An Insect Resident

Our UPS driver is a friendly young guy who always had a treat for Lila and likes to talk about what’s happening in the neighborhood. A few weeks ago, while he was unloading six big boxes of tools into the husband’s shop, he said to me, “You have a big garden—have you ever seen a praying mantis in it?” I said that no, I had lots of ladybugs but no mantises. He proceeded to tell me about several customers on his route who had seen them recently. I offered up the story of how, as a child, I had kidnapped one and put it in my bedroom closet, where—to my mother’s dismay—it gave birth. I then promised to be on the lookout for any here.

The husband came to the kitchen door yesterday afternoon and called me over. “Look,” he said:

The husband knows me well. He knows that I will stop the car to move a turtle out of the road. He knows that I shepherd baby robins from their nests when they are ready to fledge. He knows that I talk to the snakes in the garden. He knows that I sneak scratch grains to the turkeys. And he brought me a praying mantis.

We carefully transferred the mantis from his arm to mine, and I walked it over to the garden and left it on a head of lettuce. Hopefully it will make itself at home over there and perhaps have some babies of its own. And now I can report to the UPS driver that I have a praying mantis in my garden.

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We have a memorial service today at our church for one of our members who died rather unexpectedly last week. I am not playing, however, because this man’s daughter is a pianist and will be providing the music. Instead, I will go and join my voice with others in singing in celebration of his life. I have to say that despite the sadness of the occasions, these services at our church are generally uplifting. I’ve always said that our pastor does a stellar job with weddings and funerals. The man who is being remembered today loved music and frequently expressed appreciation for my playing. I would often hear him humming along from the pew as I played prelude or offertory pieces. He was also a strong bass and we will miss having him in the choir.

I need to bake a cake this morning to take for the meal after the service.

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The husband and I did some landscape planning yesterday afternoon while having drinks on the veranda. There are a couple of trees in the yard that need to come down before a windstorm puts them somewhere they aren’t wanted, like on top of the house. We have room to add another 6-10 fruit trees—I am sticking to apples—so I will be shopping on the Fedco website as soon as they release their new catalog in October. I learned last year that if you don’t get orders in by January or February, they sell out of a lot of stock. The husband bought a grapple for the track loader, which will make it much easier to finish cleaning up the woods, and we’ll burn slash piles as soon as it is safe to do so.

Abundance

After breakfast yesterday morning, the husband and I went out to check on the apple trees. The Lodi only produced enough apples for about one pie. Susan said I could have some of her Duchess of Oldenburg apples, but I think we’re good on pie filling for now. The State Fair tree had some lovely apples, enough for the husband to snack on this week. I cross my fingers every year and thus far have not had to spray. The insects do not seem to have found my trees, even though the orchard has been in for almost 10 years.

The Red Wealthy is loaded and the Honeycrisps have a respectable crop, but the Wealthy needs another week yet. Susan taught me to check by cutting the apple open to see if the seeds are brown. We follow that with a taste test. The husband likes tart apples, but there is a difference between tart and sour and these apples aren’t quite ready. The Honeycrisps need a couple of weeks yet.

After I brought in the apples, I turned my attention to tomatoes. We are awash:

The husband said that next time, I should hook the wagon up to the John Deere tractor and take it over to harvest tomatoes. I was pushing the limits of this Little Tykes wagon. I am bringing in anything that has a bit of pink on it and letting it ripen inside. September is a race with Mother Nature, and already the tomato plants are looking a bit done in. At some point, I will collect whatever is left out there and bring it in, pink or not.

Everyone I know seems to be making salsa with this year’s crop of tomatoes.

Some of the Cherokee Purple tomatoes are well over a pound each. The husband is holding this one in his (not small) hand:

I’ve been researching other tomato varieties and I found one called Cherokee Chocolate, a relation of Cherokee Purple with darker skin. I am thinking ahead to next year’s plant sale. If we offer some really interesting and unusual varieties, we can build up a reputation and charge a premium for those plants.

While I was in the kitchen getting tomatoes sorted, I made a pork stew for dinner. I cut pork steaks up into cubes, browned them, and put them in the crockpot with tomatoes, beans, onions, green chilis, stock, and spices. That simmered all day. The husband had some for dinner (over rice) and pronounced it “exceptional.” I have no idea how to re-create it, LOL.

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After lunch, I pulled out and organized all the inventory for the co-op sale. I’ll pick up tags this week—the co-op has special tags printed to use at the sale—and work on pricing things. I also sewed up another T-shirt for myself from the pile that is already cut out, and traced the T-shirt pattern to make a couple of shirts for WS.

At some point, I need to get back to quilting.

I also have to visit with the quilt store owner about future serger classes. I checked the store’s class calendar and there are very few dates available for me to shoehorn in a class. I’ll see if she wants something before Christmas or if a T-shirt drafting class can wait until after the holidays.

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The husband forwarded me an e-mail Friday afternoon and said, “Read this and I’ll tell you the rest of the story.” The e-mail was from someone currently building a home, but the contractor he hired to do the foundation formed it nine inches out of square. I don’t know a lot about building, but I do know that you can’t frame a house on that kind of foundation. The homeowner is desperate to find someone to fix the foundation so work can continue. The husband wasn’t going to take the job. He knows the contractor who did that foundation and he would prefer not to get caught up in any drama, but at the last minute, he decided to talk to the homeowner. The husband is going to fix the foundation. There is an added benefit for me—the homeowner has a business importing seafood from Alaska. The husband knows that I love seafood, but good seafood is hard to get here in the land of cows, and I won’t buy farmed seafood. Halibut and crab legs won’t be a regular item on the menu, but once in a while, they will be a welcome treat. The homeowner sent a lovely filet of halibut home with the husband as a thank-you for coming to look at the job. I have to discuss preparation methods with DD#1—who not only cooks it, but has been out fishing for it now that she’s in Ketchikan—and will make that this week.

Planning for Next Season

I am very pleased with the pantry stores this year. I think I am done with green beans:

Marcie is going to let me know what variety of beans these were as I would like to do them next year. They are a flat kind of pole bean and they grow very well here. Being flat, they went through the bean frencher perfectly. She and Tom brought some corn cobs over for the pigs yesterday. I told them they couldn’t leave with an empty bucket, so they took more tomatoes. I’ve got my jars labelled for fermenting and saving seed from each of my tomato varieties and plan to get those started today.

I pulled up the zucchini plants—always such a satisfying task at the end of the season—and some of the cantaloupe vines that were done. I’m putting everything in a pile to dry out, and I’ll burn it either some time this fall or next spring. Or start another compost pile.

Some time in the next week or so, I have to render down the lard that is still in one of the freezers. I need that space so I can move pork from another freezer and defrost that freezer. I play this game of musical freezers every fall.

I’ve started researching and buying supplies for next year. I don’t want to wait. I need new soaker hoses for a better watering system, and I am sketching out ideas for where I want to put different crops. I’ve also got to figure out a better way to stake the tomatoes. I have cages, but this year, the plants got so big and heavy with fruit that the cages were mostly useless. Heavy-duty tomato towers would work, but they are not cheap. I’ll see what the farm store has in the way of cattle panels and maybe I can rig up a system.

In terms of crops, I don’t experiment much. I tend to find varieties I like and stick with them. I’ve decided to switch to Black Beauty zucchinis, though. I have been growing a variety called Grey, but I’ve been disappointed with them the last couple of years. I ended up with six Black Beauty plants and two Grey when the rodent came through the greenhouse and ate the newly-planted Grey seeds. I had the Black Beauty seeds and planted them as replacements. (No, nobody needs eight zucchini plants, but I seem to forget that every year.) The Black Beauty plants produced heavily and consistently all season and I like them better.

My shelling peas are a variety called Alaska. The tomatoes were Dirty Girl, Amish Paste, Purple Russian paste, Oregon Star paste, and Cherokee Purple. I am more impressed than ever with the Dirty Girl tomatoes after two seasons. I want to start more of those next year for the plant sale, which we plan to do again along with the garden tour.

The cucumbers are a variety called Muncher, the cantaloupes are Minnesota Midgets, and the watermelons are Sugar Baby. Those won’t change.

