Midwinter Mushroom Hunt

Lis got me Missouri's Wild Mushrooms for one of my Christmas gifts.

The day turned out to be one of the welcome mild ones we sometimes get on Christmas, with a temperature of  50. We set out to identify a mushroom on a stump that looked interesting when it first appeared weeks ago, after a rain.

This one would have been edible had I plucked it when it first showed up. We tentatively identified it as an Oyster Mushroom. Best of all, nothing poisonous looks like it in Missouri. New ones were forming at the bottom of the Tulip Poplar stump. It's in a convenient location between the house and the chicken coop, where I can keep an eye on it.

There were three different fungi on that stump.

We had already had feasts and candy and presents with the kids, so a long walk in the woods was most welcome. Our family is one of the odd ones who never go to the movies on Christmas. Long walks are much more to our liking.

These little ones were growing inside a hollow stump. 

We found lots of these on really dead trees in the woods. False Turkey Tails on the left, I think.

Reading the book made me glad I hadn't tried some red mushrooms that appear every in fall under the oak tree. I found their picture under Emetic Russula, with a little skull and crossbones alongside the name.

Best of all, the book greatly extended my mushroom-hunting season. Another outdoor hobby, what fun.

Lissa enjoyed finding mushrooms in winter, too. She dragged back a long sycamore limb for the fire. Another fun mother-daughter outing. I know, we really must learn to get in step with the populace and go to the movies on Christmas.

More Little Brown Bats

When Fall came, at first there was one Little Brown Bat clinging to the fruit cellar cement wall. It made me wonder where the other one had gone. I imagined it was the female of the pair, who refused to spend one more winter in such a cold cave. "I'm heading south, thank you very much. That woman who owns the cellar keeps opening the door and letting all the cold air in, and wakes me up when she gets wood out. Remember how I wound up in her bedroom the night of the blizzard?" Neither of us were likely to forget that. (See Bats as House Pets.)

Who could blame her? So it was with a bit of a jolt that the next time I went down there, to fetch my first sauerkraut crock, I found four bats.

One of them decided to hang from the ceiling. I took this pic yesterday when getting the last dry firewood, since I had to disturb them anyway. So that's going to be it for me using my own fruit cellar. I am leaving the door open a few inches for them to fly out on mild days, maybe to get a drink from the river before it freezes. I covered the air pipe with an old crock pot I found. The outer door, up the stairs on the outside, never will close all the way.

Whenever there has been a tornado possibility,  I've taken shelter in the cellar . The inner door is an old one with an oval glass. Glass would not be my choice for a storm cellar door, but there it is. Hopefully, a tornado would suck it out, away from me.

While trying very hard not to bother the bats, I do find them fascinating . I wonder if my little cellar will turn out to be a gathering place for rather a colony.  It appears there are even more than four of them. The guano would be useful for the garden, at any rate.

As long as I don't accidentally carry any in into the house, I'm fine with them. They are so furry and cute.

I must admit, however, that watching critters hibernate isn't terribly exciting.

Instant Winter

A great motivating force for action has always been a change in the weather. When we lived at the farm, my daughter Isabelle and I whipped ourselves into planting frenzies in springtime, just ahead of lowering rain clouds.

So, when a big cold front was forecast, I found myself in a dead heat to finish some fall projects before it arrived.

Always starting with the easiest job, I emptied the rain barrel onto the garden, put the cover on the hole in the downspout, rinsed the barrel and carried it down to the playhouse for the winter.

That day, it was 72 degrees, really too hot to run the chain saw. After crocheting the broken gaps in the cucumber trellis netting, I took it down for the season. Much to his dismay, I gave Beau a bath outside. The bees were seen sunning themselves out on their little deck, in their tiny lawn chairs.

Since I'd had two unproductive seasons trying to grow veggies without supplemental water, I already had decided to abandon the Remote Garden. Getting the big Troy-Built down to shelter turned out to be no mean feat. First, I mowed a path up the hill through the tall grass. Then I carried up the compressor and aired up the tires. Otherwise, I have had the challenge of getting a low tire back on the rim. That's what happens when the rubber tires are over thirty years old. When they feel low, everyone has to suffer. Everyone being me.

