We had our first church handbell rehearsal last Thursday, and welcomed some new players. During some after-rehearsal snacks, the conversation started on gardening. Two of the new players, a married female couple, said the rains this summer really helped with their zucchini crop, but they had too many now. We advised them to take the excess to the food pantry. Another veteran bell player told the story of moving to a small Idaho town where her husband was a Luthern pastor. They were quite solemnly warned to keep their car doors locked at all times in the summer and fall because people would stealthily deposit unwanted excess zucchini if the doors were unlocked.
We have never been the recipients of excess zucchini until last Saturday, when I found a nice big one on the front steps. I highly suspect the new bell ringers of pranking us with the zucchini. Since it is a bigger one we plan to shred it and make zucchini pancakes. Just wait until our butternuts are ripe! The new bell ringers may be in for a surprise on their front steps.
When was the last time you were pranked or you pranked someone? What would you like to leave surreptitiously on someone’s yard or front steps?
Husband and I order lots of foods on-line that are imported. We get quite a bit from a Spanish importer, such as tomato sauces, olive oil, dried beans, serrano ham, and Spanish cheeses and pancetta. We also order pasta and parmesan cheese from an Italian importer, and gallon cans of Turkish olive oil from the Syrian grocery store in Fargo. We get beans from Rancho Gordo. I like to have a well stocked larder. We are really spoiled.
I find myself in a quandary now, due to the threat and uncertainty of tariffs, the fact that we are moving soon, and the fact that this is the the time of year to stock up on dried beans and other items as it is harvest time. There is a special bean from Spain called Tolosa beans, for example, that is essential to a soup we love to make, and is hard to find in the States after autumn. We are also trying to use up as much food we have currently so we don’t have to move it.
After the threats of tariffs emerged in the new year I ordered two gallons of Turkish olive oil and two half-gallons of Spanish olive oil before the price skyrocketed. We will have a lot of olive oil to move. Yesterday I ordered eight pounds of Rancho Gordo beans as we were short on some beans we cook often. They won’t take up too much room on the moving truck. I don’t plan to order any more food on-line at this point, but I am feeling increasingly militant about not letting politics interfere with my cooking or my finances.
How might tariffs impact your budget? What imported foods do you purchase? What foods do you make sure you have on hand?
Welcome to the sick house. We all have colds. You should buy stock in tissues. My head is all fogged up so who knows what may come out in this…course that hasn’t stopped me running heavy machinery.
After last week and breaking things, I made some progress on repairing things this week. And I don’t think I’ve broken any more. Yet. (Never say never). I replaced the lift cable on the bale elevator and got that repaired. On the hay wagon I got the remaining pieces of the wheel bearings out of the hub, meaning I got both the inner and outer bearing race removed, which, thankfully, had identification numbers on them, and a local place could use that to find the correct bearings. We double checked dimensions and I got four bearings; a set for both back wheels and the plan is to have one of my padawans help me install on Saturday. It will be a good experience for him to ‘pack’ grease into a bearing. It’s not hard, but there is a process, and it is messy. It’s supposed to be hot on Saturday, so I’m planning a shop day. We’ll put the old John Deere 2 cylinder tractor, the 630, in the shop, drain the coolant and replace a radiator hose, take off the carburetor (for one of my friends to deep clean) and we’ll see what else we can get into. I’d like to replace the exhaust manifold, and those bolts will be difficult to remove as I’m not sure they’ve been out in 50 or 60 years, and through innumerable heating and cooling cycles. I’m told to heat the area red hot, let it cool for a few hours, then smack it with a hammer. That may work on some of the bolts, but on two of them, the heads are broken off, meaning the usual method is to weld a nut to the broken off bit. I’ve never tried that. I’ve seen it done successfully, just never tried it. We shall see.
Looks like we’ve lost 1 baby guinea. Still got 11.
Some of the baby guineas. They’re pigeon sized.
And they sure get around. Often when I leave in the morning, the three mom’s and them are half a mile up the road, hanging out on the edge of a corn field. By evening they’re all back home. Weird. And there’s been one pheasant hanging out around the barn. Now that the oats is out and straw baled, I’ve been mowing the edges of those fields. Cutting down weeds I couldn’t get to while the crop was growing. And I mowed the new waterway. The barn swallows sure loved me doing that. It was fun watching a couple dozen of them flirting around.
