230825 alone on the highway
August 25, 2023
Morning:
You know you are on a roll when you wash that dish rack that has needed it for, well never mind how long!
Up the hill to pick some fruit before it rains. And I am determined to get this post off my desk today! I feel inspired to get out for a walk in the woods too. Rocky will be glad. He wanders over the meadow and around, but never goes far. If I call him he comes running from nearby.
We have blueberries and blackberries that someone before us planted, plus the somewhat wild and ragged raspberries scattered about the meadow. It is magical to gather food from the land, eat it fresh from the earth. My mother, who loved to forage, would have been wild about the bounty.
Rain, we continue to have rain. This is becoming the year without summer. We have had a day here or there which was hot, summer green and shining sun. For the rest it has been cool or rainy. One day we could hear the rain approaching across the ridge like a wave.
Rain in the valley:
I have an eggplant to cook. I will cube it, with the skin on, and saute it without oil in the non-stick. Then it will go into an egg casserole and a spaghetti sauce. I love this vegetable. I learned to love it in Italy, breaded, and sautéed in butter, then in Chicago, in eggplant parmesan. But now, K doesn't eat dairy, so no cheese or butter, and we don't use cooking oil, so I have learned new ways to enjoy it, the eggplant, that is. This is delicious, if you like eggplant. This "frittata" type dish was made with eggplant, corn, and peppers, but you can add all sorts of veg to it, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes.
On the subject of food, I cook "falafels" in the oven in large round flat cakes. No oil needed, then. This time, on the second day, I prepared them in sandwiches with lettuce, tomato and tahini sauce. Made a nice lunch.
I am hoping to fit in preparing lunches as well as dinners. Our breakfast is where I want it to be, \ though it contains some processed foods. But our lunches are highly processed foods: white breads, and not-plants, like eggs and fish. So I will try and prepare a whole-food, plant-based lunch, at least partially. Our suppers are generally plants and whole foods, minimally home-processed.
With all the rain we received in July, it has been a good year for mushrooms. During the past two years, they have been present, but sparse ("scarce", so close in sound and meaning.).
These are chanterelles, edible, but I do not pick them as they are too rare around here. They are beautiful, the colour and the fluted shape.
This year they are more plentiful, still not aggressively so; there are vast tracts of the woods where nothing grows; last year's dead leaves carpet the ground. I am not sure, because during certain periods of a forest's life there is no undergrowth, but I think this is a relative desert, this high on the hill. Water quickly drains into the soil under the meadows and runs downhill, and many of the plants cling to their micro-environment, only seen in small patches about the forest and meadows. I find that this is true of most of the mushrooms. They take root in a small niche, particularly unique with just the right moisture level, just the right ingredients in the soil, perhaps a certain tree, or leaf-bed, and just the right amount of light.
The shift this year to an abundance not seen before, is not just for mushrooms, but also with another plant, not a fungus in spite of its absence of colour. It is a plant that had and lost its chlorophyll and now takes all its nutrients from the ground, like the mushrooms.
I love this plant: it reminds me of my mother. (She must still be close by, even after thirty years her ways are with me. Some of my favorite memories are of her joy in discovering nature: birds, plants, and mushrooms. These ghost pipes were not plentiful in southern Ontario. They are not usually plentiful here! But this summer they are sprouting up all over! It is delightful.
I very much want to get this post published. I am afraid it has been many days, knocking about in my mind, like a pinball in its machine, while I find a hundred things to do before I get to it. Likewise art; the blue cave is sitting, begun, and prepared for, but lingering in the before. I am pretty sure now that it will get done, as I cut more pieces ready to place and begin to line them up along the sides.
But first, there are newspapers and emails. Most are adverts and scams , but a few are important and there is always one or two from K. He will send a link and a comment . You would think we would talk since we share a house! Then there is some french, with Duolingo. I can read and write it, but my speaking and auditory comprehension are sadly lacking. There is also the Quebec accent to learn, not what Duo is teaching, but it can come later. There is cooking, and the dishes to do, other sundry housework, and then I feel tired and take a rest.
Rocky seems needy lately too. I don't know whether he is in pain or just wants "bonies", what Rain and her family call Milkbone treats. I think, that if he does not get a big walk in, he feels antsy. It is for that reason, mostly, that I have walked the last three mornings.
It seems to me that Rock is more needy on the days following his tick medicine treatment . I feel very ambivalent about using these meds, which you apply to the dog's skin in small drops along his body, where it is supposed to keep ticks from staying on and coming home with him. I am suspicious, because the experts would not recommend a human using this, but it is okay for our dog? I wonder what the realistic chance is to get a tick, although I have had one already. But Ricky is much more among the ferns and leaves than I am and he has lots of fur, easy to grab. This med prevents him bringing ticks into the house.
