Things are happening here this week in an alarming way. Yesterday the downspout guy came and cleared out the final downspout his brother couldn’t get cleared out last week. Today the flood fixer people are coming to remove the large dehumidifier and two remaining fans in the basement. Tomorrow the roofers arrive to replace the hail damaged shingles from last year.
I am somewhat alarmed by what is happening at the end of our street. Our whole neighborhood is receiving upgraded gas lines, which means large holes in the sidewalks, driveways, and streets as the old lines are removed and new ones are replaced. They are even putting a new gas line in the backyards. The streets on either side of ours are done, and now it looks like it is our turn. I saw the utility construction trucks just a block down from us yesterday.
When the roofers are here we can’t park in the driveway. When the utility people are digging up things in front of our house we can’t park on the street. I do hope they aren’t here at the same time, or things could get difficult.
When have too many things happened at the same time for you? Did you like Hair, either the musical or the movie? Ever been followerof astrology?
About two years ago, I found a great deal on King Arthur artisan flour. It is called Sir Galahad flour. I got it from a wholesale restaurant supply company. We got 50 lbs for $18.00. I thought I was buying King Arthur artisan bread flour, which has ascorbic acid as well as a little white whole wheat flour in the mix. I was mistaken, as it was a general flour with ascorbic acid but no white whole wheat. No matter. It turned out to be a great all round flour for bread and pastries. We have maybe 8 lbs left. We also have every kind of rye flour, graham flour, and other esoteric flours you can imagine. That is Husband’s doing.
We bake a lot, and it worked really well for a long time in all our breads along with Swany White flour from the mill in Freeport, MN. I think we got 40 lbs of that at the same time we got Sir Galahad. We have large bins to store it in next to our freezers.
As time has passed my French bread has become inexplicably denser and less springy. The loaves are smaller. The recipe has remained the same. I make four loaves at a time with 6 cups of King Arthur and 5 cups of Swany, adding a little gluten, and using bread salt and the same brand of fresh yeast.
We ran out of Swany earlier this month, and I ordered 20 lbs from Freeport. I love the Swany White mill. Gary, the owner, only takes cheques, but he shipped our flour so fast this month it arrived the next day after I placed the order by Speedee Delivery before I could get the cheque in the mail. The last time I ordered I gave all the information to his wife, who said Gary was down with a bad flare up of gout. I love the trust and community feel of this.
I baked French bread this weekend using the old Sir Galahad and the new Swany, and the loaves were big and puffy and wonderful. All the other ingredients were the same. In the past I have ignored comments from Master bakers who say that flour ages poorly, and you should only bake with flour that is less than 6 months old. Well, I believe them now. I plan to pep up the remaining Sir Galahad with 5 lbs of a new bag of King Arthur regular bread flour and pound of white whole wheat. Who knew? I am grateful for the Scientific Method! We will only order flour in 20 lbs bags now.
How old is your flour? What are your favorite kinds of flour? When have you used the Scientific Method lately?
It has been a long struggle adjusting to gardening in the cold and dry climates in Winnipeg and western North Dakota. We managed to find the plants that worked the best for the soil and the weather, and just persevered. The discovery of Morden roses, really cold hardy and beautiful roses from the Morden, Manitoba Agricultural Experiment Station has allowed us to have a beautiful yard of very low maintenance roses.
I am inordinately proud of our backyard for defying the odds and allowing us to grow things like hazelnut bushes, rhododendrons, ligularia, bleeding hearts, and ostrich ferns. There are very few trees on the western Plains. I believe that North Dakota has the fewest trees of any US state. It is windy. Our climate is semi-arid. The people who owned our house before us did extensive landscaping that made for an unexpected microclimate in the backyard.
We have a cool, moist, and shady backyard because of one Amur maple tree, a large and unruly lilac bush that goes along the entire back yard on the west, and the wooden privacy fences on the north and west sides of the property. That fence, with the lilacs, keeps much of the wind out. Here is our fern bed under the maple tree.
Plants like ferns, ligularia, rhododendrons, and bleeding hearts take a lot of babying and water, but if you are persistent, they will establish themselves. We also planted grapes to grow on the deck to keep the deck and the west side of the house shady. You can see in the lower right hand corner of the photo a small Red Hazel, which we planted not knowing it only can winter over in Zone 5. We are Zone 4 on a good, day, and usually Zone 3. The hazel is small, but we have had it for 30 years.
It is amazing what luck, water, and perseverance can accomplish. Our yard is relatively small, but it is a joy to nurture.
What microclimates are you familiar with? What joys do you derive from gardening?
Saturday was supposed to be a day of house cleaning and weeding, a less vigorous Saturday than the previous weekend when we exhausted ourselves with garden work.
