Thanksgiving Week

Saturday Nov 23
I’m back from playing music and being fed at Briarwood in EBRG – and not feeling hunky dory (cough, cough), but I made it through and came home to proof the blog John has been editing. We had lots to eat so I will not have any dinner tonight. It was a super LUPPER for sure. While I was gone John moved bags (recycle stuff) from along the wall where I park and moved and stored the nice loaned-out boxes I had retrieved from the Wednesday trip. He brought a box of old academic stuff into the house for me to sort out. The main point is that I have a lot more space to park in the 3-sided shed. John took his photos of the buck off his camera and we realized it was larger than originally reported. There are at least 5 tines on each side with eye guards. A beautiful handsome fellow and the does look health too. We have had a couple of older does around for years. Our neighbor has fed apples to one (called her Apple) and there was one with a split ear. Those 2 seem to be gone but there is a younger Split-Ear so maybe that is genetic and not the result of injury. Who Knows?
I’m glad I don’t have anything pending on tomorrow’s schedule (or Monday’s).. maybe not Tuesday’s. So I can take time to get well, and to work on chores. Things start on Wednesday for us. Our group plays our normal Thursday gig on Wednesday at 2:00, and then afterwards we go over to the Community Thanksgiving Feed at the Moose (large room). We have done that for many years. It’s a nice event for anyone in the community to attend. Turkey and all the normal fixings.

Sunday, Nov 24
Well today has been a great day. Slept in and went without taking any cough med with codeine after 5:00 a.m. My nose is a little runny, but overall, I’m getting much better, in time for Thanksgiving. Glory be. That’s nice. No more coughing fits. I was expecting a longer ordeal after talking to our nurse. Today we mostly done stuff in the yard and house. I managed to photograph the large Buck we wrote about and had one photo of in last week’s blog, submitted yesterday, but now a movie

of my early morning efforts to film the large Mule Deer in our backyard. I’m pleased with it, and we have a few photos from that video and on John’s camera as well. Unless we wanted to enlarge and print one of these, mine taken from the video “movie” off my digital camera, Nikon handheld, is just fine for resolution, and he never got the front views I did.

3 photos of the Mule Deer
2X4 inch mesh fence
He’s out, I’m in.

After sending the video to a bunch of friends last week, I received many comments from locals about the beauty of the buck and how they wished for him to be saved to add to the gene pool. We remain hopeful. Neighbors within our area (even the real old timers) do not recall seeing such a large rack in many years. One person’s family a mile up the road from us has been here since the very early days in the valley. He remarked on how nice the palmated antlers were. John knew exactly what he meant, and I had an idea that it was something to do with the thickness shown on the merged antlers on his left side, but I got on line to check things out. I found mostly palmation stories and images of White (tailed) Deer, and one was particularly interesting with a contrasting scale object and a good example, so I grabbed the photo from the web. Then I went looking for Palmetto and Palm vegetation to see where the term originated. The photo below is the opposite side of the same antler, not a pair.

A soda can for scale with the wide palm-like antler (web photo)
A strange combination
2 web photos of bright green palms -- widely spreading
Recollection of Palm Sunday

Palmetto fans: All the uses share the meaning of the “palm of one’s hand.” Now on to other things.
The new LED light now shines from the washroom ceiling, and I am thrilled at having light again. Better than the small LED strip that has been there since the old 20 inch fluorescent fixture failed. We got one of these for near the pet-window so when a dog or cat passes it the thing lights up. Neat for that, especially when we want to close the window to keep them in (or out). That room has no overhead lights and no switches. Pole lights were big in the early 1980s and it saved the builder a few bucks. (If you have a house built, don’t let them do that.) Back to the new light: I was so thrilled I did two loads of clothes. I spent more time on other household chores, bills, and email. I’m still way behind, so will continue catching up tomorrow and Tuesday. John got straw around the base of the new plum trees, and over the strawberries, in both gardens. Luckily the deer are unable to get to the garden, blueberries, raspberries, or plum trees. We have cool temperatures, but they will be slightly increasing over the next week, and snow is not in the forecast. Suits us just fine.

