Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
The ice has gone into the dog’s watering bowl. The beer is back in the fridge. The remains of the meal have new temporary housing in glad plastic boxes and the last of the dishes feel the heat of the wash cycle right now. Done, then, except for the memories and they are good ones.
Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
It was fun to see Kate get compliments on her cooking. Her cooking skills are remarkable. Her nutmeg sauce melts the heart of the largest Mammoth. We had a ceremony, a brief one, in which Kate passed to me the new wedding ring she purchased for me in Jackson Hole. We also acknowledged the reason for the ceremony, Vega.
Though we have not done our work here for a public or any public, it gratified us both to have genuine interest in our permaculture efforts. Having said that I need to get and plant some fall crops right now.
Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
The Woollies have come and gone. Kate’s wonderful meal has begun to work the true miracle of transubstantiation, beets and potatoes and chicken become Bill, Frank, Charlie, Warren. We did a tour of the orchard and the vegetable garden, talking along the way about permaculture. The topic interested everyone. It was fun to share the work Kate and I have been doing here with good friends.
Kate’s idea of giving the big dogs bones to occupy them worked well.
The dining room table had 9 people around it. It felt like a family dinner. We never moved from the table.
Jim Johnson showed up and brought his idea of selling lambs to individuals.
Now, tired. Good night.
Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
The table has its two extra leaves, making it big enough for 8 seated with space, 10 or so with a little up closeness thrown in for good measure. There are daisies and marigolds in vases. Our entire apple crop for this year–3–rest in a Japanese bowl. The greens have been cut, washed and chiffonaded. Kate has roasted the turnips and beets. The chickens will go into a clay pot each and the potatoes will go onto boil.
Appetizers are ready and we’ll get the ice when Warren arrives to help. The house got an extra cleaning today and the patio and deck have been swept. We’re ready.
It’s fun to do this once in a while. Gathering our own produce and preparing it made me feel like a small farmer. It’s a good feeling.
The temperature will be moderate and the sky clear. A perfect evening to consider local and sustainable agriculture, but even more a perfect evening to entertain friends.
Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
Today the Woolly Mammoths put themselves on the ancient trail to the north, a gathering of the herd happens here in Andover starting at 6:00 p.m. or so. Kate has helped me with the meal the last two meetings, or, better, I have helped her help me. The menu includes two brined and roasted free-range chickens. It also includes potatoes from our garden with our parsley, roasted beets, turnips, and carrots, and possibly, tomato and onion salad from our garden. I say possibly because three of our Cherokee Purples began to turn last Friday, all the rest of our tomato explosion are still green. Kate will also make her signature dish, a rhubarb pudding.
I have to go out this morning and retrieve my new wedding ring from the jewelers so Vega, Kate, and I can have a small ceremony during the meeting blessing the new ring. Then there’s a chain to get to keep Rigel out of the damned orchard. Ice. Bones to keep the big dogs happy during the meal. The little things that have to get done before a large meal.
So, I’d better get to it. Talk to you later.
Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
Kate made banana bread and cut up vegetables. I went to the grocery store and returned. In the average year we may entertain non-family members once or at most twice, family sometimes 3 or 4 times. We’re far away from the center of things here in Andover, true, but we’re not big entertainers or party goers in the first place. Kate is comfortable cooking for guests while I’m not, so I’m glad to have her home. We make a good team.
Tiger Woods is a competitive guy. He chewed nails today when he made a couple of bad shots near the end of the PGA. They ensured Ye Yang’s victory, the first Asian born PGA champion. Tiger also said some bad words.
I have to go debrine the chickens and put them in gallon freezer bags with olive oil. They’ll stay in the fridge over night.
Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
OK. In previous episodes of the Vega/Rigel saga our heroines have: escaped multiple times, eaten the recently installed netaphim, chewed up various hoses and their inside beds and, most famously, eaten my wedding ring. All that, but now they’ve done something serious: revealed the insides of the dvd player remote. Yike. Can you imagine manually inputting every command to your dvd player? I thought not. Sigh.
Kate’s back and she’s glad to be back. It allowed a day to rest and today we’ve begun work on the meal for the Woollies. I dug potatoes and pulled beets and carrots (three colors–white, purple and orange) while Kate brined the two free-range chickens I bought yesterday at the grocery store.
While filling the dogs pool (yes, they have one in addition to the water container.), I squatted down to hold the hose, the shortened bit Vega has left me. Crack, snapple and pop. Not rice krispies. Nope. It was my lower back. Owee.
Kate is a great resource on how to handle back pain so I have been her apprentice since then. She also gave me some pain meds that helped, too. I wanted to go out to the Marsh in Minnetonka to see the opening of Moon’s art show, but I can’t make it. Moon is Scott Simpson’s 92 year old Cantonese mother-in-law.
