Yesterday’s drier, cooler air was an invitation to open the windows and go outside, so I did. What a lovely world we live in. The outdoor spaces are so inviting, and there’s a lot to do out there!
August 5th was the day I finally decided to put out the garden hoses and bring in the extra long extension cord that had powered 2009’s Christmas lights. While I was outside it occurred to me that the lawn could use its annual springtime feeding. And how “pre” does a pre-emergent weed treatment have to occur? Is it too early to put some down for the emergence scheduled for spring in 2011? 2010 is a lost cause, I’m afraid.
When it comes to yard chores I realize I’m late getting started, but in my defense I should point out that there is a certain balance to my calendar. I usually don’t bring the hoses in until November. But getting the house ready for winter is always a challenge. The week between Christmas and New Year’s comes in handy for that, and I do a lot of my autumn raking in April.
The seasons race ahead while I struggle to keep up.
I’d say it’s a fair bet that my Myers-Briggs results will not identify me as a prime candidate to lead a band of primitive hunter-gatherers. Under my guidance, we’d always be late for the harvest and miles behind the herd. For that matter, I would not have made much headway as a Cro-Magnon man either. It’s tough to be successful on a cave bear hunt if you’re just getting around to sharpening the antler points on your jabbing stick when everybody else is set to go.
We all feel pretty advanced when it comes to comparisons with ancient humans who wore animal skins and hunted with spears, but I wonder. Fred Flintstone dressed in a business suit and magically inserted in a downtown Minneapolis cubicle farm or dropped into a board meeting would probably do better for longer than any one of us were we suddenly transferred to the Upper Paleolithic office for a Wooly Mammoth expedition.
I could have done OK during the Bronze Age though I tend to shy away from molten metals. The Roman Empire might have been a congenial place to land as long as I could manage to stay out of the Gladiator business.
Timing is everything.
Historically, what era is your best “fit”?
Trail Baboon 
I used to think I had been born 100 years too late and would have made a fine Victorian, but I’m coming to realize, that is mostly about the clothes and needlework.
You’re asking a complex question for women here, Dale, as I suspect most of us would not have been tolerated in our current state of um, shall we say, independence, in the past.
So, if I can get a pass on “the position of women in society” and just answer your question from a technology level, I’d have to say I would be ok with just about any time that is pre-Industrial , but within the realm of the agrarian. I like a few domesticated animals and grains around me.
Living and working in Colonial Williamsburg would be my dream job. We have looked in to volunteering at Fort Snelling. It’s on our list. As soon as the s&h is old enough we will be looking into that seriously. Also love Murphy’s Landing, but have yet to get to Gibb’s Farm.
It’s all about the clothes and cooking over a fire. I really should get the tranquility of spirit to learn to spin.
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Perhaps we need to compare historical fantasies! I think you are correct about women’s independence being tolerated — we are so fortunate to live now as we do. My grandmother felt very thwarted by her role and by her own fertility.
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Rise and Shine All:
I agree with Dale’s appreciation of the cooler, drier air. What a relief.
I have long been fascinated with the American Frontier. My living room coffee table is a wagon box from 1807 (printed on the back) from a covered wagon an ancestor built for the trip west from Philadelphia. Sometimes I put my hand on its surface and imagine where that has been. I also gather wild plums and wild grapes to preserve or make jam this time of year. When I do that I think of those generations of women that came before me, trying to feed their families. We even have an old pioneer recipe for “Plum Pudding” (really a cake) out of wild plums that we have traced back to 1830’s Iowa. This cake appears on family tables at reunions, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
However, as I age I am becoming allergic to hard physical labor. I look at those old pictures of families and farms in the 1800’s, and I wonder, ” Would I have been able to survive that life?” Don’t know.
Off into the day. Enjoy the summer!
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gotta think about that a bit, Dale, but i think we’re in the same boat. i’ve always been a grasshopper and i’ve always lived next to ants. i’ve let the weeds go in the garden until (yesterday, finally) the onions have been devoured by them and i can’t pull a weed without pulling about 5 onions. another lost crop. the only things that have survived the gophers and weeds are potatoes, garlic, one zucchini plant and we have lots of basil. meanwhile, the ants next door have a weed-free garden that is producing and they will not starve this winter. oh well, i think we could live on a steamed zucchini/potato bowl with a garlicky chevre/basil pesto.
