Stream renovations

I think I mentioned the stream renovation project. Well, it’s done. Stan Wheatley, who graded the yard when I first bought the house and had the pool removed, did the work.

The island that has been building itself since 2007 is gone, the stream bed is lower, and the bank is steeper, to better contain high water on my side. Stan consulted with my neighbor Paul, who said he didn’t care if the water came up into his cow pasture.

Stan also found the drainpipe that leads from the basement floor drain, and hasn’t drained during the winter for years. Why not, you might ask. Because several high-water springs filled about a foot of the pipe with soil and mud, which froze in the winter and kept water from draining. We’ll see if a cleared-out pipe makes a difference next spring. I'll stick piece of rebar into the bank to show me where the pipe is, so I keep it clear.

Two buckthorns were excavated, hooray. They are trash trees, nothing but a cluster of suckers, they won't do for stovewood, and they have thorns. Sadly, the gorgeous swath of spring daffodils is buried under piles of rock, right about where the excavator is sitting. But new bulbs should arrive soon by mail, and in a couple of springs (with luck and bulb food) the swath will have returned.

In the last post I said the weather was mild in the daytime. Well, that was short lived. It never got higher than 58 today, and as I write this I've unearthed a warm nightgown and I've lit the woodstove. And it's not even October yet! But the house was so bone-chillingly clammy that I couldn't stand it. Ernie has buried himself in a foot-of-the-bed throw for over a week. Now he's back on his end of the sofa, by the stove, purring up a storm.

Summer into fall, and harvest time

It’s getting to be sweatshirt season. Nighttime temps are brisk, but daytime temps are still in the 70s, which makes for lovely weather. Rain keeps threatening, but has been holding off until after dark, a REALLY nice treat, although We Need Rain.

The blog entries have been sparse because my time has been spent working, riding my horse, dealing with home-grown produce, and working in the yard. Just as we clean house before company comes, I have to get most of the weeding done before Tim arrives. One good thing about spending a great deal of time working in a flower bed is that solutions to problems present themselves as if by magic. What I have not finished is stacking and covering the wood. That might be a Mom-and-Tim job. And, for the first time all season, this weekend I did not have to mow the lawn. By Wednesday I may regret that, but the weather has been so friendly to growing things that there was no August lawn slow-down and I have mowed every week since Memorial Day.

The green beans and tomatoes were painfully successful. Every other day since around August 15, I picked more green beans and more cherry tomatoes. I put 6 quart bags of green beans in the freezer, and am overjoyed that the beans finally finished up this past Thursday. You can see the winter supply of blueberries (3 bags) peeking out at the bottom of the green bean photo. They’re from a pick-your-own farm.

A person can only live on (Vermont) bacon, (homegrown) lettuce and (homegrown) tomatoes for so long. I know that, because for a  solid week it was BLT sandwiches at lunch and BLT salads (with sunflower seeds) for dinner. I do not get easily tired of home-grown tomatoes, but that was an overdose and part of my digestive system rebelled in an uncomfortable way.

Sunday every inch of the kitchen counters were full of cherry and full-size tomatoes and I had to do something with them before they spoiled. I had four 1-pint jars of tomato sauce in the freezer from last year – my first attempt, and way too thin. So I thawed those jars, peeled and seeded about 4 more pounds of tomatoes, and put sauce and tomatoes in the giant blue pot along with basil and oregano from the garden, garlic (from the grocery), and home-made tomato paste from oven-dried cherry tomatoes, and cooked everything for about two hours. It thickened nicely, looks great, and there are now 6 jars of much better sauce in the freezer. (One is in the freezer itself, because it wouldn’t fit on the door shelf.)

There are still tomatoes on the counter, and more tomatoes on the plants, but now I know how to make sauce, and can easily make a much smaller quantity in less time and with less effort. I have to put up a couple of jars of sweet-and-sour beets (I only got a few beets, boo hoo, and had to buy some at the farm market). Then I will be done with “the harvest”. There’s still time to plant more lettuce and spinach, but all you have to do with lettuce and spinach is make salad. Or use the spinach in my Favorite Egg Breakfast.  So easy. That’s a relief.

Echo Taps

The evening of September 11 I attended “Echo Taps” on the Norwich campus. All the cadets turn out at 9:45 pm in their dress uniforms, everyone gathers on the big green space called the Upper Parade Ground, and at 10pm a student piper plays Amazing Grace, and then two student buglers at each end of the Parade Ground play taps, one echoing the other. No one makes a sound, except the musicians. It was very solemn, very appropriate, and comforting.

Vermonters agree, of course, that the terrorist attacks were a horrible event and a horrible tragedy, but none of the Vermonters I know were there, or close to there, as so many New Yorkers and New Jerseyans were. For us, our feelings are a little different, and deeper, and as we remember the reality of that day and the ones that followed, we’re perhaps a little more reflective. This year I have two faculty members who were living in New York on that day. Both lost friends, and one is always distressed at not being in NYC when September 11 comes along. I told him I would go to Echo Taps on his behalf, and he said that would make him feel better.

I will always remember the way people left shopping carts in the aisles and raced out of the Shop-Rite when the manager announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

I will always remember WFUV playing any song a listener requested, all day until well after midnight, as long as the song had some relevance for peace.

I will always remember my super’s wife sitting in my apartment because a woman who lived downstairs from me had not come home – she did, well after suppertime.