The last part of the journey was a little tricky, navigating the steep hill down to the outbuilding. There's no stopping Big Red if he decides to lay over on his side like a stubborn bull. Even though the old tiller acts tough, he has always been kept out of the rain until these last two forlorn years, when he was almost abandoned up at the Remote. I believe I heard a sigh of relief from Red when he was safely tucked into the outbuilding with a good roof.

Late in the the afternoon before the cold came, I decided to zip up to the closest field and mow a path around it. however, I managed to get Rosie the ride-on mower high-centered over a hidden telephone pole lying in the grass. I used the chain saw to cut off the pole but the part under the mower deck was embedded in the ground, quietly rotting. Sweat was dripping down my glasses as I struggled to free Rosie from between two hills. I did not succeed.

The next day,  it was 27 degrees. The cold wind brought tears to my eyes. It isn't the cold as much as the sudden stoppage of warm weather that is a pain in the neck, like whiplash.

Not a soul was around, but nevertheless I felt embarrassed because I couldn't remember how to unwind the cable from the winch I bought the last time Rosie got stuck. At the local hardware store, I bought a length of stout chain.

Finally recalling where I put the winch instructions, I pounded in a fence tee post. After that, I was able to winch Rosie uphill, off the pole. I must say, it gives a woman a sense of being powerful to use a winch. There's nothing like a wench at the winch.

Assorted Excuses

At this time of year, I have the farmers to thank for curtailing my outside work around my house.

Grain trucks, combines and trucks
towing combine heads stir up so much dust that it briefly looks like the Great Dust Bowl. Here is a combine head parked at the neighbor's place. It's longer than a truck. It seems to attain supersonic speeds, too fast to photograph in motion.

The gravel road is entirely too close, only kept from getting closer by the fence. This is one of the small grain trucks, a minor dust-raiser. Most of the trucks are semis and rolling pretty darn fast, notwithstanding the sharp curve before the bridge. I took the pic through the storm door because I value the camera lens. Not surprisingly, dusty wind  is a big reason to not hang out laundry, mow leaves and mulch the garden beds. I've tried working with a dust mask, but the dust still stung my eyes.

As I've mentioned, the wind is usually from the road. The ironic part is the farmers only get on the fields when they, and the road, are dry.

That got me to thinking that it's helpful to have a supply of valid reasons for putting off outdoor chores.That way, no guilt is attached to what otherwise might be viewed as indolence. The following excuses are valid and have stood the test of time.

     Digging soil and pulling weeds are only possible when it isn't too dry or too wet.

     Planting can be put off because of the above, plus unfavorable moon signs.

     Burning the brush pile can be postponed when it is too windy, there are dry leaves in the nearby trees, or it is too cold to hook up the hoses.

     Watering is not sensible when there is rain in the forecast, even days hence.

     Fishing is out of the question when the river is above Fishing Beach. Also when it's too windy, the moon is not favorable or the river is frozen.

     Running the chain saw is out when the poison ivy is in leaf or it is hot.

Beau is glad when the road is dusty because we usually go for a long walk in the woods, where the dust can't reach us.

Harvesting is one thing that brooks no excuses. Even pouring down rain doesn't qualify as legit. However, relying on the "Rain before seven, dry by eleven" will allow an extra four hours of slothful behavior indoors. This time can be used to iron curtains, or work a puzzle, whichever needs to be done the most. Ironing, of course, is more pressing.

Swimming in My Bee Suit

In ordering a bee suit, I had to take into consideration the suits are made for tall thin men. That's despite the fact that many women are beekeepers. Some of them may even be on the short side. I got a medium.

The crotch droops down around my knees. The legs cascade in folds above my boots. If needed,  I could wear the suit with short stilts underneath, for a clown parade. Despite my advanced age, I'm good on stilts.

The hat and veil combo allow for extended growth of my neck, say another two-thirds of a yard.

I say two-thirds of a yard for clarity, instead of two feet. As everyone knows, necks cannot grow feet.

Honey and Apple Harvest

The bees filled a few frames of the top super. They also had capped honey in the super that I gave them to clean up. I extracted three quarts and a half pint for me and left the other super for them. There are lots of bees in the hive so no doubt they will need plenty of honey to get through our cold winter.