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That sounds yummy!
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Mm-mmm…
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Barb, it’s not like you’ve been idle! Onions will be easy to come by, and YOU’ve got goat milk and goat cheese…
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That is so cool about your coffee table, Jacque! What a treasure to have. Are you able to share your plum cake recipe?
It’s good to know that there is someone who procrastinates more than I do with homeowner tasks, Dale. I do try to get the garden in by Memorial Day though – I like those tomatoes.
Issues of feminism aside, it’s the Renaissance period for me. I’ve often fantasized about running off with the Renaissance Festival acting troupe. I’m too old for such things now – wish I would’ve done it when I was younger. I used to dress up to go to the Festival. Someone once told me they thought I was one of the actors. I love everything about it – the Shakespearean English, the manners, the humor, the outdoors life, the costumes, the romance…
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I meant to include that since I was very young I’ve loved chamber music and madrigals. I sang with a madrigal group in high school – loved it.
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Will post recipe this evening. Must get to work now.
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I worked out at the MN Renaissance Festival for a number of years – and as fun as it was to be someone else for 7 weekends out of the year, I will admit to a preference to modern foundation garments and indoor plumbing.
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Greetings! You guys are a resourceful bunch doing canning, goat milking, fire cooking, sewing, etc. I haven’t gotten that far and may not have survived all the hard labor of the old days. If I could live in a different era, I would be a Flapper Girl during the 1920’s. Love the clothes, Art Deco, the joie de vivre of that time, music, dancing, etc. Just insert me in the “The Great Gatsby” lifestyle and find me some hooch!
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funny you should mention Gatsby, Joanne – we watched the lastest re-make of the film a couple weeks ago and then started the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow film last night. (much prefer the latter) i admire anyone who can party with such abandon. so you’d be dancing the Charleston in the fountains?
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Yup — that would be me! I didn’t realize they had a remake of “The Great Gatsby” recently. I liked the Sam Waterston/Robert Redford/Mia Farrow version, but the pacing and editing was sooo slow as I recall. In high school, I took a Jazz Age class where we read the books, short stories and literature of the 1920’s which I absolutely loved. We even had a jazz age party with students and teachers to celebrate in full costume and everything — great fun! I think I still have pictures. We even had party crashers who made a surprise entrance halfway through (friends not in the class).
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I usually re-read Gatsby once a year. In my opinion, a good film has never been made of it, nor is that likely to happen. The joy of that book is the language of the narrator, and that can’t be filmed.
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Joanne, I would love to live in the 1920’s and 1930’s as well. I have always loved English murder mysteries and the Mulliner stories by PG Wodehouse set in that era. I would be happy with any era since the introduction of the washing machine.
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Reading books about the dental and medical practices of old, knowing how hard folks worked who lived on the land…I think, unless I had the option of being royalty or an aristocrat in any age…I might be best suited to the future when I might have robots to do the daily grind duties. I’m with you ,Barb, about weeding. I finally have accepted the reality that I can only grow things that get taller than the quack grass: trees, grapes, native bushes.
Reading about a Viking woman’s life based on the sagas and archeology…tough life, but not bad in terms of woman’s rights…she owned her own farms, traveled the world from Norway to Iceland to Greenland to Vinland back to Norway and on to a pilgrimage to Rome as an old woman. Widowed at least twice by the time she was 18, but her life chronicled in the sagas…if I got to choose.
Just realized I didn’t put screens on windows this spring, is it too late?
ps. What to make of a blue jay without head feathers hopping around the feeders this morning?
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How hard is it to put on the screens?
What is the book, sounds interesting.
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I should check back sooner…I write a comment just before milking and feeding and driving to work…what book is it? the Far Traveler by Nancy Marie Brown. It is a nice blend of science, anthropology and bits of the sagas.
I too love Tina Nunnally’s translation of Kristin Lavransdatter, but she was middle ages. Gudrid was 10th-11th century, sailing about with Eirik and Leif and the boys in those Long boats.
How hard is it to put on screens? well, really easy, but first you have to remember to do it.
Good weekend, y’all. Mahtowa Folks Festival is this weekend. Barb, who is playing this year? I remember the year Trampled by Turtles played. Charlie Parr often plays it. Becky Schlegel entered the songwriter contest the first year. It’s a sleeper of an event!
