.

I’m not sure I’d be on this track right now if it weren’t for those otherworldly mushrooms that appeared mysteriously. I’m not sure I’d have seen the mushrooms if the sunflowers had not first caught my eye…

Mushrooms from Outer Space

/ eponine3 / Leave a comment

The sunflowers caught my eye. Coming down the driveway late yesterday afternoon, I had to stop the car in front of the garden and go look at them. Coco had come along for the ride and hopped out to go have a sniff around too. Look, one of the flowers is even (sadly) fallen over, yet it still turns its face toward the sun! What a lesson in that alone!

sunflowers.jpg

Naturally I can’t just take a picture of the sunflowers and then get back in the car. I remembered the tomatoes, and decided I also had to quickly check them. When I got there, I noticed something strange. All the rain we have had brought visitors of an otherworldly kind. This little colony of mushrooms was restricted to the area near the water pump, on the way to the tomatoes, where for some reason I am content to leave the hose a mess.

Check it out! These little volunteers are so delicate.

funky mushrooms 2

Forgive me, I just watched The Princess Bride (a thing to do with a ten-year-old visitor), so in my head I hear:

Inigo: The mushroom heads look just like *lace*

Fezzik: I think they come from outer *space*

I could easily crush them, easily overlook them, easily dismiss them. Instead I have forgotten about my car left in the middle of the driveway (and the ten-year-old in the car), and find myself fascinated, entranced, intrigued.

Where did they come from? Why are they here? Why are they only here and not growing up from the rest of the mulchy areas in the garden? Why do they cup their heads like that? Do they serve any purpose? Will they be gone tomorrow?

funky mushrooms

Sometimes I ask myself how much I miss, how much beauty exists all around me that I never see because I am too busy with this or that. Today I did not have to ask. Today did not lack for breathtaking beauty. I got my fill. We visited a friend in Williamsville, in the western mountains of Virginia more than an hour beyond Staunton. Behind her house is this incredible mountain stream. I don’t know the words rich enough to describe it.

mountain stream (2)

Kaileena was not the least concerned with descriptions — she found it to be a perfect natural water slide!

mountain stream K

My adventurous 83-year-old mom walked a hundred yards or so along a not-so-easy mountain path to get to the not-so-easy stone steps leading to a rock to sit on in this little pocket of paradise. Bravo, Mom! She doesn’t want to miss anything either.

When you think a thing is very cool, it’s even cooler when someone else thinks so too. We all were awestruck at the swimming hole and waterfall. We listened to that water rushing over the rocks the way it’s been doing for countless generations. How many kids have slid down that rock the way Kaileena did today? How many beamed like she did every time she landed in the froth?

mountain stream K3 (2)

Rivers like this don’t get old or tired. The water keeps coming, keeps flowing, keeps rushing. Kids keep having fun. Sunflowers keep turning toward the sun. And mushrooms have landed from outer space!

You think the day has given you enough and you are grateful. But it is not finished. On the drive back we watched a mother wild turkey and her two little ones prance across the road in front of us. Many adorable black calves walked closely to their mothers in the green fields of the farms we passed. A raccoon did not see the danger of dawdling along the shoulder of the road. And just as I turned into the driveway, two deer leaped gloriously within our field of vision. Kaileena let out a breathless Ohhhh! as she watched them bound into the forest. I hope she remembers today.