This late honey was also light and incredibly delicious, bringing the season's harvest to twenty-six pounds and a half pint. Celebrating my good fortune, I baked a loaf of honey white bread in the Sun Oven and spread it liberally with this golden goodness. Bliss.

Not only did I get all the honey, but the two apple trees gave me the first real crop ever. Lissa and I canned 9 pints of apple pie filling. I put up 27 pints of applesauce, filled the fridge crisper drawers with these lovely Criterion apples for eating, and still have a few to pick. This is part of the crop, after I thinned it early on. At the last, I had to prop up the limbs with cut branches to keep the slender limbs from breaking under the heavy loads.

The faces of the apples were a bit grimy from the road dirt, but they cleaned up nicely.

The Criterion apples turned out to be the best I have ever tasted in my life, absolutely fabulous. They are a keeper, literally and figuratively. I got the tree from Miller Nurseries in the spring of 2008. After ordering fruit trees and strawberry plants from Millers for many, many years, we were aghast to learn that last year was the final one for the mail-order nursery.

Looks like I now have a hard-to-find variety of apple to go with the unnamed red one that was here already. The fence is to discourage stray cows. They damaged another apple tree that I planted with the Criterion in '08. Even though it is beyond recovery,  I hadn't the heart to cut it down. When it produced one very small red apple, I thanked it profusely and didn't mention its terminal condition.

The apples are all due to the bees's pollinating work on the blossoms in the early spring. I believe they really love my organic acres as much as I love them.

While the bees will have plenty of stores for the cold months, the grasshoppers continue leaping from spot to spot. How something with so few survival instincts could become so plentiful this year is a mystery. They heed not the shorter days, the turning leaves or morning fog. Winter is dead ahead, like a massive iceberg from which there is no turning.

This indolent grasshopper whiled away some time, sitting on the deck railing, watching me read a novel. Perhaps she enjoyed listening to the Respighi that I had on the CD player drown out the gunfire from the Skeeters. Obviously not a Prepper, she had all the time in the world to spare.

Finally, I shooed it away. Its continued scrutiny of me was somehow unnerving. It made me feel I should get up and dehydrate, can and freeze even more vegetables and fruits.

The Dragonfly Squadron

Until recently, there were lots of Swallows flying around at the bridge. Since there aren't as many barns out in the country these days, I guess they should be renamed Bridge Swallows. Lately, it would appear that the Swallows have gone back to Capistrano.

Thus the Dusk Patrol had relocated the mosquito fighters to another area. But recent rains had ensured plenty of those pests to torment me when gardening. They were the tiny ones that utilize small but sharp syringes to take a sample of my blood. I did not wish to be a donor.

Fortunately, the valiant bi-wing Dragonflies for a while were still guarding the air. Squadrons of them relentlessly swooped, dived and maneuvered overhead. It was not possible for me to see them actually gobble up the mosquitoes but they did some tricky maneuvers. In flight, the little warriors looked like miniature helicopters.

They were seen briefly resting on the top tier of the garden, which I believe was their designated Aerodrome. I watched them do touch-and-goes.

Some days, a good stiff breeze kept the mosquitoes grounded. No doubt the Dragonflies were stood down and enjoyed very small beers at their favorite watering hole.

Usually, there were several dozen of that Twilight Squadron working the area. They took off from the Aerodrome for dogfights with the mosquito bombers (not RAF de Havilland Mosquitoes).

That made it possible for me and my pets to be outside.

To paraphrase Churchill,  Never have so few owed so much to so many.

Three Tomato Seeds

In March, I started some tomato plants from seed. My motto is too many is better than too few, so I had plenty to give to my daughters.

Lissa started a Permaculture garden last fall. I wasn't convinced that it would work. She didn't till the soil in her small back yard plot. She scattered some of Molly's chickens' bedding and manure, put down some opened, overlapping brown paper leaf bags and piled layers of leaves on top. She bought some composted chicken litter and scattered that, then added lawn clippings when the grass started growing.

In spring, she liberated some red wriggler worms that she had been raising in the house. When I went over with the tomato seedlings in May, I was amazed that the earth under the mulch was rich and loamy, no trace of the grass that had been growing on the spot.

