Scary

So it turns out that there are some pretty scary things around here.  

I'm not talking about the snakes.   Even though there is this one water snake that lives along the road that is easily as big around as your arm.   I'm totally not exaggerating. 

OK, I am totally exaggerating.   It's not that big.   It just seemed that big when it scooted off the culvert top and splashed into the creek with a mighty splash that sent a tidal wave of water up the creek and flooded our lower pasture.  Twice.

OK, that never really happened.  There was a snake, and a mighty splash but no actual flooding anywhere after it dropped into the water.

Hyperbole is a story teller's BFF.

Other scary things around here include some ginormous spiders,  some ginormous cows and a really scary monster.

Which turns out to be me.

No kidding.  According to all the dogs that live around here except mine, I am The Scariest Thing in the World.  They all stay out of my way.  Please note:  I have never hurt one.  In fact, I don't even have to touch them.   I am scary out of pure intimidation.  [I know some people who think so, too.   You know who you are.]

We get a lot of strays out here.  Seriously many.  Six so far this summer.   It's like there's some website somewhere with a map of Where To Dump Your Unwanted Dogs and it has a big arrow pointing to our road. 

A couple of days ago, I chased a stray dog away from where it had been sleeping on my flowers and eating Tibby's dogfood.   It wouldn't leave us alone or go away so I decided to take it with us on our daily walk and then leave it a mile up the road at the blacktop where it could go find someone else's flowers to sleep on.

It worked like a charm.   That poor dog followed every rule of Pack Etiquette, never getting ahead of me [Pack Leader] or my kids.  It knew its place.  We got to the blacktop and I went into my Big Scary Person Whom A Dog Does NOT Want To Follow Home.

This involves me baring my teeth, growling and stomping around at them with my arms outstretched like Michael Gambon in that scene from Wives and Daughters where he's playing with his little grandson flapping around like a giant bird.  Really.

I am very good at it.   By doing this, I am able to scare the pee [literally] out of dogs, who cower on the ground in front of me.  All the neighborhood dogs that have tried to hang out here are terrified of me.  It's freaking hilarious.

On this day, after we got to the blacktop,  I went into my Big Scary Monster act and I was insisting that the stray stay up the road and around a corner.   This means that I scare it where I want it, then turn my back and walk away.  If it follows, I do it again.   And again.   Usually it takes no more than a half dozen times and sometimes much fewer.   You have to be firm and willing to do it as many times as possible.   When that dog sees you on another day, all you have to do is bare your teeth and look mean and it'll stay away.  Works like a charm.

This stray was persistent.   Doggone dog wouldn't stay gone.  I picked up a couple of big sticks to hold in each hand and wave around to make me look bigger.    Finally, that dog stayed put.   I turned around and headed back down the road where my girls and our dog were waiting for me just around a curve out of sight.  

And then a bunch of coyotes in the thicket right next to me started howling and yipping.  Loudly.  Coming toward me.   And it sounded like lots of them.   Coyotes in full voice are one of the creepiest, most blood-chilling sounds out here. 

It scared the living tar out of me.  I pitched the sticks and took off back toward the girls, calling them but they couldn't hear me over the coyotes and the loud pounding of their hearts and feet as they ran the other way.   All I could think was that I'd make a pretty good target for the coyotes who were no doubt in hot pursuit.  I kept looking back.  And then saw that the stray followed me again, too.  Apparently, coyotes are even scarier than me.

I got the girls to stop, and I picked up some more sticks with which to wave like Monster Arms to scare that stray.   About that time a man came walking around the curve with an even bigger stick in one hand and a pistol in his other.   I wondered if I ought to stomp around and try to scare the pee out of him.  

I don't see well at distances and it wasn't until he called out to ask if that was my dog that I realized it was a neighbor, whom I like a lot, but didn't expect to see walking on the road amidst all the howling, carrying a stick and gun.   The stray saw the two of us and hid in the brush at the side of the road. So, Ben and I watched it and swapped stray dog and coyote stories.   He'd seen me stomping away the stray up and down his hill a few times [I can just imagine him howling with laughter at that sight!] and then heard the coyotes and came out with the gun to make sure we were OK.   God bless him.  

About that time, Eric drove up, home from work, and stopped and talked with the truck  right where that poor stray was hiding and we all chatted for a while.   Then I started home with the girls and Eric talked to Ben about guns and the stray didn't follow us home.    And neither did the coyotes.

The stray was so traumatized by the Robin Monster and the coyotes and the neighbor and the truck, that it has stayed away.   The next day, when we went for a walk, it was hanging out with another dog at a house near the road.   It thought about coming over to say Hi, but when I glared at it, it turned around and went back to its buddy. 

The End

By the way, this pic up there has nothing to do with this post.  I just thought it was pretty how the sun hit the grass just right.  

A long time ago, I burned our hill

As you may know, I have a love/hate relationship with most mowers. It is a sad fact that I treat mowers more like battering rams than grass cutters.

Since our property is doing its best to revert to forest, it is a constant battle to keep the trees and rosebushes and brambles from taking over everything. It would look like Sleeping Beauty's rose covered castle if we stopped mowing for very long. In fact, there are places on our property that look like that already. I'm pretty sure that our place is the inspiration for the phrase, "Everything's coming up roses".

Our only defense against the ever encroaching thorny jungle is the riding mower. I have been known to mow down small trees and giant rosebushes with a small riding lawn mower. Here's how: Put it in 2nd gear, slightly uphill from your target. Let off the break, tuck elbows and knees in, scream Geronimo and ram the target.  It works very, very well.

Very well, I tell you.

