Saturday night (9/24) at almost 11:00 p.m. Rascal just brought into the house a live small black Vole (check this link for clarification: http://www.rogerbolger.com/Moles_Voles_&_Shrews.pdf
I got John to capture it, after chasing the cat and “mouse” into the back computer room, and then back to the den, where he had started. Rascal was flipping him around, and when he would run, he’d grab him in his mouth and tote him around. Once or twice I gently put my foot on him, and Rascal reached under and grabbed him out. We froze him. He was dead when we put him in the freezer (in a bag). Oh my, we started out this morning with the Steller’s Jay. Now he has gone back outside. Wonder what he will bring in next. I’m going to try to go to sleep. What a Rascal! We surely named him correctly. Luckily, he did not bring any more animals in the window, and slept most of the night in bed. However, in the middle of the night or early morning, there was a cat scream outside the bedroom window. John got up and looked and Big Sue was on the “veranda” – the entrance to the doggie door window! He didn’t see anyone else. He watched her jump down into the yard and sit for awhile. Then he sent Shay out the window to check, and that made Big Sue move over to the cable table, where she stayed a long while, till John decided to stop watching. Rascal was on the bed this whole time.
Sunday. “Morning has broken” (as Cat Stevens used to sing), without sun, with a little sprinkle, but cloudy and cool. John decided to go out and work in the yard awhile after taking the dogs for their morning exercise, and feeding the outside kitties. Check out this short video with gorgeous pictures set to the music, Morning Has Broken.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ESHjYat9rk
For a longer version with beautiful pictures set to the lyrics, check this 3-minute version. This is craftily presented even to the footsteps in the sand, “where his feet pass.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0TInLOJuUM
Here are the lyrics of this “prayer for anyone that has some faith”:
Morning Has Broken, As Sung by Cat Stevens; lyrics by Eleanor Farjeon
Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for the springing fresh from the word
Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass
Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God’s recreation of the new day
We never got to the dehydrator loading yesterday, and we decided to do it today. I have hand washed the inner parts and the top and bottom, as suggested by the manufacturer for a new unit. When John returns from outside we will work on filling it.
John finally came in around noon, and we did a few things checking out the peaches he bought, that were in a box on the clothes washer. YIKES, he screamed, and I rushed to see what was wrong. I was standing in the kitchen. He had just looked at the box yesterday (peaches were individually seated in a plastic shelf), but one had gone bad and had black mold and hairy fungi all over it. It had reached to 4 peaches surrounding it. John picked out ones around it, and brought the bad ones in. I cut off the bad part down to where the “brown meat” stopped, and then washed the remaining peach and the knife. I cut up the remaining parts of the peaches (with skin) into a bowl. Given another half day might have been disastrous. John washed a yellow plum and we put half of it in a bowl for each of us, and then I spooned a few peach pieces into a bowl for our lunch. Before we ate, I put some sugar on the peaches and John held a plastic bag for me to fill to put in the freezer for his next Peach Cobbler. We took the last of the juice in the bowl, and spooned it over our small bowls of fruit. After eating them, I heated bacon, and put together a nice BLT for each of us. Now we are done, but relaxing before we put fruit in the dehydrator. We need some lemon juice to pre-process the peaches, apples, and pears, and what we have is pretty old. We imagine it will be okay, however, as it has been refrigerated.
Okay– all done and the dehydrator is loaded and drying. John and I both worked hard, cleaning the fruit, cutting (mostly John’s doing) and de-seeding (mine), put into the lemon juice (except for the plums). We started with a tray of Italian plums (halved); next were Honeycrisp apples, and then a tray of pears, two kinds (Starkrimson and Bartlett), finally a tray of peaches. Hopefully this first load will be a success.
We sliced some of the peaches and put sugar on them to eat later.
John has been out putting up a barrier to keep the horses out from behind the hay shed where the kitties are eating, playing and drinking. Woody sat up on top of the hay watching John dig a post-hole, and the other two yellow felines were at the top of the ladder in the hay shed, sleeping. Rascal is in next to me on a blanket, while I type on my laptop. I forgot to say we made some great cinnamon/sugar sticks today from the leftover pie dough. We have enjoyed them throughout the day.