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I will have to look for this book…sounds really cool!
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is that Kristin Lavransdatter? love that book!
we had a bare-headed blue jay one year – think it’s like mange or something. doesn’t seem to bother them as much as it bothers us 🙂
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A few years back a book club I belonged to read Kristin Lavransdatter (author, Sigrid Undset; first published 1920). Since it is a trilogy, we read it one book per month. I had read it for the first time just after highschool in the translation by Charles Archer. The book club read the translation by Tiina Nunnelly, which I think is much better than the Archer, for a number of reasons. Marvelous book!
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I’ve heard of this before – think they go through a molting season. That, or an infestation of bugs.
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The bluejays, I mean….
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i think the american indian pre westward ho timing would have been ideal for me. you live off the land, hang with a community and are at one with the universe. use the available resurses to the best of you abilities. it sounds like an enjoyable way to do life. i guess that is what cave men did too so maybe i would be ok there also. the vikings would have been a fun gang to hang with. the renaissance would have been great if you were one of the upper class. i’m not so sure the regular folk got to share in the soul enrichment the upper crust did.
all in all i am pretty happy right here and now. hosta and daylillies are the idiotproof plants in my life. a couple other perennials that are hearty enough to make it through my neglect are welcome. i have to blow out the lines on the underground sprinkler system or they will explode (i do better with consequences).
life is kind of life isn’t it. if you are doing it with an iron shovel or a stick, the painting of a canvas or the ditzing on a laptop. do your best and make the most of it.
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Remember, Dale, that the lawn is the highest expression of Western Culture.
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Ooh, that one’s going into the quote book.
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OT: Sandra Marguerite Slimak and I were married 45 years ago tomorrow. I just noticed that Garrison’s poem for tomorrw is “Epithalamium,” which means in Greek “song for bride” but in current English usage means “wedding poem/song.” That is nice syncronicity, but we have little in common with the couple in the poem. The song of our courtship, breif as it was, was “Shannendoah.” This may be the only group which would not find that choice of a song weird. I have always wanted to gather up all of the funky versions of it like Spider John’s and Van Morrisons. I met an English teacher in central KS who was a cowboy/poet/singer who gave me a tape of him singing it solo by a roaring campfire, with the wood popping and the fire roaring. Kind of authentic. He had a Johnny Cash sort of good-bad voice. Wore it out drving around the midwest. I used to every so often request it from Dale but just for me because my wife sleeps until close to noon almost every day.
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Happy Anniversary (tomorrow) !!!! We’ll have to see how many versions of Shenandoah we can find for you 🙂
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Happy Anniversary! May you enjoy many more!
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the funky versions are fine but what a wonderful song in the classic version. i loved singin that song with large groups. it kind of makes you hair stand up when the voices bring it up to max out and then go back to the whispers again. great great song.
congrats on the anniversary. 45 years sounds like a long time but for me it feels like two or three summers ago in my brain.
doing anything special?
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Our initial favorite version was some big choir doing it on an lp. Norman Luboff, I bet. I had a frat brother at U of Chi who sang it in his clear high tenor voice for Friday supper, which is how it became our song. So over time I have drifted to the other end of the spectrum. She, however, still prefers a choir version, which we have on a CD I bought her.
I do not think we will be able to do anything at all.
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Happy Anniversary! Can your kids make it to celebrate with you? Have a great time.
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Our son is in San Jose still planning his wedding in San Diego. (Wedding rings are interesting these days–his will be tungsten carbide–what happened to gold, silver? But it is just beautiful.) Our daughter has to work.
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Interesting Clyde, Tungsten Carbide rings?
Here’s a little tidbit they might want to consider.
From – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten_carbide
-A common misconception held concerning tungsten carbide rings is they cannot be removed in the course of emergency medical treatment, requiring the finger to be removed instead
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Emergency rooms and many full-service jewelry repair shops are equipped with jewelers’ saws that can cut through tungsten carbide rings [16] without injuring the hand or finger.
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Happy anniversary tomorrow! And may there be many more anniversaries, and reasons to listen to Shanendoah, to come.
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Happy early anniversary, Clyde! My favorite version of Shenendoah is by Cantus, or is it Chanticlear? Anyway, it’s a cappella and gorgeous.