It's amazing what a typical mower with a 36 or so inch deck can mow through. Our first little Craftsman mower was the best battering ram I ever had. I loved that thing. It had a nice wide bar at the front that sort of pushed things out of the way before they went under the mower. This is especially important when mowing through roses and brambles. You need a mower that will push them away from you as you go through them. It is no fun getting whipped across the face/head with a rose or bramble cane. Just yesterday I got hit right in the face with an old blackberry cane that left thorns in my nose and cheek. Blood ensued from my wounds. Curses ensued from my mouth.

I no longer have my beloved 36 inch Craftsman mower.   I'll tell you why.

One April, many years ago, I set out on my annual quest to tame the roses and brambles on this place. I mowed paths through the jungle so that people could walk around this place and enjoy its beautiful vistas and surprises - like the iris bog, the view of the giant old oak tree, the creeks, the view from the top of the big hill. I spent one glorious weekend, dressed in denim armor, wearing goggles, ear protectors and hats, clearing miles of paths through the acres of dead bramble canes and huge old roses.

Once I cleared the paths, I decided to take out some of the monster roses on our big hill. It's a great sledding hill, except it's full of brambles and roses, which are no fun to land in. Ask me how I know.

I started with the smaller roses. I set the mower on 2nd, gave it a head start and rammed those roses right over. Smack, crack, crunch. The mower chewed them up and spat them out, leaving a trail of stumps and masticated canes in its wake. It was brilliant.

I gained confidence as I gained experience. I took out bigger and bigger roses. I and my mower were invincible.

Invincible.

Rose after rose, bigger and bigger, they fell. And then I took aim at one Medusa of a rose full of dead canes and whippy live ones, rising out of a sea of last year's grass, in the middle of the hill. I rammed it with all the force of my trusty steed and overconfident personality.

And got stuck right in the middle of it.

Stuck. As in can't really back up out of it.

Then I smelled smoke.

And realized that the dried grass had been rammed up into the muffler of the mower and was now beginning to burn.

Crap.

So I backed up harder and finally got free. But by then the middle of the rosebush was on fire, so I turned off the mower so I could jump off and go put the fire out.

Except the mower wouldn't turn off.

As in, wouldn't turn off.

Wouldn't. Turn. Off. Even after I took the key out. Apparently the fire had burned out some important wiring in the mower.

And speaking of the fire, it was getting bigger.

So I jumped off the mower, praying that since it's got one of those seat sensors that it would go off. And it did. Whew.

So, I went to fight the fire with my.....feet. And gloved hands. Because I'm brave like that and have actually beaten out a field fire with my feet and a carpet, but I didn't have a carpet, so I was going to use my gloves if I had to.

But it's kind of impossible to stomp out a fire in the middle of a rosebush.

And you know how it's kind of breezy in the spring and sometimes kind of windy? This was one of those days.

In no time flat, the breeze had whipped that fire into a frenzy and that rosebush belched flames in every direction and it was clear that it was way bigger than me. So I jumped on the mower to get it out of the way and to get to the house to call 911.

But the mower wouldn't start.

As in, Would. Not. Start.

So I left it there on the hill with the fire and I took off for the house, which I reached a couple of minutes later, gasping for air and clutching the cramp in my side. [I'm not much of a runner, you see. At. All. I don't think I've run, even once, since that day.]

And I called 911 because by then I was scared spitless that I had just started the fire that would burn down my house and most of Greene County. It was terrifying.

And 911 said they'd get someone out there right away.

Right away is a really long time.

We live almost exactly 4 miles away from the fire station. It felt like forever.

So to kill time, I called my husband to fill him in on the action. Because nothing says, 'I love you', like sharing the joy of a field fire on a dry windy day. When he's too far away to help.

The truth is I was sort of hysterical. And we were waiting and waiting and waiting.  It felt like the fire trucks would never get there. And I was really scared that the fire would reach last year's leaves in the woods and really get going. And that it would jump the creek and get to the house. And that once it got to the woods, it would get my neighbors' houses, too. Talk about bad karma.

So I hung up from Eric and wrangled the 15 feet of garden hose that we had and was determined to defend my house and children against the fiery beast.

And the fire trucks still hadn't come, so I called 911 again. Just to remind them that we had a fire and I was scared it was going to get the house. In case they had forgotten. [I'm not kidding.]

She assured me that they were on their way. [And not very nicely, as I recall. Geez.]

In the meantime, Eric had called the neighbors, who came down the other hill from their place bearing shovels. They promptly began to regale me with stories of how they had set their fields on fire, too. They assured me everything would be OK.

God bless them.

About that time the first volunteer fireman showed up with a tank on the back of his truck. Halleluia. Except it was empty. I showed him where to get trucks up to the hill and he said, 'They'll be here soon. We just got done putting one of these out at my house.' I didn't know whether to be comforted or not.

Finally, finally the other trucks got there. You know, the ones with actual water in them.

And soon the field was full of firefighters with water tanks and sprayers on their backs and neighbors with shovels. They walked around the fire and sprayed and stomped and pounded it out. I'd like to say that I was up there helping them out, but the truth is I was trying to keep my kids calm. And my neighbors were trying to keep me calm. And some time during this part, Eric called me back, or I called him back and I was giving him a blow by blow account of what was happening.

It took a while for them to get the fire under control, though I must say that all those paths I mowed did indeed help them get to stuff.  When the fire was out around the edges, all the firefighters moved toward the center of the burned site, where sat my mower.  Smoking.

Slowly they circled the mower, spraying, watching, waiting.

There was a moment of stillness and I swear one of them crossed himself and they gave that mower the last rites. 

Then they packed their gear and said good bye and I said thank you about five million times and they left.

