Really the Last

It is obvious now that I can't keep this blog going on any kind of regular basis... so I'm throwing in the towel. I appreciate those of you who poked your head in from time to time to read my entries. I am still having adventures in housewrecking - fortunately, only my own.

Oh, and the mourning dove now has a partner ('tis the season) - whoever said two can eat as frugally as one?? Those two are gobbling everything in sight!

Anyway, someday I might try this again. It's been fun, but I need the time to live my real life. Take care,
Cathy

At Long Last...What?

In case you were wondering, I hadn’t succumbed to one of those adventures I’ve often recounted; haven’t fallen out of the apple tree or slipped on the roof moss… No, aside from my typical run-ins with gravity (birdseed should have a warning label), I just seem to be busier and busier with the effort of keeping up house and yard, and working from home, and trying to be creative in whatever hours (minutes) I have left. I travelled for half of November, but since some of my favorite bloggers seem to carry on their daily analysis of national crises while apparently hiking in the Mohave Desert or Arches national wilderness, that’s no excuse, I know. I have added a little wingnut thingie (okay, widget - just as idiotic a name) so that you can get alerted to my increasingly random postings… I don’t want to give up completely, but I accept that I am not a daily blogger… I’m not a daily anything! My lack of consistency is part of my charm (except in most circumstances).

Anyway, to catch up: the house is snug against the fall/winter rains and I love that smug feeling (oh - I mean snug, really I do…). I even decorated the new front porch for the holidays, since I was no longer calling attention to a chipped concrete step with an embedded steel waterpipe handrail. No, this year it looked like the back end of a caboose when tricked out in lights… hadn’t noticed that before… Of course, like all my adventures, this one almost self-destructed. I found last year’ lights - I’d never put them away w/the Xmas stuff, so it was a true Xmas miracle - but they were too few to do the new outlining job. The additional lights I’d picked up at the thrift for a buck only lit halfway along their strand so I bought yet another cheap strand and doubled that segment - almost… I now have a lovely door/porch outline except for one foot of blackout - and I just don’t have time to change that! Since no one comes to my house and it’s not really visible from the road, it’s not a big deal… and if folks want fancy Xmas lights, the guy around the bend has literally a half-acre display of moving scenes, inflatable creatures of Christian and pagan persuasion - it glows for a hundred feet above his house every night this season.

The garden has been abandoned for the year; I would like to say “put to bed” but my energy gave out before all the leaves and weeds - and there are no handymen who use rakes anymore… but it worked out, because the two inches of dead leaves were very insulating against the hard freeze last week… and hopefully the bugs will have eaten the weeds down to nubs by spring…

I’m still living in a town where a bumpsticker “Just Say No to Crack” refers to plumbers, and the new Chinese restaurant in town is called “Double Chen” -- their attempt at wordplay defeated by poor spelling… it’s a restful place. The guy at the gas station wore a Santa hat for Christmas; it was camoflage-colored but I suppose hunters just can’t bring themselves to wear red? The town’s lightposts displayed Cowboy Christmas decorations - boot and hat silhouettes with rakish poinsettas. I wonder what the Chinese who create these things think?

Anyway, I will try to get back to this at least every two weeks… just sign yourself up to be notified, and you won’t miss a thing…

Seeds of the Future

Once again, I have dropped the thread of this blog, as the realities of a little homestead overtake me (okay - maybe a “stead-ette”). I’m tempted to follow the last post with more of the same - as I watch this harvest season so full of reaping the whirlwind. But I’m gonna stick closer to home; after all, I have more than enough of my own gaffes to work with. And if my retirement savings has now dwindled to the point that they are planning to shoot it around the center of the Large Hadron Collider, at least I have a freezer-full of badly preserved food to live on.

As the garden begins to wind down (which means the tomatoes, peppers, melons and eggplants sudden take notice of the weather and start blossoming, like a ne‘er do well child who at 54 decides to become a doctor, teasing his poor mother, breaking her heart), I am now into the seed saving phase. I am learning to recognize when seeds are ready to be gathered: about a day before I find those brown exploded husks on the ground by the dead plant. So far the only seeds I’ve been able to capture are the ones too big to get away, like beans and peas, and the ones that are so prolific as to be weeds, like calendula, marigold and lettuce. Not to say that I will be able to keep them over the winter (a jar of pea pods has turned black with mold -- if only I could find a mold-processing service who needs my harvesting skills!), but this is all part of my first year farming course: City Rube 101. Last week I celebrated the year anniversary of signing off on the counter offer to this place, and told myself how far I’d come from the days when I was driving down here, on the sly, before the deal was sealed, to mow the waist-high weeds and paint the eroded window sills before the rains started. Now I have waist-high buggy vegetables, and the window sills (and everything else!) on the main house are painted and snug - see the before/after photos (I think you can tell the difference). I did, as planned, treat myself to having contractors do the porch and the painting, and I am very happy with the results! Only 765 more projects to go!

Today I’m gonna keep this short, since I have 3 bags of bug-infested windfall apples to surgically prepare for cider, another quart or so of berries to preserve somehow (I might try berry-stuffed cabbage rolls) and the summer clothes to get up into the attic (finally bought a step ladder, a vast improvement over the knotted rope.) More later.

Morning After in America

I’m trying as hard as I can to ignore all this political hooha - we country folk have hogs to swill and hay to get in… alright, alright - but, I’ve got all the windows to caulk and the cat shit to get off the lawn… it’s the same idea. It’s a different world out here, and when I see all those swankers in their shiny suits and wide striped ties (when did wide ties come back? I’ve been out of the stores for too long…), I know that they don’t speak my language, nor I theirs.

But even I couldn't avoid some of the headlines recently and since we don’t have long now (it just seems like forever), I’ve got a few suggestions to help the campaigns. Firstly, Obama/Biden should be campaigning under the slogan, “Morning After in America” - riffing on the Bush comment that Wall St. got way drunk. Might as well give us the real story right up front -- we all have hell to pay. And that would leave the McCain group with “Hair of the Dog”. What we don’t know won’t hurt as it’s killing us.

Secondly, each winning campaign must vow not only to remove every last campaign sign, bulletin board and poster by one week after the election, but also to spend at least as much on social programs (aid to the poor, food kitchens, etc.) as they spent campaigning. And all the losing candidates are stuck rebuilding the bridges. It’s clear that they can afford it, and if that becomes the “loser’s task” each election, perhaps we’ll get fewer major millionaires in the race. Or maybe we just cycle them through: you pledge to give all your money to the general fund if you lose, and then you drop down to the level of the majority of the people you supposedly serve, and start again. If you’re a really good businesman, you might be able to afford to run twice in your life.

Okay, I can see there’s a fuzziness to my logic (it’s all the moss around here)… I’m happier at figuring out how long to boil the boysenberries to kill the mold than I am pondering the big questions like what slick theme song to follow X’s speech with, in order to ram home the message to the audience hindbrain, or whether to ban all the fat news correspondents from the campaign plane in order to save fuel. I don’t even want to know how much they are spending on the two conventions. It’s enough to know that I could live very comfortably on it for the rest of my life; heck, my whole town of 9,000 (no, it’s not Palin’s town, but just as rural) would be comfortable at least until the next election… why is it that recessions end up laying off all the steelworkers but hanging on to the marketing flacks? Because the Emperor’s New Clothes are made of the most expensive material there is - illusions ain’t cheap. But I’m sure that since both parties swear they’re the green party, they’re carefully packing up all those tall tales, sob stories and fun facts to recycle for 2012.

Weather or Not...

We’re having a bout of “newcomer’s weather” in our little town… that’s the unexpected, sometimes disastrous weather shifts that all the natives will solemnly tell me “ain’t the usual weather, no way”. On the one hand, it’s a relief to know that three days of 100 degree-plus baking followed by lightning, hail and rain that brings 57 degree days is not run of the mill. As one of my neighbors says, “Thankew, Jesus!” On the other hand, I am getting worn out creating an emergency greenhouse around the veggies -- this must be the sixth time this growing season! There is a part of me that is so sick of salad that I’m happy to see lettuce bolting, but it’s not only a waste but added work to turn it all under. These don’t just qualify as gourmet veggies -- I’m calling them “hand ripened”.