Monday, Nov 25
I have spent a lot of time today sorting 3 boxes of academic stuff from my past. Most today was from the 1990s. John spent most of his day moving previously cut trees from beside the pasture where he had cut them down, to up near the old cottonwood tree where he cuts and stacks firewood for the future. He’s propping them up to keep them from lying on the ground in case he doesn’t get them cut and stacked before snow gets deep or it gets too cold.

Tuesday, Nov 26
Interesting and busy day. I wrote a note to my 88 yr old friend this afternoon, and her response (first below) made my day. Glad I was able to make her laugh. Her response surely made us chuckle. “Nancy, –So you and John filled up on cat food at the Grocery Outlet!!! Are you folks feeling well tonight? Maybe you should drink a lot of water this evening? I just could not help myself from becoming hysterical when I read that. Well, I have read that a little laughter is better than medicine. Gloria
(my note to her follows): Today we took the truck to town and spent much time doing “truck” things. Got some 20 gallons of gas, went to the transfer station to recycle plastic and glass, and to Super One for meds and pop and found they had a 10% off on everything in the store (except pharmacy and services) because of a suspected security breech in their credit/debit system.
Then on to Grocery Outlet where we filled up on cat food and had a $3.00 coupon needing used before tomorrow. Also delivered two boxes of books to my colleagues, and a nice framed shot of the Timothy Hay Industry here in the valley I took in 2003 and framed to put in the photography exhibit at the Fair. I won a 2nd place with it. I gave it to my co-author of the paper we had published this year (researched and presented last year). Seems like John and I did something else (oh, ate lunch in town too, and got extra to bring home for supper). Fun and games in the fast lane.

Wednesday, Nov 27
Different today from most Wednesdays. Today instead of playing music at the Food Bank, I stopped off to deliver a box of books and materials to my colleague who is honchoing being my liaison and saving me trips to the University with a heavy load of books, and he is distributing them to different folks. I was on my way to Hearthstone to play music, and afterwards most of our music group and several of the residents went down to the Community Thanksgiving Dinner at the Moose. It’s a tradition and a nice one for the season. Anyone in town is invited. We had turkey, potatoes & gravy, dressing, vegetables, and a roll. There was only pumpkin pie, and I passed. I sat with two of our musicians and their husbands, plus a former colleague from the Geography Dept. with his wife and daughter. Later, I went to thank the crew (led by the staff from the Adult Activity Center). And stopped and visited with people I know from around town I have met playing at assisted living homes and retirement centers. Then I came home — getting here just before dark.
John stayed home to work on yard chores before the snow falls. Over the years he accumulated a pile of old wood with nails and other metal attachments. He cleaned those up and sorted out still useful pieces and he loaded about 50 gallons of black walnuts from under those trees. He threw the walnuts on the trail to the mailbox that goes through our shrub-steppe (aka rocky wasted area, according to John’s dd-dad). The shrub-steppe wildflowers including Mariposa lilies, onions, penstemon, phlox, lupine, balsamroot, bitterroot, sagebrush, buckwheat, and others we don’t know the names of.
Tonight, after dinner, we put together an apple pie to take to the Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. It took over an hour coring, peeling, slicing apples, and fixing them for the pie, and I made a crumb crust for the top (probably in a stupider way than I should have). I didn’t melt the butter and didn’t have a little instrument to break up the lumps of butter to mix with the sugar and flour. I used a knife and a fork. I’m sure it will be yummy. Then I mixed the dough for the crust, but John made it and finished the rest of the pie. I’m exhausted . HA HA. We did enough apples and topping that we could freeze the makings for another pie (except the bottom crust). Our left-over crust dough gets rolled out and topped with sugar and cinnamon and baked for 20 minutes. Waste not, want not.
Also today at the community dinner, I discussed our huge array of pallets and a couple of folks couldn’t imagine how we would use them. One asked if we just broke them up for firewood or to use the plywood. So I mentioned as many uses as I could recall that I have seen John do, told him tonight, and we made a list: making a work table under the trees in the side yard, making a hut (2 on edge with a plywood cover) under which the lawnmower rests, fences or parts thereof and I recalled him making temporary steps to get into the bed of the pickup. Oh, he anchored the corner of our front yard fence with 4 in the shape of a hollow cube, then filled it with soil – for summer flowers.