And then the fire started burning again. [I'm not kidding] The edge on the bottom side wasn't quite out.

So, I panicked and started screeching. And my completely implacable neighbor just looked at me, then picked up his shovel and went up the hill to pound it out. I vaguely remember feeling pretty bad about not helping fight the big fire and feeling like I ought to at least help pound a little, since I had started the fire, so I grabbed my shovel and ran up to help. Remember how I told you I don't really run? By the time I 'ran' up that hill, I was huffing and puffing and my neighbor looked at me like he was afraid I might have a coronary right there and said, 'Are you all right? I've got this. It's nothing much' And he pounded it out.

When I asked him if it was going to stay out, he looked at me and said, 'Yes.'

And he walked back down the hill to collect his family and go back home.

In the end, the fire burned up pretty much the entire east side of our big hill - a few acres.  When Eric got home we went to look at the mower, reigning supreme in the middle of a big black hill.   The mower was in remarkably good shape considering that the wiring was completely burned up and the tires were melted.

Unfortunately, most of the windows in the house face that view. So does the road. For a week that blackened hill and dead mower mocked me every time I looked out the window. It was awful. Finally, I begged Eric to at least pull the mower off the hill so I and everyone who drove by wouldn't be reminded of my stupidity.

We hid the mower behind a willow tree where it sat until another neighbor bought it for scrap. I was never so grateful as the day he hauled that away.

The hill recovered quite nicely - as you'd expect. In a week or so new green shoots came up and it would have been really pretty if it hadn't been so humiliating.

One good thing though. That rose bush?

Toast.

Visitor in the Chicken Coop

The other night, K2 was putting the ducks in the coop and as she was closing the door, she noticed what she thought was a cat in the coop with her ducks. 

Only it wasn't a cat.

It was a possum.

I know you're supposed to call them O-possums, but the truth is, out here, no one has seen or heard that O in maybe a century.   They're possums.   The end.

Anyway.

It was a big one.  K2 screamed for help and Eric came running to take care of it.   He got K2 and the ducks out of the coop and dispatched it with a shovel.

Possums die hard. 

Seriously.   It's almost impossible to kill one.   It's the possum superpower - near-immortality.

Last year, during the winter, when there was snow on the ground we came home one afternoon to find one trying to get into the coop.    I dispatched it with a shovel.   Then I left it for a minute.  When I came back it was alive again.   So I dispatched it again, with emphasis.  And when I was done, I tipped a bucket on top of it and put a big rock on it so that Tibby wouldn't get it.   When Eric came home and took off the bucket, the damn thing was alive again.  So Eric dispatched it again.   With emphasis.  Permanently. 

He did the same thing with this one.    

Geez.

Indoor Plumbing is a Good Thing

We're re-doing the bathroom.   We only have the one, so it's kind of a big deal to gut it and all.    This means that we [Eric] had to take everything out of the bathroom and start all over.    The tub, the sink, the toilet.  

And once again, I have a greater respect for the people who survived without indoor plumbing. 

Don't feel too sorry for us because I do have a studio with a bathroom.  Thank heavens.  But it's about the same distance from the house as the old outhouse was.   And it's winter.    And sometimes, you just have to go when it's dark.   And cold.   And your hair is wet because you just took a bath [in the kitchen sink.]

As I traipsed out to the studio, in the dark, with wet hair, and a pair of sweats on under my nightgown, and mismatched socks because it was too dark to care, and a shawl wrapped around my head so my hair wouldn't freeze off, I contemplated what it would have been like to be going to an outhouse instead of a warm studio.

The thought of my bare butt hitting a 35 degree outhouse seat made my intestines retreat.

I'm so glad we have the studio.  I think everyone should have a studio just in case they have to gut their bathroom.

Anyway.

This is what we found under all the wall board in the bathroom when we gutted it.

Red.

Blood red.

Intense blood red.

In a room that's only 6 x 5 to begin with.

I love red, and this is a fabulous red, but in this little bitty room it was like something from the movie Carrie.

When we gutted the kitchen a few years ago, we found the same color.   I thought it was an accident.  I figured they painted it that color because it was leftover barn paint.

Nope.    The barn was never painted.

Now we know why.    They used the red to paint the kitchen and bathroom.


There were a lot of problems with the old bathroom.  For one, we had a trick bathtub.  It was gradually disappearing.    First blue spots started appearing.   Then they darkened and darkened and eventually became black.   Coincidentally the same color black as the metal the tub was made with.   Weird, huh.    [We know it was the scrubbing, but we have hard, HARD water and never could find anything that would clean that wouldn't eat the finish.  Aggravating.]

Eric wrestled the tub out while we were at White Violet.   He was very grateful for steel toed boots, as the thing weighed about 200 lbs.  He took it to the scrap metal place and got $40 for it.     That's a lot of metal.

We have the toilet back in and working.   Yay.   The new tub is in and the goal is to get it hooked up so we can use it tonight.    The red is covered up with green board, which is a vast improvement on the red.   Vast, I tell you.

Now we're arguing over what color to paint it.    I can't decide.    It needs to be pale, pale, pale since the room is only 5x6 to begin with.    Feel free to tell me what color you want it to be - none of us agree anyway and a few more votes won't hurt.

Kitchen Fireworks

Last week, I turned on the oven to preheat it for some cornbread and then I started doing the dishes.  Two minutes later, I heard buzzing and fizzing and pops and out of the corner of my eye I saw lights flashing in the oven.

Not a good sign. 

The buzzing and fizzing and pops could easily have been the kids or the cats.   Or a renegade mouse.  Or the radio, which has seen better days.    Or some paper that got caught behind the fridge and sort of got sucked into the exhaust unit thingie and was rattling around. 