It’s not just the veggies, of course. I’m halfway through my summer fix-it projects (pump house roof is done, though I haven’t had the courage to look inside and see how it faired through yesterday’s rain), and the rain has dappled the wooden chairs left outside, the clothes on the line and the tools I carelessly lost in the waist-high weeds (which I won’t be able to weed-wack now until the rain stops). And the contractor I’ve hired to build me a new front porch has called in once for heat and now is telling me he’s not water-proof. (The good news on that is he is so much faster than I am, that even the two days he’s worked is more than the two weeks I’d put into the project).

Everyone swears this strange weather shouldn’t persist. So in the meantime, I’m investing in a lightening-rod hardhat, an insulated bathsuit and wellies, and going into high gear on the house painting job! More soon…

Running Wild

Today was errand day - with gas the same price as a good steak, I don’t go out until I have a pile of errands and then I just plow through them… by the end, I’m generally twitching, but that’s the price ya pay…

Errands usually means I have to drive to the next town over - the only things I can do in my little town is Post office, bank and library… and a trip of 15 miles means I’d better have a bunch to do there! So I gathered up books that hadn’t won the unpacking contest - if they’ve been in the garage for 8 months, I don’t need ’em - and added them to the truck, along with a Hefty bag full of packing peanuts (I saw a pawnshop advertising they had a need - great chance to get rid of them!) and then decided Today Was the Day: I’d get the scrap metal to the recycler. It was the water tank that put me over the top -- not only was it butt-ugly in a way that shrieked “Hick!!” but my neighbor had been ogling it, so it must be worth money. It also was a few pounds more than I’m used to lifting… and that truck bed seemed to have risen a couple inches. Even backing the truck as close as possible and trying to just lean it in and push, I was sweating and trembling when I got that sucker in - I punched the air: Yes! Then the metal cabinet that looked like it had been rejected by an auto repair shop, and the twist of steel pipe that the old guy had used as a front handrail, and an old coal scuttle (I think) and some scraps of pipe that I’d inherited-- and the old lawn mower. I had to rest up a bit after that…

Eventually, I was dressed for public and ready to go. I am at the age where I have to list my errands chronologically or I will forget one… and even so, I occasionally shoot past an item, grind more enamel from my teeth and have to go back… today wasn’t too bad -- though I ended up with errands that took me 2 towns over, and went through the gauntlet of fast food smells just at lunchtime. Another rough spot was when I dropped the donated books off at the Friends of the Library, and I found that paper covers were 25 cents, magazines a dime, and hardcovers 50 cents… and ended up with just about as many books as I’d dropped off. But better ones. That’s the important thing - right??

The scrap metal place was like landing on the moon. Not being a guy, I had never been to an auto scrapper, and I hesitated at the entrance. A girl who looked about high school age told me she’d weigh me in - just drive onto the scale. Like I ever, ever get anywhere near a scale?? Well, sacrifices must be made… She said my stuff was “shredder” stuff -- I tried to picture something like my paper shredder that could handle the water tank. Sitting on the scale-bridge, I could see beyond to the scrap heap -where crushed-car sculpture twisted around unidentified steel filigree two stories high, and a backhoe-type vehicle, waving a magnet the size of a manhole cover, was lifting tangles of metal bits -- like that desktop toy that was all the rage a few years ago. The girl was telling me I had to drive into that -- “All the way to the end; you’ll see some appliances” … my little truck could too easily be mistaken for scrap (so could I, for that matter)! Full of foreboding, I drove forward, skirted the monster magnet as fast as I could without taking out the front axle (this wasn’t a road; it was a slag heap only slightly flattened by the haulers). Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a spark, looked over - and it seemed like ancient gnomes hunched over alchemical fires! Still trying to steer, I risked another glance - guys with hoodies were bent over large metal hunks, either soldering on or cutting off bits. Never did find out…

I got back to the appliances (including -- I wanted to cry -- an antique 1920’s washer) and parked near the Tower of Toyota. To think that people stacked car pancakes as carelessly as I stack books! In the shadow of that unstable avalanche-in-waiting, I unloaded my scrap, trying hard not to twist my back. An ambulance would flatly refuse to pick me up here, I was sure. Luckily I didn’t have to worry about damaging anything else, so I could just let the junk fall out of the truck. I noted a very flattened egg beater was part of the “pavement”, as well as a car’s rear view mirror (the metal, anyway) and a hubcap, and some large bed springs -- all as flat as Swedish pancakes. I cringed for my tires, and eased my truck back out of the hellhole. Back on the scale, I learned I was 180 lbs lighter! I was floored -- I’d hoisted one hundred eighty pounds in and out of my truck?? No wonder my muscles were trembling like a 90-year-old’s! I felt very proud of myself in that moment. The thrill faded somewhat when I got my check for $13.45... I risked a multi-thousand-dollar injury for enough money to treat myself to a KFC banquet?? Okay, lesson learned. But at least the crap was gone from the yard.

I wasn’t finished with the rural aerobic session tho -- at Home Despot, I had to get fence-fixin’s… four concrete deck-blocks that had a carved space so that a 4x4 would sit upright in it… dang expensive, but it had a much better chance of becoming a fence that my planning to dig a hole and pour my own concrete! I sucked it up and got the 4x4’s and 2x4’s in order to get my side fence finished (I hope)…and one packet of roofing shingles to get the pump house roof redone (man, I‘d forgotten how heavy roofing shingles were!)…The truck sagged even more on the way home, so I’m guessing another 180 lbs. at least…? I certainly couldn’t blame it on the front seat full of books.

Anyway, it’s taken me most of the afternoon to unload the truck, and that’s a good day’s hauling… with luck, I’ll actually use all the stuff I bought before the rains come back…but even if I don’t, it’s still cheaper than a day at the gym.

Birdland

I’m one step away from having bats in my belfrey… something twittery has taken up residence in my chimney. At first I thought it was bats, but the 2nd time I pulled out the dinner plate and looked, there were tiny feathers, and one pea-sized egg sitting among the cinders. The twittering is pretty constant these days, and I was beginning to fear a colony had taken up residence. Not sure what fires up the avian monologue - sometimes it seems to be my heavy steps on the wood floor, but other times I’m quietly typing up a blog post - maybe I have phantom editors? At other times it might be my cooking - tho I haven’t had poultry for dinner in weeks. It sounds like a particularly squeaky stationary bike is being ridden in my chimney! Or a demented hamster on a wheel…

Today I pulled off the dinner plate --okay, what else should I call it? That metal thing that looks like a fluted paper plate with some flower or landscape collaged on it, that covers the round hole that every old brick chimney seems to have? The thing with the twin wire “legs” that supposedly grip the sides of the hole but in reality spring off as soon as you pull it out, and at that point not even duct tape will keep the dang thing together?? Anyhoo, that’s the thing I removed and looked to see if perhaps the nest was blocking the chimney. I used a compact mirror (I always seem to get some sort of makeup with mirrors from a relative; I save them for looking under the house or up chimneys. The makeup just gets stale). There was some definitely irate twittering at that point, but no matter which way I angled it, I couldn’t see much… either they are tunneling in from another dimension (my chimney is channeling?), or the dark splodges of stuff I thought was creosote are actually disguised nests. I kind of feel like a monster scaring the phantom twitterer like that, but I just wanted to remind it whose house it is… these last days have had a distinct hint of Fall, and I want to be sure this squatter isn’t feeling too comfortable. I don’t mind it launching the fledglings and then heading South, provided they’re not stopping over through Thanksgiving. And now it seems like an even better idea to have a chimney sweep in before I start the first fire. Last thing I want is fireworks coming out the chimney.