I put in new Cortland, Winesap, Seek-No-Further, and Northern Lights apple trees last spring. We still have room for half a dozen more trees. I’d like to keep the strawberry variety we already have (Triumph) if I can move enough of the plants from their existing location. I’ll fill in with new plants otherwise. The only thing missing that I’d like to have is asparagus.

The end-of-season garden work is vastly different than what I do in the spring, but it’s necessary and enjoyable in its own way.

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Our homesteading chat group had such a good discussion yesterday. That group is an oasis of sanity for me, because it’s populated with people who know how to have a respectful discussion that doesn’t devolve into ridicule and name-calling. I think it helps that it’s got the underpinnings of a liberty-minded groups of individuals. Homesteaders are just as susceptible as everyone else to adopting a “my way or the highway” mentality—I’ve seen contentious discussions break out over something as simple as what kind of watering system is best for chickens—but this group has a fundamental understanding that two people can look at the same situation and come to two entirely different but equally valid conclusions about how to proceed. I wish more people were able to engage like that. I suspect that it’s just part of human nature to want validation for one’s choices, and to want that validation in the form of everyone else making the same choices.

This morning over coffee, that group debated the merits of pineapple on pizza or not. For the record, pineapple-and-ham is one of my favorite kinds of pizza.

Beans and Fabric

Back to our regularly scheduled blog posts . . .

One of our local grocery stores has a twice-yearly case lot sale, in March and September. The sale started yesterday, so I popped in to pick up a few things. Many of the items are processed foods, which I don’t use, but I take advantage of the opportunity to get things like evaporated milk, apple cider vinegar, canned tuna, rice, and other foods I can’t/don’t grow or make here. I also picked up a few items to send to the girls. DD#2 asked for salsa. She is another one who needs to have it delivered in 55-gallon drums. I think I am going to can some in pint jars to take over the next time I go to Seattle.

I followed the case lot sale with a trip to Costco, and by the time I left town, the car was loaded down with supplies. Marcie had asked me to pick up some ground beef for her, and when I dropped it off on my way home, she gifted me with a 12-quart bucket of green beans she and Tom had just brought in from the garden.

I rigged up a slightly better system for my green bean cutter and got about half of them done yesterday afternoon. (Yes, the floor needs a good sweeping and mopping.)

I’ll do the rest this morning and run them through the canner. We are set for green beans for the winter, yay!

We had our garden tour debriefing meeting last night. It was a lot of fun to hear about everyone’s experiences and we all agreed that it is something we want to continue doing. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that we had attendees from all over the valley—not just from our immediate area—thanks to information that appeared in the newspaper. We brainstormed lots of ideas for next year’s event.

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I did not buy much in Spokane; I was searching for things that I can’t get here and the stores in Spokane are having supply chain issues, too, not surprisingly. I found a length of teal rayon/spandex at one of the Joann stores. I bought two different chunks of Moda Grunge in light pink and dark pink at The Quilting Bee. At Regal Fabric and Gifts, which is the smaller of the two quilt stores—the owner would like to expand but she’s paying a small fortune in rent as it is—I picked up some Kaufman Mammoth Flannel that is destined to become a winter scarf:

I made myself an infinity scarf a few years ago that consisted of one layer of flannel and one layer of knit fabric. I wore that thing to death. In really cold weather, I wrapped it twice around my neck, but if I didn’t need that much warmth, I crossed it over my chest underneath my coat. Being an infinity scarf, I didn’t have to worry about it slipping off. I need a new one to match the coat I am wearing now. I’ve got some cotton knit in that pink color that should coordinate nicely.

I’ve also seen some cool flatlock serging projects for scarves and blankets using this flannel, so I bought enough extra to play around with that technique.

Walking around quilt stores makes me realize that I am a Robert Kaufman Fabrics fangirl, for sure. I love everything they put out, from Kona to Essex Linen to Mammoth Flannel to Laguna Cotton.

I also picked up another piece of Tula Pink fabric:

I know there are lots of Tula PInk fangirls out there. I salute you. I like some of her stuff, but most of it just makes me say, “Eh.” This sewing-themed fabric will become some kind of bag—maybe one of the large Poppins bags.

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Tomato harvesting continues. I need to keep a close eye on the weather forecast just in case it dips below 40 at night again. We typically get tomatoes until the end of September, even if we have to cover them every so often, so the tomato tsunami could go on for another month yet.

The co-op sale is in three weeks. I’ve got to get stuff out and start tagging it. I’d like to make a few more items, but that might not happen with all the canning that needs to get done yet. And it’s time to start cleaning up the garden. Lots to do in the next couple of weeks.

Spending Time Inside My Head

I spent the past two days driving around by myself in my car, listening to podcasts, thinking, and trying to find some perspective. I have, for the most part, avoided talking about the pandemic here on the blog. That has been intentional. One reason is that we’re all tired of it. I prefer to focus on the positive things going on in my life, of which there are many. Another is that there are enough people blathering on incessantly about it that I don’t feel the need to add my voice to the din. Mostly, though, it’s because I can’t make enough sense of what is happening in any meaningful scientific, social, or rational way.

I have a scanner in my office. The disembodied voices of the county dispatchers are my constant companions throughout the day. I keep a running mental tally of who is getting called and to what kind of incidents. I don’t do that intentionally—it’s more that after 25 years, the scanner traffic is just part of the information that my brain takes in every day, much as it unconsciously logs a thousand other things. I am aware enough of that running mental tally, though, that I can tell you there has been an uptick in calls for difficulty breathing and other covid-related calls in recent weeks. (I can also tell you there has been an uptick in calls for suicides and domestic violence.) I have talked to EMTs about what they are seeing on these calls, and some of their observations are unexpected. I have heard from medical personnel about what they are experiencing at the hospital. I know people who have lost loved ones to covid recently. I am trying to sift through data—and by data, I don’t mean what the mainstream media tells me the numbers say, because journalists are notoriously lousy statisticians, but what the source papers and scientists themselves are saying. I am trying to put a picture together of what’s going on, a picture that makes sense to my brain, even if I don’t like the way the picture looks. I can’t, and that’s making my brain hurt.

Here is a perfect example of why mainstream media is useless to me: Everything I have heard on the news indicates that the delta variant is the dominant variant in the US at the moment. Curious, I googled the question “How is the delta variant tested for?” I came up with news article after news article like this one that states, “The delta variant accounts for more than 80% of the nation's COVID-19 cases, the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.” However, that same article notes, a few paragraphs later, that “There is not a specific test for the delta variant.” (Actually, there is a genomic test, but most labs don’t run it as a matter of course.) So the CDC is telling us it’s the dominant variant, but if no one is actually testing for it, how do they know that it is the dominant variant? I’m not saying that covid is a hoax—please go read the first part of this blog post again—but this is the kind of stuff I am having trouble reconciling in my head.

I thought that going to Spokane might give me some perspective. It did and it didn’t. Washington state reinstated its mask mandate for indoor spaces about a week ago, so I washed all my masks and put them into my little zip pouch and put it back on the front seat of my car. If I want to shop at a business and that business requests that I wear a mask to enter their establishment, I will. I expected that when I got to Spokane, the mask mandate would be in full force. I was surprised to discover that it wasn’t. Almost every single store had a sign on the door reminding customers that masks were mandatory in Washington state, but very few stores were policing the mandate. I saw plenty of customers in masks and a good handful not. I even went into a few stores where no one was wearing a mask. My sense was that a lot of people were just tired of the whole situation. Some of the small businesses are hanging on by their fingernails. One of the quilt store owners told me that the Fourth of July fabric that was supposed to arrive in March finally came—last week. I kept thinking of that saying, “Beatings will continue until morale improves.”

I stopped at the BMW dealer because the check engine light went on in The Diva about halfway across Idaho. The husband suggested I see if they could run a diagnostic panel and find out if it was kicking out a code. I walked into the service office, which was completely empty. That was odd. I waited for a few minutes and eventually Kevin came in. We chatted briefly and he said that he couldn’t even run the diagnostic panel for me because four of their service techs were out with covid. I don’t know what BMW’s vaccine policy is, but I would be surprised if their techs were unvaccinated.