But the flashing lights in the oven could not be explained by any of those things. 

The lights in the oven corresponded with the pops and fizzes and buzzes and then bangs.

I looked inside and saw that one corner of the bottom element was sending up a fountain of sparks - like those fireworks that stay on the ground and that send up a fountain of sparks.   I love those.  Actually I love all fireworks.   Especially the big ones that look like zinnias and spread out slowly across the sky.  Oh and the ones that go straight up and explode into three more fireworks of all different colors.   And the pink ones.   I love the pink ones.

Where was I?

There were no pink fireworks in my oven.    I don't really think fireworks belong in the oven.

I turned the oven off.  

It seemed like the right thing to do.

I was so glad my cornbread wasn't in there.

When I got the courage to open the door, I saw that one corner of the element was toast.

Not actual toast.   Just toasted.

Not actually toasted, more like melted and cracked.

Yep.  One corner of the element was melted and cracked.

We did not have cornbread that night.

I was bummed.

We have a new element now and as we speak, we are inaugurating it with spritz cookies. 

Not in the shapes of fireworks.

Nine Horses

The first thing I tell anyone who is considering getting animals is to first consider fences.

What kind of fences?     The Best Darn Fences Money Can Buy.

Trust me.   It'll be worth it.

One of our neighbors once said to me, "If you've got animals, they'll get out."    Truer words have never been spoken.

For example, the other day while K1 and I were putting deer fence over the cold frames to keep the cat from using them as a litter box [*!&^# cat!!], a neighbor stopped by to ask us if we knew anyone around us who had horses, because nine of them were in her yard.

Yep, that's what it's like in the country.   You never know when you're going to take the trash out and find nine horses staring at you as they clip your grass down to nothing.

Luckily, we have a lot of grass and we won't miss it.

Four hours later, just after dark, another neighbor called me and said, "Quick, pull your car across the road so we can stop these horses".

Of course, I ran right outside and did it.

We're cooperative out here that way.

A few minutes later, we could hear nine horses clip clopping down our gravel road.  

And then they stopped at my car.

And looked at me, like I was supposed to do something.    Other than stand there in the dark saying, "It's OK, just stay put."

But they did stay there.   Until their owner came to get them and they all lived happily ever after, amen.

Not.

Those horses sized me up pretty quick and what they saw was a short nervous woman backed up by two short nervous kids, none of whom were a serious deterrent.  

So nine horses went around me.   Into my flower garden.   Up the rock paths.   Up onto the back patio where Tibby was tied up so as not to scare the horses into charging and really hurting someone.   Whereupon Tibby promptly sounded the general alarm.

They didn't like Tibby much, so they veered away and up through the veg gardens into the wilderness of brambles beyond.

Yet another neighbor came up behind them and since there was no way under the big night sky we were going to get those horses home, and since there was a lot of electric fence between the horses and yet another neighbor's place, we decided to leave them be.   It was dark.

So he went home and we went in the house to call the neighbor behind us and the phone was dead.

Dead, dead, dead. 

Somehow, those nine horses killed the phone.

Without going any where near the phones or the phone line.

Cursed horses!

So I went outside to check the jack and wiggled something and then the phone worked again.  About that time, Eric got home and we told him all about the nine horses.

And then Tibby let us know that the nine horses had come forth from the wilderness of brambles and were back in the yard.

Yay.

So Eric and I guided those horses right back to the road.   And those horses did just what we wanted them to do.   And then the owner came and they all lived happily ever after, amen.

Not.

Those horses moseyed their way right back up the road where they came from.   And Eric, being the great guy that he is, (and also remembering the number of times our wonderful neighbors chased our blasted sheep back home to us) followed those nine horses back up to the second neighbor's road, and then down their long drive, where he met the neighbor and they watched the horses go past the barn and down into the pasture where they'd spent a good part of the day and where they'd probably be just fine until their owner came.

And all that time, I tried to call those neighbors to tell them Eric and nine horses were on their way.   But the phone was dead again.  

Those nine horses killed my phone again.   Without going any where near the phones or the phone line.

And then Eric and the neighbor chatted about dumb sheep and dumb horses and then the neighbor drove Eric home.   And then the owner really did stop by and say thanks.

I have great neighbors.   I love them.

I'm not so big on nine horses, though.

Walking

Every evening, I take a walk down our road to the big blacktop that goes to the town village intersection where our post office is.    The blacktop is a mile down the way.  

There are woods and pastures on either side of the road. 

I pass two houses.  Three if you count the one way off the road.   

Most days I don't see any cars at all, but when I do, they slow down and we wave and maybe chat for a bit.

I often take the dog and most days K1 comes, too.

And while I walk, I think, I plan, I listen, I unwind.  Mostly, I unwind. 

I walk because I love to walk.   I love the rhythm of it.  I love all that coordinated motion. I love it when it's 97 degrees in July.   I love it in the rain.   I love it now that the weather is cooler.

I love watching things along the side of the road change - which flowers are blooming, which are going to seed, which have dried up because it's so dry.

I know where the fields smell like cumarin.   I know where the deer carcass was and approximately how many vultures were enjoying it.   I know where the walnut trees are.   And the hickories.   And the oaks.  I know where the nest of red headed woodpeckers was.   I know which fields have quail.   I know where the dead tree with 5 kinds of weird fungus is.   I know where the one stalk of arum along the whole road bloomed.    I know where the black raspberries ripened first.  

All of these things I would have missed if I had not walked by. 