The three tomato plants went in the ground. The soil was filled with tiny earthworms. They loved their new home.

Meanwhile, I planted twice as many tomato plants. A few got killed by frost. Some of the tomatoes got sunscald.

When next I was at her place, the tomatoes were obviously thriving in their new rich location.

They'd climbed out of their cages by late July.

I began reading up on Permaculture.

Every few days in August, I canned a few pints of tomatoes from my plants. I ran up my water bill giving them drinks. Grasshoppers were feasting on the tomatoes, so I had to bring them in to finish ripening. Mostly, they were small to medium tomatoes.

Lissa gave her plants only occasional water. She had plenty of tomatoes to eat, give away, can whole and make pizza sauce.

I started a couple of Permaculture patches in my weedy garden.

Lis borrowed Chris's Victorio strainer. I suggested that she bring  some of her tomatoes up to meet mine. Object: sauce. It was like asking another mother to bring their newborn baby to come meet mine and then finding my preemie was being compared to her husky ten pound future Sumo wrestler.

The orange ones are Kellogg's Breakfast, an heirloom. I was able to contribute only about six small tomatoes to the operation.

We cooked two pots of juice down to one pot of sauce, a special blend of three varieties.

We canned 21 half pints of this great stuff, which will be perfect for homemade pizzas.

In addition to turning the handle of the strainer, my part was chiefly planting the original three seeds.

The One I Let Get Away

Having canned as many quarts of dill pickles as I needed, ten, plus a quart and a half gallon of fresh sliced dills in the fridge, I decided to let the chickens have the rest of the cucumbers.

Pretending to not see this cuke, I waited to see how big it would get.

This guy no doubt thought he would escape the pickle jar by becoming the Arnold Schwarzenegger of cucumbers. I believe I heard it chuckle when I gasped over what a big boy he'd become.

The chickens love to peck out the seeds, but leave the rest of the cukes. Periodically, I have to rake out the cucumber and zucchini donuts from the hen run.

Rupert the Rooster is quite gallant, calling the hens to eat before he does. I've watched him break off a small bit of clover and put it down for a hen. The stupid hens never do notice his offerings, but do come for chow whenever I appear anywhere nearby. They prefer vegetables to cracked corn, which always gets left for the cardinals and other birds to clean up.

As for Mr. Big Cucumber, as sometimes happens with these late-maturing brawny types, he wound up being terribly henpecked.

The Skeeters are Back

In early spring, I was hanging out laundry when I smelled smoke. It was terribly windy, too windy to be burning brush. There had been lots of brush fires but surely no one in their right mind would be burning anything outside.

Coming around the front of the house, I saw the smoke was black and coming from down by  the Skeeters. It's a cabin calling itself a lodge, back in the trees on the other side of the road, down by the bridge. The folks who own the place only come on occasional weekends, to shoot skeet, set off loud fireworks and generally disrupt my peaceful life. They are not bad people, just noisy. I'm sure it never crossed their minds that I live here because it's so peaceful. What a concept.

There were young persons there earlier in the day, zipping up and down the road on motorbikes.

But now, there was this smoke. I called 911. The dispatcher said a fire truck was already on the way.
After a while, I heard it coming. The smoke got darker and more voluminous. More trucks arrived, plus a water tanker. There was that popping sound I heard when the Yeller's house across the road from the lodge burned down that dark rainy night.

Finally, some of the trucks moved off and I walked down the gravel road to check it out. I'm not much of a gawker, but I do get curious. Some firefighters were working at keeping the fire from getting carried away in the dry leaves in the woods all around the lodge.

What was left of the cabin was still burning. I noticed the two motorbikes parked some distance away but the kids were nowhere to be seen.

Later, I saw the bikes in the back of a pickup truck that went by. I could imagine the kids saying, "Gee, Dad, we didn't mean to burn the place down."

The guys who do plumbing for me are volunteer firemen. They said the kids had been trying to burn some leaves in the high wind and the fire got away from them.

That was in the early spring. It didn't appear that they would be rebuilding the lodge. I did hear shots from over there on some weekends. A 30-06 rifle sounds a lot like a cannon.