You can kinda see the barn swallows fliting around.
The new waterway.
The chickens like it when I mow, too.
On Wednesday this week I drove to the twin cities to pick up some lighting stuff for the college. I have mentioned before that my favorite Bob Dylan song is ‘Tangled up in Blue’. I don’t often listen to song words or meanings, but that one appeals to me. I love a good story, and one of love lost tugs at my heartstrings. I was aware of two versions of the song, Dylan’s and Joan Osborn’s. Then I heard of this guitar player who was recently in the cities by the name of Billy Strings, and he does a cover. So I started looking for his version. It’s on YouTube, but not Apple music yet. However I found several other versions.
I spent half the trip up, and the entire trip back listening to these different versions of the same song. The differences were really interesting to me. I really like the rhythm of the song, the tempo, the structure, and, depending on the version, the instrumentation or harmonies. A group called Grain Thief has a bluegrass version. The Indigo Girls have a section that drops into a solid blues verse. KT Tunstall’s gritty, throaty voice gives it a different vibe. Then there’s Mary Lee’s Corvette, who I hadn’t heard of before this, and she’s got a good rocking version. Jerry Garcia’s Band has a version complete with guitar jam. Bob Malone does a ROCKING bluesy version that I really liked (And a solo piano version available on YouTube). Robyn Hitchcock is just guitar and piano with a very folk / blues sound. A few are simply guitar, one starts as piano before adding the full band (and I really like a song that grows like that.) There was one version that seemed to be punk rock or something. I only got 20 seconds into it before deleting. Overall, the different guitar sounds, the slightly changed lyrics, the interpretation of each artist was fascinating to me and I still am not tired of this song after listening to it 58 times.
We have these fuel barrels for the farm: a 300 gallon barrel of gasoline that’s up on a stand so it’s gravity fed. And a 500 gallon for diesel fuel that’s electric and has a pump. The automatic nozzles like you use at the gas station don’t work on gravity feed, the only work with a pump, so it was a big deal when, however many years ago I got a used barrel from a neighbor and went from gravity to a pump on the diesel barrel. I rented a trencher and ran an electric line across the driveway from the shop to the barrel and then could buy one of those automatic shut off nozzles. When I needed to refill the tractor the other day, I started the fuel flowing, went to the house to grab a snack, and got back to the tractor two seconds before the fuel stopped. I remember a few times with the gravity system and we used a big square nut to hold the lever up and then I would go to the shop and get distracted and I spilled a few gallons… I appreciate not having to worry about that anymore.
The header photo and that hole in the ground? I dug up the cover of the septic tank. Bailey helped.
Those eyes!
We got the tank pumped out. It’s been on my ‘to-do’ list for a couple years. Also got a riser installed so the cover isn’t 2 feet underground anymore. Digging it up on Thursday I was thinking that is going to be a really good thing.
Our last day of working for the State will be sometime the first week of October. The administrators at both of our agencies are scrambling to figure out who can do all the things we do, and it is turning out to be a challenge.
Husband and I are somewhat unique in that we are actually in-person at our agencies and don’t work remotely. Most of our State psychology colleagues live out of state and only test people via telehealth with the help of psychometrists. Very few of them even test children. We also are unique in that we know how to give IQ tests to children about to turn 3, and that is a rare skill indeed. Children with developmental disabilities need IQ testing before the age of 3 to determine if their issues are severe enough and will be long term. If so, they qualify for a host of services, as well as Medicaid and excellent case management. In other more populous parts of the state, there are enough psychologists in the private sector to do the testing. Not so out here.
We also know how to do IQ testing using the Stanford Binet IQ test, which has norms down to age 2, and which none of the younger State or private sector psychologists know how to use. You can’t test a 2 year old via telehealth. They don’t make them like us anymore.
Husband says he wants to be like a 1964 Chevy Impala. You can see it in the header photo. I identify with my Great Grandmother’s early 1920’s Reo. My father had vivid memories of playing in the car when he was small. Here is a similar model
What out of production car model do you miss? What else have they stopped making that you regret?