I’m glad to be back on the blog, though Vista is still giving me about a dozen Line Errors every time I arrive on my own page, and I still can’t leave comments for almost every blog I enjoy reading (so guys, if you’re reading this, I’m not ignoring you!). According to Crooks and Liars, there was some glitch with sitetracking (but why now? why suddenly? And why did it only seem to be the left-leaning sites??), and gradually I’m finding I can load sites that crashed two days ago… it’s that kind of thing that’s really encouraging my hair to fall out. When I wonder why I just don’t have any time, I need to remember how many hours I spent trying to figure out why it was one site but not another, and then as a last ditch effort, working through eight pages of onlineVista tech support instructions of “what to do when a webpage won’t load” -- they don’t get that problem often, do they? (snark) And then, after it all, nothing I did had any effect…it was some pixels getting stuck in the internet tubes.

Deconstruction Chronicles

With the brief rain overnight, I became more acutely aware that I was losing the dry season time to make exterior changes to the house. So I decided it was a good day for tearing out more things. In this instance, the two rickety wood-frame awnings over the twin back doors (this house has five entrances, which is a bit much for 945 sq ft!). They had been built from scraps such as a steel strut, a slice of metal gutter, several L-brackets and old wood lattice - and covered with plastic tarp that had disintegrated in the sun. I have plans to re-install them with some nice blue duckcloth awnings, and maybe even proper supports. But for now I wanted them off so the back of the place doesn’t look like it’s on welfare.

They were just a bit too high for me to reach, and a bit too low for the extension ladder (which had no place to lean except against the awnings, anyway). So I brought out what I had: the 3-step wooden stepladder and my electric screwdriver. Of course, there was no flat ground for the stepladder, so I did the usual dance: plunk it down, step up gingerly, leap back as one leg sinks - repeat. Mole holes, chunks of concrete and large pulpy weeds made the ground as flat as a compost heap. Finally I was able to step up without being jettisoned by the stepladder, and I started to unscrew the fastenings, very aware that -- as someone whose feet were not on the ground -- I might have some difficulty if the awning suddenly fell on top of me. I had cleverly positioned myself under the large rip in the plastic, so if the awning fell straight down (a 10 million to 1 chance) it would drop around me to the ground. Other than that, I hadn’t much planned. We don’t need no stinking precautions… But I did remove the secondary screws first, and left the corner ones for last, thinking I could swing it down on one corner and then let it drop. What I hadn’t seen -- until I had all the other screws out; the frame was sagging and partly leaning on the open screen door and partly on my hand -- was the very small paperwasp nest in the left corner, right by the last screw. I suddenly realized I’d be fighting four wasps for the privilege of undoing that last screw.

Gingerly I set the awning on the screen door top (listening to the door creak as the hinges stretched), slowly eased down the step ladder and went inside for the Raid. I’m not a vicious person, but I knew my chances against a quartet of wasps. But of course, the Raid was nowhere to be found…. I spent an annoying ten minutes looking everywhere. First the logical places, and then under the bathroom sink, even in the food cupboards and in the coat closet (when I’m not paying attention, all bets are off!) I know I’d used it just recently, but it had vanished. Murphy‘s law strikes again. I looked at all the other spray bottles, but fertilizer and blackspot spray would probably just make them mad. And of course there was no way I could leave the awning as it was! The groans from the screen door were getting urgent.



I decided to put on some protective gear and see if I could move fast enough…. the photo shows the long jeans shirt, nylon gardening gloves and glitter vinyl baseball cap -- okay, I didn’t have a bee helmet, and this was the best second choice - made from the vinyl used in 50’s kitchen chairs -- nothing could sting me through that! I was glad none of the neighbors had cameras though. .. I looked like I’d been sniffing Raid and wandering through a Goodwill.

I was a bit more awkward, also, in this get-up, but I carefully eased under the cockeyed awning, moved the stepladder under the corner with the wasp nest, grabbed the power screwdriver firmly in my non-dominant hand (needing my more clever hand to keep the awning from collapsing on me) and slowly climbed up. Almost face to wing with the fiercesome foursome, I waved them aside with the metal tool, knocked the paper nest down and quickly slotted into the rusty (of course) screw. To my great relief, it turned - mostly. But the wasps weren’t happy with their eviction - they came back and circled where the nest had been. Luckily they were laughing too hard at the glitter hat to make any serious forays. Okay then - time to get down! I dropped the powertool, jumped back off the stepladder and grabbed the far end of the awning in both hands -- and wrenched. For a moment, it hung on by the rust and cobwebs, but then crashed down, taking two sunflowers with it, but scattering the wasps. Before they had a chance to regroup, I grabbed the powertool and scooted inside. Mission Accomplished!

The second awning was not nearly as interesting a job, and I could hang up my glitter hat within the half hour. And after I’d put all the tools away, and shifted a nearby tarp to recover some shingles.. there was the Raid, not a foot away from where I needed it. I grabbed it and started stalking every wasp I could find.

Nothing Doing...

Another wonderfully boring day here in the country… it’s quiet except for the shrill of the woodpulper in the distance; the sky is dappled blue; the weeds are glowing in the sunlight. All the sunflowers planted by the birds are blooming like little suns around the yard. I have decided they are deliberate - they’ve figured out the connection and are anticipating a fall bumpercrop of seed. The yard is developing a typical country junkyard look -- the tarps, buckets, piles of treebranch, old strips of tire, etc. that I’ve left around after my various attempts to garden have taken on the mossy look of abandonment. The neighbor offered to “relieve me” of the heavy steel water tank -- somehow he didn’t mention that he’d get a good sum selling it as scrap. I declined - I need the money myself.

We had our first rain last night after about 40 days of misleadingly dry weather -- it soaked all the porous objects me and the neighbors finally had been lulled into leaving out overnight. I thought about the house I’d passed last weekend that basically had re-created the living room outdoors… hopefully they at least brought in the tv and stereo.There’s a tang of Fall in the air, and the bit of rain did at least wash the pollen and the dense smoke from grassfield burning out of the air so I can breathe without coughing. Am I missing something, or is it ironic that the state which has banned tobacco smoke in every public area, including some parks, still allows acres of grass fields to be burned off after harvest, creating miles of orange acrid smoke that hangs in the air and in some places actually creates traffic hazards?

Anyway, I’m sitting here in the deck chair, eagerly anticipating absolutely nothing happening. Boredom is the cure for that urban plague, Novelty. I ran out of adrenalin years ago, after living in NYC and then in So. Cal (which is supposed to be mellow, but compared to Oregon is on fast-forward), so I’m just as happy to have a day -- or even a week! -- when no water pump breaks, nor stove smells like burnt wires nor truck sounds like metal fatigue. A week when I can manage the same schedule 5 out of 7 days, and not have to drop everything to wait for some emergency repair guy. I did have a painter in to estimate the exterior house painting job - a bit steep, but I know I’m leaving a lot of prep work for him… the stuck point is that the repair guy who has to do the job first has not called back… everyone’s on “country time” around here, or they haven’t paid their phone bills….

I’m sure there’ll be new crises to write about soon, but for today I’ll just sign off: Happily Bored.

Country Sayings

After having heard a young kid puzzle over the saying “alike as two P’s in IPOD” -- for obvious reasons it didn’t make sense to her -- I decided that as a public service I would help the younger generation with some of the simple, old country phrases that have no physical equivalent in their world.


The first example doesn’t concern digitial typography at all, and is in fact “two peas in a pod”, a reference to the similarities of the little round green things of salad bar and potpie fame, when they are harvested from the little green cocoons that they grow in. It looks like a green banana, but smaller, and is attached to a vine that looks like a tangled ball of yarn. Around here, they are planted “when the ground becomes dry enough to work”, which is supposed to be February but often is June. Each individual pea grows into its own vine full of new podded peas, which have to be plucked, opened, and the peas removed for cooking -- this half hour or more of work is balanced by the fact that the bag didn’t cost $1.59 to buy. (Although, if you factor in the time spent protecting those suckers from snow, wind and birds, not to mention fertilizer and chiropractic visits, the savings doesn’t appear to be that great). For those of you young’uns who doubt me, you probably can take one of the frozen peas from the bag and plant it amongst your mother‘s houseplants (if it hasn’t been treated w/radiation - excuse me, “cold pasturization“) and discover the truth for yourself. It will take longer than downloading your favorite album, so be prepared to check back with the clay pot from time to time.