Well, what was for dinner? Surprise; John bought some white/yellow corn on the cob at the fruit-stand stop, and we cooked one tonight for each of us. They had small and tender kernels, both yellow and white. I had some leftovers from the Scholarship luncheon (my lettuce/pea salad), and some little yellow tomatoes, and a piece of sour dough toast. John had corn, toast, and grocery store-boxed fried fish. I suspect we’ll have peaches on ice cream for dessert. Meanwhile Rascal has been sleeping all evening; wonder if he will go out “catting” tonight. Just so he doesn’t return with voles or mice. We cannot lock our doggie door. All we can do is close the window, but would rather not when dogs will go out on their own in the middle of the night to potty.
Monday. Whoa, lots of hospital time this morning. John carried Annie in to the vet. She looked at her drain hole on the soft tissue place near her mammary glands. She said to keep her from licking it and gave some meds, and put “diaper rash cream” on it. John went to the grocery and bought more. John loaded our dehydrator again this morning while I was at the hospital. He put more peaches, pears, and apples in.
I went by myself to the hospital for my two tests. The first was to get a Holter Heart Monitor (24 hr.). While there I was given another EKG, and it looked very good. My heartbeat was 65 and in normal rhythm. Then I took a Pulmonary Function Test. Last one I had was Nov, 2010. The technician explained all my results to me. I asked him about the problems I was having with my voice, projection and singing. He said I would probably improve with an inhaler and I needed to see my family physician ASAP. I made an appointment this afternoon for Oct 4th. We need to go anyway for flu shots. Afternoon found us both going back to town for my exercise class, and John went to buy us some stamps at the USPS, to the grocery for more things, and to fill the car with gasoline. We were running on vapors. We were both hungry from having no lunch, so at 2:30, we went to Burger King for a Whopper each. I had a coupon for one free with the purchase of another ($3.49).
When we got home, John went over to check at the neighbors about getting them some firewood for the winter. While there he brought home a few nice tomatoes (for our BLTs tonight with corn-on-the-cob). Also brought some coats my neighbor gave me. She has lost a lot of weight and now cannot wear the size I am. So, rather than give them to Goodwill, she is giving them to me. Anything I cannot wear, I pass long to my friends, in exercise class or in the music group.
Tonight, I made a CD of my 50s songs from my high school reunion to take to my exercise class this Wednesday. I did NOT like the new music the staff of the Adult Activity Center made to replace our CD that was sticking some (but only near the end of the hour). No one else in the class liked it either because there was no beat to keep up with.
Tuesday. Our morning started with a small breakfast before I went (alone) to the hospital to have the Holter Heart Monitor removed, and then over to deliver some yellow squash in trade for tomatoes at a friend’s, and then off to my 2nd acupuncture. It was pretty intense, with me on my side and the treatment concentrated on my bad left shoulder. He used heat, needles, suction cups, and massage. I was a little woozy at the end and sat in my car for 20 minutes, resting, before driving home. I believe it did some good. The pain became less as the treatment went forward. I really hope this will break up the scar tissue that is plaguing me and my rotator cuff’s surrounding muscles–affecting my movement and extension (reach) of my left arm.
While I was in town, John went to the neighbor’s, taking down a volunteer cherry tree they wanted rid of, because it unfortunately sprouted in the pathway to the back of their house and also it produced lousy cherries. They let it get big enough to produce fruit, and when it did, the cherries were mostly skin and seed. John cut it down and also used his truck to remove the root ball. Then he came home and worked on weeds in our corral. He was going to put in a fence post, but the wind was blowing too hard and would have blown up dust and dirt in his face.
Lunch — I fixed a meal from the fruits around. Here’s what we had: yellow and red cherry tomatoes, multi-grain crackers and cheddar cheese, a yellow plum and a red one too, and finally a yellow pear. Fall colors all.
After lunch, we filled the dehydrator again. Before I left this morning, I had washed all the trays. John did most of the fruit cutting, and I dunked the fruit into the bowl of lemon juice, and then we shared putting it on the trays. Things we included were nice large peaches and Honeycrisp apples he had bought on his way home from trail work last Friday. He intends to go again this weekend and will buy more! We also cut pears (both kinds), and then finished with 2 large Roma tomatoes. We’ll see what they dry out tasting like. I also put the previously dried fruit (peaches, plums, & apples) into two half pound freezer bags for the freezer. We can take out what we need when we want.