One benefit of moving is the chance to go through things and decide what is good to keep and what is good to go. I spent part of Saturday going through a closet in the guest bedroom that has all our photo albums in it. That was a daunting task.
I am the photographer in the family. Over the years we have kept, organized in albums, most of the many photos I took during our early marriage and of the children as they grew up. We also acquired Husband’s family photos that included photos of his childhood as well as old family photos from early 20th century. We got a lot of those after Husband’s father died. I have my own old family photos organized in another part of the house.
I found I still have the scrapbooks my mother put together of a trip to Europe I took as a high school senior with America’s Youth In Concert in 1976, and my years at Concordia. I had forgotten we had those, since I shoved them in our closet after my parents died 11 years ago. I am glad I made an executive decision then to get rid of most of the volumes of my own baby pictures. I haven’t missed them at all.
The whole problem with the guest room closet is that we have been shoving things in there and forgetting about them. I got rid of empty photo albums and other useless things on Saturday. Why, I asked myself, do we have three pairs of binoculars? I didn’t have the energy to sort through the fifteen or so photo albums that remain. That will be done at our leisure after we move.
Snce the advent of smartphones I no longer use my camera. Those photos are in “the Cloud”. I will have to figure out how to digitize the photos in the albums I decide to keep. Our son assured me it is easily done. We shall see if that is so.
How do you store your pre-smartphone photos? Any Baboon scrapbookers?
One of the challenges of sharing a kitchen with Husband is his extreme fussiness regarding the foods he cooks and prepares. He has many preconceived expectations as to what goes with what, and is unhappy if the combinations aren’t exactly the way he wants them. When he seasons a dish, he spends quite a bit of time tasting and adding this and that til it is just right in his mind. I can’t tell the difference.
The same goes for his fussiness in pairings of different foods. I can usually put up with his demands for just the right main course with just the right sides. It is a little more difficult now that we are trying to empty our freezers before we move. We have agreed, for example, that we aren’t going to buy any more sausage, brats, or ground meat until the stuff we have is gone. There are a lot of sausages to be used up.
The other day I was pretty exasperated with him for stopping at the butcher shop and buying some ring bologna and summer sausage. I reminded him of all the brats and other sausage that we had that would work just as well as bologna. He insisted that he had to have the bologna because that is always what he has with the particular side dish he was going to have that evening. I told him that we would never get through the food we already had if he keeps this up, and that he might have to change some of his expectations for meals if we are to reduce the food in the freezers. He sighed and stated in a somewhat martyred tone that he would just have to start practicing acceptance regarding our meals. Husband says he owns his culinary idealism.
I am fortunate to be married to someone who loves to cook and loves good food. I just hope he doesn’t get too distressed as he has to change his ideas, at least temporarily, regarding our meals.
What do you have to practice acceptance of? Do you have inviolable expectations for some meals and food pairings?
For the last several weeks I have been plagued with an ear worm of Oh, Canada. Don’t ask me why. It is a nice enough tune, but it was getting annoying. I woke up at 3:00 am Sunday with another tune going through my head. I was sleepy and had to think for a minute but recognized it as Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper by Jaromir Weinbeger.
I pride myself for an ability to identify pieces of classical music by ear. I had the advantage of playing the Schwanda piece in college concert band, so it wasn’t too hard to identify it. I challenge myself as I drive or listen to Classical MPR to name the piece or composer before the announcer does. I still have some trouble discerning between Poulenc and Milhaud, as well as all the Spanish guitar composers, but on most other composers I think I am pretty solid.
This knowledge, as well as $5.00, will get me a cup of coffee, but it is pretty satisfying to be able to say, if anyone asks “Oh, that is such and such by so and so”.
What area of esoteric knowlege or skill do you pride yourself on? What long running 1960’s television program made repeated use of a composition by Brahms?What classical music are you most familiar with?
I was sitting at my desk at work yesterday at about 1:45 pm when I got a phone call from the Stark County Emergency Services Office. It was an emergency message sent out to everyone in town advising us that the community emergency storm shelter was opening now instead of this evening, and people who might need shelter from severe storms should go there now. The shelter is at the Dickinson State University Student Union. There were other shelters in the varios small towns around us. Cumulus clouds were developing quickly to our west and southwest, and there was the possibility of severe storms with baseball size hail and 80 mph to hit in the next couple of hours.