Thursday, Nov 28 Thanksgiving
A few chores – then we headed to Suzy & Bob West’s family gathering about 30 miles away. We drove to south Ellensburg on the west side past the KOA to have dinner with a large family longtime in our valley (the Orcutts). It will be a nice break from our routine. What a great group and room for many people. I have no clue how many people were there, but many of their children and their grandchildren. Our apple pie was a big hit, but it was one of many different pies. We didn’t get home until after 5:30 p.m., and darkness had come in our absence. John fed the horses and the outside cats in the dark, but all is well. I’ll take some photos off my camera to include below in the Thanksgiving Collage of one of the turkeys cooking in boiling oil and of our Honeycrisp Apple Pie with Crumb Crust. I know now I should have rubbed the crumb mixture (flour, sugar, & butter) through my hands. Next pie, I’ll try that tip from Suzy’s mom. We also brought two pieces of her excellent pecan pie home in our not completely empty pie plate. As well, she had made a pie with apples, pears, and brandy. Wow.. how’s that for a combination.

Left photo of cooking a turkey outside in a pan of hot oil; a large apple pie with crumb topping in a ceramic pie dish
Not your Grandmother’s way with turkey,
but apple pie is still apple pie

Friday, Nov 29
Today was an important day in my life. Making it through today is a milestone and somewhat of a miracle. Four years ago, at 3:00 a.m. of the day after Thanksgiving, was my severe heart attack that started a series of events, which almost caused my demise. Every Thanksgiving since, I give thanks that I’m still on this side of the grass.

Wow–we had an exciting day in our neighborhood. No deer around (well, 2 we saw late just before dark); John was out working in the yard most of the time on several chores. I left for a 1:00 pm haircut appointment about a mile away, and returned back by another neighbor’s to pick up some jelly. As I pulled out of her driveway, I was driving slowly toward my mailbox, and I saw a white truck coming way too fast for our curve. I slowed down and moved way over to the right side of the road. He came screaming around the curve across the center lane, in front of our house (and mailbox), and gunned it as he went past me. Had there been any ice on the road, he would have taken out the electric pole, our mailbox, and ended up in the ditch. I pulled in to check my mail, but went into my driveway, rather than checking from the car or even leaving my car parked near the road. I came on in and had just parked, and was talking to John about what he was doing (making a roof to cover his pile of gravel to keep it dry, if he wants to use it through the winter). The curve in front of our house and another one 1/2 km south of us are notorious for accidents. We both heard a loud noise, followed by other strange noises, and figured someone had dropped a load off a truck, or driven it off the road, and the loud pops were likely tires bursting. So, John said, why don’t you drive back and see what’s up. I wish I had stopped to get my camera, but I didn’t. A truck had come around the deadly first turn of two in our section of the road on an otherwise straight north-south road, and came into a 30 mph curve going about 80 mph, according to witnesses. As I drove down, I saw a bunch of people in the road, each telling her/his side of the story, and I saw the debris spread out on the road and a canopy in the ditch. The truck went out of control and off the road at our neighbor’s house, taking out her mailbox and the 55-gallon barrel full of rocks holding the post, a barrel that had even held against a snowplow previously. The hit did bad damage to the truck (it was totaled), but the driver kept driving and did not flip over. Two tires blew out. The back window was broken out, and the canopy flew off and rolled down the road into the ditch. They came on north past a couple of neighbors out working on their fence, turned around in another’s drive, and drove back the way they’d come, yeah, a true hit and run. However, with all the damage from the collision with the barrel of rocks, the engine obviously broke some bolts, shifted into the radiator, and drained it. The truck was also driving on the rims of two flat tires. They made it about a mile down the road and it stopped. Another neighbor’s family driving home saw the truck smoking on the side of the road, and a young boy and man sitting in the ditch, talking on a cell phone. They stopped to offer help and a ride, but they declined. The family came on up to where the original problem occurred. Several of us were in the road directing traffic around the debris. I talked to them and heard their side of the story. We had a lot of information put together before the patrolman arrived.
Eventually, after gathering information, the patrolman took the large black mailbox (with its mail inside) to its owner. This poor woman has lost her front pasture fence a couple of times in recent years. Actually, one of the vehicles we ushered through was the postal carrier. He handed us her mail and we put it in the mailbox, which now resided on the ground at the end of her driveway. We hope to hear eventually the “rest of the story.” The patrolman took the mailbox in the long driveway to the owner to get her name on the report as a victim. I had left a message on her phone answering machine, and she called me soon after he left to let me know what happened. She had just returned home and was getting out of the car when she heard the loud noise and looked and saw a puff of dirt rising.
Below is a picture I took an hour or so later, when the sun came out briefly, of the 55-gallon blue barrel on the left and the remains on the right of the fence post secured by the rock-filled barrel holding the mailbox.