The day started off calmly enough. We went to church to check on the garden and plant a couple of bedding plants a parishioner had left for us. We drove back home, and I noticed that there was water gushing out of the hose in the front yard. I knew that neither of us had turned on the faucet that morning, and Husband said he must have forgot to turn off the water the night before when he washed his hands. The end of the hose was right by the egress window in the smallest basement bedroom. The water had been running for 12 hours.
We have struggled with water filling up the egress window well during heavy rains, especially when the down spouts are plugged. We have replaced drywall below the window in that bedroom twice, and removed some of the carpet right below the window after it flooded. We solved the problem with the down spouts by building up dirt around the window well so water from the down spouts flowed away from the window. Husband ran downstairs and came right back up and said there was water everywhere.
There was about an inch of water on the bedroom floor, and it had spread under the walls into the furnace room and the larger adjacent bedroom. The carpet in the hallway was also soaked. We got the wet vac and started moving things out of the bedroom. We pulled up the remaining carpet in the small bedroom and removed the pad. After 90 minutes of using the wet vac the pad was still sopping wet. It is now in pieces in the garage. We were too exhausted to pull up the wet carpet in the other bedroom and hallway. We are waiting for a water damage company to send a crew out later today and they can remove that carpet and pad. Husband feels awful about this.
Our plan for next winter was to paint the basement and put in new carpet. The basement looks dreadful now. I haven’t cussed like I did Saturday for a really long time. My mother would have said that the air turned blue had she heard me. I don’t know the origin of that phrase, but it was pretty blue around here.
What are some of your favorite phrases and euphemisms? Have you ever had water damage?
I was walking in our back yard the other day and I started thinking about all the things I want to tell the next people who buy our home about our plants and shrubs.
We have lived here since 1988 and have landscaped and put in all sorts of plants and shrubs that we care deeply about. I want whoever buys our home to know how to care for the plants in ways that work. I am imagining, of course, that they will keep all the plants we have and just add more.
Husband and I like to imagine that the ideal people to buy our home will be a retired couple, preferably a farm couple who like to garden and can, and who want enough bedrooms for family to visit. Nothing too fancy, but with a nice garden and not too much lawn to mow. We won’t be putting our house on the market for a couple of years yet, and we have lots to do yet to refurbish the interior. I hope whoever moves in after us will be as happy as we have been here.
What sort of people would you want to live in your home after you? What would they need to know about your house to be successful there.
Went out on Saturday morning and discovered that two of my iris’ are gone! Not eaten by some little critter, but gone – as in pulled up and removed. I water these things every day so I know it happened between 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon and 9 a.m. on Saturday morning.
One was a brand new Red Raptor (the deepest reddish purple you can get without it actually being black) and a lovely shade of orange call Savanna Sunset, which I planted last year. Both of these are colors that are outside the iris norm and that I really loved.
It was quite disheartening and I feel like I’ve joined the ranks for crime victims in the Twin Cities. Obviously this isn’t on the level of car theft or having your house broken into, but it still makes me a little sad. At least both of them were just past their bloom glory for the season.
It’s hardly fair that down here in our valley, it’s colder in the winter AND hotter in the summer. It’s not even noon on Thursday and it’s 89°. Plus, we don’t always get the breeze. What a cruel, cruel world.
I just took the back off the chicken coop and turned on their fan. Supposed to get baby chicks next week. They won’t hardly need a heat lamp.
The corn is growing, soybeans are just coming out, and the oats is looking a little rough in a few spots, but it’s coming along. We think the cold and rain right after planting affected the oats. Oats doesn’t like wet ground, plus there may have been enough rain to wash out some nutrients. We’ll have to see how it does. The co-op is getting ready to spray for weeds in the corn, and to spray the oats with fungicides and to prevent broadleaf weeds.
I’m officially done working at the college for the summer, but considering I wasn’t there last week when I was supposed to be, I have to go back and at least haul out garbage and put some things away and sit in the dark theater for a few minutes and have my talk with the room and just feel the energy. Yeah. I do that. All the people and activities that have come through the theater in the last 12 months, it’s good to take time and reflect on them.
Our neighbors who rent our pasture have brought cattle out.
The cows were really interested in my cutting grass right next to them the other night. I just didn’t have a camera on me.
The next show I’m lighting, ‘Raisin in the Sun’, has gotten through the first few tech rehearsals and it should be getting easier now. My friend Paul has been working night and day on the set. Three doors, a window, full vintage kitchen with working sink. And what a lot of props in this show! (It was funny to watch the cast try to figure out the record player).
The directors are from the Twin Cities.
You probably all know the plot or have seen the movies and know it’s about a black family. Finding actors of color in Rochester is difficult; in the community theaters, there may be a few. At the college, we might have two or three. So to find eight for this show, plus understudies, took a lot of community engagement before-hand. And there’s a lot of new people! I know one actor, who was at the college 13 years ago. It’s a good group of actors, and they’re doing great, and it should be a good production.