This week, however, some big dump trucks and bulldozer worked to shore up the drive to the place. From the looks of that effort, something grand is going to rise out of the ashes. Already it's noisy.

This fine driveway gives a clue as to what the new structure will look like. Now, I'm curious, but the STAY OUT sign peeking out from the leaves makes me wonder if they mean me. After all, I'm their nearest neighbor. Surely they don't mean me. It doesn't say This Means You.

It doesn't help for my grown kids to keep kidding me about how I solved the noisy neighbors problems with the Skeeters and the Yeller.

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Basswood Honey

The first super has been extracted, and the honey is exquisite! The basswood blossoms gave the honey a fruity flavor and light color that makes it a premium honey. The new extractor proudly stands by  its work.

For six years I've been looking at the huge basswood tree, smelling the fragrant blossoms in springtime and thinking bees could surely makes some good honey from them. I wanted some guy to come bring a hive. At last, I did something about it, all by myself. Now, I wonder what took me so long.

Putting the honey in jars was easy. I just filled them from the honey gate in the bucket that strained the honey from the extractor.

Uncapping the super  frames was rather a sticky process, but not bad for my first solo harvesting effort.

The bees had made some burr comb between their hive body and the super. That broke apart when I took the super off, making things sticky from that point. In front of the hive, a nice chunk of comb honey dropped from one of the frames. I picked it up, getting honey on my gloves and my trusty lawn tractor's steering wheel. I whisked the super away, covered by a towel,  in Rosie's cart.

It is a beautiful sight and somewhat irresistible. The second super may consist of some basswood and some wildflower honey, perhaps catnip. Some is already capped, but I await the completion of it by the bees.

The day after I took the one super, I returned it, empty of honey, to the hive all sticky and ready to be cleaned up and reworked by the bees. Bless their tiny hearts, they had cleaned up the honey from the burr comb, which is sort of a bonus storage area for them between stories of the hive. They were calm, not seeming to hold it against me that I had marauded their food stores the day before like a big clumsy bear or maybe a Sasquatch..

Catnip Honey

Gosh, it's great to have bees on the flowers once more. Bees were getting pretty scarce before I started raising them this spring. The best news is I am going to get a honey crop this year. Sometimes, the bees don't make enough honey the first year, so I am pretty excited.

For years, these catnip plants have been growing in amongst the flowers, popping up until they became nuisances. The first time I took some of the leaves into the house to look them up in Missouri Wildflowers, one of the cats streaked across the room, snatched the sprig from my hands and wrestled it to the ground. Shortly thereafter, that feline picked a fight with one of the other cats and had to be put outside. Cats on drugs are not a pretty sight.

If the plant isn't cut, the cats don't notice it. Because it blooms at a time when pretty much nothing else is flowering, I generally let it get carried away, for the sake of the wild bees. Even the one that flops over the steps to my workshop is not cut back.

My hive of bees probably made a lot of honey from the basswood tree. The buzz was they were coming and going in that direction. They were nice and gentle when I opened the hive. That's to say they pretty much ignored me.

When I had bees about thirty years ago, I had a policy of not disturbing them too much. I felt they knew what they were doing and didn't want to mess up their work to satisfy my curiosity. I'm just the colony landlord, who comes to provide syrup in early spring and additional stories for honey storage. So far, I have added two supers. I'm the super with the supers.  Like all landlords, I hope to be paid.

Catnip wasn't in the wildflowers book. The leaves are quite pungent. The flowers are teensy, with new blossoms opening each day. I have to admire the bees for their work on them, since the nectar they must get from each flower is minuscule.

The question is, will the honey be something I can only spread on toast when all the cats are out of the house?

Cukes in a Pickle

What I hope will be just the tip of the iceburg, these quarts are the start of the pickle season. The cuke on the right hid from me and demanded a jar of its own. Five quarts so far, and many babies on the vine. I am knitting nearby, but no doubt some will elude me again.

Unlike the cucumbers, the volunteer dill beg to be picked. They are threatening to go to seed if I don't choose them. The pickle factory is ready to go into full operation as soon as I can catch the cukes.