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Morning–
Interesting question Dale…
I’ve always been interested in the farming ways of the early 20th century… and just the whole ‘simplicity’ that life looked like back then. But I’m sure I’m only seeing that through my straw colored glasses and, yep, boy does it look like a lot of manual labor!
It is what it is…. so, there you go.
Carpe Diem!
The past is a good place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. ~Author Unknown
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Lovliness is the order of the day. Want to take bits of all the surrounding beauty, pop them in a dumpling and eat them for lunch.
Enjoy reading about the past, but want to live in the future. Best of both worlds. It’s living today that is a challenge, I think. Reminds me of a birthday card I saw recently. On the front it said: “Time is an illusion…”; on the inside it said “Cake is real. Happy Birthday!” Oh oh – now I’m hungry. Cake, anyone?
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I don’t know… I just don’t know. When did Henry Higgins fall gaga for Audrey Hepburn? I’ll go with that one.
Happy Anniversary Clyde and and Sandra Marguerite. Beautiful name!
Off to school today to ready my classroom for open house Tuesday. It’s a mad mad mad mad mad district! (It makes me grouchy that we start so early.) You know what doesn’t make me grouchy? All ya’ll and that’s a damn fact! (Stole that line from Steve. Thanks Big Guy!)
The Kinks sounded great Mike!
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My sister in Brookings, now retired, railed for years against ther inanity of strarting school so early in SD.
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Cute photo, Donna, of you and Barb!
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i traveled down to kc yesterday where the baseball for the week is going on. it was only 90 yeatreeday supposed to warm up for the weekend. we are lucky to be winning nd get the 730pm slot instead of the 1pm or 4 pm slot
i tried getting into the blog on the iphone yesterday and watching the news about the school busses and the rear ending acident i had better pay attention.
i had ideas that i failed at sending for the blimps with paint jobs. someone came in at the end with the flying pickle, i had a pickle cucumber salami a great ad space for viagra on the side, the puffy piccolo, johnsonville blimp, the floating banana. whole fleet of oddball paintjobs would make it interesting to see what airsip you drew for the day.
do the cabin in the theme of the paint job, watch out for that viagra blimp i guess.
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I’d like to see the visuals for these, tim!
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Like Joanne and Cynthia, I subscribe to the view that living in any past era would just be too much work. I don’t think I would want to get up in the morning if I had to haul water for all the cooking and washing chores.
My house was built in about 1885, and you can tell from the floor plan there was no bathroom originally. No city utilities were available then either. The woman of the house probably had her work cut out for her.
It’s fun to imagine what it would have been like for her if all the modern conveniences had arrived at the same time. Some Monday, the power company came in and wired the house for electricity. No more lighting kerosene lamps – ceiling fixtures with wall switches! Then Tuesday, a gas connection, a boiler controlled by a thermostat, radiators, and a gas stove. Wednesday, running water, faucets, bathtub, WC, water heater. On Thursday, a washer, dryer, refrigerator and dishwasher arrived. Friday, all the little appliances for good measure – automatic drip coffeemaker, toaster, microwave oven, breadmaker, food processor, electric mixer. On Saturday, after she had finished filling out and mailing back all the warranty cards, she would have had the whole weekend to just relax and revel in all that convenience.
Then, the following Monday, she would have to look for a job to pay for all the stuff.
I don’t have the screens in the storm doors yet, either, and the lilacs need a trim.
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This is clever.
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In the beginning, the earth was without form and void….
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How do you look in fig leaves? Like snakes?
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Don’t trim the lilacs now, or they might not bloom next year. At least don’t deadhead ’em. (I read this somewhere.)
We had a house like this in Winona, Linda. Had a half basement that was a REAL adventure…
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Been pondering Dale’s question, what period in history I want. At any period in history, if we had these bodies, my wife would be long dead and I would be living in pain hell. I also agree with the comments from the womenfolk above. I hope, but doubt, that I would be bothered by women as second-class citizens, and people of minority and outcast status in any other age. Maybe to have been acompatriot of William Wilberforce or have lived in Lake District England in the period captured by Arthur Ransome or the same place in Beatrix Potter era or the Rockies of Northern NM 100 years ago or the Maine of Sara Orne Jewett or maybe best the Concord Mass of Thoreau and Emerson and all of those great minds.