“to separate the wheat from the chaff” - this is not about finicky breakfast eaters separating “the wheat from decaf”, but refers to the process of taking the very tiny wheat seeds off the long stalks it grows on and then sorting it out from all the inedible stuff… and by extension, to separate out the important stuff from the b*llsh*t. Frankly, if I had to go through that much work for my Wonder Bread, I would have stuck to meat and potatoes. I believe that the related verb “to chaff” has to do with the rubbing/scratching process that frees the grain - though how they transferred it to itchy skin is not an image to be contemplated for long. After the wheat seeds, or berries as they are called (in yet another humorous country technique to utterly confuse the rube), are removed from the plant, they must be dried, then ground up via a big stone wheel (or, nowadays, some gigantic metal factory machine) to become the flour that some people use to make the bread that magically appears on your grocery shelf in colored plastic bags. (The process of harvesting the plastic berries and pounding them into flat sheets is another story entirely).

“who let the cat out of the bag?” - this may have referred to the ancient custom of killing extra cats by dumping bags of them into the main river… any cat that escaped that fate would be a very mad cat indeed, and something to be reckoned with. The secret nowadays revealed in these situations end up with the proverbial sh*t hitting the fan -- another country saying that has to do with the foolishness of combining modern cooling equipment with old farming chores… mucking out the barn is sweaty work and no trying to get around it.

“One bad apple spoils the whole bunch” - this was pre-wax, and even pre-pesticides, when farmers noticed a basket of apples with a brown one spoiled faster. Now we have nothing to worry about - at the price we’re paying, those apples are irradiated, pesticided, individually wrapped and labelled -- I have had a couple of those keep in my fridge for months, thus proving there was nothing alive in them to deteriorate. That crunch isn’t natural - it’s injected plastics.

“making bacon” - I’m not gonna touch this one, though I expect with the passion of the media for off-color phrases, this one has been kept in the vernacular even unto the present generation.

“what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” - An old “fair is fair” line, which loses its meaning if one doesn’t know that goose is female, gander is male (as in “take a gander at that pair of legs!”) - I have yet to find out what natural circumstance was actually slanted toward the women, since generally the guys had all the plusses back then.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees” - I have seen the totally incredulity on young faces when some grandmother makes this remark in public. You’d have thought they were ready to call for the van with the straight jackets! Well, duh!! they are thinking. But listen up, youngster - once upon a time, most of the things we had in our lives grew on trees, shrubs or vines… it was a symbol of the abundance of Life that you had enough fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and then the whole panoply of vegetable plants that sprouted the food you ate. Children grew up with the ease of picking their breakfast and lunches (and if they were handy at milking, could even grab a quick drink!) with little or no effort on their part, and therefore when they started being too free with money, their parents began to lecture them about how much harder it was to get money than just about anything else… now, I suppose, the new saying is “Money just doesn’t pour out of a machine”… although to see the way the parental units are frantically pulling handles at the casinos, I’m not sure if anyone believes that anymore. And soon it will all be on a chip, or embedded under our skin, and you youngsters will be explaining to future generations (if any) that “money” was a concept of pretending bits of paper and metal were actually worth something, so that people could transfer enough of their credit to get into the museums to see the dioramas of ancient things like trees, cats, geese and apples… sigh… this is most likely why ancient civilazations left their elderly on mountaintops to die… when granny started cackling “In my days, youngster…“ one too many times… just just tie me in a bag and throw me in a river…

Three Days Away, Three Days of Retribution

Sunday:
My house greeted me when I got back in the same way a cat would -- with savage vengeance for my abandonment. Cats do it by vomiting on the carpet or shredding a couch; the house managed, in my absence, to burn up or break the water pump even though I’d turned off all the faucets before I left. I had a good hot shower when I got home, and then found that was the last of the water! So I’m back to flushing toilets with buckets of water from the neighbor’s hose and stacking dishes in the sink… and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna incur double-overtime by calling the pump guy today. I already have gallons of drinking water stored, so the only thing I worry about is the garden, which has gone three days w/o watering already, and which I’d planned to water last night on my return… since I still have chest congestion that makes me feel like I’m breathing underwater, I haven’t the strength of the old washerwomen to haul 15 buckets or so for the veggies… I may try one or two later…I’m doing it in shifts: carry water, collapse on couch; repeat.

Possibly the house bribed some of the appliances as well: the bread machine failed for the first time in perhaps a year, so when I dumped out what looked like crisp brown bread on to the rack, I got a bread shell and a pound of batter all over the counter (and no water to wash it off, of course). I’ve been stroking the fridge and saying soothing things to it, in the desperate hope that it won’t turn against me as well.

And I don’t know what it is about lacking proper plumbing facilities that gives me the runs… it happened last time, when the toilet exploded - instant cure for constipation. And I’ve been “irregular” as the ads say, for two weeks.. and now is when the internal plumbing decides to unclog?? I’ve read books that say we have another brain in our gut, but mine has a very low IQ… I’m going to bed, hoping the sheets don’t explode.

Monday:
The guy got here an hour late, and switched the pump on in about 30 seconds. He fiddled around with it a bit to cover that up, but really it was a $120/minute service call. I made him show me how to use my complicated voltage meter just to get some additional benefit. But that didn’t matter, since apparently the batteries are drained and it doesn’t work. Bought it a year ago; haven’t used it yet. He says he doesn’t know what’s wrong with the pump, but my tank needs replacing soon - at least $500 worth of work… and my first thought was that I’d carefully stacked/hidden all those old shingles in their black plastic up against the pumphouse wall, figuring there was no way that I’d need to get near that wall this year - how does the house know to do this?? Those bags are 50 pounds each, if they’re an ounce! I didn’t want to move them again until I haul them to the special dump. Now I might have to shift them another two or three times? Because - as I described in another water-pump posting - the weird “door” (hatch might be a better word) to the shed is way too small to get the pump in or out! They must have built the shed around the dang tank! At least the water is on and the garden is getting soaked… now to wash all the dishes and clothes, and flush the toilet properly…



Tuesday:
Ah - I don’t know where to start. With the water pump, out again, the day after the $65 visit?? With the carpenter ants nesting in the shingles that I’ve just struggled to get into their black plastic bags and away from the shed wall?? With the wood covers for the crawlspaces that won’t come out for me to paint them?? With the twitter of birds… or bats.. that I am now hearing hourly through the woodstove pipe?? There was an old movie in the 70’s called “Burnt Offerings” about a house that was demonic, and would basically destroy any family that moved in… I’m beginning to wonder…… maybe taking the shingles off is revealing its true demonic character…. but no - this is such a cute house… that twitter isn’t the laughter of ancient ghosts… the water pump isn’t possessed… [theme from Twilight Zone kicks in] Nooooooo!!!

Sigh… the manager of the pump company says he’ll be out here by dinner time, and promises he’ll get the water running again… it’ll probably take 30 seconds… and then what? I’ve never been psychic, but I’m seeing shades of a depleted bank account in the near future… maybe I can ask how much it costs to put in a bucket and pulley…. I’m getting good at flushing toilets with a bucket…

Has One Plus One Gone Quantum?

I pulled out my carpenter’s tools again recently, to finally make some crawl-space covers. I have two openings in the foundation (due to someone having put a solid concrete wall down the middle of the house) and the covers had been so rotted when I got here that they seemed like the Hot L Baltimore for termites. I’d pulled them immediately, but since it was November, I just piled some cinderblocks and bricks in one, and for the other I’d tried an old window and some bricks, followed by a very large piece of cardboard and some bricks (obviously I didn’t have enough bricks for the opening… should tried shifting some from my head… or is that rocks?). I’d promised myself that “as soon as the dry weather came” I’d get a decent pair of wooden covers made. But various other crises intervened, and I’ve only just now gotten to them.