[FWIW, the check engine light issue has happened before, and when I explained to Kevin the conditions under which the check engine light was coming on, he nodded and said the husband had done exactly what he was supposed to to try to fix this, and that it was a known—but minor—problem. Eventually, the light went out.]

On the way home, I listened to a couple of podcasts heavy on data analysis in an attempt to get a handle on the actual numbers. One of the podcasters posited the theory—a disconcerting one, certainly—that vaccinated people are driving the current surges. “How can that be?” you ask. If the vaccine lessens the severity of the disease but doesn’t limit transmission, then a vaccinated person with a mild case could be spreading the virus without realizing it. Is that what is happening? I don’t know, but I am entertaining all possibilities. And here’s a thought: If we woke up tomorrow morning and there was scientific evidence that the vaccinated are driving the surge of cases, would the vaccinated people be comfortable being treated the way many of them have been treating the unvaccinated? Would they accept being labelled as “selfish” and made to be social pariahs? That is a good reminder to extend the same grace to others that we ourselves would like to receive if the tables were turned.

Life is complex. Beware of those who say, “If only you do X, then Y will happen.” That is a reductionist approach that fails miserably in the face of reality. I am reminded of Thomas Sowell’s observation that “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.” And the more I think about all of this, the more I realize how vastly complex the whole situation really is.

I had a good trip. I’ll show some of the goodies I got later this week.

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The county is repaving our road. In Montana, “repaving” often means taking the existing road down to the roadbed and rebuilding it, rather than just slapping a layer of asphalt on top of what’s already there. In anticipation of that, the road department has cut down the road every half-mile or so, creating speed bumps. We have one such speed bump right in front of our house:

As far as I am concerned, the county can forget about repaving and just leave this speed bump here forever. It has had the wonderful side effect of stopping drivers from coming around the curve and hitting the straightaway at 90 miles an hour. I’ve seen a few people try, and it isn’t pretty.

It’s time to get the apples off the trees. I’ve got a few canning projects on the schedule and I also need to make some shaving cream for the husband. I bought some from a vendor at the Food and Farm Expo in Spokane two years ago and it’s almost gone. Unfortunately, that vendor no longer makes it and the one she does sell now has a honey and banana scent. I am kind of particular about the shaving cream he uses because I am so sensitive to scents, and I loathe bananas. I’ll mix up a batch here—probably lavender- or peppermint-scented—and see how that works.

What's Growing in Mountain Brook?

We were all exhausted at the end of the day, but the garden tour was a success! We will have a debriefing session some time later this week so we can compare notes and make plans for next year.

The only picture I have is this one:

Thank goodness for Robin, my hostess. I had organized everything I needed ahead of time, from plates and napkins to lemonade and homemade zucchini bread, but I am entirely worthless when it comes to hostessing. It is not and never will be one of my talents. Robin sent me to the old herb garden to cut echinacea, grabbed some Mountain Brook Studio pottery for the floral arrangements, and set up the refreshments where people could partake on their way in and out of the greenhouse. She sat at a table outside and greeted people as they arrived, keeping track of all the administrative details and freeing me up to talk about the garden. During the quiet times, she crocheted potholders—a woman after my own heart.

The day started out cool and foggy, but by mid-morning it was a glorious 70 degrees and sunny. We had somewhere around 50 people come through. I was at the very south end of the route, so I expected that some of the attendees might not make it down that far. However, tickets were punched at each garden, and anyone who got all five punches could take the ticket back to the starting area and enter to win the gift basket.

The best part, for me, was getting to meet some of the new people who have moved into our community. I am enough of an old-timer now, having been here for 28 years next week, that I put people on my mental landscape map based on whose house they live in. One couple said, “Yes, we live in that yellow house just around the sharp curve,” and I said, “Oh, Earl and Evelyn’s house!” They are several owners removed from Earl and Evelyn, and the house used to be red, but they are part of the neighborhood now. The lavender hedges generated lots of comments, and I invited people to come back in the spring to get lavender seedlings.

The pigs were thrilled to have so many people admiring them. They love to be social and came running to the fence as soon as people entered the garden.

Our tour organizer, Sunnie, is an artist, and she had arranged for each of us to have an artist set up for plein air painting. I had two—one set up in the garden and one set up in the front yard by the apple orchard. (I got more than my 10,000 steps in yesterday, because the garden is on the rental property and the orchard and chickens are here by the house, so there was a lot of back and forth.) Gini Ogle was painting in the garden. She did two small oils, one of a tomato and one of the greenhouse with the lavender hedge. I purchased the greenhouse painting from her at the end of the day. I don’t have it yet because she took it back to her studio to put some finishing touches on it.

The husband went to one of his jobsites to strip forms yesterday but helped us clean up and put things away when he got home. He needed a new pair of boots and I hadn’t made anything for dinner, so we had date night with a stop at the Army-Navy store followed by a fabulous dinner at Blaine Creek (for you locals). I had the most amazing grilled salmon and finished up with a piece of cheesecake with caramel sauce. The food there never disappoints, although the husband noted that they could do three times the business if they could find enough wait staff. Everyone is shorthanded.

Now garden cleanup can begin in earnest. We ran into one of our farmer friends at Blaine Creek and he and the husband made arrangements for the husband to go over and get some straw bales soon. I think I am going to pull everything but the tomatoes and get to work on bringing in some loads of compost.

But first, some down time for me in Spokane this week. I can’t wait.

Fire Cider

I put anther eight gallon zip bags of ripe tomatoes into the freezer yesterday. They will become the next batch of salsa. My friend Marcie came over mid-morning and got a couple of five-gallon buckets’ worth of tomatoes to round out her salsa-making. We stood out in the cool rain and worked and talked for a bit. After the excessive heat and drought this summer, working in the rain in 60-degree temps felt heavenly. I was in no hurry to come inside.

[This has been a banner year for tomatoes. Some of it was the heat, for sure. I planted fewer plants this year than last, and we’re still going to exceed last year’s harvest by quite a bit. I also saved seed from my best-producing plants from last season, and I think that makes a difference.]

The garden is as ready as it is going to be. The garden tour starts this morning—you can stop by the Mountain Brook Library on Foothill Road and get tickets if you don’t have them yet—and runs until 4 pm. We got a few more showers overnight, but today is supposed to be pleasant and about 70 degrees. I’ve got lemonade and zucchini bread ready for the guests. I’ll try to get some photos, but I may just be too busy.

After I finished up in the garden, I came in and made a batch of fire cider. While I appreciate the availability of modern medical treatments, I also believe in the power of good ole’ homemade remedies, and I’ve been stocking the medicine cabinet with vitamins and other supplies. Fire cider is a new one to me, although I’ve seen some of the ingredients in other cold and flu remedies. You can Google “fire cider” and get tons of recipes. The one I used calls for onion, garlic, ginger root, horseradish root (dug from my garden), orange zest and fresh orange juice, cayenne pepper, and any other spices you want to add (I put in some allspice and whole cloves). Mix everything in a quart mason jar and cover with apple cider vinegar:

Now it goes into a cool, dark cabinet to steep for a month. To use, strain and mix with honey/hot water to taste. I’ve got enough ingredients to do a few more batches.

Even if it’s only palliative, for alleviating symptoms, I plan to use it. The mixture was fairly pungent as I was getting it ready and I have no doubt it’s going to be a powerful decongestant.

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The husband did another timber frame barn foundation and slab a few weeks ago. He told me that this barn came from the same company that did my friend Tera’s barn. The company sends a crew out from back east to put the frame together, and they made a video of the barn raising. It’s on Vimeo and I cannot figure out how to embed it here, but if you click on the link, it should go right to the video.

I am making my list of things I want to get in Spokane when I go this week. I asked our renter and his wife if they needed anything from Trader Joe’s and their five year-old (Marcie’s granddaughter) piped right up and said she needed some Scandinavian Swimmers. That was a new one to me. Apparently, they are the Trader Joe’s brand of Swedish Fish. They are now on the list, along with a couple of one-pound bars of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate (for me) and the usual haul of chocolate-covered espresso beans for the husband. Does anyone else need anything?