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Having a hard time getting into work this AM. We have a cat food crisis (the bag is empty) and I’m being followed all over the house by three voracious felines wondering when dinner is served. We will spend the weekend getting the garden and house ready for us to be gone for our trip to Ontario for the Suzuki institute. Travel in former eras could be awful, but I don’t think I’d call the way we travel a picnic, either.
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I’m petsitting this week, and had a similar crisis Wednesday. The cat bowl normally resides on the second floor, with a resealable bag of Science Diet beside it. The cat’s owners are having some floor refinishing done while they are out of town, and told the contractor he was supposed to move the cat food down to the first floor and to block the stairs to keep Puss from walking on the polyurethane. So the contractor moved the cat dish to the first floor, left the bag where it was upstairs, and wrapped the base of the stairs in sheet plastic. Of course the dish was empty when I got there. Could not find any backup supplies, so a run to the store was required. It’s hard to face those beseeching feline eyes.
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Sometimes I think would have liked to be an aristocrat in France in the time of Louis XIV–spending half the day getting dressed in beautiful silk and ermine clothes, diamond jewelry, having servants give me fancy hair-do’s. And then spend the rest of the day going to parties, and dinners and drinking lots of wine and absinthe. It all seems very decadent–but I’m sure it would get old quickly. The bad teeth and b.o. beneath glamor and all that.
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Hi gang. I’m swamped with computer issues, as I find my old computer has croaked and I am suddenly in the market for a new one.
My first impulse on this question was to want to be a young guy in the late 1960s when “free love” was widely accepted. Then I remembered that I was a young guy in those years but was too fastidious and principled to have a lot of fun doing stupid things that would make for good memories later on. The lesson, maybe, is that I would be stuck being me no matter what the period.
But if we can put that aside, there was a narrow slice of time after horses arrived but before white men screwed everything up when it would have been a joy to be a plains Indian, Lakota preferably. I’ve heard the men of that time had to work six days a year, and the work was chasing buffalo on horseback. The other 300 days a year they could mess around playing games or giving neighboring tribes a bad time. From a distance, at least, that sounds like a sweet gig.
Anyone who yearns to have lived in an earlier period should read the book I just finished, Little Heathens. It describes life in Iowa during the Depression. (Thanks, Clyde, for the book!) It was a good life in many ways, but, oh, the work! For sure, no woman would want to go back to a time before washing machines.
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I have tried to read history as more the lives of ordinary people and not “famous dead white man,” such as the book Steve just mentioned, which barb in bh, your mother would say is the story of her childhood, I bet. My conclusion is that I lived in about the best place and period in history, all things considered, live and health, leisure time and entertainment and arts, technology, economic stability, etc. Pretty sure I lived it wrong but it was the best time and place.
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and if we had it to do over again we would do it wrong again in a different fashion
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But the problem is that I would know it was in a different fashion and the hole repetition would be wasted–the existential angst.
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LOL, Steve about the “then I remembered!”
My mom has that book, I guess I’ll have to read it.
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As a friend pointed out to me once during a crisis of “what have I done for my world lately”-itis, no matter whether or not I am happy with where and when I am, I am always content to be there. Which is quite true. I’d love to go visit some other times – but more to visit the people there than actually have to live then – I’d love to have lunch with Eleanor Roosevelt, or spend an afternoon with Albert Einstein, or have a week or month-long apprenticeship with Leonardo DaVinci, but I am content with where I am, and the time I am in, right down to the current hour (not always the current minute).
Viking-era Norway might suit – but then we get back to that indoor plumbing stuff I’ve become so fond of…
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It’s rather slow right now, so I just have to share this article that is quite fascinating. In this research study, rats are given free access to junk food. But after a while, when they are offered the healthy food they grew up on, they preferred to starve themselves rather than eat healthy! The rats are totally addicted to the junk food and refuse anything else — how weird is that? Actually, it’s also quite true for humans. The excitotoxins (like MSG) in processed food is like a drug. Very interesting …
http://www.naturalnews.com/029382_junk_food_rats.html
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i always have known i would have been a good pioneer; i like challenges and hardship and hard work
so i guess i too was born too late
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how much do you charge an hour? 🙂 have i got a deal for you.
