An Early Christmas Present

A couple of weeks ago, I spent the day at Lissa's. Returning  home in the dark, I pulled in my driveway and a cat jumped onto the hood of my car. Then it tried to get in the door of the house with me.

I have been feeding a feral Maine Coon Cat for some time, but it is very shy of me. I thought maybe it had decided to trust me. I gently pushed it away from the door with my foot.

When I came out with Beau to go shut the chickens up for the night, I didn't anticipate what followed. The wild cat always runs from him, but it became apparent at once that this must be a different, trusting, cat.

I watched in horror as Beau got hold of the poor cat and shook it fiercely. He is a coon hound and it did look like a raccoon. After a few seconds that seemed like hours, the cat escaped and spent the night in the topmost branches of the Bradford Pear tree.

I went out at five a.m. and shone the flashlight. It was still in the tree. I put out a half of a can of tuna, almost guaranteed to take the place of a fireman.

To my surprise, when the kitty came down, she had no visible injuries at all. She was very friendly to me, as if she had always lived here.

Next, I tried to introduce her to Beau when I had him on a choke chain. He lunged at her, so that didn't work at making them into close friends.

My granddaughter Molly had told Izzy that the way to accomplish the seemingly impossible feat was to put the cat in the carrier and bring her inside. So I did. When Beau seemed to become fixated on her, not in a good way, I just turned his head away so he could look at the soothing fire instead.

The process didn't take all that long and now they are fine with each other.

Lissa came and identified the kitten as a Maine Coon Cat. I named her Lovie on account of how affectionate she is. Lovie has the characteristic big paws, furry ears, bushy tail,  neck ruff, tiny voice and extremely friendly disposition.

She's not a kitten but probably not full grown, either. Who left her here? She is obviously used to being an inside cat. I drove over and asked my nearest neighbor if he'd lost a cat, but he said no.

Here she is with a favorite game, get the ball out of the box. Or maybe she was used to drinking beer.

Oreo and Iris found Lovie's playfulness annoying and retreated to higher ground.

Also, Lovie chases them. Iris likes to chase Oreo but howls at Lovie for the same trick.

Lovie plays hard but then takes long naps. Sometimes, she goes into the cat cage by herself, where she has a cozy wool blankie, formerly a vest I knitted.

Even though she is suited to cold temperatures, we've had snow and minus ten degrees in the last few days, so I am grateful she found a good place in time.

Years ago, another feral cat brought her babies to me. It took me a long time to tame them, but  the "Wilds" were the most gentle cats. I brought all four of them here with me when I moved. Oreo is the only one who didn't vanish over the following several years.

So there is a slight possibility that the big Maine Coon Cat who comes at night might be Lovie's mother. I did see that big cat in the daytime when I was coaxing Lovie down out of the tree. Hmmm.

The food left out at night continues to be gone by morning, like a plate of cookies left out for Santa. In return, I got an unexpected furry present.

All Split

It took days, but I completed splitting the wood. Those big chunks were really heavy. I lifted with my knees, which conjures up a picture of me lying on my back, legs in the air, spinning the wood with my feet. Yep, that's what I did. Unfortunately, there was no one around to take pics.

Here is the other porchful, which should be a word.

Meanwhile, between Chris cutting and me splitting all that basswood, the guy I ordered wood from came with this nice load of dry mixed wood. I'll burn that while waiting for the basswood to dry in the sun and wind. Beau loves all the warmth by the wood stove. Even though he has a nice fur coat, he only wants to be outside when I am there to keep him company.

Here we are on a family walk down at the Grand River, which I own. Perhaps I've mentioned our tradition of a long walk after a big Thanksgiving dinner. Even Beau got some turkey. Another tradition is no football, now reinforced by no TV reception. Peace and quiet prevail.

The grandkids Molly and Jason always love coming down to the river.

Firewood Surprises

Time to cut firewood again. The basswood tree limbs have been down for over a year, so I loaded up my cute chain saw and drove Rosie and the cart to the edge of the field.

The biggest surprise was how heavy my little chain saw had gotten since last year. It's true that since the garden had gone past, I had become the vegetable. I had erroneously believed that knitting would be good exercise for my upper arms. Instead, all those days staying inside to avoid the awful road dust had left me with Weenie Arms. I had to rest periodically in order to be safe cutting limbs of the tree only.

The other surprise was how much good wood was down. The ends of the limbs were punky and covered with fungi. However, down the hill, beyond that tangle, were bigger and bigger limbs that looked like promising firewood.

That's very good news, because I had underestimated the firewood situation in the same manner as I did the hickory nuts. A cursory glance is never enough. I had already called my guy who has sold me firewood in the past and ordered a truck load.

Meanwhile, I have not been warm and toasty at all. There's always woolies, and I do knit a lot, but nothing beats a wood fire, especially one seen through the glass door of the Buck stove. That's probably why people get fireplace videos. It's not the same; we are not fooled.

Exercising without doing useful work has never appealed to me, or I would have brought the chain saw inside in the summer and waved it around, mimicking the real thing. If I had, I could have cut more than a puny half cart my first time out.

I left off in the middle of a rather nice limb, to encourage myself to return soon There also appears to be a whole winter's worth of kindling. Of all the trees I didn't want to lose a big limb, it's the basswood, with its exquisite blossoms that the bees made into honey. The limb that broke off was a massive one. I found that out when I'd cleared off several loads of kindling.

My prayers were answered when my son Chris, perhaps tired of me whining that the limbs were bigger than my puny saw, came up with his bigger saw and his bigger muscles.

He made short work of the limbs that would have been within the scope of my little chain saw, and then went on to the really big ones. I was the person who loaded the wood chunks into Rosie's cart and zipped them up to the house. I lost track of how many loads. My part may have given me some upper arm strength.

That went on for hours. The smallish stuff I stacked on the porch nearest the wood stove.

The big chunks I unloaded near the workshop, home of the electric log-splitter. Many hours of fun await me.

Anyway, I didn't exaggerate. They really were too big for my little saw.

All that wood made my original contribution of three loads of kindling look a bit puny. These little branches are not my idea of ideal kindling, because they cling together like coat hangers. Apparently, they know where they are headed.

The End

It happens every year about this time. That doesn't mean that gardeners accept it graciously. It makes us sad.

Hard Frost pulls the plug on tender vegetation. In the past, I've delayed the inevitable with low hoops over plants. This year, I didn't fight it. Succumbing to Nature's will was easier.

These turnips didn't die, but they failed to ever develop roots. They didn't say if it was my belated thinning or just contrariness. They will be greens for the hens.

The same was also true for the winter radishes. Maybe it was the heat after I planted them. Whatever it was, there are no radishes, just leafy tops.

Overnight temperatures have dipped into the low twenties. Sunshine takes the chill off later in the day, if the sun decides to come out at all. We could still use some rain but so far only had a half inch of snow that remained overnight. It looked like frosting on the green grass.

The bees are ready to go into winter. I've left them with an extra super and put the hive entrance reducer in to keep mice out. Lis and I finished extracting and wound up with 53 pounds of honey this season.

The propane tank has been filled. I got fresh gas for the chain saw. The remnants of wood in the pile are only enough for a few fires. They are left over from last winter's supply, so I guess they are "over-summered."

I dug out the box of winter duds. My grandchildren say calling clothes "duds" is terribly funny. The flannel sheets are on the bed.

Fall gardening clean-up sounds better than pulling up the beloved dead bodies of plants I've cared for since early spring. I believe there should be persons of little feeling who go around and act as morticians for the stiffs.

Thinnings

A body has to be desperate for fresh greens to consider washing these tiny Tom Thumb lettuces. That's me. Ready for the salad spinner (another fabulous gift from Lissa) are these lettuces and some bigger spinach leaves.

A good rain, actually a deluge, made them easy to pull up. These greens suffered through lots of heat and dusty winds, and are now really glad to have cooler days. Yesterday was the exception, being in the 80's. Like a sundial, we in Missouri only count the pleasant days.

Great news this morning, the Toy Choys are within days of being ready for a stir-fry. Because they do not over-winter like spinach, I will gobble them up.

A Favorite Hickory Tree

Of course I hate to play favorites and hurt the other hickory trees' feelings, but I do have one special tree. Those nuts just taste better. From my brochure from the Missouri Conservation Department, it appears that the tree is not a Shagbark or Shellbark. I went around one spring and tried to identify all the hickories in the twenty-four bearing trees from the leaves. This one is a Mockernut hickory (Carya tomentosa). I could be wrong.