I do have to go to the grocery store for the stuff we decided we need for the meal.
Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
Got some sleep. Feel better this morning. A busy day ahead. Groceries, recycling, straw, more weeding.
Kate comes back from Denver today. I had a bit of a snit yesterday when she wanted to stay an extra day. My Woolly meeting is on Monday and she’s a big part of the get ready for it plan. Also, her birthday is Tuesday–65!–and I have an evening ready for us. I wanted her back her with me, but felt conflicted because she wanted to stay with Jon. He had a bad ride home from the hospital. A moot point as it turns out, since it would have cost around $500 to change the ticket with $150 airline fee, $30 Orbitz and $320 in additional ticket costs. Not proud of myself over this, but I’m glad she’ll be home today.
Vega or Rigel, remember them?, ate my pocket moleskine diary and a current novel I’m reading, Consider Philebas. By eat I mean shred and coat with drool. The diary’s pages are recoverable and Consider Philebas, though badly mauled and wet, contains the pages I’ve not yet read, which is good enough for me. Just one more of the V&R stories.
Over the last few days I have dutifully filled the large rubber water container we have outside. And refilled it. Those big dogs, I thought, drink a lot of water. Then, shortly after I filled it yesterday morning, I put the hose away, turned around to see Vega curled up in the water container. She was happy. Archimedes could have had his eureka moment watching her. 90 pounds of puppy displaces a lot of water.
The Denver Olsons have had a rough summer. Hirschel their 6 year old German Shorthair developed cancer and died. 
Jon’s surgery has created the kind of upset recovery from any surgery always does. Next up is Gabe’s surgery to install a port for his prophylactic factor. That comes on the 27th. Not to mention that they started back teaching two weeks ago. A lot for a young family to absorb. Why I was conflicted. (pic: Hirschel)
Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
A funky day. This morning found me on my hands and knees, on a garden pad plucking weeds from between the bricks on our patio. The whole back perennial garden has taken last place in the maintenance department as Kate and I have learned how to keep up with the vegetable garden and the orchard. That means it got a bit overgrown and weedy so I’ve spent a lot of time this week putting it back in shape. The Woolly meeting is a good spur, but I felt bad about neglecting it anyhow.
While doing this, I misplaced or lost a Japanese hand held weeder I bought Kate at the Seed Savers Exchange conference. When I say lost or misplaced, I mean I went upstairs for my cell phone and when I came back down, I could not find the damned thing. It was as if it grew legs and ran off into the garden or developed roots, turned green and hid itself among the lilies and the clematis. Very weird. Felt like I’d lost my mind. I have no idea what happened to it.
It was hot, too. I finished that work, fed the dogs and tried to get a nap in but the dogs began whining. They got me up at 6:30 a.m., about an hour to an hour and a half before I normally get up. I’ve felt sleep deprived all day, too.
I’ve not gotten as much work done so far as I wanted. A yucky no good no account day. On that note, I’ll get some sleep.
Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
Even though summer seems to have arrived, or returned this week, I can already feel social rhythms beginning to change. Fall has begun to peek up over the calendar. Ads for school supplies have begun to appear. I remember getting a mimeographed sheet (remember mimeographs?) in elementary school of the things we would need: lined paper, #2 lead pencils, paste, a paint set. Those are the things that remain in my memory.
They achieved totemic value for me. These simple items carried the promise of learning, of new areas to explore, a new year away from home and in the company of other kids, at least for most of the day during the week. Mom and I would go to Danner’s or Murphy’s 5 and 10 cent stores. To this day I love going into office supply stores. They bring back that anticipation and wonder.
Many of our vegetables have matured and others are well on their way, the harvest season has begun as the celebration of Lughnasa marks. The angle of the sun has begun to change and the days have continued to grow shorter since the Summer Solstice. At the Autumn Equinox we will be halfway between the Summer Solstice and the Winter Solstice.
Jon and Jen have started their new school years, back with the elementary school kids in Aurora, Colorado. There’s news in their family, too. Jon has partial shoulder replacement surgery this Wednesday, still fixing a skiing injury now three years old.
Gabe has had 13 bleeds in the recent past, including a spontaneous bleed on his back and a swollen hand. In trying to get factor into him he has suffered many sticks. He has small veins. He will get an internal port on August 27th so he can receive factor infusions prophylactically instead of acutely. This should give him a normal childhood and relieve the anxiety for Jon and Jen. There is, though, one potential problem. It is possible the body will develop antibodies against the factor. That would make things tougher. A balancing act.
Kate’s going out there on Wednesday and will stay through Saturday. We go see a neuro-surgeon tomorrow morning, still trying to track down more effective treatments. She’s done very well with this degenerative disc disease, but it has not been easy. She’s tough.