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Hi Gang:
I’m posting below the recipe for the plum pudding. This came from my grandmother’s grandmother who settled in Grundy County Iowa in 1838, Her name was Martha Douglas Gearhart. Her husband’s grandfather was in the Revolutionary War and was one of the very first Iowa settlers in his old age. Many of these people were English and Flemish so we think it is the Midwest Pioneer variant of an English Plum pudding. Canning as a food preparation technology that was consistently safe, was first introduced in the 1870’s I believe. That was when they stopped drying the wild plums and began to can them. I have known how to can them since childhood because my mother and grandmother drafted me to help as a child on the days when I was not fast enough to elude them.
Wild plums populate the fence rows and railroad easements of the Midwest. I look for the white blossoms in the Spring, then in August I go back and look for plums. The crop varies greatly from year to year. The plums make good jam or wine. I can them in water for this pudding. You use the water in the jar for the sauce that you pour over the cake. I have added the rum for some 21st Century zing — Grandma was raised a Brethren Mennonite and would be horrified!
My sister the writer, has written articles about assembling family cookbooks (I made one 12 years ago) with heirloom recipes, and she featured this one. If you cannot get wild plums, she recommends using sour cherries as a replacement.
Pioneer Wild Plum Pudding
1 c. sugar
1 c. butter
2 eggs
1 c. wild plums, canned, drain and keep the just. Pit the plums
1 c. sour cream or buttermilk
2 c. flour
1 t. soda
1/4 t. cloves
1 t. cinnamon
1 t. nutmeg
Pour batter into 9″ X 13″ cake pan. Bake 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees. Do not over bake — it will shrink and become tough.
Sauce
1 1/2 c. brown sugar (I use only 1 c–don’t like it too sweet)
1 1/2 T cornstarch
All of the drained plum juice, 1 T. lemon juice and water to equal 2 c. liquid. I replace some of the water with 1/4 c. rum
1 pat butter
1 t. vanilla
Mix the ingredients and cook until thick. Add butter and vanilla
Serve cake squares with sauce poured over each piece.
(If the cousin who gets to the sauce before you do, takes so much that you don’t get enough, HIT HIM).
If you want I can make this for the next Oct book group for sampling.
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How could we resist?? Thanks for the tip about substituting sour cherries…
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My best friend, the one I tried to cure of thumb sucking, (See Trial Balloon when I was the guest blogger) defined wild plums two ways-one type was for jam, and one type was for ammunition. It all depended on the hardness. She lived on a farm in the shadow of the Blue Mounds near Luverne, and we would find cannabis plants there as tall as the seat of her father’s tractor. In 10th grade biology class we had to make a scrap book of wild local plants and we prominently displayed the local weed along with its flowers. Our teacher didn’t say a word but gave us an A on our scrap book. (I hesitate to say our “Joint” project”.) We were too sensible to do any more with the vegetation. It was really bad for her father’s Herefords and they burned and sprayed it when they found it in the pasture.
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Wow, I know some people my son’s age who would really like to know where that is…
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My father’s people also settled in northwest Iowa in the 1850’s and came from Menno Simon’s home town in northwest Germany. They embraced Mennonite noncomformity but were religious revolutionaries instead of devout Mennonites.
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I know I’m rambling- Has anyhone read the delightful book “Mennonite in a little black dress”?
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Thanks Jacque!
This has been posted at Kitchen Congress.
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Ah, what an oasis — I’ve laughed out loud half a dozen times reading these. Thanks everyone.
I’ve been enamored of Tolkein’s Shire, always thought I’d kind of like to live there, with elves and dwarves about, Gandalf popping in on occasion, etc. Or to be able to time travel like Claire in the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon…
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This is late so not many of you may see this; didn’t remember it when I posted earlier… we have a diary of my wife’s Uncle’s Mother. It is a book giving you just room for a sentence or two daily for five years. I’ll have to dig it out again for the exact dates but it’s roughly 1920 – 1925 I think.
She has just gotten married. It is *very * cool reading and what really stands out is how often the car broke down — they couldn’t go anywhere that it doesn’t say ‘Car needed a tire’ or ‘Car needed starter’.
And the housework; baking, sewing, washing… but also visiting neighbors and relatives.
Been thinking we should transcribe it into the computer…
Night night!
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Would be cool. you, too, might like to read “Little Heathens.”
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