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A Watched Cucumber

For a spell of knitting in a lawn chair in the shade, I positioned myself where I could keep an eye on the cucumbers.

Most people do not believe that cukes have a sense of humor, but that is simply a popular misconception. What they like to do is look tiny and insignificant. Then, when my back is turned, they can get too big to go in a wide-mouth jar. Sometimes they think it's funny to hide under big leaves where I can't keep track of them until it's too late to make them into pickles. It is the height of hilarity for some to get huge and yellow before I find them.

This morning, I found this little guy, who one would think could not possibly be pickle sized by tomorrow. I'm taking no chances, getting the ingredients for pickles at the ready. I have some half gallon and quart jars lined up. I don't like little dills but I do like to have more than one to a quart jar.

In 1977, an elderly couple, Marshall and Mabel Coots,  gave me their fabulous dill pickle recipe. A couple of years ago, I'm sad to say, I somehow didn't measure the salt right in some I made. Actually, it was a gross miscalculation. The pickles shriveled, and rightly so. I shall be more careful this time.

It's very exciting to have both the cukes and the dill in the same year. I let all these dill  volunteers spring up in the now-defunct strawberry patch. Contrary to popular opinion, dill have no visible risible.
   
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Fear of Mowing

Since the bees joined me here, I'm hesitant to mow. There are so many wildflowers that they may be working in the field . They've been spotted gathering pollen from the potentillas and nectar from the sweet yellow clover.

Meanwhile, the grass is now up to my shoulder, which is about four feet. Where I've mowed, the red clover is thriving. Honeybees aren't able to use it, an old beekeeper once told me, but the bumblebees are working it. I've even seen hummingbirds sipping nectar there. It benefits red clover to finally mow it, when it's mostly past blooming.

What happens when the field is left completely unmowed, as it was when I first moved here, is the fescue grass takes over. I mowed the huge clumps and the red clover got a start, along with the pretty wildflowers.

It has always been hard for me to mow any wild flowers, but now I am even more loathe to run over them with Rosie. However, Rosie is a suburban lawn tractor, not really designed for such field work, so I do need to get on with it.

That's all very well, but my cold feet for mowing means the front yard is similarly getting out of hand. This clover surely would be good for the bees, if only I knew how to call them to come and get it.  It's hard to know where the bees are concentrating their efforts. I have never really seen one doing the "bee dance" they talk about. I believe it is the pollenaise.

Company at the Mulberry Tree

While snacking on mulberries, I heard Beau get into a frenzy under the other mulberry tree.

I wasn't the only one who found the mulberries irresistible. We worked out an arrangement, the raccoon got the ones in the top of the tree that I couldn't reach, and I picked the lower ones. He seemed to prefer the highest branches anyway.

With his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, Beau had lots of fun barking, leaping and exhausting himself. He is, after all a coon hound.

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Tree

                                         Next on the wild and free menu: mulberries.

The best way to enjoy them is grazing directly from the tree. The two trees in my field, by the road, are laden with goodies this year.

They are sweeter than the strawberries this year, more prolific and definitely were less work. No weeding, no watering, no neighbor dogs coming in the open garden gate (Beau was in the house) and munching away while my back was turned. When I picked strawberries later, I wondered how many had been licked.

The only problem with mulberries is they leave my fingernails looking like I've been working as a truck mechanic. Black nails are worth it, a memento of a brief season's foraging. They do grow out.

                                              Meanwhile, Down at the River

After a dry spring, some dark clouds opened as if they had zippers on the bottoms, pouring rather a lot of water on one locale. The house gutters couldn't contain it when three inches fell over a short period.

This view is from the bridge, looking upriver. My place is on the right. Fishing Beach and Clam Beach are seriously underwater. Earlier in the day, the river was about a third floating logs and debris.

Lissa and I were glad we were not on the Grand River, which now is living up to its name. It would be okay to float down it now, if we could borrow some sort of amphibious landing craft from the Army.

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Up a Lazy River

The Grand River, which I own, was up for a float trip.

In this file photo dated August, 2013, Lis loaded up our tubes into her Jeep. At that time, the river was so shallow that we gave up the idea of a float trip. This year, we aired up our River Run float tubes and stuffed them into her Toyota that she got to replace her gas guzzler. We set off  to the access point to the north, just up the road a ways.  We thought it would be a little outing, taking a couple of hours to float back down to my beach. After all, how many wide curves could the river make? We were to find out.