Silver Spoons

Graduate school is hard.  And long.  And in the end, it's not about your field or your topic; it's about diplomacy.   This was my idea of diplomacy:   'That's a dumb idea and I won't do it.'

I had a lot to learn about diplomacy.  

I did learn.  Now, this is my idea of diplomacy:  'Hmm.  What an interesting idea.   I need to think about that for a while to really appreciate the nuances of every level.  I'll get back to you.'  [Translation:  That's a dumb idea and I won't do it.]

It took a long time for me to learn how to do that.   I had to mature a lot.

A lot.

And in the meantime, I had to do heavy duty research and then write about it.   I had to work hard.   My dissertation was long.   Diplomacy was hard.   I whined a lot.

Then I got into the habit of rewarding myself for all that hard work.  Every time I finished a chapter, I gave myself the reward of going to the antique mall and hanging out for an afternoon.

Confession:  It's impossible for me to go into an antique store and not find things that I can't live without.   As in, I will DIE if I don't get this.

It's ridiculous.   And embarrassing.   And potentially  fiscally irresponsible.

Since I am not independently wealthy, I kept my purchases small and utilitarian:  a hat, a teacup, a china plate with little pink roses, a piece or two of silverware.   My dissertation was long and I got to go to the antique mall a lot.  In time I had a lovely collection of silverware.

I love silver utensils.  I don't care if they're pitted.  Or if the silver has worn off on the back where the spoon rests on the table.   Or if they are monogrammed with someone else's initials.   Or if they tarnish five minutes after I polished them because I looked at them cross eyed or waved them in the general direction of brown rice.  I love them.  

I love the sleek and stylized designs of the 50s and 60s.   I love the rococo curlicues of the late 19th century.   I love the art deco angles of the 20s.   I love them all.    

Who knew there were so many types of spoons?   From left to right these are:  grapefruit spoon (with the little teeth on top), sugar spoon, teaspoon, tablespoon/soup spoon, iced tea spoon (very long handle, small bowl), cream soup spoon (very round bowl, some are quite deep), serving spoon, berry spoon (large, egg shaped bowl).

These spoons and their tined and bladed relatives stayed in my silverware drawer in the buffet for more years than I care to admit.  I'd use them Some Day, I told myself.   In the meantime, they tarnished.   I polished.  They stayed put.  They tarnished.  I polished.   They stayed put.   They tarnished.  

Then last year around Christmas time, I got sick of my old stainless and gave it away.   I pulled out all the old silverware and decided to use it every day.  I washed it all well and  I ignored the tarnish.  I figured that with regular use and washing, the tarnish would go away - and mostly it did.    We discovered that some of the knives rusted, so they went back into the buffet to stay.  We discovered that a couple of the teaspoons are for stirring tea only because they are barely strong enough to carry a spoonful of sugar from the bowl to the cup.   They went back in the buffet and on display in my old glass sugar bowl [right, in the top photo.]

The rest get regular use at every meal.   That old silver loves being used and with every washing it glows brighter.   

Here are some things to remember when using old silver:

1.  Tarnish is cosmetic only and will not hurt you.   Even stubborn tarnish will wear off with regular use.   Don't feel like you have to polish your pieces before you use them.  

2.  Don't put your silver in the dishwasher.    Most dishwasher detergents contain abrasives and/or bleach which will damage your silver.

3.  Wash with a soft sponge or cloth only.  Don't use a scratch pad.   Soak the silverware to soften hardened goo and then gently work it off without scratching the piece. 

4.   Patina is good.   That black stuff in the creases and dips of your silver is evidence of years of love.  Leave it there.    Dipping a piece in tarnish remover will remove all the patina.   I recommend against it.   Leave the patina.  

5.  There are many ways to remove tarnish.   I use a soft cloth and lots of elbow grease when I polish my silver.  A quick Google search for 'silver polishing' will take you to several interesting sites with tips and products to use to polish your silver.   Silver restorers recommend gentle creams.  I have used them with good results.   You can find these at places such as jewelers and fine stores that sell silver.    Remember, there are some creative tarnish removing tricks out there, but many of them will damage your silver.  Try them on a piece of silver you aren't attached to and wouldn't mind ruining before you try them on your precious pieces. 

Love your silver.   It will love you back.

Trees with white flowers

The night after we first saw this place [in February], I had a dream that it was a valley full of trees with white flowers.   We moved here in March and that first spring, we realized that we did indeed have a lot of trees with white flowers in the hollow.   They were honey locust trees.  They have deliciously fragrant white flowers and terrifying thorns - the guardians of the hollow.   However, we didn't have any dogwoods. 

In Indiana, that was an anomaly.  Indiana wants to be forest.   The first trees to start forest in Indiana are the dogwoods and redbuds - the understory trees.   We didn't have any dogwoods or any redbuds.    150 years of cows on a place will do that, I guess.  

Well, we didn't have cows and though we did have sheep,  the sheep didn't have the run of every inch of the place, so in time, we started getting dogwoods and redbuds.   

I mowed around every single one I could find.    They were all allowed to stay.  

It was a pain, but it was worth it.

Now our hollow is full of trees with white flowers.  

Flood

So, we've had a little rain.

Every freakin' day.

For years.

Ok.  Fine.  I'm exaggerating.   It only feels like years.  Really it's just been weeks.    Our water table is very happy.    So is our well.    If our well is happy, I'm happy.

Once in a while we get flash floods that fill up our low spots.    The other night we had one and when we woke up, things had been rearranged a bit and there were big piles of sand where there hadn't been the day before.

K2's area suffered the biggest transformation.    You might have to blow the pic up to see the notes.

The log bridge is usually wedged between two willow stumps.   The water had to get high and fast to loosen it and move it.