I have a tshirt with the Measure Twice Cut Once reminder, and -- just in case of inflation -- I measured three times before I began to cut the 2x4s. The first problem was that the rectangular hole had developed a parallelogram shape -- either the deceptively upright concrete was leaning, or the house was sagging… or I couldn’t measure (always a likely culprit!). I did what I usually do in these cases -- I averaged. If one side is 15.5 inches and the other is 14.5, then the best measurement for both will be 15, right? It generally works for fabric (as long as I keep moving so no one notices one sleeve is longer than the other). Apparently this is not as helpful with rigid things like wood. I cut all four uprights and one set of horizontal studs, then wisely decided to test them out in the actual opening. I immediately discovered that I had neglected to allow for the fact that, nailed together, one measurement would be lengthened by the thickness of the attached 2x4 (which is not, as you might think, two inches, but is in fact one and a half inches - all part of the conspiracy of the Milluminati to control the world by shrinking all numbers).

Suddenly the project had taken on the characteristics of those math word problems that I so loathed in middle and high school: “If two boards are each 1.5 inches too long, and the matching uprights are 1.5 inches too short, how do you cut the boards to get them to fit the damn opening???” Alright, the book didn’t swear - but the book never had to figure out the answer. I was running out of 2x4s but I realized that the larger of the two uprights (cut too short) would do for the smaller opening, so I only had to re-cut one pair. Quantum physics was obviously attacking my simple rural cosmos again, so I switched to my guaranteed way of measuring -- putting it against the item you want to match and drawing a cutting line. Who cares if it’s 15.5 inches or the square root of pi? It fits the place it’s gonna be in! So back and forth I went, around to the openings, back into the garage -- where I had graduated from cutting on stacks of cardboard boxes to cutting on a side chair and an end table -- and back to the opening, etc. When I had the rectangle cut, I tentatively hammered the studs together -- in my studio, starting with one board propped on a spare suitcase. I had a handful of really big nails, and a couple dozen that were too small for the framing, but would work for the plywood. So I rationed the big nails, one to a corner; I figured this cover wasn’t gonna get a whole lot of use, unless skunks had learned how to work in teams.

I checked the frame out before attaching the plywood sheeting -- and found that while the measurements were pretty darn close, that meant that it was almost impossible to wedge the damn frame into the opening! There is a concept known as “leeway”, and rigid objects need more of it than stretchy things like fabric and some people’s patience (not mine!). In order to get it to slide/shift into the opening, it had to be slightly smaller than the opening. Back to the drawing… well, the big sheets of paper and the black crayon. I examined the issue from as many sides as I could (including inside the house with a cold drink), and concluded that the easiest thing was to dig out just a bit of the dirt and then push it back into place later. With that inspiration, I felt free to place the 2x4 frame on the plywood, trace a rectangle (parallelogram) and cut it out… it mostly fit, and the extra nails I used to attach it to the frame made up for the dearth of joist nails. I can always tell when I’ve exceeded my patience, because I begin to pick up steam like a locomotive, or a snowball on the top of a hill.. and obstacles begin to fly sideways as I crash into them or sweep them from the area. I was developing this kind of reckless speed, and so, with the covers wedged in place and only enough room for mice, rats, squirrels or a determined skunk to squeeze past them, I considered my job done for the day. I’d get to the sanding and painting another day… and if this is anything like the living room curtains (that hang so lovely and so un-hemmed), probably another year.

Waiting for Good’o…

Water Wars, Part Two
If only I’d stayed burrowed in the envelope! But my do-it-yourselfer genes hijacked me, and the Evil Genie of “this looks simple enough” sang its siren song in my ear… I would have waited, honestly, but at 4pm (just before the holiday) I called the repairman, who hemmed and hawed, and allowed as how he could come by after his prayer meeting at 9pm that night, “to take a look”, figure out what parts he’d need, and “get to it in a day or two” -- the alarm bells started clanging, and I decided I needed Plan B (or was that C? I‘d lost track). I raced out, bought the pieces it looked like he’d need so maybe he could do it that night… and it looked so straightforward, and the wrench was just sitting there… I couldn’t help it - I dove in (almost literally) and started trying to get the bad pipe off. At first it was much too much for my clerical strength, but after running over to a neighbors and getting a much bigger pipe wrench, I must have scared it -- it started to wriggled free - and I discovered the middle piece wasn’t a filter but a “compression connector” put on there to bridge a 3 inch gap in the PVC pipe (why they needed to cut 3 inches out of the plumbing will the be subject of a few nightmares, I’m sure)… so I tried to tighten it -- and when I turned the water back on, it looked like some kids’ water fight! Hurriedly I turned it back off and adjusted again; turned it on - and the motor hummed a moment and clicked off. Dead.

I went through my seven languages worth of curse words, and then reluctantly called the pump company…. by this time it was after hours on a holiday, but I knew I didn’t want to go three days w/o water, so I sucked it up and had them send a guy. The kid that came out could have been my grandson, but I’m guessing anyone with seniority was already enjoying a beer and the fireworks somewhere. The first thing he said after he’d checked the motor was that it wasn’t broken - it had properly shut off because no water was required, therefore no need for motor. The fact that everything was sitting there quietly meant -- have you guessed it? -- that I’d fixed the leak and nothing was wrong now. I think I staggered at that point - he was looking at me like I was his senile granny, anyway. I swore to him on a stack of plumber’s cracks that the stupid pipe had been spraying water not 30 minutes ago! He fiddled with it some more, and allowed as how the shut off value wasn’t real good; it probably needed to be replaced. Since I was paying for him to come out, I agreed. Mistake number one.

He got his tools and glue pots, and found a new valve in the truck, brought it all back, along with a mini searchlight headpiece that did a much better job than the antique worklight I’d found in the garage. He removed the compression connector and began to replace it with the new pipe I’d bought, all the while telling me about the long hours he’d put in that week. A sudden silence, then… “Damn!” under his breath. Only thing worse to hear is an “Aaarrrgh!” of pain because that might be a lawsuit.

Sure enough, he’d forgotten to add a whole auxiliary L-joint of pipes that he’d removed when started to replace the leaky one. No problem, he just cut the new PVC pipe and said he’d add another connector. Got the jigsaw puzzle re-assembled approximately as I remembered it, and then we tried the water. Turned out that the wonderful new seal on one joint made another one leak! Cut the new pipe again, remove pipe, fix another joint. Try the water again. Inside it was great -- the water in the sink was flowing; outside it was a trickle. I didn’t want to ask if he’d glued up the wrong end of the pipe, but perhaps he was thinking that as he cut the pipe yet one more time (it now would have more patch joints than it started with) and he looked at the valve, then played with the pipe for a while, put it back. Then told me to go try the water outside again. Still trickling… Okay - what next, Sherlock?

He did something weird by “flushing the water back through” - connected the hoses in some sort of circle, took the head off one outside faucet and washed his hands a couple times. I was watching the dollars fly away on the summer breeze, and biting my tongue to keep from asking if his hands were clean enough, because it was obvious that he didn’t have a clue what was wrong, and he needed the silence to think in. He did something else inside and said, “Try it again” - and this time it was full pressure! I was very relieved; he said he thought some big bit of rust broke off in the pipe when he was repairing it - apparently I have waterial sclerosis… but it was back to normal, that was the key point, even though there are now four - count em! -- joints along that 1 ft. pipe. And today, when I tried to water the garden... it was back to half pressure. I’m definitely at full pressure though - just about to bursting, actually. Plan Z, anyone?