At two-thirty, we slipped down the muddy bank. Lis was holding my trusty tube. The current looked a little swift as I stared down into the muddy water. Lissa reassured me it wasn't fast at all, which turned out to the be the understatement of the day. The river was still shallow. Splashing into the nylon mesh seats of the tubes, we launched ourselves for a relaxing afternoon's float.

The sky was deep blue with interesting cumulus clouds constantly changing shape. High in the sky were bald eagles. The water was warm. It was pleasant to drift with the current. After a while, we realized we couldn't be napping, because there were branches sticking out of the water that were not good to impale our tubes on. We had to keep paddling with our hands to turn the ever-rotating tubes so we could see where we were going. Then we had to paddle away from the limbs.

After some time, we floated under the double bridge where the interstate highway crossed high above us. There were many swallow nests on the underside of the bridges. Swallows were drinking and bathing at the water's edge. The flying birds were thoughtfully keeping the mosquitoes in check for us. It was no doubt their life's work on the off chance some humans would drift by underneath their mud nests.

We took no cameras or cell phones, on account of them not being waterproof. The day was hot and mostly sunny. I regarded my pale legs stretched out to the sun and hoped the spray-on sunblock we'd used was waterproof. Soon, my wish for a cooling rain shower was granted. It was refreshing but I no longer had any dry cloth on me to wipe my glasses. My sun visor helped a bit but became rather heavy when it was saturated. I retrieved my  white handkerchief from my shorts pocket and found it brown and sodden.

The trouble with uncharted waters is a person doesn't know when they have reached the halfway point of the trip. We expected to arrive at home a few hours into the journey. Each wide bend in the river was followed by another one. I checked the position of the sun when it was not covered by clouds and breathed a sigh of relief. We had hours of daylight left.

 Lis spotted a beaver slipping into the water, and pointed out a coyote along the shore downriver. We saw deer and many Great Blue Herons. The birds let us get a certain distance away before flying off. Probably they never saw a soul visiting their fishing spots. The river is not navigable. We saw a couple of water snakes, who looked at us with curiosity. I believe they swam off to check a reference work to identify us. No doubt they looked at pictures of our species and decided, yes, those were two females, one in its grey phase. Extraordinary!

Sometimes, we got off the tubes and waded or kicked with them as floats. It would have been better if we'd been wearing swim flippers instead of mesh tennis shoes. Lis pulled my tube's rope while she waded. Every hour or so, one of us would think we'd walked that far upriver last year when the water was low. "Isn't that where we came upon that dead deer?" I asked about a dozen times.

Our shoes became full of  wet sand and had to be emptied out every now and again. Lis stepped on a big catfish or a turtle, that wriggled out from underfoot.

The scenery reminded us of boating up the Inside Passage to Alaska. There was water and there were trees on both sides. The only difference was the availability of something to eat while on board. We'd brought only a bottle of water each.

"It's around this next bend," we said so many times it became a joke. When I said I didn't recognize some rock formations, Lissa said it wasn't helpful to mention it.

The river, which I thought was supposed to get deeper or bigger as it flowed, inexplicably got more shallow. Possibly it was evaporating in the heat. With an eye toward the lowering sun, we found it expedient to get up on the sand bars and carry the tubes until the hard surface ended. Lis said she had to get out of the water occasionally because she could feel her body starting to decompose.

The sun sank lower. Yet another bend was around the last bend in the river, and yet another. The sluggish current seemed to be barely moving now. It took rather a long time to move from one long bend to the next disappointment. I wondered how long we could keep going around the bend without going around the bend.

One of the things I was holding my breath about was the seaworthiness of our craft. True, the water was only waist deep in most places, but floating did give us a break from walking on sand or wading in water in sand.

My arms are a little short for paddling the big tubes, but I had a new concern: darkness. I paddled enthusiastically, trying to remember to keep my fingers together and wishing I had some ping pong paddles.

My fingers had become pruney after the first couple of hours.

Because we had no flashlight, I imagined us floating on through the night in the quiet dark country, unaware that we'd missed our stop.

After six (yes, six!) hours, Lis said she was starting to get tired. I was, too, but didn't want to admit it. I felt the need to make her laugh, so I said, "Well, we'll just have to turn back."

Then we saw the power lines crossing above the river. There are power lines a ways upriver from Fishing Beach. At that point, we heard voices and the sound of a pickup truck, so knew the bridge by my place had to be close. Unfortunately, the terrain under the power lines didn't look familiar. More floating was in order, and we could swear the river was deliberately standing still by then.

The sun had set and the light was fading, but they were the right power lines and the bridge was ahead. Lis deflated the tubes at Fishing Beach (my fingers were too pruney to unscrew the caps) and we went up the path through the woods to home.

Shaking hands, we congratulated ourselves on our first float trip success. It was not your typical Mother-Daughter Outing. Before I drove Lissa back to her car, we hosed off and then had most welcome hot showers before getting into dry clothes.

Not in the least restful, but fun, we proved we could be troupers. We'd been on the river for six and a half hours, had kept our senses of humor and had not resorted to cannibalism.

Ironically, the next night a good rain brought the river up and gave it a little pep. I emailed the pics to Lis so she could have a good laugh.
   
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One Disappointed Dog

                                      This pic of Beau says it all.

Throwing myself into spring gardening has left him looking for a new best friend.

Where before I was good for long walks in the woods, now I am spending too much time digging in the dirt, something he is not encouraged to do.

I did get down to the river one evening. That gave Beau a chance to explore the woods. The banks were muddy and at one point I came close to making my own slide next to the beaver slide. Both my jeans and the river had a muddy bottom. Catching a nice catfish for dinner made it all worth while.

Lissa and I found tasty morels in the woods. That was good for more exploration for the dog.

It's not that I keep him on a chain, but he seems to need to be close by. I envy him dozing in the nearby shade while I sweat and weed and sweat.

What's happened is the poison ivy, my arch enemy, has taken over the woods. I dare not go back in there now, with those meanies already four feet tall and growing. The best I can do is keep the paths open to Fishing Beach and Clam Beach.

The weather has not been cooperative for my gardening efforts. A late frost on May 16 had me hastily erecting my fencing hoops over the tomato and pepper plants. A couple of tomato plants that were in another part of the garden were cruelly slain.

The strawberry patch had to be tucked in for the night with odds and ends of old sheets.

The cabbages and broccolis were at a vulnerable stage and suffered some damage, from which I'm hopeful that they may recover. I'd read about it in the Stokes catalog for years but forgot they were not always frost-proof.

When Beau sees me clad in my bee suit and veil he knows he will be staying in the house while I check on the hive. Apparently, I've become a big no-fun.

This is just a terribly busy time of year. I'm put in mind of the old adage Never Get a Place Bigger Than Your Wife Can Handle.  Even though I'm no longer a wife, it's possible I have spread out too much here. I planted some sweet potatoes up at the Remote Garden, in hopes of adequate rainfall.

Many hours of weeding the grasses out of the bed were required for the planting of seven new daylilies. Lis dug up some Bridal Wreath Spirea for me, and Izzy let me have some plants. All that was not the work of an instant. There were some pussy willows and weeping willows to plant, plus some buttonbush starts and some hostas to divide. Beau got lots of nap time.

Close on the heels of the Killing Frost came hot weather and enough road dust to choke a horse. Living on the north side of the gravel road turned out to be not good, since the wind is generally from the south. It was 91 degrees yesterday, less than a week after a record low of 32.

My daughters always ask me if I have been lying on the chaise and eating bonbons. What are bonbons, anyway?

Beau is going to be delighted today, because it rained. That put a stop to all the mowing, mulching, digging, deadheading, thinning  and planting for today. I'll be going down to check on the river. That always makes him smile.

May 23

Here is one happy dog, after we had a lovely long walk where Beau could sniff the wind and follow the deer tracks.  Speaking of deer tracks, when I went fishing, I should have noticed  the places on the river bank where the deer had lost their footing in the slippery mud. They have better traction with four legs and sharp hooves, compared to my puny two legs and slippery old garden shoes.

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