Well, this was rather alarming to hear. The weather was hot and quite humid yesterday. It is unusual for us to have much humidity. The NWS had been predicting possible severe weather depending on factors like heat and humidity. It was most probable that our severe weather would arrive late evening, but they wanted vulnerable people to seek shelter before that just in case.
I decided to leave work and pick up a few things at the grocery store. The emergency message must have been effective since the lines at the strore reminded me of the panic shopping we see before a snow storm hits. I went home and sat and watched the sky. There was a lot more traffic than usual for a Thursday in the early afternoon. Neighbors and people I talked to said it looked and felt like we were really going to be in for some bad weather tonight.
By 3:30 there still was no storm, but the sky was filled with big grey clouds coming in from the south and southwest alternating with periods of sun.
By 4:30 the temperature was up a couple of degrees. The sun/dark cloud pattern conntinued, and all of eastern Montana was under a severe thunderstorm watch.
By 5:30 pm, skies were mainly clear, and by 5:45 they had partially clouded over and our chance for severe storms was increased to 70%. The Thunderstorm watch was still on for eastern Montana.
By 8:30 pm, skies were completely clear, except for a solid grey line of clouds in the far west. We were in a Severe Thunderstorm Watch until 2:00 As I was exhausted from work and weather, I went to bed.
At 11:30, a very windy storm hit that lasted about 20 minutes, dropping .07 of rain and no hail. No sirens. No damage. All the storms moved east
How good are you at predicting the weather? How much faith do you have in the NWS? Any memorable times when they have been really right or really wrong?
This Summer has been one of the wettest on record here in western ND. Our veggie garden and flower beds are looking great. The trees are also looking quite happy.
We have a couple of hazelnut trees at the northwest corner of the house.
They are loaded with at the nuts, so that the thin branches are drooping lower and lower as the nuts get bigger and heavier.
We have never actually harvested any of the nuts because they disappear before we can pick them. I always notice an increased presence of sq6uirrels as the nuts ripen every year. I have seen squirrels with clusters of nuts in their mouths running along the top of our our neighbor’s fence as a bluejay shrieked “Thief!” in the way blujays do. I have never, ever, though, seen a squirrel in the hazel trees. The nuts are all at the outer ends of very thin branches. The nuts get removed right from the tree. Although the branches are sagging with the weight of the nuts, the lowest ones are still a good 3 feet off the ground and the ones at the top of the trees disappear, too. The only thing I can think is that the squirrels somehow crawl to the ends of these very thin branches, tear off the nuts, and leap to the ground. We find hoards of shells buried in the flowerbeds in the Spring. I think they really enjoy them.
Eight years ago, my new neighbors moved in. Two parents, one daughter; later a second daughter rounded out the family. Early on it was clear that Minnie (the older daughter) and I had a clear affinity for chalk. Often when Minnie was out doing chalk artwork on their driveway, I would go over for a bit and join in.
When my next birthday rolled around, Minnie and her folks came over and did chalkwork all over my front sidewalk. It was wonderful – lots of colors, flowers and rainbows. After that, every year, we would have a chalk party. A couple of other kids in the neighborhood joined in. I even found glitter chalk online to add to the festivities.
This summer, the family moved a few blocks away and while I briefly thought about asking if the girls wanted to come over, I let it go as they are so busy with camps until school starts. On Monday afternoon, YA texted me from downstairs (she was working from home and I was upstairs) that Marie (younger daughter) was at the door. I hurried down and found the whole family outside, working on a spectacular birthday chalk display, down the whole sidewalk, up and down some of the driveway, even on the steps up to the house.
There is a fun “dance zone”
An exhortation to sing
And the obligatory hopscotch
Marie and I did the hopscotch several times and after some more chat and hugs, they all headed home. That’s when I teared up a little – it was so special that they came over to do this for me. Hopefully this tradition can keep going for a few more years. I’m assuming that once Minnie and Marie hit their teenage years, coming over to do art on their “neighborhood gramma’s” sidewalk won’t be all that appealing!
When was the last time you jumped hopscotch? Any notable chalk artwork in your past?
Trail Baboon 