Blog catchup

Wow; it has been a long time since I posted. This blog unfortunately did not make the priority list but I am here today updating Life (as I know it) in the Northeast Kingdom.

We are having a blizzard which does not photograph well, so I am including a picture taken yesterday of the garden, now dormant and blanketed with snow. The temp has been falling steadily and now is at 6 degrees. The plow rumbled by at irregular intervals all night. An illegal snowmobiler droned by at 4 am and I finally got up, unable to sleep.

Today is garbage day and the evidence of the season's celebrations is gathered and placed in a neat black bag by the Irish boy who does make it out of the driveway through hip-deep drifts, blown north. There is an advisory against driving if at all possible; parts of the highway are closed. He has to go north in a few hours; I wonder if it could wait until tomorrow.

With the holiday cards came next year's gardening catalogs and we salivate, anticipating another season, remembering with sadness last year's blight. In our 'cold room' we have pumpkins, squashes, and beets. I used the last of the carrots for a fabulous julienned dish to accompany the Christmas meat. We are finally out of the wonderful King Harry potatoes, the only survivors.

It is a muted season with preparations only for the holiday concert at school. I made an enormous wreath which took the better part of an afternoon and hung it up as the centerpiece. It was flanked by two more conventional wreaths. I decorated the piano with three poinsettias that did not survive the blast of -15 degree air when transported home. The 6th grade painted a brick fireplace with a big fire and most grades hung art work on the walls.

The Irish lad cut fragrant boughs of balsam for the wreaths and a tree which could not be placed in the school for fire safety reasons. We put it up in the living room instead and I hung three long strings of lights on it. It is beautiful. Lights are elsewhere in the house as well; in the bedroom on an automatic timer to wake me gently in the morning before the harsh alarm (thank you Cheryl), in the conservatory with the baby grand piano, and in the kitchen. Let's bring light into the darkness!

9/10

I did ask a child and they did know how to do that. It is Thursday, the end of my school week and I am ensconced in the office with a hat on and wool socks (and other things too, these are just the more noticeable articles of clothing)!

I finally figured out how to "post" and succeeded in finishing the first week's HW for the Adolescence class. Time-consuming but not too bad. The other class, Childhood Development, is filled with new terminology which takes time to wade through, has two books, and a very cagey instructor who knows how to determine if students assimilate the information. He is having us take a thread of the week's readings and teach it to the rest of the class. I don't like one of the books: it is fiction but an account of how a child leads her three siblings walking through much of CT after they are abandoned by their mother (who actually goes nuts but they don't know that). My sister-in-law reminded me it was fiction and I've already read it once and know how it ends, but I prefer books for escapism thank-you-very-much; not romances but historical fiction and detective mysteries. All that struggle and angst leaves me very tired.

Successfully finished the second week of school, a little less tired than last week which is really good because next week the band and choral lessons start beofre, during, and after school.

I certainly hope I become MUCH more efficient at this, because I am not at all right now.

9/7/09

Well now, I am almost sorry for wading through pricker bushes and brambles all summer when I see the kids looking at the sorry state of my ankles! And no, there won't be a picture of those. Still, it was worth it, no matter what. I do however regret wearing a real pair of shoes and new ones to boot on the first day of school. I instantly developed blisters on each heel which are still raw.

Struggling through the Introduction and navigation around the site of my first two online classes; navigating around my new MP3 player, speaker; and new camera and printer. We have finally hit the 21st century here in this old Victorian! Spent quite a bit of precious time today trying to figure out how to put my Star Spangled Banners on a playlist for easy access this week. (It is National Anthem Day on 9/14 and I have discovered many children do not know our National Anthem.) I am going to give up for the night and ask the first child I see tomorrow. No doubt it will be a piece of cake for them and I will be quite a bit happier when I am more proficient with these new time-saving tools.

9/5/09

A day grown only here in Northern VT! Sunny, 64 degrees (58 inside), a perfect Kingdom day and a holiday weekend to boot, designed for contemplation of summer's achievements and organization of the coming weeks which at the moment arouse slight feelings of panic.

The beefsteak tomatoes were a total loss. The sight of the ruined stalks and black fruit are hard not to take personally. The romas are heavy-laden with fruit and it is now a race against the clock to see if any will ripen. The basil, which one can never have too much of, has been harvested, leaves chopped and frozen in e.v.o.o.-filled ice cube trays for use in winter to remind us of the hot weather we finally had. The peas, sugar and snow, are done. We have missed two frosts by a half mile, some fog, and the Irish getting up to turn the sprinklers on at 4 a.m. This happened right after the Barton Orleans Fair so local lore and legend is true. Chard, kale, haricots vert, beets (finally), all being consumed. There are more zucchini and yellow squash coming. I have to find a better recipe for the chocolate, zucchini bread that I made a double batch of as it wasn't well-received by the lad with the sweet tooth. Insipid I guess. I thought I found a great recipe after a long search online after being refused by someone with a good one.

We put up the new storage shelf today to get all the appliances and cooking vessels together. They have been all over the downstairs up to this point. It is satisfying to have them in one place for easy use. We buy in bulk here and have flours, dry beans, and rice all over the cold room, mixed in with Ball jars, herbal preparations, empty boxes, and dust bunnies. The shelf organizing is the project for the day in between lesson planning, studying for psychology classes which start soon, practicing the clarinet, printing the kids' pictures, picking out hymns, ordering fabric, enjoying the morning glories, observing the changes in the garden, and enjoying being at home.

