Friday, July 30, 2010

Of country folk in august

Whenever we tackled the creekside shed there was always something else to do such times as we were stumped, or nails ran short,

or the sun looked round the fir and bleached us down from raftering, roofing, or the like. We leaned, gossip-like, against the cool framing's

naked shade, sipping solar tea, watching some cloud's long tasseled skirt chase the neighbors' horses leisurely

across their pasture, down the camas swale and up the other side, against black backgrounds, maple-shrouded hills. The horses liked

to amble to our corner, stand and watch. We couldn't shake them of the shies, though, try as we might with proffered handfuls

of our green grass, or blandishments, or clucks. They'd check us out: first one black blink from behind the forehead blaze, and then another,

cocking their long heads round to register our self-assured, our predatory faces, gazing on them, horse-flesh accountants

Surely. Their flanks would shiver, and their forefeet stamp, scoring earth in a language built of weight. Some movement would always spook them off:

a silvery chisel hefted, or water bottle sloshed, spattering sun. They'd hammer up the swale; caressingly we'd watch them go,

coveting our neighbors' lands and all that lived thereon, as country folk in August always do.

1995

Saturday, July 17, 2010

A July morning at the north window


Risa runs a little bit of well water from the tap every morning, and toasts the garden with it. This year's garden is making a poor showing compared to most at Stony Run, due to the cold, late start; but every garden deserves to be thanked, don't you think?

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Friday, July 09, 2010

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

What to do?

It's going to be 98F. What to do?

1. Coffee and a small bowl of hand-ground grains, cooked with honey, on the patio with Beloved, who's having yogurt and some of last year's blackberries.

2. Let out the poultry and check their water. Gather duck eggs.

3. See Beloved off to work.

4.. Start the soaker hoses.

5.. Pick some favas and peas to shell in the shade later when it's hotter.

6.. Gather outer leaves from cabbages, kale, bok choi, beets, chard, turnips, spinach, collards, cauliflower -- pretty much whatever people will turn up their nose at for having holes in it, or is about to bolt. Debug.

7. Spread leaves in dehydrator. In two days they will be ready to strip and crumble to make a fabulously nutritious and attractive additive to soups, stews, pastas, breads, and salads. Pretty much anything. Year round.

8. Gather hen eggs. Lunch of salad with hard-boiled eggs and new potatoes.

9. Shell beans and peas in the shade with a light green drink of mint with whatever, whizzed and strained and cooled.

10. Get around to the dishes in the cool of the house -- 68F while it's already 93F outside, thanks to shades on the outside of windows, insulation, white roof and walls -- and think about what to fix for dinner. Maybe salad tossed with grilled tofu and sunflower seeds, with homebrewed Hefeweizen?

Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit. -- Thoreau