Jammin’

It’s that time of year - the berries are ripening fast, and good homesteaders are assembling the jars and canning pots to preserve the harvest. I was excited last January, when I saw the bushes growing out of the lawn, and envisioned mega-crops of raspberries, boysenberries and strawberries. I had conveniently forgotten both that I tend not to eat fresh fruit (I prefer coffee and potato chips) and that my last several “brushes” with canning and making jam had ending in the kind of sticky chaos usually reserved for pre-school lunchtimes. I suppose it’s like childbirth pains (not that I’d know) - we forget the worst of it and put a golden glow around the rest.

I started as I usually do (as befits my Attention Deficit makeup): I grabbed some berries, threw them into the Cuisinart and then into a pot and started to cook. While they were heating, I rummaged around for the Joy Of Cooking book in order to find out what was next. (note to experienced canners: stop here unless you want to give yourself a headache.) It reminded me that I needed almost equal parts sugar, depending on how sweet the berries were. Apparently one doesn’t usually blend strawberries and raspberries, but I didn’t have enough of each, so what the heck… I hadn’t measured them, either, so I did a visual approximation, and poured white sugar into the hot pulp. As the mess - uh, mix - started to simmer then boil, I realized I needed those canning jars that were in the garage, and probably the canning pot as well… with a quick glance at the stove, I raced out to get them - of course they were buried under my last project and it took me a moment to unearth them. The canning pot lid was nowhere to be found, so I hauled the rest of it back into the house, where the jam was boiling like red soapsuds. It smelled great (except for the faint hint of burnt sugar) and I gave it a vigorous stir and checked the recipe book again.

The quantities called for seemed much larger than what I had - in fact, putting a couple gallons of water on to boil up two half-pint jars seemed hardly worth the trouble. But I did put the canning jars in the water, turned on the burner (it was about half the diameter of the pot, which made me a bit worried about how long it would take to boil), and raced out to the garden to see if any more berries had ripened overnight. Fortunately quite a lot had, and I fumbled with the bird net, trying to reach the ripe ones (the bird net does not seem to have stopped the birds, but it sure has me flummoxed). With another pint in the container, I raced inside. The smell of burnt sugar was stronger now, but when I’d washed and tossed the new berries in, crushing them in the pot to save time, the bubbling mixture subsided a bit. The canning water was still tepid around the empty jars - in order to raise the level of the water without pouring in another gallon, I had added about five quart jars that I knew I wouldn’t need - finally, my high school geometry class paid off!

I remembered that I wanted to do mini-jars for gifts, so again I raced to the garage- I’d bought new ones of these, so they didn’t need washing (I hope). By then, the mix had thickened - Joy of Cooking has this test: if the mix falls off the spoon in one drop rather than two split drops, it’s gonna gel. That hadn’t worked in the past, but hope sproings enternal, as they say. So I spooned the mix into the baby jars- damn, that stuff was goopy! Probably as much fell to the counter, and I was really tempted to re-capture it using a piece of bread (that was months of watering, growing, and a fair amount of fertilizer - wasted on the counter!) but I restrained myself - only a couple finger-fuls hastily lapped up. I screwed the lids on the jars, remembered that they stick when they’re goopy, unscrewed them, wiped off the threads (isn’t that what they call the long lumps of glass around the rim?) and re-sealed them. I dumped them into the large canner pot, where the water was finally a bit too hot to touch (and how was I gonna get them out of those many gallons of boiling water?? I’d burn that bridge when I came to it). Then I hemmed and hawed -- the larger glass jar had not had its pre-requisite boiling before filling. Reasoning that this jar was for myself alone, I decided to take the risk - the jam mixture was already congealing on the sides of the cooking pot. So I spooned the rest of the muck into the larger jar - of course there wasn’t enough to fill it (how do cooks get these dang things to work out evenly?? I suppose that’s what the specific quanitities mentioned in the recipe are for?)

Once again, it seemed very sad to have boiled all this water, and dragged out all the jars, strainers, etc. for such a small batch… so I grabbed the oranges sitting in the bowl and decided to follow it with marmalade. The recipe said the oranges had to sit for 15 hours after they first boiled, but I decided I could skip that part. They were scrubbed, quartered, thrown into the food processor, and the lumpy orange goop poured into another pot. Here we go again… What with all the taste-testing and spoon licking (not to mention the counter), I now had enough sugar in me to spin out a whole classroom of kindergarteners. While the jam was getting up to sterilizing temps, I stirred the marmalade down, then filled a mini jar and an actual quart jar (but I live alone - when will I need a quart of marmalade??) then sealed and plunked them into the canning pot. While waiting, I re-read the recipe… and realized there was no mention of canning/boiling after sealing the jars! Apparently, that’s just for vegetables… all that water, boiled for nothing. Sheesh… With much difficulty and a couple of burns, I fished the jam and marmalade out of the pot and let them cool on the counter for a bit, then tossed a couple in the freezer and some in the fridge.

I really hope my family is happy with their gifts of homemade jam. It’s not that I mind all the chopping, stirring and boiling -- but having to wash three sinkfuls of jammy pots, pans, ladles, bowls and spoons is what I call a major pain in the canning jar!

Withy Dell

Well, I just found out my house lied about its age… many of us middle-aged do that, so I can’t hold it against her (homes, being the realm of Vesta, are female). I ran into someone who had come back to take photos of the neighboring house and told me he’d lived there (in the neighboring house) in ‘51, and my house was there, a good four years prior to the supposed build-time of the place… It was fun to hear about the neighborhood and how it looked then. I have always been a home historian -- if I can find out about how the place was built, or changed or who lived there, I have a great time. I can’t find any permits on record for the building, so I’m guessing it was all gerry-rigged. The last owner was a retired Boeing engineer, and we all know what that means! I’m finding “engineering kludges” all over the place, such as the old truck topper used as a shed, and what looks like a miniature railroad segment used to hang tools in the garage… oh, yes - and the iron pipe that sticks out of the wall on the outside of the kitchen which (I found out four months after I got here) actually drains all of the water from the kitchen sink… and since the water barrel that he must have had there was sold in the estate sale, has been pouring water down under the foundation all winter! I’ve duck-taped an old gutter pipe to the outlet “for now” - truly ugly, but a classic kludge, so I’m kinda proud.

Anyway, the place has the feel of a cabin, mainly because of the knotty pine walls and the old iron woodstove with the cabin scene embossed in relief on the side. It’s cozy because the former owners did insulate; I’m grateful for that, especially since the two bedrooms are unheated… but there’s another classic “kludge”: an old motor rigged to an old box fan has been “inset” (okay, jammed) into a hole in the wall near the woodstove that opens onto the back hallway. Now anytime I want to enjoy the sound of a busy airport, all I have to do is flip a switch and the fan will send the warm air from around the stove through the hole and into the hall at speeds that turn it into air conditioning…

Also, unlike me, the house got a facelift sometime in its past. Recently, one of the 50’s style concrete shingles came off, and I discovered solid pine beadboard siding underneath. So now I am in a careful but exuberant process of taking off the retrofit to reveal the cottage underneath. All things become fashionable again… but you won’t find me wearing hip-huggers or mini-skirts, even if they are all the rage!

So far, the excavations haven’t revealed too many nasty surprises. Still, I feel like those scientists who are checking out the near-miss comets: will “Comet Repair” impact my wallet, or will I be able to adjust the flight path to a near-miss?

Oh, and in case you’re curious - I’ve named the place Withy Dell, using the centuries-old tradition (still widely used in real estate) of giving a sow’s ear the name of a silk purse. I have enough saplings in the yard to create a small woodlot by the time I croak, and although I am cutting them down as fast as I can, I am trying to re-use my “withies” for various staking tasks. And it’s low enough to count as a dell -- nothing to do with the computer company, you nerds. Although… with all the kludges… who knows??

If You’re Happy and You Know It… Shut Your Trap!