The nuts have a fabulous taste. The year I gathered quantities of nuts in anticipation of selling some, I kept the Mockernut ones for me. Alas, I wound up doing all the work of hulling, etc., only to put the rest out for the squirrels in winter. They were glad, because they couldn't quite remember where they had stashed theirs.

A couple of weeks ago, I found a few under my Fave Tree. I looked up and could have sworn there were no more. However, Iz took a walk in the woods when she came for a visit. She found quantities, which shows how reliable my opinions are.

These are some from a shellbark tree down on the river bottom that I named Bountiful. I got 47 gallons  from it in 2010, the last prolific harvest.

We went up yesterday with buckets to the special tree. We grubbed around in the leaves and kept getting quantities of nuts. The other night the drought was broken once more with nearly seven inches of rain. That must have knocked them down. Quickly filling the two buckets we brought, we carried them down that steep hill, then up a steep hill to where we had left Rosie and the cart.

It seemed like a good opportunity to change my blog picture. I'm repeating it here for those who don't get the entire picture. Many thanks to my sister Jeni, who I am indebted to for getting the blog up and running in the first place. The technical parts of blogging are a big mystery to me.

Since I am nothing if not greedy, I went back today to get the rest of the fave nuts. The hulled nuts that float aren't good, but I got plenty of the sinkers. They have to be dried and allowed to age a bit. I can hardly wait.

Adorable Nuts

When I first moved here, I planted a few Filbert trees from the Missouri Dept. of Conservation. Since then, I've kept checking on the two that survived. They had catkins, which helped me to tell them from the other shrubby growth in that area.

This year, I got a wonderful surprise: nuts. They grew in leaf-like wrappers that were easy to pick. I wasn't expecting them to look like that. I read up on them and was reassured that they will no doubt produce many more nuts in years to come.

I picked a bowl of them and took them over to the pond and hulled them. They are darling.

This year, they are small, but I'm hopeful that this will be the start of something big.

I don't recall ever being so excited about Filberts. This was my first time to grow them. Had to take their pics and the squash and peppers barged into the shoot.

The hickory nuts dried enough to start splitting, after I set them out in the sunshine for weeks and brought them inside every night.

The hulls are best popped open with a flat-bladed screwdriver. This was not a big year for hickories. 2010 was a bumper crop. I froze enough nuts to last years. According to the literature (nuts are prolific writers) they only bear every two years. I'm always eager for a repeat of the bounty in 2010.

There is one black walnut down on the bottoms. I intend to get some of  those, too, for some banana nut bread. The first year I was here, I stored the walnuts in the playhouse, where the mice surprised me by being able to gnaw through the hard hulls.

Another year, mice climbed down the strings on the hanging bags of hickory nuts and spoiled them. Mice suffer from incontinence.

This time, all the nuts are coming in with me. I hate to be greedy, but I am not sharing this tiny harvest with rodents.  

Prepping Peppers

It's been a good year for bell peppers, also Anaheim Chilis and mild Jalapenos. I brought in these beauties to slice and freeze for stir-fry dishes. Last winter, I bought a green pepper at the grocery store. It was big, watery and almost tasteless. Hence, I'm saving more of my superior stock. The Jalapenos I just add whole to dishes to give them a little pep. We originally found the mild ones as an offering from Texas A&M, called Tams. Haven't seen those in a while, but we still call the mild ones Tams. I tossed one into a veggie concoction in the juicer with tomatoes. I realized, when the juice was too hot to drink, that taking the seeds out first would have been a great idea.

The peppers are both Yolo, an old reliable variety, and Margaret's. I found the pointy Margaret's in the Jung catalog some years ago. They were from seeds of a Hungarian pepper saved by a woman with that name. She was apparently a pepper prepper. I began saving my own seeds and was glad I did when they were no longer available in the Jung's catalog. One has to save the seeds from the red ones because the green ones aren't quite ripe. Margaret's have wonderful flavor, especially when red.



The Anaheim chilis are mild and delicious. Once I figured out how to stuff and broil them, they were fabulous. One plant always gives a bumper crop. I only regret I can't eat more of them. I'm just one woman against all that bounty.

Little tomato cages are a good idea for the peppers. Otherwise their limbs break under the heavy peppers.

All summer long, I've enjoyed quantities of peppers. I've had hash stuffed green peppers, plain raw peppers, tuna pilaf and this elegant Spanish Frittata that Lissa sent me the recipe for. It's a meal using lots of what I have on hand, peppers and eggs and parsley. Excellent with a glass of Pinot Grigio.

This year, I grew five bell peppers, two Tams and one Anaheim, and have enjoyed a wealth of peppers. Over the years, I've tried the multi-colored ones but for best flavor, I keep coming back to Yolo and Margaret's. The red ones are sweet. Even sweeter are the moments when I see similar red peppers at the grocery store for over a dollar each.

Rich, beyond my wildest dreams.

Ode to Swiss Chard

The heretofore unsung veggie this year is Swiss Chard. Even naughty Iris is in awe of chard. In early spring, I started four plants. The wonderful green continued bearing all summer long. Heavy rains, weeds, heat, drought and hot dusty wind failed to affect it in any way.

Chard surpasses its finicky cousin spinach, which bolts with heat. I made it into chard quiche when it wasn't too hot to turn on the oven. The ribs are a bit tough, so I always trimmed them away.

Chard really came into its own when it came to providing morning greens for the hens. They gobbled up every speck, including the ribs. No matter how often it was cut, the chard kept on producing.

It's still going strong, after all these months. The seeds reveal it is in the beet family, grown for the tops and not the bulbs, which are big and tough.

I've even started some late chard, El Dorado, with golden ribs, from Park Seeds. It really wasn't as good for the main chard last summer, but might be interesting if it gets in gear before too long.

It is hard to find a leafy green that is so versatile. Bugs that left the green beans riddled with holes didn't seem to notice the chard growing nearby. Excessive rains that spelled disaster to the entire tomato crop just rolled off the chard. I cut it repeatedly all summer, which seemed only to encourage it to put on more and more fresh light green leaves.

I wouldn't be surprised if it makes it beyond the first light frosts, clear into November. One year, it even over-wintered. Amazing.

I only wish it were tastier.

Stocking Up Time

When I moved here ten years ago, there was one apple tree that never bore more than four red apples each fall. I planted two other apple trees and started keeping bees to pollinate them.

This year, the Criterion apple blossoms got nipped by frost, resulting in no baby apples. The newer Golden Delicious blossomed at the same time as the red apple. Wow, what a difference with the existing red apple crop! Both trees had lots of apples, somewhat heroic of them on account of such a dry summer. The Golden Delicious limbs were actually too young to bear such a lot of big apples. I did thin them a lot but just propped the limbs up and tried not to feel guilty as the slender things bowed under the load. When I picked the last of the apples, I believe I heard a big sigh of relief from the young tree.

Those were the best apples. The Pampered Chef peeler, corer, slicer that Lis got for me one Christmas made short work of them. The 12 dehydrator trays of slices fit nicely into 3 quart jars.

I'm just emerging from a week of making applesauce. Lissa came up on Sunday and picked the rest of the high apples for her short Mom. We made two more batches of applesauce pints, bringing the total to 47 pints, with enough left for me to finish with a batch of apple butter, now cooking down in the Crock Pot.

While we worked by the hot stove, we watched a documentary about people stranded in the woods in a spring snowstorm. We couldn't help but comment how no one in the hiking party knew how to make a fire to keep warm. Winter seems to come every year, so a little planning and effort now always seems sensible.

Last week, a bumper crop of grapes needed to be dealt with. It apparently was just a great year for grapes in these parts. For years, I've pruned the grapes in late winter and trained them up in the way they should go. They refused to stick to the script, running wild and bearing little. This year, I let that go and basically gave up on the endeavor. Molly and I noticed lots of baby grapes in springtime, but I was quite surprised to see them all mature, sometimes even growing on long, un-pruned canes under the grass that grew up around them.

So, a grape juice project was in order. The first batches I did were lots of work, crushing the grapes in the food mill, straining them and myself.

Lissa came up and showed me a much better way. Not the extra-sweet recipe I found in my old Ball Blue Book, just grapes and a little honey. Much easier, especially with Lissa's help. When they are ready, they just get strained before serving.

Yesterday promised to be the last of the 90 degree days with a blast furnace wind. I awoke to a welcome gentle rain, the first one in a month.

Now, I just have one more batch of honey to extract and then I'll put my feet up and knit!

In the winter, I'll enjoy the fruits of my labors. By then, I fully expect my hands will have recovered from days in the sink. The shriveling surely will go away by then.

Golden Days

I'm running a little late in getting the honey in. I kept waiting for some rain, but it repeatedly refused to arrive, except for a quarter inch on the day of the Eclipse. I think the bees are having a rough time of it. They seem to be in a surly mood, not their usual gentle selves at all. It must be the lack of wildflowers; I don't believe they read the political news.

Off to a great harvest, with the first 27 pounds extracted. This has been my first year to sell honey. Once folks taste it, they come back for more, quarts at a time.

There were some snags getting the first super in. The dump feature on the cart wasn't secured. Chugging away from the hive on the lawn tractor, I looked back to see the full super on the ground. Visions of broken wooden hive parts and bees zoning in on the honey enticingly oozing onto the grass swam before my eyes. Shutting down Rosie, I ran back and picked up the intact super. Breathing a big sigh of relief, I continued on to the house.

Memo to self: make sure the cart latch is secured.  Yet another thing to experience only once.

The extracting part is getting to be a smoother operation. This time, only one bee came in with the box of beautiful light honey. The next morning, I heard it flying against the window. I covered it with a glass, slipped a card between it and the bee, inverted all and let it fly away outside.

I explained to the neighbor kids that if a bee ever lands on them, it won't sting. The kids didn't believe that, probably just as well, since most folks don't know the difference between a honeybee and a Yellow Jacket.

It's amazing how many former beekeeper guys urge me to increase my operation. I had a husband who talked me into keeping more hives; I had to let him go.

One hive is my limit, so it remains a hobby that I enjoy.

Not a Toy

Here's my fabulous new telescope. It wasn't an impulse buy. Back in 2012, I started a special savings account to purchase a 10" DOB  'scope.

There were many reasons I wanted a bigger 'scope, but I remained loyal to my 4" refractor.

In the interim, I managed to amass rather a number of star atlases. The reason we amateur astronomers want bigger scopes is we want to see even more of the heavens above. It's called Aperture Fever and it is incurable.

I tried getting others in my family interested in stargazing, but they mostly just said NO. Even after seeing Saturn and her moon, Titan, they were able to walk away from astronomy. The exception was my granddaughter Molly, now twelve years old. She really gets into it when she comes to stay with me. Once, we were lying on the front porch, just looking up at night sky overhead, when a big fireball whizzed across the dark sky. We laughed and hugged each other in our excitement.

There is no quicker way to clear the room than to discuss astronomy. A couple of years ago, at Molly's house, the big kitchen table was filled with family and friends. She was showing a star atlas, pinpointing our recent discoveries. No sooner had we started talking than suddenly it was just Molly and me and her dad. He would have drifted away, too, but she was sitting on his lap. She and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Her mom, my daughter Isabelle, says we are Not Normal.

A word of caution about visual (not automated) stargazing: a person gets into it thinking they can just have a quick look at the stars occasionally. Then they start splitting double stars and searching for fuzzy spots called globular clusters. They find comets currently in the news. They move to a place with darker skies. They buy more eyepieces and filters for their baby. They lose sleep. Friends drift away.

I started in 2005 in a town with much light pollution from nearby gas stations and other sources. I rigged up a tarp enclosure on the clotheslines. I kept my nighttime vigil accompanied by feral cats, in the dead of winter.

After all these years, it's apparent that I'm never going to get over my fixation on the stars. It's okay, I'm retired now and can nap the next day. It's amazing how I can be sleepy at 10:30, step outside for a quick look and suddenly it's 2:00 a.m. and I'm enthralled. I hear myself saying, "Oh, Wow," a lot.

In order to not become addicted to astronomy, do not check for exciting displays of the Sun's antics on spaceweather.com. That can only lead to buying a solar filter for the telescope.

Whatever you do, don't read read Starlight Nights, by Leslie Peltier, especially more than once.