I will always be grateful that my former husband, the father of my beloved sons, survived, having had to run for his life as the second tower fell. I will always be grateful that good friends who worked near the towers were not hurt, although it took days to hear from them. I will always be grateful that a church friend, and the mother of a dear Norwich friend, both managed to get out of the towers in time.
 
I will always remember being confused, maybe even disoriented, because the weather was bright and sunny and sparkling. It had started out to be a “perfect day”. By 9am that sunshine seemed out of place, and completely wrong.

This is not my photo.  Someone sent it to me, from a website or a photo collection, sometime over the many nights that those lights reached upward.  If someone emails me the source, I will gladly credit it.

A visit from Mike and Kate

Wow, it's been a while.

Mike and Kate came for a long weekend.  This visit almost didn't happen because driving took too long and flying was too expensive.  Thanks go to Kate's parents (who are vacationing in the Adirondacks) for coming up with the idea of meeting at a ferry that crosses Lake Champlain!!

So my DC sweeties came up on Saturday noon and stayed through Tuesday noon.  And while they were here, one, some, or all of us did the following:

Food: 
           had lunch at the Burlington Bay Market and Cafe
           had supper at Village Pizza in Randolph
           had a delicious supper at home of green bean/tomato/pesto/pasta salad, and sublime roast chicken
           did grocery shopping at Hannaford's in South Barre
           picked enough green beans to feed an army, a bowlful of delicious cherry tomatoes, and lettuce
           picked several bunches of basil for pesto, and decided never to plant that tasteless basil variety again
           made excellent breakfasts with farm-fresh eggs, and plenty of fruit
           drank Otter Creek beer and lots of Dunkin Donuts coffee (not at the same time)

Visited:
           the Howards, and saw the house they're building up where the old camp is
           Thelma, and my horse
           Kate's friends in Stowe
           an Antique Boat Show at the Burlington waterfront which had two, count 'em, two antique boats and half a dozen expensive shiny modern monsters. Thank heaven the show was free.

Worked:
           mowed the lawn
           did a lot of weeding
           stacked wood
           hung the tarp that protects the woodpile from snow
           fixed the roller on the deck door

Exercised:
           yoga in the front yard
           ran about 2 miles
           used the Nordic Track for 15 minutes (first time in months and months)

Entertainment:
           canoed around Baker Pond with the Brookfield Hiking and Adventure Society
           recorded Ernie sounds, horse sounds, and attempted to record cow sounds
           watched DVD movies
           fell asleep during DVD movies
           played Bananagrams

and finally - drove to the western edge of Vermont so that Mike and Kate could take the Crown Point ferry and continue their vacation with several days at the Rabinowitz's summer house.  It appears that the crossing is about 2 ferry lengths long.  So that just about the time the passengers at the back are well offshore, the passengers in the front are arriving at the other side.

Lovely visit. Absolutely lovely. I miss them already.

Rain, rain go away

That Wednesday thunderstorm was a doozy. I drove back to work after supper for an online faculty meeting, and further up West St. trees had brought down power lines and had ripped connections from homes The ancient maples at the far end of the Crossover Road, which had been pretty well damaged during the 2007 windstorm, looked like cannon had been shot at them.

Friday was gray and cloudy, and it got cloudier and grayer and more threatening as the day went on. I was going to ride Raven in the late afternoon but I had an unshakeable certainty that as soon as I had the saddle on her the skies would open. So I did the laundry instead. And it didn’t begin to rain until 7pm. Another riding opportunity lost.

But THURSDAY was splendid, and so was today! So I got out the camera. Ernie graced my efforts with his presence. (As always, click to see bigger pix.)

The flowers by the bedroom deck are glorious

Globe thistles attract bees by the dozen

 

Here's a daylily I purchased last year from George and Gail Africa's Vermont Flower Farm in Plainfield, VT

Here's part of  the bed behind the bedroom window

I have veggies!!  I have beets, but they're roasting in the oven now.  So we have a harvest of Swiss Chard:

And the tomatoes are coming along:

And here's the King of the Garden himself:

Evening skies

At 5pm we had a monster thunderstorm.  Some lightning, loud thunder, a heavy, pounding  delugewith enough wind to make it rain sideways for a few exciting minutes. I had to park the car within 3 feet of the front door to get inside without getting soaked. By 6:30 the storm was over. The sun came out, and around 8pm the sun began to set. 

And the fog began to descend.

Ernie had a difficult week

There was the heat wave. If he went outdoors and came onto the porch, he couldn’t get into the cooler house. If he stayed in the cooler house, he couldn’t go outdoors. He was unhappy all week.  We all know how bad the heat wave was.  I don't need to blog about it ...

Adding injury to insult, Ernie had another run-in with the Churchill’s barn cat on Thursday at  3am, which I broke up by throwing a pot of cold water on the swirling cat mass. I got the other cat, since Ernie was pretty dry when I got him in. Then I had to doctor the scratches Ernie had received – plenty of them, but no bites. Ernie does not like being doctored.

This morning I came onto the porch from my Sunday visit at Thelma’s and the air on the porch reeked.  Ernie reeked.  Ernie, bath time.

I drew water 3” deep in the bathtub, put Ernie in, poured warm water over him, and (ta-daa) He Stood Still. Somehow he knew this must be a good thing. I shampooed him, rinsed him a lot (with a big pitcher) and He Stood Still. I wrapped him in a towel to dry him off and He Sat Quietly In My Lap. Of course he had to try to lick himself dry. Seeing dozens of hairballs in the future, I brushed him to dry him out and he actually thought that was good too.  He was happy to finish drying on the porch, with a fan blowing gently on him.