A Return to Normal?

I have spent much of the past 3 days out in the fresh air, dealing with the hopes of a winter garden.

I am grateful that my inner nag had me clear out all the tomatoes (and their stakes and cages) before September even approached. This made what we accomplished over the weekend much less grueling.

Most of the raised beds were fairly empty so we pulled the scraggly peppers and the last of the tenacious weeds and roughed up 5 of the 11. I chose those beds for a couple of reason which I may go into at another date, and added compost, minerals and the like to them and worked it all in.

Then Sunday morning, in another return to what was once normal, I had breakfast with a gardening friend and afterwards we visited O'Keefes in Covington to see what they had. I have been concerned that I missed te optimum planting weeks but am going to give it a go anyway.

We now have planted broccoli, collards, sprouts, 38 leek seedlings and celery from plants. We await the raab til next week (our dealer is out of town)

You can see that a few peppers and 2 eggplant shrubs remain putting out good stuff and the shallots are in the edges of several beds. I just keep propagating them.

I did all that yesterday morning and since I was on a roll, I kept on rolling! I seeded the carrots, rutabagas, 3 types of kale from seeds I collected last spring, and 4 kinds of lettuce and of course the neon chard. The evening cool off but the days are warm so I think the soil will help the seeds germinate quickly. I cannot believe October is 4 days away.

Thanks Daddy

I have been receiving the 18 boxes of stuff from my father over the past few days. I packed them up while mentally processing what happened.

Looking around the house, I was really really wondering, "What Happened Here???" There is so much 'things'. I hate to use the word 'stuff' because that just diminishes what one person valued and loved and nurtured for so many years. Let's face it; the man had 51 years to accumulate and I had 5 days to pack what was now mine! (Don't even ask what I spent in packing peanuts, bubble-wrap and postage)

Two boxes of books beat me back home but the others trickled in. Still awaiting 2 more boxes of books but as they are coming media mail USPS (thank you Marty!) it might take awhile.

Which is strange because the two which did arrive got here in 3 days! One is still sitting in Seacacus, New Jersey. Stuck, as it were. French books. I don't speak French and don't know what to do with these books but I'll get there. My brother said, "How to eat an elephant? One bite at a time"

It is a small comfort to be standing here in one room and looking at a poster (framed) that has hung on one wall in my father's home since 1965. Same wall, same position for 46 years. Til yesterday.

Well, mine looks better because it has a good frame around it but you get the idea. It's a Ben Shahn painting/poster and for whatever reason, it has always spoken to me. I just wish I had asked Daddy about what it was for and how it came to be in his home. I have a sense he picked it up in Italy on one of his business trips with Alitalia but that is all conjecture.

So, along with this I have 4 Fritz Rudolph Hug paintings of animals. And one exquisite oil of a man in a Jag speaking to a young woman standing outside a British pub. This is a photo of the Limited Edition print:

So, then there are boxes of "mint" car replicas..... Danbury Mint, Franklin Mint. I will unpack them, one by one and decide which I will be keeping, which I will be selling and and which I will save for my daughters to sell when the "market" for these sorts of things improves.

I mean, how many 1929 Bugattis does one woman need?

So. Where Have I been?

There's only a small handful of people who read this blog on any regular basis. They already know what has occurred in the past few weeks and suffice it to say, I won't be going into elaborations at this point in time.

Briefly put: my father fell, hit his head and ended up with a massive swelling on his brain. Surgery was performed but his condition did not improve.

God has made me face just about every fear I have. More on that at another time.

Unfortunately, I have a few more out there and am in no hurry to meet up with. Everytime I hit one head-on, it takes it's toll on me physically, emotionally, financially and ethically. Amazing how it works.

I do know this: the harder I try to hold on to things, the quicker they slip away. There is much to be said for living simply.

And avoiding the rapid pull of gravity when taking blood thinners and anti-coagulants. That's a BIG lesson learned.

Midsomer Murders

I have Netflix as streaming video beside the machine as I sew and have been filling up on the British mystery series, Midsomer Murders.

Now this may be old-hat to most of you but with me I am always invariably late to the prom. I started watching Seinfeld and Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond, big hits back in their day, when they had about one season left to run. Always years behind everyone else, that's me.

So this Midsomer murders was very novel a few weeks ago when I stumbled across it. Great fun. DCI Barnaby is married to a most understanding wife who fills her days as a volunteer, shows up at every costumed "town event" and gets wrapped up in a few of the murders. Their only daughter, Cully, is an actress perpetually in search of a role and also volunteers throughout the county and remarkably is well informed of the goings on in any deviant village because that week she happens to man the mobile library. Or is working as a temp secretary for a hot-shot, or lands a spot hauling horses around town. And every time Father and Daughter see each other, you'd think they hadn't just had breakfast together that morning ."Cully!" he cries and gives a big hug, kiss on the cheek.

What I liked about it in the beginning was the scenery. All the action takes place in a mythical county in England. The shops and buildings line quaint, slim, curving streets; no-one is ever in a particular hurry; homes are usually either very grand or if not, they are thatched roofed and Tudor-styled. This is what you have heard referred to as "chocolate box"quintessentially English homes (or at the very least the way I think of as English) . Nothing is out of place, no mess or garbage bins. Lovely flowers. Trimmed hedges. Get the picture? Even cars are new. And washed.