Late afternoon sun with long shadows lights up the background hill and trees and foreground shows the blue barrel and mailbox.
Oops! Mailbox has been separated
from its blue barrel support.

By the time I got there, the patrolman had already ordered a wrecker to retrieve the pieces to impound them. Nothing was left. The canopy was gone as well as the truck. I drove down to see where the truck was reported to be and found only a black spot in the road (probably from leaking oil). Thus ended an exciting afternoon. I left out of this report my follow-up telephone calls to the neighbors I saw at the scene and to the lady who lost her mailbox. My friend said, Thanks for the photos and info. We’ll have to get you a Private Investigator’s license.
Well, it is Noon Saturday and we still don’t know why the truck was speeding north, why he turned around and left without stopping, who they were, nor where they disappeared to.

Saturday Nov 30
Arranged to have our supplier bring us a lot of hay today – he was going to start at 9:00 a.m., so we sort-of expected to see him coming down the driveway about 10:30. No such luck. We received a call at 11:49 that he was leaving the scale at Ward Rugh in town. We were unreasonably optimistic. The guys have to travel to the southwest side of the valley (probably a good 20 miles away), load it from the farmer’s barn, drive to the west side of Ellensburg, to have the load weighed (they had to stop by first with an empty trailer). Then they had to drive another 15-20 minutes to our house to unload. Then turn around and go back for another load and then do that all over again. It would have been completed before dark six weeks ago but not now. There is only an hour left of good light and they are not back yet with the second load. We do not have lights in the hay shed but the little barn nearby has power so we’ve got a big floodlight aimed into the shed. I don’t recall the time it took for the first unload. [I didn’t time the next either, but they finished and drove off in the dark.] John is going out to move the horses who have come back up from the lower end of the pasture, and he will move them into a fenced off area so the hay truck can come and go from the pole building. He also moved the RV trailer out of the way and will return it there later. I’m working on various projects in the house and on the computer. John’s truck-dragging the Quaken Aspen trees up closer to where he will cut them next year. The temperatures started rising and got to 50 (for two hours), but is now headed back down. It sprinkled a little but not enough to hamper putting the hay in the shed. Now we’ve had a late lunch of leftover pizza. John’s returned outside to do more yard chores, while he awaits the next truckload of hay. Luckily, the supplier and his hired hand do all the unloading and loading, so John doesn’t have to. That labor is included in our ton price (along with the taxes), and we are fortunate to be getting good green orchard grass hay from a farmer we have used before, and this is first cutting that came through without rain damage. Much of the hay in the valley this year was a great loss (especially for the export Timothy Hay market). The weight of these bales of orchard grass are 118#.

photo of a red truck pulling a flatbed with 175 bales of hay; 10.33 tons
175 bales, each about 118 pounds;
10.33 tons

Arrival of the trailer load is pictured above.
For a short video of part of the delivery process:

Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan