220527 birdshit caterpillar dog and bread

 May 27

Once there was a caterpillar who by a random mutation looked a little bit like birdshit

on a leaf and he had

a survival advantage

and his grandchildren looked a little bit more like birdshit...

You couldn't make this stuff up.

*****

Rocky is my guide. If we cut through the woods, he follows deer paths that I can get through. I tie a bit of orange trail tape around his neck, enough to tell a hunter he is a dog. (I wear something orange too.) But if he snags on a branch the tape will break easily. Rock has fine-tuned his behavior, to come back for me at regular intervals, probably the same interval I leave from last sighting to calling him to wait. He is keeping closer in general, keeping an eye on me. I still wonder sometimes if he is not real, and everyone just humours me and says, "Yes, nice dog." He is too good to be true. He is my familiar, my soulmate. 

He was injured last week, his neck it seemed, and was on pain meds for five days. He is better now. I think we both were physically stressed by the Toronto drive. I am not sure now why we have rushed the seven hundred kilometers. "To get it over with.", says K. We will have to make the trip again in a few days, but for this drive, K and I are going to do what we love best. We will travel slowly, and stop at interesting places. K is the perfect travel companion. He goes off the path, to see sights the tourists don't see. We have our best conversations while we are sitting side by side watching the road, the trees, the wetlands and the birds. We will take as long as possible to do the drive, instead of trying to make the shortest time. We are good at taking seven hours to do a three hour trip. 

It was feeding time again for the sourdough baby, so I made bread. I only had two cups of wheat flour in the house, so I took out all the floury things I had and used them. The house was filled with the smell of baking bread all day and the bread was delicious. It is amazing how adaptable bread is: you can add or substitute so many ingredients and the process will work around delays and still turn out wonderful bread.

There were two cups of cooked spelt and wheat berries from the freezer, hemp hearts, chickpea flour, oat flour, and PAN, a cornmeal preparation that is for South American arepas. I just treated them all like "flour" but I used the oat flour and PAN for the final kneading, since they work into the dough like wheat flour. I have used chickpea flour for every sort of recipe (except pie pastry and cakes, which I don't ever make from scratch. They are both art forms which I have just not practiced.) It makes delicious scones, cookies, pancakes and breads.

*****

We have cows. They are actually from the farm down the road. They came up on Wednesday, so we will not be able to visit the ridge for a couple of weeks. There is a black bull, with great heavy shoulders and head, like a buffalo. He puts himself between us and the cows as they graze up the meadow. They like it under the witches; they love the apples in the fall, and they like to scratch on the low branches.

Thank you for visiting. Keep well. 

Mumma Yaga