Sigh. I do not use human repellants on myself. I do not mean for repelling humans, but for repelling biting insects. I either put up with them, staying where there is a breeze, or keep moving, and wearing protective clothes, or I stay out of the woods. The products smell and feel awful , and are poisonous to something, though not to us? Something to spend money on, that perhaps isn't necessary for some of us. (If you react badly or don't mind the repellant as much as the insects.) But I use the dog meds on the dog. I do not know why. I did not, for several years with Fig. It was partly a case of, like vaccinations, if enough dogs (or people) are medicated ( or vaccinated) the rest of the population is safe to be untreated. But it must be a small number, so it's not very fair to those who have done the deed.
The deer were here this morning again. For the past two weeks a female and a male have visited the witches on the way up the meadow to bed. It is always about six, just as we are rising. Rocky will sit on the porch and watch, not moving or frightening them away. We are careful to move slowly even inside by the windows, not to spook them.
I have wished for such visits, but they have been rare, I thought because Blackie, the dog up the hill, keeps them away. But they seem to feel safe these days and they love the apples. I think I have mentioned this already, pictures and all.
I am so grateful that Rocky can live this life of freedom and health. It does my heart good.
I am similarly grateful and usually amazed, when my grandchildren enjoy my company. I often wonder which of us is the child. I cannot presume to think that I am an importance in their lives. I am happy simply to be in the sunshine of their young life. It would be so of any child I knew as well. Family is the people you live with, more than the people who share your dna. I do not presume that "love" is more than the doing that you do for someone. The words, " I love you." have to mean, "I will be there for you, I will do for you."
No segue : I am planning, and trying, to quit smoking. I thought Monday was the day. the thirty-first of July, but then I caved and bought two packs. I have read this book (below) through, but not thoroughly obviously, otherwise I would have stayed quit, quitten? So, I will think about what he says and perhaps read the book again. I love his approach. I think he is on the right track. I am the one who doesn't yet believe what he says, in spite of its being absolutely true .
*****
"I've got to get it together man." as William Shatner says. * K and I have got to get it together. We are not dead and over, every day is winning and being. Don't waste it. "I need peace." "It hasn't happened yet.".
As mentioned, I am on a roll this morning, dishes done and garbage taken down to the bins at the bottom of the road. I was thinking how glad I am that the bins are downhill. So I can draw the sled uphill, empty, not full. Jack and Jill. I have wished for a wagon, but the sled, a plastic two-seater toboggan, works just as well. Except that I am shredding microplastic bits onto the ground. I am not brave enough to live a perfect co-existence with the planet. Everywhere I turn, something is harmful, an alternative has its own harm, plastic bag or paper, electric or fossil fuel.
Thunder is sounding in the west and rain is already falling on Vermont. I love the storms. Rocky, not so much. But we do not know what dogs hear, and when there is a storm, they may even feel the electricity in the air, and there may be parts of the thunder outside our range of hearing. At any rate he seems upset by it.
I am sending this as is, hoping that I will write again soon. News of covid is not good, new variant, and reports now available about long covid and other issues, that the scientists have had time to process. I am still wearing a mask when I am in a public indoor space, though I am almost the only one. Plexiglass counter screens are gone from most stores, and sanitizers at the door. Although I was cowed today as I entered the supermarket in mask, I remembered that I STILL don't want to get covid, it is still out there. K does not go out. He is a hermit.
Made pickles. Except I am pretty sure the dill was suppposed to go IN the jars!!
The pickled cabbage is done in two days. "How do you like it?", I ask K. "It's okay.", he replies. I loved It! By the end of the day we had finished the jar! So I am making more. a lot more! My mother used to make it all the time, but I never found a recipe. Now I have tweaked the pickle brine and it should be fine!
*****
A toad somehow got into the window-well of my bedroom. I rescued him.
I was driving home tonight on the highway that runs, two lanes, down from the cross-province four-lane. I might have been, perhaps, ten minutes at a time alone on that road, no car before or behind. It was dusk, and one has to watch for deer, (or bigger!) on the road. It was such a wonderful feeling to be all alone and driving fast along that winding way through woods and fields. I thought of the car rallies a little before my time at the church youth group. I was only in one, may have been the last. It was a scavenger hunt in a car, in the countryside. This might be a good place to play the game.
Keep safe and well. See you on the other side.
Mumma Yaga
* William Shatner, It Hasn't Happened Yet.
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