I read a blog the other day that attempted to frame some concepts of good country living with those contrary examples that pervade children’s literature (although this was supposedly for adults): Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Hopeless. As a child, I read about “David Do-good” and “Donny Dumb-ass”, and “The Goops’ Misadventures”, etc… all to “give life to” the author’s opinions about the right and wrong ways to do things. This particular blog/lecture concerned (I kid you not!) “Mr. Happy” and “Mr. Grumpy” -- or “Mr. Half-assed” which I’m sure was his real point of view. Mr. Happy had all his jobs done so well that he sang through the day, while Mr. Grumpy ran into one snarl after another -- all, (you guessed it) because he had not taken the time to “do it right”.

I gotta speak up for the Grumpies of the world here. Firstly, if The Great Farmer had meant us to sing through the day, he’d have invented karoake machines much earlier. Second, sometimes compost just happens. If you‘ve read any of my other entries, you know I empathize with (or epitomize!) Mr. Grumpy, and his piles of wickedly clever obstacles -- as someone who tries to saw boards on top of half-collapsed cardboard boxes (because proper sawhorses need a) money, b) time to build and c) room to store and use), I understand that what seems to be incompetence is in fact a calculated gamble that the falling House of Cards will pile up right where you need a card pile, at least for a moment. Alright… not so much “calculated” as “gamble”.

I noted that the Happy author never mentions where Mr. Happy had found the time to do all these things “right”… because one of his points was that it does take extra time “at first” but it “pays off later”. Just like those poor folks who can’t invest in a top-of-the-line appliance that “saves money over the long run”, maybe poor Mr. Grumpy just didn’t have the time to spend perfecting every task! Maybe he didn’t have slave labor in the form of a wife and four terrorized - er, “well-behaved” - kids to assist exactly when he needed them. And Happies probably also start with at least a Journeyman’s level of construction competence, rather than a stack of Handyman magazines and some half-rusting tools from Goodwill.

I wish the Happies -- or, lets face it, the Smugs -- of the world would find a better use for all that free time they save by “doing it right” . Stop wasting it chortling about the rest of us!

The Happies never have a day that starts with putting bread in the machine to bake, then having the pest man come and inform you he has to fog and you have to leave - now - and no, the bread probably shouldn’t be baking while he’s fogging…. [Note: Hauled the batter out to the overheated greenhouse, hoping that a couple hours there would be similar to the “rising” part of the cycle - rather than part of the “compost” cycle. It worked, sort of… as in, I ate it and didn’t die. Tasted like sourdough.] The Happies don’t have psychotic bluejays that persistently peck at their sideview mirrors and then their studio windows, causing the tension rod holding up all the handmade necklaces to slip, cascading the whole lot to the ground and taking half the birdhouses-in-progress with them! (But Happies never start anything they don’t finish… I forgot). Happies never get everything out to mow the lawn only to find their grass-cutting clothes (so designated because the non-shielded weedwacker creates permanently grass-encrusted jeans) have just come out of the washer and are on the line to dry for two days in the damp summer chill.

But you know, I’m guessing that Happy is not a family trait. In fact, I can just hear Mrs. Happy now: “David - have you stopped to fix that gate? I need you to fix my clothesline!”
“You’ll have to do that yourself, dear. I need to Do this Right.”
“How long will it take? It was your turn today to pick up Hulda at ballet.” (okay, 4-H)
“It takes as long as it takes, dear. Doing it Right is worth the time.” (He’s one of those who can Talk in Capitals.)
“Easy for you to say - I‘ve got the wash, then lunch… and now kid-chauffeur?!”
“But think of all the time you saved, dear, because I got your butter churn to seal perfectly and your spinning wheel to turn without friction.”
“I’ve already spent that time - drinking your homemade vodka. To drown you out.”

Veggie Garden Update

I realize that the last post on my veggie garden was in the midst of a mid-April snowstorm, so I figured I'd quickly let you all know that it survived. Despite the snow and then, exactly a month later, four days of almost 100-deg. weather, then a precipitous drop to the low 60's where it's pretty much been since May - most of the plants grew, and I've been eating lettuce, broccoli, radishes and even my first peas! But of course the progess hasn't been easy. More on that later.

Ye Olde Almaniac

I picked up a copy of the 2008 Old Farmer’s Almanac -- proudly aware that now I could legitimately say I needed to consult it. “Consult” might not be the best word… dig into it, plow through the ads and promotions, looking for the actual almanac… as far as I could tell, the first almaniacal information (on the year’s weather) started on page 80, the masthead was on page 84, and “How to Use this Almanac“ was on page 110! Obviously, this is one publications that knows about “compost”! That’s a heap o’ turning to get to the good stuff… and then, to add to the fun, the tables themselves -- the part with the information -- is printed in 5 to 8 point type! Given the average farmer’s age, you’d think they’d package this with a magnifying glass…I suppose if they made a Large Type edition, it would be the size of an encyclopedia (you remember -- those were the big books that held up various piece of furniture because they were so uniform in size?) And then they compound the problem by playing with typeface -- I didn’t even know they had Olde English typeface in 5 point type! I have to enlarge the page on my copier/scanner just to read it.

And then there’s the instruction page, with its bold arrows and arithmetic equations for deciphering the numbers for your individual town and state. I paged back and forth several times, squinting at the examples and finding the key letter for my town… okay - my town is not listed, (of course not! it’s a small rural town! Where the farms are!) but I found the two closest cities and then all I had to do after I figured out the proper key was to position the number of minutes to add or subtract somewhere between the two numbers given. (Huh?) I was glad I wasn’t doing sunrise or sunset rituals or fasting for any daylight ceremonies, because I don’t have to be exact to the minute. In fact, I generally forget the time the moment I close the book. But it’s comforting to know that I can check the table if any day I think the sun has gotten lazy… And reading the monthly Table of Events is a trip - not too many books have lists of the saint’s days alongside the start of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame… but I’ll bet the old Almanacs didn’t have ads for Viagra (it wasn’t a veterinarian version, either).

But not all of the pages before page 80 are pure ads… there are some “entertaining articles” (which are created purely to tease readers into opening the pages full of ads). Page six has a list of predictions for the new smart houses of the future, which, they say, will be called ‘responsive houses”… these houses will be able to shrink in the winter to conserve heat, shake snow off the roof, and have windows and doors that change size and type, and open/close to regulate heat/temperatures… that sounds like living inside a dog! What, exactly, do they think will happen to the good china when this house shakes itself to get the fleas -- sorry, snow -- off? And will it heel like a loyal lab, or will it be a bumptious mongrel that flares the windows and doors for fun, while you stand there howling for it to behave? I can just imagine the fun of living in a place that changes size when it decides it’s needed. Some morning I wake up in a bedroom the size of a breadbox! But perhaps they’re expecting that by then the furniture will have “contraction sensors” and will downsize accordingly… and I’ll be like Alice in Wonderland, sitting in -- or wearing -- a room and wondering where the bottle marked “Drink Me” is! It makes me wonder what these farmers are growing…

On Country Time

One of the things everyone loves so much about country life is that you can move at the pace of the seasons, waking at dawn, moving slowly and mindfully to your garden and hand-weeding it, watering it gently, greeting the trees and the birds as the morning brightens, moving through your day with slow, gentle actions -- and get four days behind in six hours!!! I don’t know where this Slow Life is located (though many are looking -- there are even websites devoted to it), but it’s not in my county. I have tried to move at a sane pace; I have even cut out many events and tasks from my schedule so that my life is simpler (or at least, complex in different ways)… but time is definitely speeding up.

It’s not just the extended daylight savings time that makes the hours melt and shift in decidedly unchronological ways. There is a rubberband effect that is disconcerting: when I read news on the internet (since I’ve dropped the paper and most magazines, in an effort to be frugal and avoid tons of recycling), an hour can vanish in two sips of coffee, but when hauling away yard debris, or other heavy lifting, time stretches and slows so that I can see the barcodes on the seconds! (You didn’t know they are barcoding Time now? It’s a new DARPA project, in order to track who’s using what time; costs about $45 per nanosecond - apparently the cause of a large chunk of their billion-dollar budget, but since that’s all secret, we can’t know for sure).