Tonight John fixed a pork roast for dinner, along with onions, carrots, and corn-on-the-cob. Leftovers went into a black plastic bowl (then frozen) for a meal for John sometime when I’m gone (say, Wed. – see next).
Wednesday. Well, today was Nancy’s day to go to town to play music and eat at the Soup Kitchen of the Food Bank – aka FISH:
http://www.dailyrecordnews.com/news/article_ffb45f52-68eb-11df-aeb4-001cc4c03286.html
There were only two of us there today; a banjo player and me. We did all right, considering. Food was vegetable beef soup, cucumber (Yuk), onion & tomatoes salad, bread with butter, and a strange cobbler, made from Peaches (okay), Plums (okay), and Cantaloupe (WHAT THE HECK?). From there I moved to the Adult Activity Center, and put in my fifties music to play for my exercise group. My foot care had been rescheduled from 1:00 to 1:30, and that is the start of my class. I went ahead and took the appointment because my toes needed attention. So, I stayed in the class until the lady was done with the person in front of me. She was running 20 minutes behind schedule because her first client was LATE. That threw off everyone else the rest of the day. Some people have no concern for others. I got finished in time to make it back for a few exercises in class. I came on home afterwards, and put together a music book for a new member (guitarist) joining our group. Tonight we had BLTs and chips for dinner. John picked strawberries and has fixed them, so we will have them on ice cream tonight.
Thursday. Another strange full day. Started with the normal stuff we do every morning, and then we both got to work on filling the dehydrator with fruit pieces. This bunch had pears, peaches, apples and tomatoes.
Then tonight we realized it was no longer running. So, we ate a late dinner (Chicken, veggies stir fried, tomatoes, and French fries), and called our neighbors 8.5 miles down the road to see if we could borrow their dehydrator. Went in and visited an hour and brought it home. It is now finishing our fruit.
Back to this afternoon. We both went to town. John dropped me off to play music at Mt. View Meadows and we had a nice bunch of residents who appreciated our being there for them. They sang along (with words we gave them). The new activities director made chocolate cookies with choc and white choc chips. She is trying to entice us to come more frequently – the place was on our once-a month-list – but now only for the 5th Thur. of the month. The baking cookies smelled good cooking and then we stayed afterwards and ate them with the residents (many of whom had already eaten theirs while we were still playing music). John had gone to the grocery store for my meds, and chocolate milk and some other things. He met one of our players, and traded our yellow squash for pears and little yellow tomatoes. He also went by the bank to get some money for us both. He is going again to work trails west of Steven’s Pass, and plans to stop by the fruit stand and buy more fruit as last week.
Yesterday afternoon, when we got back from town, we checked and the dehydrator was no longer working. In the morning, John had dropped the top power head and cracked the plastic around the switch. He plugged it in and it worked. We checked on it the next 3 hours and it was working fine. Something must have shorted out during the afternoon.
Our trays fit the borrowed dehydrator, so that was good. They have to be rotated and moved around (up and down the stack, because the heat is on the bottom with no fan). The new, non-working, one had a top heater/blower (like a hand-held hair dryer).
John leaves at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, for his trail work near the West Fork of the Foss River, south of Skykomish, WA up on the north side of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.
Friday. John took off and I had fallen back to sleep. When I awoke the house heater was running and the cat was beside me, purring. I went out to feed the outside (untamed) cats, and then fed myself. Not much, because I was going to go to an assisted living home (where we played music yesterday), having been invited for Baked Potatoes and all the toppings. I went and it was wonderful. A real meal that filled us all up. They served us tapioca pudding for dessert. Sat at a table with 3 gentlemen; two had been Marines or Navy personnel on carriers. We asked the lady in charge questions and found out it costs $79/ day (“but it is negotiable”) to live there with 3 meals a day and laundry, plus nice things in the rooms (own bathroom, microwave, and frig). That’s better than going to Holiday Inn. They no longer allow animals there, however. Left there and stopped at my friends to pick up some tomatoes. I will trade her yellow squash tomorrow when I go back to town.
