Last of the Harvest

Eeeny, meeny, miney, mo.

Can you pick out the watermelon?  Can we say "dry Summer"?  The cucumber is for seeds, the last of the red peppers and my so-pathetic watermelon.

The Zen of Socks

A sure sign of Autumn is when the knitting needles are in action once again.  I discovered - to my horror - that I only had three pair of wool socks!  Lucky for me (snort) I also discovered that I have an entire bin of sock yarn!  What a surprise!  Not.  Being my usual impatient self, I didn't bother to do a crash refresher course on knitting socks on two circular needles.  Oh, no.  I just pulled out those four tiny little filaments and charged ahead.  I truly do think that knitting socks is a form of Zen.  You just have to make it past the beginning - the unnatural posture your hands and fingers have to maintain in order to get those tiny little sticks all going in the same direction.  Bad words were spoken.   Often and loudly.

Stash-busting!

I am back into my comfortable routine of early morning knitting.  I am even doing some before-bedtime knitting, although it is most likely the time where stitches are dropped.  This makes for more bad words in the morning.  My crew is becoming used to the routine, bad words and all.

This is what happens when I put down
my knitting for a second.

I am guaranteed a lapful whenever I sit down.  And, if I put my knitting down for a nanosecond, Kramer moves in with lightning speed.  I have learned to knit over him and he doesn't seem to mind the occasional poke.  That is The Pepperoni snugged up next to me, under his blanket.

 

Slimbo feels the Zen...

Slimbo tries to horn in and, if he can't get the primo spot (smooshed next to me), he smooshes next to The Pepperoni, who carries on something awful - from under the blanket.  After a few minutes of this, everyone settles into the Zen.

Slimbo is IN the Zen.

The only added accoutrement to our Zen-ness in the mornings is the high level of dog farts.  I am almost used to The Pepperoni's green aura - he had bodacious farts for such a tiny guy.  However, everyone is getting accustomed to their new diet to various levels of smell-ociousness.  I was forced to turn the exhaust fan on last night and this morning so that I could concentrate on my knitting.  I sure hope their various systems settle down before I have to close up for winter - or it will be a particularly cold one, as I will be forced to keep a window open out of self-defense.

Firsts and Fits

After months of silence, Bunny has found his voice.  At exactly 7:46 AM Eastern, he crowed.  And then you couldn't shut him up.  This has rattled Pecito no end.  I do believe he thought he was the one and only.

Juno and I have worked our way into an odd, although rather comforting, routine.  It's like dealing with a baby but no diapers.  I leave the gate open to the barn during the night so that she will have company - Apria is her boon companion.  Then it's her morning molasses drench, followed by some physical therapy, then special hay, then fill her water container.  I've been giving both Apria and Juno grain in the morning - when I finally got my hands on Apria, she felt rather thin under her woolies.  This has chafed Norman, who lives and breathes for grain.  Tough nuggets.  After duck chores, and before I get ready for work, I toddle back to the barn and open the gate so everyone can socialize.  At night - rinse, wash, repeat.  I am not holding out much hope that she will get up on her pins and walk again.  It's been a week and, although I do my best in the little time I have to keep her limbs flexible, she shows no signs of leg strength.  Although I am firmly entrenched in denial at the moment, I know this can't go on indefinitely.

My boy, Scrappy, suddenly decided that he did not care for a raw diet.  Just like that.  First time EVER that he wouldn't eat his breakfast.  This, of course, sent me into a tailspin, as I thought the end was near.  I tried tempting him with a variety of foods before, out of desperation, I gave him some of The Pepperoni's high-end, no-grain canned food.  Bingo!  So, now I have a freezer full of homemade and premade raw dog food and the one and only dog that really needed it won't eat it.  Le sigh.  Instead, he is inhaling two cans of primo dog food a day, at a cost of CHA-CHING.  I've said it before, and I know I will say it ad nauseum - we are nothing, if not flexible.  So The Pepperoni and Lovey are now on a raw diet, while the Little Prince is fed beef and spinach.  Au jus.  If it was at all possible, I would like to come back as one of my own dogs.

After giving us a hopeful weather forecast for three-plus days of rain and showers, the sun is out and shining.  Looking forward to the weekend, I have decided to put some elasticity into my to-do list.  This approach, of course, runs the risk of creating a pretty saggy* list.  I have convinced myself that everything I do needs doing.  Clear as mud?  I do have a couple of must-dos, but everything else is pure serendipity.

*Speaking of saggy elastic, did I ever tell you about the time I walked right out of my underwear, crossing the main drag in Cleveland?  I didn't?  It was a clear-cut case of letting one's BGPs reach a dangerous point of sagginess.  Luckily, I was young and flippant and kept on going without a backwards glance... And if I HAVE told you, humor me.  I'm old and forget things.

In Support of Sloppy Entertaining

I don't know if there is much worse (okay, there IS much worse - but let's keep this relevant, 'k?) than slaving for hours on a dinner menu to have it turn out totally MEH.  Especially when you are also trying to clean the house to a level that requires heavy equipment and months of prep work in less than half a day.  It cannot be done, peoples. 

My Girlz Night group now meets, maybe, on a seasonal basis.  One woman now has two homes - one on Cape Cod, where I secretly think she'd rather be - and one woman works full time, as I do, but her work entails driving from Monday to Thursday.  Plus, she has a real social life.  Anyhoo, somewhere in the process of our getting together, we all now try to outdo each other with the scope, quality and fanciness of our dinner.  This is, in a word, ridiculous.  I take the whole day off because I am cooking up a complicated storm, trying to whip my house into order (neither women have pets, although one has knick-knacks) and then appear at the appointed hour, martini glasses frosted, not a hair out of place, in something casual but classy.

Not surprisingly, it never happens that way.  The menu was this:

Seeded Flatbread
Almond Flour Crackers
Red Lentil Hummus

Tomato Ricotta Pie in a Brown Rice Crust
Orange/Avocado Salad on Arugula with a Balsamic Glaze

Autumn Apple Cake

What was edible?  Not much.  The flatbread and crackers were good.  The hummus was watery.  The Tomato pie was supremely MEH and did not set properly.  The salad was good.  The cake was medium MEH.

And it took HOURS.  Okay, given I was also stressed out over Juno and the gopher-sized balls of fur that kept wafting across the dining room floor - all of which could have added to the looming disaster.  Instead of finding me cool, calm, wine glass in hand, they found me sweaty and apologetic.  It was wrong!

From now on - I will be the Queen of Crappy Entertaining.  The Salome of Sloppiness.  The Eve of Ease.  I will plan an easy meal, based on what's at hand (although, in my defense, everything I made was with what was at hand).  I will not apologize for dust gophers.  I will not dress up.  I will have a good time.  Barring sick sheep and dead ducks.

Do as I say - not as I do.

In amongst all the trials and tribulations I experienced over this weekend, I managed to clean the house, wash all the waterers, and bake dog treats.  None of which were on my to-do list.  Sigh.  I have decided to write a book, and its working title is, "Do as I Say! (Not as I Do)".  It will have chapters such as, "Don't Overdo the Ducks", "Don't Raise Livestock Unless You Want to Give Up Your Life", "Be Sure to Make Room for You Time".

This was one of those weekends where all I wanted to do was to hit the rewind button - or step into the Wayback Machine (Professor Peabody, anyone?).  Since none of those options were available to me, it was Pull Up the BGPs and Full Steam Ahead. 

The roof is finished.  Except for one vent cap that went missing, it is screwed on tight and looks marvelous.  The roofer returned last night with the errant cap and to get his money.  The dogs and I survived, although the cats are still jumpy.  The Pepperoni managed to slip out numerous times so that he could waylay the roofers at every turn and pop up like a meerkat.  They were very nice about Mr. Nuisance.  I'd be looking out and I'd see one of the guys stop, put down his tools and bend down to the ground.  After the third escape, I put him in his crate under house arrest.

On Friday, as I cooked and cleaned like a fiend for the Girlz (more about this in a separate post), popping outside occasionally to do a chore or two, I discovered that Juno was getting edema again. She and I have been battling parasites since early spring - she's older and does not have a lot of resistance under the best circumstances.  Saturday morning she was down - but bright-eyed and with an appetite.  As things stand now, she is still bright-eyed, eating everything but not able to stand.  I had been moving her legs and trying to get her up every few hours, but now, stuck in my damn office, I cannot do anything but worry and think about it.  I am afraid that she will not be able to stand again if she goes on like this much longer, and then yet another tough decision must be made.

Over this weekend Hopalong, the lame duck, lost the good fight.  She was a tough little thing, but she was too lame to sustain herself and got weaker and weaker.  I had to help her along to her next big life.  It's a tough way to downsize.

Saturday and Sunday nights the temperatures plummeted to the freezing/frost point and I had a mad scramble to get the avocado and lemon trees inside, and then did a sweep through the basil.  Other than a cover on the geraniums, everything else was on its own.  Next weekend is plant-the-garlic-and-shallots time, and yoink the tomato plants.  The kale is amazing this year - thank goodness for that.

Aromatic Bouquet in a Bucket

 

There goes my dining room.

I am trying not to bake for the sake of baking - I am a baking fool.  I LOVE to bake.  However, I am a family of one human and nothing I bake is a single serving.  I think I have found the solution.  I may also have three dirigibles on legs in the house.

Dog Bicuits

Note here - Am I the last person on Earth to realize that you can make little treat blobs and not spend hours rolling out and cutting individual little neat, square treats?  Save me from myself!




 

I guess this means summer is over.

This was not the low.  We hit 34* at bottom.  Forgive the blurry pic.  My trigger finger was frozen from outside chores.

There are days

when the only thing standing between me and a precipitous drop into total chaos is a neatly made bed.

Such as today.

Do you only venture into your day after making your bed, or are you of the "I'll only have to unmake it to sleep in it" school?