This is just across the road.   See the grass where it looks like someone drove over it?   That's where the water was flowing from one side of the road to the other.

Here's a closer look.   Notice where the girls found the other half of K2's footbridge.

This is the flood path we found in our squishy meadow.

The creek is behind me and curves off around the left side of the pic.   K2 is standing in it.

Further up, we found a new dam.

 

We named it Turtle Dam because at the bottom of it we found a box turtle treading water.  Poor thing must have been picked up and swept in by the flood.  Probably had been there all night long.  He was so relieved to be rescued.  

 This is what the flood waters did when they hit the new dam:

We found new sand deposits everywhere.    We don't mind much.   The sand keeps the Virginia bluebells [mertensia virginiana] happy.

And the ducks don't mind the new arrangement at all.

Visiting Toad

This is King.  He is a toad. 

He came to visit us from Iona, Idaho.   He is doing some research on different parts of the country for his friend Savannah, who is a 5th grader at Iona Elementary School.  

We think he is adorable.  I especially love his eye patch.  It reminds me of one of my favorite artists - Dale Chihuly, who also has an eye patch.

While King was visiting us he had a chat with Tibby. 

And he spent some time with the chickens.   The chickens were very impressed with him.

He tried to find some tree frogs to hang out with, but they didn't show up. 

King happened to come on a night when we were having Greek food.    He loved the baklava, but wasn't so excited about the bean salad. 

After dinner, he took a little cat nap with Blue.  He needs to rest up because tomorrow he will be on his way to Washington state to visit someone else.  


Bon Voyage, King!

Killer Brambles

We have 40 acres.   Most of what we have is woods.  About 15 acres around the house had been cleared and used for grazing cattle for about 100 years, so when we got it it needed a rest and to let the ecosystems recover.  Little blue stem [grass] and vernonia altissima [ironweed] do not an ecosystem make.   It was exciting to see things come back.  

Until they started attacking. 

The brambles came back in a big way - in patches that go on and on - full of canes 8 feet tall and an inch in diameter made of some sort of whippy ropey steel.   And they have attitude.  Apparently 10 acres of brambles is kind of bossy.    They don't appreciate being cut down with a chainsaw and hauled away with a pitchfork.   For the record, I wouldn't either, I guess.    They don't like being mowed either - they fight back.   I was going to post a photo, but decided not to because 10 acres of brambles is just too scary and this is a G rated blog. 

So after Eric cut the brambles with the chainsaw, it was my job to gather them up a bit and pull them down so he could get in further to cut more.    In theory. 

The first batch came out OK, but then when I turned around to head off toward the ravine where we're dumping them piling them gently, dragging the brambles behind me, one of the tips whipped around and impaled itself in my sleeve.    Undaunted, I forged onward to edge of the ravine and when I pulled the pile around me to dump pile it gently in the ravine, more tips whipped around and got me. 

They got me on the sleeve, in the hair, and all over my pants, and I was wearing sweats and a long sleeved t-shirt.    Do you know what brambles do when they come into contact with knit?    Let me tell you, it was ugly.  In about 10 seconds [one for every acre of brambles] I was completely entangled by the pile I was dragging  coaxing politely [with the pitchfork] to the edge of the ravine where we're dumping them piling them gently.

I couldn't get out by myself.   Every time I moved one way to get one off, another one got me.   And I heard them threatening K2, too.   In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I said bad words.   Really bad words.   But I won't tell you which ones because this is a G rated blog.   I barely escaped with my life -- and my clothes.   Seriously.   It was touch and go.   No pun intended.  

Then I handed the rake and pitchfork to Eric and went inside.   I prefer to fight brambles fully armored [in denim with helmet and goggles] and riding the mower. 

Just wait until this summer.  I'll show those brambles who's boss when it's jelly time. 

We're famous! Sort of...

This story was on the front page of our local paper today.  No, our kids names really aren't K1 and K2.  We're still negotiating the internet vs. privacy stuff.


PATHWAYS  - Herald Times, Bloomington, IN
Syrup from the fog
By Monty Howell 331-4380 | pathways@heraldt.com 
March 21, 2011

K1, 15, stirs maple sap, moving it along to the right in a maple syrup arch, as it simmers and boils down to becoming maple syrup at the end. This Greene County family pitched in with friends for 10 days of loading firewood and pouring sap into the homemade boiling system, or arch. K1 and her family netted 3 gallons for their time and trouble.

For 10 days, the Jenness family piled and split firewood to feed a homemade syrup arch. Boiling maple sap removes the water and fills the air with a sweet-smelling fog that warms the body in the cool night air, like no ordinary campfire can. The boiling usually ran the course of eight hours per day.

The cold nights and warming sun brought out the spring peepers in a chorus in front of their rural farmhouse near Newark.

The sap was flowing up the trunks of the maple trees as well. But this sap was carried here from about 20 miles away, from the Hinkle-Garton Farmstead on East 10th Street in Bloomington. Those trees delivered about 35 gallons per day during the best flow recently.

Making maple syrup takes time, heat, a lot of effort and about 43 gallons of sap for one gallon of syrup. This was a good-weather day, without rain, and the firebox made enough heat to evaporate off about seven gallons per hour.

This was a group effort shared by K1, 15, sister K2, 12, father Eric and mother Robin Edmundson. The family had the aid of Michael Bell, who made the arch and gathered the raw maple sap.

Bell periodically drew up several ounces from the final stage using a hydrometer to measure the specific gravity of the boiling sap. This indicates the sugar content of the final stage, which becomes syrup when it is 66 percent sugar. Sap normally flows at 2 percent sugar. The rest is mostly water.