Oh!, and all the people who live here are white, over 40, and can't stop killing each other. There is usually someone(s) terribly rich and "above" it all (or better yet, titled), the middle-class and finally those who live on the fringes of 'society'. And don't believe for a moment that any of them wouldn't kill to get what they want.

Now, the county may be Midsomer but the towns in the county have lovely evocative names: Midsomer Mallow, Midsomer Newton, Fletcher's Cross and the popular Badger's Drift. Wouldn't you want to be murdered somewhere named Badger's Drift?

Here is where it gets interesting. The murders are done in the most amazing techniques. Far be it for anyone in Midsomer to simply slit a throat or push an old lady down a flight of stairs. Oh wait... they did do that as well.

No, here in Midsomer, a terrific method for murder would be to drug your victim first, then tether him down to the ground with croquet wickets (naturally) and lob wine bottles at him with a medieval catapult. Ingenious! I would never have imagined THAT!

Or, if that takes too much planning, how about ramming a pitchfork through a chair? Drown someone in a cauldron of tomato soup? I especially didn't picture this one aged Russian (female) spy who knew some fancy jujitsu moves. (Note to self: never, ever, sneak up on an old lady in Midsomer Worthy).

And this one: Smash a man with a forklift full of bottled chutney, then scald him in the 200 degree bath to clean him up.

Once the first murder has been discovered and Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby shows up to take statements, the murderer's associates start dropping like flies! I mean, if you lived anywhere in Midsomer and someone turns up murdered, you better leave town because no one is safe! Pretty soon, there aren't going be many people to kill at the rate they're going!

His 'second', Deputy Inspector fill-in-the-blank, is usually a few steps behind this weathered master of all that is inscrutable. Barnaby's on the case, you're days of freedom are numbered!

I sound snarky but I do enjoy these episodes. Mostly because I never know what's going to happen next and can't guess who the true villan will be in the end. That, and the fact that each episode is approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Oh! Gotta go... another one just queued up!

Chicks in the Henhouse

The "babies" are MONTH OLD already! I can't believe it... and are getting cranky about being (ahem!) cooped up in such a small cage so I made the decision to begin accustoming them to the other chickens and vice versa. Step one:

For several days, perhaps longer, I will leave them in the cage in the coop overnight and allow them to play freely inside loose with the doors closed to all the others. Two hours in the early morning and two again in the late afternoon. These times happily coincide with the laying routine, for the most part. The hens rarely lay first thing in the morning.

After that time I will leave the cage inside but start letting the little ones roam around outdoors. They are almost full feathered, A small area around the necks are still bare but the feathers are replacing the down quickly now.

And I finished a sample for an up-coming class in October. This is a curved log cabin

Do You Have Any Idea.....

... how hard it can be to photograph a chicken? ??????

I lost track of how many clicks it took to get THAT. They don't pose. They don't cooperate at all!

But doesn't Buttercup have lovely wing feathers coming in?

They are growing so rapidly, I stand in amazement. Still, Nutmeg is quite small compared to the others, and only 3 days younger than the oldest one, Val. That is short for Valentino. He is very handsome.

It's great fun to watch him and Buttercup go at it. They are by far the most active of the four and fly around the little cage acting like raptors. The cage is going to be too small to hold them all at the rate they are growing.

Pleased as Punch...

...to report that all 4 chickies are doing well.

No. 1 (still unnamed) is definitely a rooster! He bops around the cage, trying unsuccessfully to fly with his stumpy little wings and barging around the floor like he owns the joint.

No. 2 Buttercup, the little yellow chick with brown streaks, is growing rapidly. She is a real mover.... and very pretty. Doesn't like being handled. None of them do.

No. 3 Sable She is the most docile of them at the moment and does this funny thing: When she evacuates, she does the small squat and starts backing up a few steps and then out it comes. Like a dumptruck. hahhahahaha

No. 4 (formerly Wren) is now named Nutmeg or Meg for short. I am 87% certain it's a female and is the cutest of the bunch. Like a tiny version of Sable in coloring with a splash of white around her face.

She is still so much smaller than the rest and has this way of falling asleep on her feet. She moves around, interested in what the others are pecking at but doesn't have their stamina (yet) so she just slows to a stop and her head lowers til her forehead touched the sawdust, and stays like that until someone (usually No 1) bangs into and startles her awake again.

Can you tell I am in loooovve?

Kat gave John this salt block for Christmas and we finally used Saturday for dinner. You set it either on a grill outdoors on cook right there, or you can heat it in your oven under broil for 30 minutes and set it on some bricks on the table and cook there. That is what we did as it is too hot to cook outside now. Well, you could still do it but it isn't what I call a good time.
Here you see us placing thinly sliced tuna, salmon and shrimps on the block. Caution: at first the salt doesn't overpower the meat but apparently the longer the meat stays on the slab, the more the salt releases. So shrimp, which stays longer to cook, gets saltier as the dining continues. Rachel made a terrific mango salsa and salad to go with it and it was great fun to sit at the table and talk and sizzle. In air-conditioning.