This morning I started by calling the NESCO people in Wisconsin to see what the cost was of a replacement power head. It would be $15.99 plus $6.50 postage and handling. Yikes, I’d be better off to get another from Bi-Mart. It was on sale and the 30-day sale ended two days ago. I called them and asked if they would consider selling me a new one at the same sale price I had back on September 18th. I told her what had happened, and the cost of a replacement, and she said I should just bring back the unit and get a replacement; that they have a 30-day guarantee. I said, “Well it’s our fault; we dropped the power head unit (it fits on top down into the center of the trays,” but she said she would ask her supervisor. She did, and they said to bring it back in, and they would just give me a replacement. Amazing.
I will clean it up tomorrow and repackage it and take it back for a trade. Meanwhile, today, before going to my exercise class, I stopped at a yard sale at a lady’s house where I bought a lot of clothes last year. She recognized me and said how much better I looked. Actually I knew her niece at CWU when I worked there. As I walked in, I asked if she happened to have a dehydrator for sale. She did! Said she never used it and decided to put it in the sale. I checked it out (on the far back table), and she had a $10 price tag on it. Obviously, that was a good price, but I bargained anyway, and she dropped it to $8. It will work fine to help us get through all the fruit John plans to bring home. Also got 4 paperback book s for John for a quarter each. Then on to my exercise class. On the brink of not going, thinking I was tired, but still . . . I went and neither of our regular leaders was there, so I led the group. They were very happy. There were only 8 of us there. Wednesday, there had been 18! (our largest group ever)
After that I took my pills back to the Pharmacy, requesting they halve them. They are not “scored” and it is a pain for us to do it. They were willing and have a little implement that does it. I will pick them up tomorrow.
On to one last yard sale, out south of town in the rural area. There were lots of clothes and most stuff I really don’t need. I have many blouses from yard sales, and a lot recently from my neighbor (including the coats and sweaters). I just browsed and found some wooden frames for a quarter each, that I can give to my artist friend who likes to frame her small paintings. Coming back around the center table I found a Christmas vest. It has never been used; still had the tag on it. It will be perfect for playing music at Christmas events, of which we do many. There was also a nice white silk blouse to go with it (on another rack). Each was $1.00.
Then also there were some sweatshirts for certain holidays: Christmas again, and Halloween, and a nice navy blue Lake Mead Cruise sweatshirt (We wonder – does the company provide these for workers? Otherwise, why do they exist?) Each in excellent shape. Each a buck. Nice finds.
On the way back home I passed by some friends of friends we have known awhile, and they are moving. They were having a “farm” sale. I stopped and went in and reminded them who I was and our connection. Looked at their stuff but wished John was along to pick out books for himself. Then I saw some metal fence posts marked $3.00 each. I’m sure they are worth that, but I said, “If I bought them all, would you make me a deal? The wife said, “Yes, if you take them all, we’ll sell them for $2 each. I accepted. John says we really don’t need that many, but I know he’s always putting up fences to separate the horses, so he will use them. She also offered me a Fence Post Driver for $5 and I took that too.
We will go back Monday probably to pick them up. Need to take our old truck, because I don’t want to mess up my Subaru. As I was leaving I told him where John was and about him getting some yellow plums. They said they had a yellow plum tree (called Greengage), . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greengage
and they didn’t have time to be moving and pick the plums. So, they picked a bag for me, and threw in some Macintosh apples. Wow. Nice.
John was quite late getting home tonight, because he had to stop by the fruit stand again. He brought more Honeycrisp apples, some Galas, more yellow plums, some purple plums, more Starkrimson & Bartlett pears, and a box of peaches (harder than those last week), and they gave him a half dozen corn. Last week he bought $27 worth and this week he bought $47 worth. She gave him the same excellent price on all species at $1 / pound. One of the Honeycrisp apples almost weighs a pound, so is probably a 90 cent apple. All the fruit is beautiful.