This day had a campfire atmosphere near the back door of the busy household. K2 sat just out of the maple fog with a telescope, ready for the clear night sky. The sisters maintain a strict study routine at home, but their days can be broken up into real-life science experiments, such as how syrup is made.

The family enjoys knowing where their food comes from. They try to be as self- sufficient as practicality allows and grow much of their food at home. The family knows where this maple syrup was made and what went into making it. For their share of the work, they netted three gallons of dark amber syrup. They report its flavor is a 10 on a 0-to-10 scale, with 10 being the best possible.

Dad

Joe Edmundson and his first kiddo - me!

Today is my Dad's birthday.  Happy Birthday, Joe!   We're celebrating with real German Chocolate Cake - [which should be called German's Chocolate Cake] made from scratch with Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate  by K1, who is a marvelous baker.   German chocolate cake was Dad's favorite and I encourage you all to break out those cake pans, melt that chocolate and join us in the celebration. 

The photo above was my first Christmas - sometime just after the earth's crust cooled.    Dad was 22 years old and he loved me - you can tell.

Dad taught me how to work.   When I was thirteen years old he let me mow lawns for him in his lawn care business.   He mowed Big Lawns.  Acres and acres.  Miles and miles.   He got to ride the Big Mower with the 54" deck.   I got to use the push mower and trim around all the blasted trees.  For $1.75 an hour.   I pushed that mower as long as my fat 13 year old legs could push.  Then I sat down under a tree and moaned.   Eventually Dad came over and asked me what I was doing.   I said, 'Dad, I'm tired'.  He said, 'Rob, you're not done'.   So, we got a drink and then I finished.   Slowly.   Really, really slowly.  

Dad taught me not to quit until the thing was done - even when I was really uncomfortable.   And then he let me sleep on his arm all the way home.    

Dads don't get much better than that. 

 

Tibby

Tibby is a big black dog with a white chest and big brown eyes.  I love her.  She has a scar on her nose where she did combat with a snake once when she was a puppy.  Since then, she doesn't much care for snakes, and really, who can blame her?   I wouldn't like snakes either, if one bit me on the nose.   I haven't been bitten on the nose by a snake though, so I still get along OK with snakes.  In fact, I like them a whole lot and every time one shows up I go introduce myself and.....but I digress - this story isn't about snakes, it's about chickens.

Tib was still a bit of a puppy when she came to live with us.  She'd belonged to a student who tried to bring her to college.  It didn't work out so Tibby went back home to the student's farm to play with the horses and to fight snakes.  She was smart and got into a lot of trouble.  She missed the student.

At around the same time, it became apparent that our old dog was getting far to old to do his job.

Shearing

Sheep need to be sheared and the year we started our herd, two of our three ewes, Rachel and Eve, had been sheared before we got them.  Buttercup had not.  I, being ignorant and brave, said no problem, we’ll get a pair of handshears since we have no electricity in the barn and we’ll do it ourselves.  So, bravely, late one Saturday morning, Eric and I retired to the barn to shear Buttercup.  Sheep as a rule don’t like to be sheared, much like children don’t like haircuts.  They won’t stand for it.  Or sit for it.  Or be still for it. Sheep are like the child in the barber’s chair who keeps looking to see what you are doing to them.  Therefore, they have to be immobilized.  Most people do this by laying the sheep down and rocking her back on her butt.  In theory, then, one shears her neck and down her sides and back, rolls her over to do one side of the back end and then rolls again to do the other side.  Buttercup decided to dispense with theory and we spent the next three torturous hours holding her down while I clipped three inch by one half inch sections of her fleece at a time. 

Sheep shears.  photo: utoledo.edu

It was a nightmare.  I didn’t dare stop because I was afraid that I’d never have the courage to finish the job.  To Eric’s credit, she stayed down very well. To my credit, I only nicked her one time and she didn’t bleed;  and I only swore a little when she kicked me.  At one moment when I was shearing around her belly, I told Eric that at no time during our plans to turn this place into a working farm, had I imagined myself getting this up close and personal to a sheep’s privates.   Shearing the sides was one thing, but shearing around her privates after she had been forced to endure three hours of this was an entirely different matter.  Buttercup thought so, too.  To Buttercup’s credit, she only kicked me three or four times, and the bruises faded in a couple of months.

When we were finished, Buttercup looked like a skinny goat with a big head that had taken a wrong turn in a cotton ball factory.  She hid behind the barn for the rest of the day. I think she was embarrassed.  My parents stopped by a couple of hours later and my mother took one look at the poor animal and said, ‘You didn’t shear her very close.’  I told her she was supposed to look that way.   At that moment, Garland stopped to see and his first comment was, “You didn’t shear her very close.  You could have taken lot more off.”  Geez.  Everybody’s a critic.  I related blow by blow the difficulties of shearing closely a sheep that has been pinned to the floor for three hours. He looked at me and said, ‘Three hours!  It would take you forever to sheer a flock if you take three hours for every sheep.  Why, the little 4-H kids can do one in four minutes.”   I was speechless.

The next year we made it a point to invest in a nice pair of electric shears.  So, one Saturday we borrowed my Dad’s generator and went to it again.  This time it was much faster.  However, it was much more difficult to keep from slicing and dicing the sheep to pieces.  Luckily, in the package with the shears, was a sample can of Bluecote, an antiseptic spray that we could use on nicks.  It’s called that because it is made from tincture of gentian and sprays a beautiful blue/purple.   The most difficult places to shear this way were all of the places on a sheep which have folds of skin, for example, where each leg joins the torso,  around the privates, under the neck.  We were very thankful for the spray.   We cut our shearing time per sheep down to close to thirty minutes, which won’t ever win any shearing contests, but which sure beats three hours.   We thought we had done great, with only a few bleeding cuts until we were done and looked at our newly sheared flock of purple polka-dotted sheep grazing peacefully in the pasture.  

Geez.

Once upon a time we had sheep

1997

I am a spinner.   I make yarn from scratch on a spinning wheel.  When we moved out here we realized that we could raise our own fleeces.   It was a delicious, wonderful, romantic idea.   Forty acres in the country with our own flock of sheep.  How Cool Is That?

Deciding what kind of sheep to buy took a long time.  My sister-in-law had sent me a gift of several different types of fibers to spin.  One of them was Romney.  I loved it.  Romneys have long soft fleeces and they come in white and natural colors (e.g. black and gray).   They are also well behaved and good meat sheep, too if we were so inclined. 

We checked out the local sheep breeders associations but found their stock out of our price range.  So we put out  feelers through a local spinners and weavers guild and we finally heard about an annual Fleece Fair in Greencastle.  We decided to attend. [This has turned into the wonderful annual Fiber Event at Greencastle]

On good days the chicken came to visit

Soon after we bought our farm, we began raising chickens.  It was a battle of wits:  ours against every poultry predator in the county.  The predators won and soon we were down to one hen.  Our lone chicken was an incredible example to me of adaptation to one’s circumstances. Once on her own and ‘peer-less’, our chicken broke herself of the compulsion to cave in to peer pressure.  She tried new things, went new places, made new friends.

She quickly made herself at home with the sheep and the sheep seem to have intimidated any potential predators enough to prevent any further attempts on her life.  She found herself a new perch in the sheep side of the barn and began to put herself away there at night.  Eric didn’t see any reason to disturb her new routine.  She followed the sheep wherever they went for a while, then she decided that she wanted to explore the other side of the fence, where the sheep could not go.

Soon we would wake up in the morning to find her perched outside on our deck posts, eating birdseed out of the bird feeders.  She had found a way to get out of the barn by herself  in the morning and she had found a new feed source far superior to sheep feed.  It was fall by that time and I saw no reason she shouldn’t have free reign over the gardens.  All that winter she came up to the house for breakfast and then spent the rest of the day scratching around the gardens.  In the evenings, she headed back to the barn to her perch, where Eric would find her when he put the sheep away at night.

One day, Eric heard crowing in the barn.  Upon investigation, it turned out that our hen was trying to crow.   This brought up all kinds of questions about transsexual barnyard animals, but before we had a chance to contact the Guinness World Record people, she stopped.  Perhaps she was only exploring the nature of avian gender identification.

In many ways, this chicken reminded me of a woman who finds herself in a situation where her identity is not based on her relationship to her children, spouse or other family member.  She is unique, one of a kind, able to define herself however she wishes, free to do the introspection necessary to see what she has inside to cope with her situation.  She cannot depend on others to tell her how she is, because there are no others.  She decides herself what kind of chicken she’ll be.  Interestingly enough, though she experimented with new chicken behaviors (e.g. the crowing), I don’t think that she denied the basic being that she is:  a female chicken.  She still laid eggs, she still molted, she still scratched, she still loved birdseed.  Although she had sheep friends and associated very closely with them, she did not try to become a sheep.   She did not graze, she did not mate with the ram, she did not bleat.    Neither did the sheep encourage her to.

I think that is a trick that I would like to learn.  I want to be a person who does not depend on others to tell me what kind of female person I should be.  I want to try new behaviors, and associate with friends who are very different from me and whose perspective I can learn from, without feeling the pressure to be one of them.   And I still want to strengthen the innate talents or abilities that I already have.  I want to be a good mother, even if family isn’t a very high priority among my peers.    I want to be a good gardener and farmer, even if my colleagues think that it is a waste of my degree.   I want to be a good writer, even if no one reads what I write.

Experiments with Ducks and Chickens

Our current ducks

Our second spring here, we decided to raise more domesticated livestock:  sheep, chickens and ducks.  We got the ducks because our neighbor has a pond and wanted some.  We got the sheep because I am a spinner and wanted to raise my own fleeces and because it is very difficult to raise anything this part of Indiana except cows, corn, soybeans and tobacco and the state is trying to expand into other crops, like sheep.  We got the chickens because, well, this is a farm.  

We got the chickens and ducks first.  We had driven all the way up to Indianapolis to a place that advertised itself as a hatchery only to find that it was a glorified pet store that did none of the hatching, but got weekly, Monday, shipments of chicks from a real hatchery.  They still had a very small selection of breeds by the time we got there on Saturday and we were able to get eleven chickens of various types and five Khaki Campbell ducks.  We got our first lesson in fowl production on our way home.   Those cute little fuzzy balls stink.

Adventures in Alcohol

Lemonade Lucy

For the record, I am a teetotaler.  And I just found out that I can also call myself a teetotalist.  The spell check doesn't like that, but Wikipedia does.  I can spell it teetotaller, too.   And the spell check really hates that - it gave me the red wavy underline and a scolding.   Geez.    Wiki says that the word possibly came from the manner of signing the pledge to abstain from alcohol during the temperance movement:  T- total.  Meaning, total temperance.    Now you know.

Other notable non-drinkers are Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife Lucy, who was known as Lemonade Lucy because she refused to serve alcohol at White House functions.   Also, Gene Simmons.  Yes, the one from KISS.   If you want to hear a great song about alcohol, I recommend Brad Paisley's song:  Alcohol   I heart Brad Paisley.  Just sayin'.

Now, just because I do not drink does not mean I do not buy alcohol and use it in other ways.