I keep saying my life is slowing down. Next week. I’ve rescheduled a massage for the third time. I’ve rescheduled a fire alarm inspection twice, and the dentist once.
I had to stop at the Farm Service Agency on Thursday and do my crop certification. I tell them what I planted where and when and how many acres. That information is used to determine cropping history and eligibility for payments in the event of natural disasters or other government payments.
Their map acres don’t match my map acres and they map out all the waterways and I end up with 55 fields on their maps. I only have about 19 fields on my maps. The staff there is always great and I hand them my maps with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is, and they figure it out. I come back later and sign it.
I started cleaning up machinery. Swept out the cab of the tractor and power washed the outside.
Started to wash the next tractor and the power washer made some terrible grinding sounds, and then it didn’t make any sounds anymore. Hmm.
I spent a few hours one day riding around in a big truck guiding the driver as he applied calcium chloride for dust control on the township gravel roads. It’s a fun way to spend a few hours.
Spotted 5 sandhill cranes a few different days. And we’re still hearing them call.
I got most of the soybean fields dragged to smooth them out. I’ve stopped now because the beans are too close to sprouting. It sure is dusty and dry, (see header photo) and every spring I’m reminded how much I rely on the ‘texture’ to find my path. It’s harder when it’s this dry and the ground didn’t work up well.
I also use a boating app that maps my route. That way I can at least tell if I skipped a spot somewhere. I use a free version, so I don’t get a map, I just get the path.
It is useful especially at night and trying to find where I left off in a field. I saw a drivers ed car: ‘St. Joseph Driving School’ with a Renaissance style image spread across the whole drivers side of St. Joseph. Considering ‘Catholic.org’ says Joseph is the patron saint of dying, maybe that’s not who I want for a driving instructor. But it seems like a great name, and it was a great image for the business!
Hauling my fertilizer wagon and some other small things to the auction in Plainview.
Next week, NEXT WEEK, I’ll start working on the shop!
Now that the weather is nicer, YA’s inner-pyromaniac has emerged for the summer.
Years ago I inherited a backyard fire pit from a friend. At this point I think the rust is the only thing holding it together but it has provided many years of enjoyable backyard conflagrations. YA is good at sweeping the yard for twigs and branches that she piles up in the very back of the yard; she is always on the lookout for kindling. She is the initiator of 98% of our backyard infernos and is generally in charge of any arranging and poking that is needed.
It doesn’t take long after the first couple of the seasons blazes that she asks about graham crackers and chocolates. We always have marshmallows (Trader Joe’s – vegetarian). I knew this was coming so I had already stocked up; we were able to have our first s’mores of the season that day! We even used the s’mores trays that I bought at the state fair a few years ago. These are clearly unnecessary toys but I love them anyway.
We have a gas stove; we could easily have s’mores all year long, but we never make them except over the fire in the back yard. I suspect that the sunshine, the smoke from the fire, the joy of finally being outside after a long winter contribute to why having summer s’mores is just the best way to go.
I have live in western North Dakota since 1987, and I still can’t get over how dusty it is here.
I like to dust using an attachment on the vacuum hose, but sometimes just use a Swiffer duster thingy. It is so dusty here that a week after dusting, I can write my name in the thick dust on the furniture surfaces. We have new windows and siding on the house. I change the furnace filters frequently, but there is no stopping the dust. It seems to be worse in our bedroom, for some reason. I am beginning to wonder if I need to vacuum all the walls and ceilings, too.
My mother had high standards for cleaning and really hated dust. One of her rules for cleaning was to always make the beds before you dusted, because shaking out the bed clothes would “raise the dust”. Next you vacuumed and then you dust. She would be very frustrated with the dust situation in our home. It just seems like a losing battle. Not dusting really isn’t an option, though.
What are some family maxims that you remember? How do you keep down the dust? What are your least favorite cleaning tasks.?
Last week when I stopped at the library, I noticed a basket on the little table inside the door, filled with bookmarks. A sign on the basket said “A Year’s Worth of Bookmakrs. Please take one.” Turns out it was a collection of all the bookmarks found in returned books over the last year. Apparently they do this every year; I must have just missed it before.
There were a good 40 bookmarks in the basket and I was tempted to look through them all to see if any of them were mine. I expect with the number of library books I borrow that one or two bookmarks might have found their way to the library!
I have a cannister on my dresser that is filled with my bookmarks. I will always pick up a bookmark if one is being offered. (Ask Chris, I have several of his!) One of my latest favorites is a cutout of Smokey the Bear that I got at the state fair last year.
You’d think that with at least 25 bookmarks in my cannister that I wouldn’t need to take another one from the library basket. Well, you’d be wrong, I flipped through them all and picked out a striking one from a publisher with brightly colored book spines on it!
Do you have bookmarks? Do you have a place to keep your bookmarks?
Trail Baboon 