The bento lunch box is working out beautifully. I was a little disappointed that the insulated container leaked a bit of ratatouille but it was warm five hours after being packed and the tomato color did not leach into the plastic. I love having the four different containers, each packed with something different. I doubt if I will have California or spring rolls every day but ratatouille; polenta or noodles; haricots vert, arugula, or other greens; and small cubes of banana bread (or chocolate zucchini maybe) work beautifully. It is important to have a special lunch.

Time to go study on the porch!

8/22/09

Muggy, 70 degrees and the garden is in full grow-mode. Time however marches on and even as the morning glories and everything else hit their stride, there are signs of fall.

We've been sleeping with the windows open, fans running, with no blanket, just a sheet. The lovely porch has been too hot to enjoy and with school starting next week, there will be no time to lounge around the plants enjoying this little-used room.

The backyard maples have "turned" first as new growth always does. The chlorophyll is exhausted, done, used up, and the true leaf colors are beginning to show. Fireweed is one of my favorite plants, so named as it is the first growth to grace a charred lot. Tall spikes of fuschia blossoms burst into color from the bottom up. As the season passes the blooms open higher and higher until finally the last ones open at the very top. This has happened already in Anchorage where they are experiencing a normal number of daylight hours, cooler temperatures, and harvest time.

We are losing daylight hours ourselves at a noticeable rate.

The Barton Orleans Fair opened this week. Local lore and legend has it that a frost can occur anytime after this. We hope of course, it is not soon, as the delicatas, buttercups, Waltham butternut squashes still have some maturing to do.

Of course the most telling sign of impending change is the woodsplitter in the back yard, once again in prime place after having been shunted around all summer. The pile of wood from the two big maples that sacrificed themselves for our warm backyard is now ready to be split and stacked in the basement. The old wood furnace is out and the new one in, ready to be hooked up. I hope it will allow the Irish lad more than two hours of sleep come winter when the furnace is going full blast to keep this enormous beautiful house above freezing temperatures!

So if we're not quite ready to pull out the goose down comforters, winter coats, and Yax tracks, we at least know where they are!

Raspberries

Scratched legs, mosquito and no see um-bitten (I thought they were gone for the year), sweat running down in uncomfortable rivulets; these things are a small price to pay for a basket-full of the best summer fruit. Lethal vines, taller than me with 1/4 inch barbs guard the way to the biggest and most perfectly ripe berries. No matter. I judiciously pick through to find the elusive big ones. Somehow, picking in a tame garden doesn't hold the same sense of triumph!


Rubus idaeus is the botanical name for the tart/sweet fruit from the Rosaceae (rose) family. Wikipedia also lists: bright crimson red color; blowing a raspberry (obnoxious sound as a symbol of disrespect); a 70s pop rock band; and the Golden Raspberries, awards for the worst films and actors, an opposite to the Academy Awards.

The leaves of the raspberry plant also make a good woman's tea, used to soothe PMS, ease childbirth, also as a diuretic and has astringent properties, an all-around good woman's tonic. Somehow on the hunt for the fruit I never think of also collecting the leaves which by this time are not as powerful as all the plant energy is going into the fruit.

The tomato plants look forlorn and bereft and I see more tomatoes starting to turn black so leaving them on the plant will probably not save all of them.

The picked berries or what's left of them after sharing with the berry baby dog Pak have already gone into the freezer in a single layer for use this winter as a reminder of the triumph of the day. There is nothing though like eating them straight from the plant with no adornments. Pak knows this. I have never before seen a dog find, rip off, and voraciously inhale Black Hills chokecherries, blueberries, blackberries, gooseberries, any kind of berry except she's not too keen on cranberries!

Blight in the garden

Death has struck the tomatoes in the form of blight. Nearly overnight the healthy, tall vines thick with beefsteak and romas have begun to show black spots. We already lost the potatoes, the lovely King Harrys which were supposed to be blight-resistant, the Green Mountains. The Irish lad was thrilled to find the King Harrys. I feel the loss of the tomatoes more because I nurtured them from seed and was so looking forward to canning, freezing, dehydrating, making sauces and catsups. As I pruned their leaves and weeded, I breathed in the tomato aroma, thinking of tomato, mayo sandwiches, warm juices running. Nothing says summer more unless it's Block Island or Hampton Beach.

So, this afternoon I spent three hours in the hot sun pulling black leaves and even a few weakened plants in the hopes of allowing what tomatoes are left, more access to sunshine to turn red before the blight further weakens them. It was hot work. I was ruthless. We are not on the coast here and when the sun warms things up, it happens fast and is intense. I am not complaining mind. I will think back to this when it is 20 below or more still, during the inbetween time of October and November when it is cool but not cold enough to start the wood furnace. Then our house is chilly. Hard to imagine just now when it is 82 and 94% humidity!

It is our first garden after being here for five years. The Irish lad cut down two sugar maples to bring warmth and sun into the back yard. I miss the sugar maples that we tapped during sugaring time for my tonic drinks in the morning but I enjoy the garden more. He set up an elaborate system to water the garden and built an amazing pea fence and bean trellis.

The blight has been big news on TV, radio, even at church. Many have lost all their nightshade plants. I wonder how the Peasley farm is faring. They are the largest potato farmers in the area and we enjoy their potatoes throughout the winter.