As I learn to adjust to “country time” (loosely translated: you never stop working), I ponder the relationship between time and money. The old saying, “Time is Money” seemed a muddled comparison, since one is printed and the other -- as yet -- is not controlled by any government agency. Except that both vanish, melt, mutate the moment my back is turned. You’ve all had the experience of breaking a $20 and having it turn into three singles in your wallet, right? And as I get older, it is harder to hang on to either Time or Money. In fact, I’m suspicious that the terms “hour” and “minute” have been devalued as part of this recession -- an hour definitely isn’t going as far as it used to!!

So there seems to be a quantum connection between the two - one of those “non-local causalities” that tie time/money together over long distances. Is it a coincidence that as time shrinks like a mohair sweater in a dryer, there are now whole websites on frugality advising us how to live more simply? And is it evidence of this see-saw connection that the one thing they don’t grapple well with is Time? Most of their frugal steps need much more time and often result in generally re-shaping our lives to move to a different rhythm (which used to be called “hand to mouth“ but they have fancier names for it now). I discovered that is exactly the point for many people, and they seem to think you get more time - or at least a better quality -- like Haggen Das or Mercedes Time.

But to me it exemplifies that “conservation of energy” principle in physics -- if I save money, I spend time. Some kind of energy gets spent in either case. For example, after having purchased one gutterspout deflector drainboard of non-descript brown plastic and been staggered at the $9.00 price tag (yes -- almost $10 for basically a narrowed dish drainer), I employed Creative Frugality for the rest: meat trays from the large family packs (a year’s worth of pork, but what the hell); the toilet tank lid from the recently deceased toilet; two halves of a cracked bucket, sawn into shape. This gives me the illusion of saving money, even though it almost certainly ends up costing more when I factor in my time and trips to the emergency room. (Me + sharp objects = ouch)

Other “money-saving” examples: looking for $5 worth of ‘shrooms in the National Forest and needing a $40 chiropractic adjustment; going rock hunting for “free” garden walls and needing a $40 chiropractic adjustment; gathering and chopping wood that eats into my work time… and ends up with me needing a $40 chiropractic adjustment. Actually pretty much anything I’ve been doing for the house seems to end up with my dialing the new chiropractor. I wonder if new houses should come with a coupon book for a local chiropractic and massage services…

But I digress… and I only have about an “hour” to spend this morning on this blog (and I think at the going rate, that‘s about 20 minutes). Time, which had slowed to the pace of a passive aggressive teenager when I was waiting to close on this house, has now snapped back to its usual pace, slightly under the record speed set by Lance Bicycler in France… in fact, don’t you sometimes wonder if the increasing number of races they keep organizing are having a quantum effect on everyone‘s time? When the Olympics were the only annual race held in Greece, life was much, much slower -- coincidence? Perhaps not. I think we need to carefully consider the possible “pollution” of time by all these race fanatics, and maybe regulate their frequency and location - keep them away from busy workers, perhaps locate them near senior centers, which have lots of unused Time (although the logistics of keeping runners from plowing into senior shufflers might turn the whole race into an obstacle course). That way, people like me and Thoreau who are trying to live simply (ie: waste hours pondering the Universe and then annoying others with our “findings”) can get on with watching the minutes unfold like a new seedling, holding its cotyledons to the raw energy of the sun -- and finding a weed has outpaced it to the soil’s nutrients and it’s SOL for another season. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi and everyone else who pauses for a second to catch their breath.

The Cold Frame is Finished

This is the second part of the blog posted 2/29/08... how does Life sprint past soooo fast??

When I had recuperated from fetching the window out of the attic, I went looking for the other parts of the cold frame, which (according to the instructions) everyone surely has lying around the house. Luckily I had bought some boards for shelving, and since the shelving was still in the planning stage, I used good old ReAllocation Implementation Process - Owing From Future (RIPoFF) to steal the raw materials for the frame. Having read that a slanted frame does the best to catch the sunlight (and keep the rain from pooling on the window until it shatters the glass), I started to measure the various boards viz a viz the window. I think I’ve mentioned before how measurement-handicapped I am: not only am I a 1950’s victim of New Math (we didn’t learn arithmetic, we learned Venn Diagrams and Base 2 - computer language), but “relative size of things” is not a concept that I have mastered. I can’t pack a trunk. I can’t measure a cupful by eye. And I rarely leave enough room when parking to squeeze my body out of the truck!

Anyway, I had a 2x4, a 1x8, 1x12 and some assorted poles and planks… I measured the window, measured it again -- got a different number -- measured it a third time -- got a different different number… and gave up on numbers. I resorted to my old habit -- the visual measurement. I took the 1x8 plank and lined it up along the window and drew a line. I have no idea how long that was, but it came to the end of the window, which was the important point. I did the same for the wide board, and I also measured that board against the 1x8 to get the top of the angle that I needed to cut at a slant.

Now I know you’ll tell me, “It’s 8 inches, Cath!” but it never is -- that’s the point! Somehow the marks on the bloody ruler move around and it never does work out to the supposed measurement. My best guess is that my ruler is marked off with irrational numbers. The only thing that doesn’t seem to shift around for me is the physical object… so I drew a line on the 1x12 at the place where the 1x8 stopped and then measured the bottom angle against the 2x4. The only difficulty as I was doing this was trying to hold these various eight-foot boards against each other in a studio which is only 15 ft wide and is full of shelves holding ceramic artwork! So -- I’m trying to balance one board on my chair, while the other is leaning gingerly against the shelf of art supplies, and using my knee as the drawing surface, which tends to make the line a little wobbly… No matter, since there’s very little chance I can follow a straight line with the huge, double-handed circular saw (described in a previous entry) that I have to use. I figured if I cut it without also cutting through the cardboard box used as sawhorse, I’d be very grateful. (The 2x4 was actually scheduled to become a sawhorse, but RIPoFF got there first).

They always recommend that you measure all the pieces before cutting, in case something doesn’t add up. Since I wasn’t gonna do any adding, and because I was running out of places to put eight-foot boards, I shifted to cutting the primary planks. The sound of that circular saw always reminds me of an airplane engine, and the similarity doesn’t stop there… once I manage to chew through the board and release the power switch, I have to hold it at arm’s length (all 35 lbs of it) while the engine (ie: saw blade) comes to a complete stop. Since there were several small cuts, I ended up holding the snarling saw at arm’s length for at least a half hour total… while watching the sawdust swirling into every sculptural cranny and open box in the room. I made a vow to get enough boxes unpacked in the garage to be able to do this dirty work there next time… but meanwhile, I finally had the four pieces and it was ready to take outside. Oh, but no -- there had to be some kind of stake/support that the window sat on… I checked the picture again and saw the vertical pieces. I found a 2x2 and painstakingly measure them against the edges of the board, and cut two -- and somehow lost the marking of the other two. No matter - I decided the 2x4 was thick enough to serve. And I was getting tired of cutting -- I wanted to bang some boards! (I tend to approach construction projects with the attitude of a 5-year-old). So out I went, and lugged the boards, window, hammer and nails to the flat ground where I was gonna place the cold frame. This was the location of that ugly old shed with the truck-topper roof… I will document its demise in another entry.

While kneeling to hammer the boards into a box, I discovered the local cats had gotten there first and were very appreciative of a new litter box. I raked the place clear and started again. I know there are clever braces and traditional methods for getting boards to line up square to each other -- but this is a 5-year-old working, so I held one board between my knees and tried to nail the other one to it… my knees don‘t grab that good. Next, I used a left-over log as a brace, but it was being braced in turn by the grass, which although strong enough to resist any attempts to dig it up, was not actually good for leaning things on. Eventually I stood one board up, resting the other on it and hammering downward… it was close enough for Republican economics. In similar makeshift fashion, I got a rough rectangle that -- mostly -- fit the window, and proudly placed my tender seedlings in their new cold frame.

And two days later, the weather had plummeted like the stock market, leaving swirls of frost on the cold frame window… but that’s another story…