Saturday. Good Lord, Grand Central Station at the Naneum Fan and Rockin’ Ponderosa. Started at 4:45 a.m. with dogs going out and finding a skunk on the opposite side of the fence, who was returning toward the pasture from eating the outside cat food. No more leaving food out overnight. Meghan and Annie (less so) got drift-spray so fragrance came through the doggie door window and then into the house also on their coats. John turned on the fan to make the filters work to remove some of the aroma. It’s still in here. He took off at 5:45 a.m. for his day working on trail again at the West Fork of Foss Creek south of Skykomish. I turned up the heat a degree and tried to go back to sleep, but it was not meant to be. A wrong number awoke me at 7:00 a.m. (This woman calls here a lot; I wish she would get her act together). About 7:45 a.m. I got a call from a lady in Oregon (there for a funeral) who is planning a big shindig at their farm this Saturday, Oct 8th, and she has invited our music group to play for the Farm Festival. She’d like us for all day, but we will get there at 10:00 a.m. and play as long as we can taking breaks. They will have recorded music to play while we break. They have a sound system rented with two microphones, and a connection to the pre-recorded music. But they want us to play tunes of old time music and gospels. We have invited the Cle Elum (with Yakima players) Bluegrass Jam session folks to join us. There are also a couple of young violinists from EBRG planning to come. Perhaps the Anderson’s granddaughter will play Boil them Cabbage Down with us (or we will back her up).
They are planning for us to get there by 10:00 a.m. to get set up
You can go to the BLOG on this site to learn more about the farm.
http://www.andersonfamilyfarm1979.com/gotmilk.html
They have advertised all over the region, at Starbuck’s on the west side, and all over Ellensburg are flyers. They are expecting a LOT of people.
Maybe as many as 800. We will be playing on a truck bed with bales of hay and chairs for those who want. There are rocking chairs if someone wants. We will get a free lunch (BBQ) and sides.
Okay, back to Saturday. I went to town for several errands. Stopped first by the lady’s house who puts on the Scholarship luncheons, to drop off some plastic black dishes that frozen foods come in. They are dishwasher safe, and she brought a stack to the last luncheon to serve John’s desserts in. When I stopped, she offered me some fruits: plums, apples, pears, and tomatoes. I graciously accepted them even though we have a house full of fruit now from John’s carting stuff home. We also have more dehydrators we can hook up and dry some of this stuff, after we clean and prepare it. We are both too tired tonight from our long day, so we will do it in the morning.
Left there and dropped off some fruit for a friend on Mt. View, and forgot the reason I was going in to her house. Duh. The fruit was an add-on by John, but I left in the frig the requested yellow squash John picked in the dark last night, and I also forgot (in the car), wooden frames I bought for her.
Went on down to Bi-Mart to trade in my broken dehydrator. Now I have a new one.
I was hungry, so I went for a hamburger. Then back to the grocery to pick up a dozen sweet things (6 apple fritters & 6 chocolate old fashioned donuts); also got my pills the Pharmacy had cut in half for me.
Off to north of town to a place where I was able to get potatoes (HUGE ones) from the Columbia Basin, for 10 cents/pound. I got 20 pounds. Then I got 20 pounds of VERY LARGE (but sweet) carrots for a nickel a pound. On my way home I passed very close to some friends from the exercise class, where John and I had dinner a month or so ago. I called and asked if they would like some and they were thrilled. So I drove by, got her to come out with two bags, and she grabbed six large potatoes and probably as many carrots too. They have guests coming next weekend so she said they would feed them then. I should take pictures of these carrots and put them on line to share with you. They are big and fat, and they are what the local Twin City Foods uses for their cut carrots frozen under many names, such as Belair, and sold across the U.S.. I used to talk about their operation in my Economic Geography class. I had a blind student once who I got John to go down and a lady went to the top of the pile of carrots outside the plant, and gave him three of the largest. We compared them to the skinny carrots we get in the grocery store, and passed them around the classroom, so he could feel them and others could see them. I also had taken a photo with a quarter for scale, some of the large and small carrots, plus an apple. It is in my PowerPoint I used in the classroom.
John got home at 6:00 p.m. and we spent time unloading both our cars. His stuff got very wet from working in the rain some today – not all day, luckily. John didn’t bring any more fruit, but he went to our garden and brought in a RED tomato!! Our first. If we get 2 more that size we will have recouped the $1.89 paid for the packet of seeds. No freezing forecast for the next seven days here high on the Naneum Fan. Valley low spots hit 31 degrees a few nights ago.
Okay—this is a day late arriving to you. Hope your next week is a good one.
Nancy and John,
on the Naneum Fan