Washington state has reinstituted its mask mandate for all inside spaces. Nordstrom had told all the corporate employees that they would be back in their offices at least a few days a week starting in September, but when I talked to DD#2 yesterday, she said they had pushed that back to January 2022. She’ll continue working from home until then.

On Flathead Lake

Part of me wasn’t sure WS would rise to the challenge, but except for a couple of trips to the bathroom, a break for lunch (pizza) around noon, and a quick stretch in the afternoon, he spent all of Wednesday in the husband’s recliner watching videos (mostly Land Before Time). He even told the husband that should the husband ever get another recliner, WS would be happy to take his old one. That recliner is a bone of contention here. The girls and I would like to get the husband a new one, but he says the old one is broken in and comfortable. It’s also dirty and ratty and starting to fall apart.

[Before anyone has a hissy fit, no, I do not believe in a steady diet of TV-watching and inactivity for children. Once in a while, as a treat, however, that is what it is—a treat. Adults “treat” themselves all the time in the name of self-care. WS starts school on Monday, and he has worked very hard this summer. I thought he deserved the down time.]

I made one last batch of zucchini bread and did some other household tasks, occasionally sitting down to watch TV and discuss dinosaurs with WS. He is a wealth of information.

Yesterday, we headed out early to do errands and have lunch before our boat cruise at 1 pm. One of our stops was Joann Fabrics, where I told WS he could pick out some dinosaur-themed fabric for a T-shirt. I plan to use the Oliver + S School Bus shirt pattern, which has already been printed and taped together for tracing:

I’d love to be able to get it done in time for him to wear on the first day of school, but I doubt that will happen.

We had lunch at Chick-Fil-A—his choice, because he had never been there. I forgot that little boys can put away a lot of food. (You would think I would know better, being married to the husband.) I should have gotten him a regular meal, not the kids’ meal. I had cookies in my purse for dessert, though.

We got to the marina at the appointed time, presented our tickets, and boarded the boat. I suggested we sit on the upper deck near the wheelhouse:

Alas, I hadn’t factored in the southwesterly “breeze” as we headed south down the lake, so the first half of the trip was a bit windy. About 15 minutes into the trip, WS discovered that our neighbor Chelsey and her daughter, Anna—who we refer to as “Little Anna” so as not to confuse her with “Big Anna,” who has the catering business—were also on the cruise. I got to visit with Chelsey for a bit and the kids hung out together.

Despite the blue skies, we still have enough smoke and haze to obscure a good view of the mountains. This is looking north/northeast as we were on our way back to the marina.

Those are two distinct ranges. The Mission range is in the foreground. It’s the darker range that peters out toward the left side of the photo. Behind it is the Swan range, which are the mountains just to the east of our house. I know the landscape well enough that I could point out where our house would be if the picture were a bit clearer.

Montana is breathtakingly beautiful.

We got home in time for WS to watch another couple of episodes of Land Before Time before his mom showed up to get him.

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My plan for today was to touch up the garden before the tour, but it has been raining off and on all night, with more showers expected today. I’ll do what I can in between the raindrops. There are a few things that will have to wait until tomorrow morning. The husband will be here to help me fold up tarps and move tables and chairs. I dropped off the apron that I made for the gift basket and then realized I had forgotten to take a picture of it. Oh, well.

The garden tour will mark the end of gardening season, in a sense. I’ll still be bringing in tomatoes and the melons will be allowed to ripen, but I’ll finish digging up potatoes, trim back the lavender hedges, and pull up the cukes and zucchini plants. It’s time to start putting the garden to bed for the winter. I will not lie, though—I am looking forward to my overnight trip to Spokane next week. I need some time where the only person I have to cater to is me.

Salsa Day

I’ve avoided making salsa for years because 1) The husband eats so much of it that I have joked about getting it delivered in 55-gallon drums; and 2) I was never happy with how mine turned out. My friend Smokey stopped by last week and I asked for his advice. Smokey is the father of one of my neighbors and he moved here 10 years ago from California. (He is, however, one of those people who might as well have been born here, because he fits right in.) He comes over every so often to sit on the porch with me and shoot the breeze. Smokey is an excellent cook, gardener, and used to raise livestock. He gave me some ideas to get started and said I should just play around with the spices until I was happy with how it tasted.

After the husband left for work yesterday morning, I got down to business. I chopped onions and garlic. I roasted and chopped Hatch chili peppers. I pulled eight gallon bags of frozen tomatoes out of the freezer and plopped all the tomatoes from one bag into a bowl of warm water, which is a neat trick I picked up from Amy Dingmann of the Farmish Kind of Life podcast. The skins slipped right off.

I do not separate my tomatoes when I freeze them, so the bags are filled with whatever is ripe at the moment. I would say the total was about 1/3 paste tomatoes (Oregon Star, Amish, and Purple Russian), 1/3 Dirty Girl, which are small, but those plants produce abundantly, and 1/3 Cherokee Purple. After chopping them coarsely, I put everything together in my 16-quart stock pot and cooked it down for a bit. I added salt, pepper, some cumin, and a dash of lime juice. I did not add any cilantro—even though I love it and it’s growing out in the garden—because the other three people in my family think it tastes like soap.

[Insert sad face here.]

I tasted the mixture and was pleasantly surprised. I like using the different varieties of tomatoes. The Cherokee Purples, being an heirloom variety, have a nice bite to them, but that’s toned down by the paste tomatoes. The result was 12 quarts of salsa goodness:

It was actually 12-2/3 quarts, so I left the 2/3 of a quart in the fridge and the husband had it on his eggs this morning, as he does every morning. And he had salsa on the meat loaf I made for dinner last night. I wasn’t kidding about the 55-gallon drums.

I always process my tomato sauce and salsa in the pressure canner—salsa, especially, because it’s got onions and chilis in it and I just don’t want to worry. My water bath canner only holds 7 quarts and the All-American holds 14, so it doesn’t take any additional time to pressure can.

Salsa is fairly labor-intensive but also easy to make in large batches. I know I’ll have enough tomatoes to make at least three or four dozen quarts this year, and if I get that much done, I’ll be happy. The husband asked me how much salsa I buy in a year and if I could make our whole supply and I said, “We don’t have that many tomatoes.”

I might make the next batch a bit hotter. Susan gave me some NuMex hot pepper plants and they produced well.

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I have WS today and tomorrow. Elysian took a teaching position in town and is having teacher orientation this week. Being the indulgent neighborhood aunt, I told WS that if he wants to park himself in the husband’s recliner all day and watch TV, that is fine with me, although his mother may have a different idea. We have tickets for a boat cruise on Flathead Lake tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll make a day of it and do lunch, too. The weather is supposed to be nice, with temps in the mid-70s, although it will be colder on the lake.

I’ve got reservations for an overnight stay in Spokane next week. The hotels were all booked—kids are coming back to college—so I found a room in a quiet Airbnb not far from where DD#1 lived when she was in grad school there. It’ll be a quick trip but a much-needed one.

Us Versus the Wildlife

We’re getting ready for the garden tour on Saturday! I hope my local readers will join us!

There are five gardens featured in the upcoming garden tour "What's Growing in Mountain Brook? (Legally)", Saturday, August 28, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Each garden has unique surprises awaiting you, from magic to medicinal herbs to heavy production. There are many different ways to garden---discover some of the different things these Mountain Brook gardeners do. Also enjoy the plein air artists and the relaxing day outside. Tickets are $10 per person and are available at the Mountain Brook Library, from Board Members, or by calling (406) 314-8232. Pick up your map to the gardens at the Library on Garden Tour Day. Tours start at each garden 5 minutes after the hour and leave plenty of time to wander around, ask questions, and enjoy the garden. Your center for bathrooms and refreshments is the Mountain Brook Community Library.

The painter who will be in my garden is coming for a visit this afternoon so we can meet each other and she can see where she would like to set up her easel.

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We have begun the annual fall battle against hungry, marauding wildlife. I have come upon the husband, more than once, yelling at the deer to get out of the apples. Over the weekend, he put up an electric fence:

Will it keep a determined bear out?—maybe not. It will, however, dissaude the deer from getting in there and munching on anything they can reach. It’s an interesting setup; the control box is mounted on the garage, a wire is attached to the fence around the porta-potty and then from there around the trees, back to the other side of the fence and finally to the garage again to complete the circuit. I just have to remember not to walk into it on my way to the mailbox.

I will need to pick apples soon, in any case, as the Lodi, State Fair, and Red Wealthy are close to being ready.

I also bagged the clusters of grapes—the ones that were left, anyway, because this year, the birds did not wait for the grapes to ripen—with organza gift bags.

If this works, I will do it earlier next year. I think I will also refrain from pruning grapes next spring. A hard pruning did wonders for the one vine that was struggling, but the rest of them put out a lot of foliage and that was it. My grapes have made it clear that they do not want to pretend they are in Tuscany. They have no desire to grow in a neatly manicured fashion. They need an arbor of some sort to trail over. The husband has said he will look at what he can do, but that’s a ways down on the to-do list.

I’ve got seven gallon bags of frozen tomatoes ready for the first round of salsa-making today. I have at least that many tomatoes (possibly more) ripening in the laundry room. It looks like I planted my tomatoes over a nuclear waste site. (I am really good at growing tomatoes, for some odd reason, and my technique consists of sticking plants in the ground.) There will be more than enough for us. Some of my Oregon Star paste tomatoes—which I grew from seed that I saved from the biggest one last year—are huge. This one weighs 14.7 ounces. Once it ripens, it will provide seed for next year’s crop.

I do tend to pull the tomatoes as soon as they have any pink on them and let them ripen inside. Less temptation for the ground squirrels.

The husband is enjoying Minnesota Midget melons with his breakfast and I’m waiting for a few more watermelons to ripen. The peas look good, but unless it warms up a bit more in September, I doubt I’ll get a second crop. We did cover everything last night because of a frost warning. The temperature was 35 degrees when I woke up, so that was probably a good call.

I am about ready for gardening season to be over. As soon as the tomatoes are done, so will I be. All that’s left will be cleanup and the application of some chicken and pig manure.

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I am trying to work through the rest of the material I had set aside for summer T-shirts. Frost warnings notwithstanding, we could still be in the 80s for much of September. Once the fabric is cut, the T-shirt takes about half an hour to assemble—save for the hems—so I’ve been making them here and there as I have time. After the shirts are all made, I’ll have a marathon coverstitching session and do all the hems.

I’m also making a pile of stuff that needs altering, mostly hems. I have one top, in particular, that I would wear more often except that I don’t like the length of the sleeves. They aren’t really short sleeves but they aren’t really elbow-length sleeves, either. It occurred to me the other day that it will take me 20 minutes to shorten and hem the sleeves to a better length on the coverstitch machine.

And then I’ll get started on making some long-sleeve tops and hoodies for cooler weather.

Life Without a Dog

Thank you all for the kind words about Lila. I will not lie; it has been a tough couple of days. I am used to having her here with me in the house and it is disconcerting to be entirely alone.

The last few days have been cool and rainy. The only thing happening in the garden right now is that the tomatoes continue to ripen. I cleaned the house, made half a dozen pillowcases, finished some rolled hem napkins, and cut out another Kensington skirt—black ponte this time—and a couple more T-shirts.

I was talking about fabrics with a friend of mine who also makes her own T-shirts. We agreed that we can’t quite understand why Joann Fabrics has such ugly garment fabrics. Truly, some of them are really hideous. Joanns has a line of knits—the 98% cotton/2% spandex ones—that are carried under the Pop! label and intended to be for juvenile apparel. Naturally, they are heavy on dinosaurs, cute forest animals, and bright colors, as they should be. My biggest gripe with that line is the scale of the prints. Kids’ clothes, especially baby clothes, are tiny. The prints should be scaled down accordingly, but they aren’t. Some of the motifs are way too big for small pieces of clothing.

And someone thought this was appropriate for a line of juvenile fabric:

It’s cute—this middle-aged woman bought some to make a T-shirt out of—but it’s not what I would consider a “juvenile” print. Also, the scale is too big for small clothing. Those greenhouses are 4” across. The print will look fine in an adult garment, but it’s going to look weird in a T-shirt for a young child.

I get it—this is Joann Fabrics we’re talking about. And I am aware that they’ll try to squeeze as much revenue out of a design as possible, so they’ll often have the same design available in cotton, fleece, flannel, and knits. That doesn’t leave much consideration for the appropriateness of the design for the fabric. A design that looks good as a fleece blanket might not look good on a kids’ T-shirt. Still, I wonder how one gets to be a fabric designer for them, because I am tempted to apply for the position. Because wouldn’t it be better to design fabrics that are attractive and of the correct scale and sell out of them instead of having a whole bunch of leftover ugly fabric that has to go on clearance or be sold as scrap?

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Our church conference had its annual meeting yesterday. We were hoping to have it in person this year, but out of an abundance of caution, the Board decided to have it online, instead. I was planning to fringe a finished prayer shawl during the meeting. However, I could not find the fourth skein of yarn in that colorway (Lion Brand Homespun). I make the shawl with three skeins and use the fourth for fringe. The missing skein might be in the bin of yarn at church. I grabbed another batch of yarn from my stash and cast on for another shawl. The meeting lasted several hours and I got a good chunk of work done.

[I again wonder how meeting attendees can sit for three or four hours with nothing to work on. Is it just me that has trouble?]

One of our discussion questions during the meeting was whether or not we should meet in person or online. The churches in our conference are geographically spread out, unlike conferences back east where you can swing a cat and hit a dozen Mennonite churches within a small radius. Ours is the congregation furthest east, in Kalispell, and there is a congregation in Anchorage. Meeting locations vary, depending on who is willing to host them, but it’s a 12-hour drive from here to Boise or Portland. We also have winter driving conditions to contend with. (I did comment, though, that I’ve made to the trip to the February meeting in Portland twice in a snowstorm, because if you live here, you just learn to drive in it.) Ultimately, the vote was 2/3 in favor of hybrid meetings, where those who want to gather in person can, and those who want to join in online can do so as well.

I am 100% in favor of in-person meetings. I hate Zoom, for all that I get a lot of knitting done. Part of that is my fondness for road trips and part of that is a desire to see my friends in person. I can’t get to Seattle for a while yet, but I am planning to squeeze an overnight trip to Spokane into the schedule here before too long. The rain has eased fire concerns enough that I am comfortable venturing further afield.

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I had a good conversation with the quilt store owner yesterday about classes and students. One of the issues with Thursday’s night’s class was a lack of preparation. One lady hadn’t received the supply list. (I do bring leftover fabrics and supplies in case that happens, but I don’t want students to rely on me to provide things.) Several students wanted to shop for supplies when they got there, despite the fact that I was very specific in the supply list—down to suggesting a suitable brand of thread—so they could buy before class. A couple of people walked in and announced that they had never taken the machine out of the box/closet and had no idea how to thread it. Another student wasn’t interested in rolled hems on woven fabrics and wanted to jump right to lettuce edges.

It’s going to take some time and ongoing “training” to get students used to taking classes, but I pointed out that if the store is going to continue to attract nationally-known teachers—Krista Moser will be there in a few weeks—those teachers are going to expect students to come to class ready to learn. I suggested that the store make something available, either on the website or as a handout when registering, that gives tips for “getting the most out of a class.” I offered to write it up. The handout would include things like becoming familiar with the machine before class (and bringing the manual), having the correct supplies, and not expecting the teacher to tailor a group class specifically to individual students.

This isn’t going to happen overnight, and there will always be students in a class who come less than prepared, for whatever reason. For these serger classes, though, I am going to insist that if someone has never used a serger—or never used the serger they want to bring to class—that they either take a mastery class, first, or make arrangements for a private class ahead of time. You could get away with coming to a sewing class with a new-to-you sewing machine, but sergers are a whole ‘nother beast entirely.

A Good Dog

The house is very quiet this morning. Out of habit, I came downstairs and walked over to open the kitchen door to let Lila out, except that Lila isn’t here. We lost her yesterday to a sudden and unexpected medical emergency.

The day started out normally, but midmorning, I heard an odd noise on the porch. I went out to find Lila lying down, breathing hard. She struggled to her feet and managed to get inside, where she flopped down on her pouf. I called the husband, then the vet, then our renter, who came over and lifted her up—dog bed and all—and put her into the back of my car. The vet took her in immediately and said she would call me as soon as she knew something.

That took most of the day. By late afternoon, they had determined that Lila had a tumor on her heart and that it was causing bleeding into the sac around the heart and into her chest. She was in a bad way. We had had no absolutely no warning as Lila hadn’t been behaving any differently than a 13 year-old dog would. The vet gave us the option of bringing her home but said she might not survive the trip and that it would be more compassionate to have her euthanized there. We agreed. The husband went to the vet’s office to be with her and bring her home.

She was such a good dog, one of the best we have ever had.

RIP, Lila. You will be missed.

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I managed to pull it together enough to go ahead with my serger class on rolled hems last night. I had seven students, four of whom were students from my first class. I’ve taught enough classes to have a sense of what the class is going to be like before it even starts—while the students are getting set up—and I decided to lower expectations right from the outset. I had planned for rolled hems on both woven and knit fabrics, but I told the students that if all we mastered were rolled hems on woven fabrics, they would be 90% of the way there.

I had seven students with seven different sergers: A Brother, a Huskylock, two Babylocks (different models), two Berninas (different models), and a Necchi. I had brought my Juki. A couple of the students either had never used a serger or never used the serger they had brought to class. Having that many different machines in one class is a challenge, and one that requires me to think on my feet. I was able to get everyone’s machine up and running save one, and—oh, the irony—it was the Necchi. We got the machine threaded and making a good serger stitch, but in order to make a rolled hem, you have to disengage the stitch finger. On most machines, that is done by moving a lever from one position to another. We could not figure out how to disengage the stitch finger on that machine. There was a lever but another piece of the machinery was preventing it from moving. That student didn’t have the manual with her and I could not find a copy online. She was very gracious about it and said she would go home and try to figure out how to do it on her own now that she understood the basic concept.

Several of the students were able to finish the edges of a set of napkins. (We all cheered when someone held up the first completed napkin.) A few more were able to get a good rolled hem by the end of the class and planned to do their napkins at home. Toward the end of the class, I took some time to explain the difference between rolled hems on wovens and rolled hems (lettuce edges) on knits and how to switch from one to the other.

Overall, I was pleased with the way the class went. The students must have been pleased, too, because they started asking what the next class would be even before last night’s class ended. I need to look at my calendar and talk to the owner and class coordinator, but I suspect the next class is going to be a draft-your-own T-shirt class. (I wore one of my me-made T-shirts to class.) That one probably will be on a Saturday as it’s going to have to be a longer class.

The mama hen wasted no time in getting the chick out to the chicken yard yesterday. I checked the rest of the eggs and they were infertile, so one chick is all we have right now.

Dave is a Dad

When I went into the coop Monday afternoon to do chicken chores, I thought I heard a faint peep coming from one of the nesting boxes. None of the broody hens would volunteer any further information, however. I figured that if there were a chick, I’d find out about it eventually.

On Tuesday, I could hear peeping as soon as I opened the coop door. Sure enough, the broody Buff Orpington hen had a chick with her:

She has been sitting on four or five eggs (and a golf ball), and of all the hens, she has acted the broodiest. That is not surprising as the Buffs are the only reliable broody hens I’ve ever had.

She’s still setting, which makes me think that perhaps another egg might hatch. In the meantime, I put some food and water in with her, and she gratefully hoovered it down.

I had to institute a rule this year that I am the only person allowed to be in charge of broody hens. One of us—the one who has never gestated a mini-me, let alone two—does not have the patience required to allow broody hens to set. He thinks that if a hen gets off the nest to get some food and a drink of water, it has abandoned its eggs and he should collect them. The hen hasn’t abandoned its eggs. It was hungry and thirsty. But I know this is killing him. A few days ago, he came in from the coop and said, “Did you know there are like three dozen eggs out there?”

Yes, yes I do. I know how exactly how many eggs are out there. I know which eggs I should bring in. I know which eggs I should leave because a hen is setting on them. I know precisely how long the hens have been parked on top of eggs. Everything is under control.

This chick has a dark spot on its head, which bodes well that it is probably a pullet. Thank goodness. We certainly don’t need any more roosters here.

I’ve still got a broody Barred Rock, who took over for a broody Leghorn (yeah, I didn’t think that would last), and a broody Light Brahma. The Barred Rock looks fairly committed. We’ll find out.

Dave is thus far unimpressed by his accomplishment.

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We went from 92 with a hot, dry wind on Monday afternoon to 55 with a cool breeze and showers on Tuesday afternoon. I’m sure you know which I prefer. If it weren’t for the fact that I still have to get tomatoes in and processed, I’d be fine with the cooler weather from here on out. At least digging potatoes will be more pleasant now that temps have moderated.

I really need to get started on the fall wardrobe, though. Serger class is tonight, and once that is over, I can get back to making a few key pieces. I also pulled some fabric to make a few more items for the sale next month. Tomorrow is supposed to be dry and cool and will be a garden work day. Saturday is supposed to be cool and rainy. I have a Zoom conference to attend in the morning, but the afternoon may end up being a marathon cutting session.

Just Like Kevin Bacon

The Mennonites have this thing called The Mennonite Game, which can be summed up thusly: Put two Mennonites in a room together, and within 10 minutes, they will have figured out how they are related.

I’ve seen it in action and it’s fascinating. Having come to the Mennonites from another denomination, I can’t lay claim to being related to many of them, but I like to play a version of the game every so often.

Back in 1993, when we were getting ready to move to Montana, my grandmother pulled out one of her church periodicals and pointed to a blurb about the Missouri Synod Lutheran church in Kalispell. “Promise me that you will go to this church when you get there,” she said. Being the dutiful granddaughter, I did as my grandmother asked. The church had a wonderful moms’ group run by a lady named Nancy, who became one of my other “moms” (I have several). Nancy and her husband are DD#2’s godparents.

The church in Kalispell grew enough that they decided to start another, smaller church, out in our fire district, pastored by the former minister of the town church. By that time, I had already started attending the Mennonite church, but I knew several people who attended the Church at Creston, as it is called, and Nancy and her husband were among them.

I attended a memorial service yesterday at the Church at Creston. Our fire department’s former assistant chief, Bob, died in June. He and his wife were members there. Being at that memorial service was a weird intersection of two very different parts of my life. I went in with my friend, Pat, and her husband, a retired member of our fire department. We all go to the Mennonite church. After the service, the three of us were standing in line for food when I spotted Nancy. Nancy and her husband had been good friends with Bob and his wife. She came over and I said, “I need to introduce you to someone.” I motioned Pat over and introduced her to Nancy and said, “Nancy’s granddaughter goes to Bethel College.” (Bethel is a Mennonite college in Kansas and obviously doesn’t limit itself to Mennonite students.) Pat said, “Our son graduated from Bethel!”

A few minutes later, we were all seated at a table with the former pastor of the church in town—who is now retired from pastoring the Church at Creston—and he and his wife asked me how the girls were doing. I said that DD#1 was married and living in Alaska and I added, half-jokingly, “She married a good Lutheran boy—he graduated from St. Olaf.” The gentleman sitting next to me—who is the pastor of the Missouri Synod church in Whitefish—said, “I graduated from St. Olaf!” We also talked a bit about the ELCA church where I play piano for Lent and Advent.

[Our DSIL’s mother’s maiden name is the same as the name of the pastor of the Whitefish church, but I didn’t think to ask if they were somehow related. I’ll have to check into that.]

Despite the sadness of the occasion, it was wonderful to sit and catch up with people I hadn’t seen in many years. And I am reminded again just how small the world really is, if you’re willing to make an effort to find out.

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It is a blessedly cool 58 degrees outside and we are waiting for the rain to arrive. I took my first batch of dried cherries out of the dehydrator yesterday and started a second batch. (That’s a half-gallon Mason jar, so it’s more than it appears.)

I also cut up some zucchini and dried that, too. I’ll either throw it into soups this winter or rehydrate it for chicken treats.

I finished another apron, the one with the cute chef fabric.

The reverse is the same black and white gingham as the pocket on the front. I use a lot of polka dot prints, but I am developing a fondness for gingham.

A Tree Falls—Again

The husband went out yesterday morning to let the pigs out, and when he came back, he said, “There is a tree hanging over the path to the garden, so watch when you go out there.”

Of course, I had to go look:

It’s a skinny grand fir, but you can see it leaning from bottom right to top left in the pic.

I walked to the other side and got a reverse angle shot. These trees tend to rot at the bottom and then shear off in the slightest breeze.

The fir got hung up in this mountain maple, which is another tree I dislike. They aren’t “trees” so much as they are a collection of branches sticking up from the ground. About their only use is for cushioning the fall of bigger trees. This maple kept the fir from taking out our little bridge.

[Krause Creek runs near our house. Many years ago, before the creek was diverted (in the 70s, maybe?) Krause Creek actually ran through our property. The old creek bed is still visible. The bridge in the picture goes over that old creek bed.]

I positioned myself in a safe spot and watched the proceedings. The husband cut the tree at the base, first, to see where it would go. It was pretty well hung up in that maple, so it didn’t do much except cantilever up and down. He worked back and forth from either end and got most of it cut up.

And then he surgically dissected what was left of the fir from within the maple. I commented that I wouldn’t be too busted up to see that maple disappear if that made his job easier, but it’s fire season and we don’t want to add to the existing brush. He said we could re-evaluate this fall when we’re cleaning up the property.

It was hot and windy yesterday. Today is “supposed” to be the last hot day—not as hot as yesterday, though—before we get rain and cooler temps tomorrow. Let’s hope. I am going to get done what I can while it’s cool this morning. I’ve got to get my serger class handout written up, too. The cooler weather coming up is going to make it much easier to finish the garden cleanup for the garden tour.

I am still figuring out the finer points of the dehydrator, like exactly how long it takes to dry cherries, but I can tell that it’s going to be a useful piece of equipment.

The Last Couple of Miles of Summer

What a difference between last Sunday—when we were shivering outside at our church service/picnic—and today, when the high is supposed to hit 92. We are forecast to get showers on Tuesday (yay!) with a high of 65, and then it’s only going to be in the 70s for the rest of the week. Hallelujah. Between the heat and the fires and the tourists, this summer has felt like an absolute marathon.

Someone dropped a box of cherries off at our house. Thank you, whoever you are! Neither of us eats a lot of fresh cherries, but they were beautiful and I wanted to do something with them:

I washed and pitted them, cut them in half, then put them in my new dehydrator. They are about halfway through the drying cycle. Dried cherries will be great in cookies and trail mix.

I tidied the house Friday. I won’t say I “cleaned” the house, because most of it needs to be torn apart, vacuumed and washed down to get rid of the dust and ash. There is no point doing that until later in the fall, but I did clean the bathrooms and pick up and organize my sewing area. I recently joined the Mountain Brook Craft Co-Op, which is loosely affiliated with our Mountain Brook Ladies’ Club (many of the same people), and I am hoping to sell some of the stuff I’ve made at the co-op sale in September. I had to be juried in, but it’s a good fit because I think most of what they sell at the sale are sewn items. I’ve got quite a bit of inventory already. If I have some time between now and the sale, though, I’d like to make a few more items. In order to do that, my workflow is going to have to be very streamlined. I’m anticipating a couple of days of marathon cutting followed by assembly-line sewing and serging. If I don’t get stuff done before this sale, then it will get bumped to later this winter for next year’s sale.

I need to figure out what is going on with one of my Juki sergers. I have two of the same model, an MO-654DE, but the second one needs adjusting. I have the first one set up for wovens and the second one for knits. The second one does fine with knits but it refuses to make a proper rolled hem on a woven fabric even when the settings are identical on both machines. It also is much noisier than the other machine and has been that way since I bought it. Unfortunately, there is a fail-safe that doesn’t allow the machine to run when the door is open, and if the door is closed, I can’t see where the noise is coming from.

[I wish I could make three-thread rolled hems on my industrial Juki. It’s a five-thread machine that can be converted to a three-thread machine, but it doesn’t have a way to do rolled hems. Industrial machines specifically for making rolled hems and only rolled hems do exist, but I don’t plan on buying one.]

We had our last Handi-Quilter Ruler Club last Tuesday. Many of us wanted to continue into the fall but we want to do something different so we’re switching to the Amanda Murphy Lollipop templates. This ruler club also comes with a pre-printed panel for practicing quilting with each of the Lollipop rulers. This club doesn’t start until October, which is great because I have no idea how I would shoehorn anything else into September.

The husband found the YouTube channel for Engels Coach Shop in Joliet, Montana, and we’ve been watching some of the videos. (The husband just did a shop foundation for someone who collects old carriages.) The videos are very well done. We watched one where the wheelwright was making the cover to one of the carriages. In part of the video, he was sewing on an industrial machine. It took me a few minutes of stopping and starting the video, but I finally figured out that he is sewing on a Singer 12W, which was the old Wheeler and Wilson 12. The giveaway was the foot style—his machine has the same kind of presser foot as the Singer 9W I’ve been working on, which was the old Wheeler and Wilson D9. (My 9W is almost back together except for the tension assembly.) I am not sure if he was making the tops with oilskin or thin leather, but the machine handled it beautifully. I had a few moments of serious machine envy there.

I had to go to town yesterday morning. While I was at Hobby Lobby, I ran into one of my students from my June serger class. She is also signed up for this week’s class—along with another repeat student—and asked if I could show her which needles to get. I found her the ones she needed and we chatted for a few minutes.

In the few minutes I’ve found here and there to sew, Vittorio has been churning out apron ties. The next apron is going to be out of this very cute chef fabric remnant:

One of the drawbacks of the remnant rack is that by the time a fabric ends up there, the likelihood of it being sold out altogether is pretty high. Sometimes I can order more online, or find it at a nearby store (“nearby” being defined as Missoula or Spokane), but sometimes what I get is all that’s available.

Potatoes and Beans

I started digging potatoes yesterday morning:

We have a good crop this year. I dug out some Yukon Golds the size of softballs. Yukon Gold and Classic Russet make up the bulk of what we eat, but there are also some Butter Reds and a few Purple Vikings in there, too. I’ll dig them all and then sort into burlap bags for storage. The Yukon Golds need to be eaten first as they don’t store well long-term.

That area of the garden is between the raspberries and the lavender hedge, and it’s going to be where I put the strawberries next year. That way, all the berries will be in the same area of the garden. The husband dumped a load of compost in that spot last fall and the potatoes were mulched with straw, so by the time the straw breaks down over the winter, the soil should be well amended.

Our friend Anna, who has a catering business, ordered green beans for me from one of her local suppliers. I didn’t grow any this year, but they will be on the list for next year. She dropped off 10 pounds of beans for me the other night and those turned into 16 pints of French-style green beans yesterday. Elysian had gotten me a green bean cutter for my birthday and I wanted to try it out:

I am on the fence. This is a sturdy little gadget—cast iron—but it needs to be clamped to something. I can’t clamp it to either my countertop or the kitchen table, so I used the wooden stand that came with my apple peeler. I had to put the stand on top of a book, though, to get the cutter high enough off the table. It was not the most stable of arrangements. Also, you can’t do more than one or two beans at a time or the cutter jams. It was slow going.

I did the first five pounds and processed them, and while the first batch was processing, I did the other five pounds. My big pressure canner holds 19 pints; I could have done all 16 pints at once, but it worked well to do them in two batches. They only have to process for 20 minutes, so I wasn’t waiting forever between batches. (Dry beans, in contrast, have to process for 90 minutes, and the canner takes a long time to cool down enough to open.) I was taking the second batch out of the canner and making spaghetti for dinner just as the husband was pulling in to the driveway. Sixteen pints are ready for the pantry:

I may still take my friend Marcie up on her offer to get green beans from her garden, but I probably won’t french those unless I can rig up a better system. I saw that another blogger had clamped her slicer to a wooden barstool and attached a bowl beneath it with a bungee cord, so I might try that. Also, according to the Cuisinart website, I should be able to slice beans horizontally using the food processor—and my new one is here and ready to use—so that’s another possibility.

If you don’t try, you won’t know.

I was hoping to unbox my new LEM dehydrator and get it up and running yesterday, too, but I didn’t get to it. I have an American Harvester dehydrator which works fine for a lot of foods, but it’s round (a weird shape for drying things) and has no temperature control. I find it hard to dry herbs in that dehydrator without them getting cooked to a crisp. Susan has a LEM dehydrator and raves about it. She loves the stainless steel trays. I will be curious to see how it does with herbs. I would like to start drying more of mine for tea, especially as I was able to expand my patch of chocolate mint this year.

I’ve got to check the apples today. Lodi is an early pie variety and I suspect these may be earlier than usual this year. We’ll find out.

My Apron Apron

I found a yard of this fabric on the remnant rack and fell in love. It was destined to become an apron:

I made it up in a basic chef’s apron pattern. The back is Robin Pickens’ “Thatched” fabric in the same acid green that is in the print. I added a large pocket because I need large pockets in my aprons.

[Did I ever tell you the story of butt-dialing 911 a few months ago? I was working in the greenhouse and bent over to get something and all of a sudden, my phone—in my apron pocket—started making a screeching alarm sound. Somehow, I had managed to depress the right combination of buttons and soon found myself chatting with a dispatcher. It was a slow day in dispatch and we had a nice conversation. She assured me that I wasn’t the first person to have done that.]

I love that this print is on a dark background. I need aprons that can stand up to some dirt.

Field testing my T-shirts is giving me lots of valuable information about what fabrics I like. Right now, the Laguna Cotton is edging out the Joann Fabrics cotton/spandex fabric. The Laguna Cotton has 5% spandex to the Joanns 2% spandex, and I am finding that the extra spandex makes a difference. I wore one of my Joann shirts yesterday, and while it fit well, the fabric recovery is not as good as the Laguna Cotton. By the end of the day, it had stretched out a bit more than I like. However, it is still a useful and comfortable top.

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Round 2 of bean canning was 15 pints of black beans, the La Preferida brand that Teri suggested:

I will be doing green beans later this week.

I am looking at my schedule for September and October and panicking only slightly, LOL. I am not sure how the days got filled, but fall is going to be almost as busy as the summer. At least it won’t be as hot (I hope).

Today’s schedule includes cutting the grass for one last time—we stop cutting in July because it gets hot and dry and the “grass” goes dormant, but usually in August, the crop of weeds that makes up part of our lawn needs to be topped off. Because we’re under stage 2 fire restrictions and not supposed to be using internal combustion engines outside after 1 pm, I need to get the cutting done this morning. And our last Ruler Club class is at the quilt store this afternoon.

Cold Feels Good

We planned an outside service and church picnic for yesterday morning. Our pastor said that if he had known it would bring rain, he would have scheduled it earlier in the summer. We were under a pavilion at the local fish hatchery, so we stayed dry, but it was in the 50s for most of the morning. And this will only make sense to people who don’t do well in the heat, but it felt wonderful to be cold enough that I had to put on warm clothes.

[Hardy folks, we Montanans. We picnic in all kinds of weather.]

The rain will help the garden, but we also had some thunderstorms. We’ll have to see if there are lightning strike fires that flare up this week when it gets back into the 90s again. Ugh.

I got a giggle out of this yesterday morning:

The husband had set up some sawhorses with lumber on top earlier in the week. I called him over to show him and said that the turkeys were grateful for the rain shelter he had built for them. He said if he had known, he would have thrown a tarp over it, too.

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Saturday morning was overcast and blissfully cool, so I spent the whole morning out in the garden. The first order of business was to cut out all the spent raspberry canes. I usually do this in the spring, but there is no reason it can’t be done in the fall. I am trying to beat back the raspberry patch to a manageable size and get the thorny variety out of there in favor of the thornless one. Fortunately, the thornless one is more vigorous and it has taken over much of the patch.

I also need to evict some ground squirrels:

I wasn’t planning on digging up potatoes yet, but I am not going to leave them for the rodents to snack on. I may have to camp out there with the .22 for a few days.

I hope the cucumber vines are close to being done producing. I think I’ve hauled in almost two hundred pounds of cukes this summer. Half of what I brought in on Saturday turned into these:

They are curry pickle slices, which is a recipe from one of my canning books. I tasted some before I canned them and they were pretty good. We’ll see how they taste after a month.

The gooseberries are ripe and I got enough to make a pie for the husband. His grandmother used to make gooseberry pies when he was growing up. I don’t know that mine is as good, but I was happy to use the fruit. I also pruned out some of the branches, similar to what I did with the currants.

I transplanted another row of lettuce seedlings. The first row bolted and is about to go to seed, which I will let it do so that lettuce comes up in that spot again next spring. And I have tiny seedlings coming up in a second tray in the greenhouse. This may be the year that I finally master succession planting.

Right now, the garden is at that stage of cleanup where it looks worse than when I started, but if I can get the canes piled up in an appropriate spot and do a bit of raking, it should look nice for the garden tour.

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With all of that gardening and kitchen work on Saturday and the picnic yesterday, I did not have time to sew much besides the straps for a couple of aprons. I offered to make a garden-themed apron for the raffle gift basket for the garden tour. That fabric was pulled from the stash and is waiting to be cut out.

The cool weather made me realize, though, that I need to get started on some long-sleeve tops for the fall.

Making All the Things

I said to the husband over dinner last night that I feel like I haven’t gotten as much accomplished this summer as I wanted to. Always one for putting things into the proper perspective, he responded with, “The summer isn’t over yet. We still have several weeks to go.”

No slacking around here, trust me.

And truly, I have gotten a lot done this summer. This is just me wrestling with the guilt of spending so much time sewing instead of gardening. I did scale back the garden quite a bit this year because of the need to kill weeds, and it was way too hot for me to work out there most days. Despite that, I kept up with the mowing and weeding. The pantry will be full this winter. I don’t have anything to feel guilty about.

Today is supposed to be pleasantly cooler, and tomorrow and Monday may be downright chilly and wet, with temps in the 60s and a 70% chance of rain. I’ve even seen warnings to backcountry hikers that they may encounter snow above 7000 feet. It gets hot again next week, unfortunately, but this will be a nice respite. It still won’t be enough to make a dent in the fires, though.

I canned 14 pints of white beans yesterday.

These are some that I grew myself. The husband asked me if I was planning to enter these in the fair. (No.) I also found the La Preferida brand of pinto beans and black beans that Teri recommended. (Thank you!) The next batch of beans will be black beans, I think.

Today is a garden work day. I’m going to cut back the spent raspberry canes, transplant some lettuce seedlings, and harvest herbs.

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I finished the dark green Kensington skirt, which was a ridiculously fast and easy project that pairs perfectly with this Liz Claiborne top:

The skirt fits me like a second skin and is very comfortable to wear. No mods will be required to the pattern, although I’d like to figure out a different way to do the yoke. The pattern calls for 1” wide elastic and I did change that to 1-1/2” wide elastic. I am not convinced that the skirt even needs the elastic, however, as that ponte holds it shape well and I am curvy enough to hold it up. It almost has the feel of a scuba knit. All in all, not bad for an $8 remnant and a couple of hours of sewing. The black version is on deck.

[If Joann Fabrics ever does away with the remnant rack, I will be one sad puppy.]

DD#2 noted that I am going to have to find places to wear all of these clothes. I told her that I might be able to sport a different outfit to church every Sunday for a year.

I’ve also got a couple of aprons moving through the assembly line. I went back to Vittorio, my beloved Necchi BF, to make those. It took me a couple of minutes to get used to sewing on a sewing machine again instead of a serger or coverstitch. The difference is noticeable.