Chronicles Continued

It is October, and 66 degrees at dusk.  After a day of planting dozens of more bulbs, my reward is a glass of Roseburg, Oregon, Albarino  while reclining on a chaise on the western facing porch, to watch the sun drop behind the hills.  This is one of my most favorite times of year,  because the trees turn black as the sun leaves the sky.  That black silhouette I have tried, oh so often, to capture in pen and ink.  While here, a few thoughts fleet past. There is never an airplane in the sky.  But never.  That is such a unique occurrence, I am dumbstruck at the realization. A cloud that looked like Dumbo – a small elephant, is hanging above the trees.  But…there is no one to turn share the thought.  It is such moments a partner, or at least a regular on the scene, would be lovely.  Guess that is not to be.  At the Fair the other day I actually noticed someone giving me the once over… but knocking on my door or blocking my car in traffic…But  I digress, back to the waning sun.  A dog barks, a car drives by slowly, they wave, I wave, I think about the wonders of putting bulbs in the ground… oh yes, accompanied by 12 gallons of self-made compost.  This is a first for me.  And the dark loam is photo worthy.  I am excited that everyone who stays here, gets with the program.  The compost bin appeared to be getting tall, and then I flipped it on its side and harvested the rich earth.  How rewarding to see that all those veggie scraps and food scrapes have returned to rich earth.  Today they were returned to the earth in the furtherance of new growth.  The sky is now dotted with gray clouds, the top of the hill is lined with finely etched black trees and a soft winding is blowing the flames of the candles that are not only decorative but enlisted to keep the mosquitos away.  At the later job they are failing miserably.

 

The day was sunny and warm, an extension of summer into Fall. The large crowds were composed of couples and families.  Due to good planning, the tents and seating areas and children’s activities centers accommodated them all. Live music played, grandmothers drank beer and everyone ate.  This festive event was held in a meadow on a  picturesque farm outside the town of Delhi.  Part of the claim to fame of the town is the university, a part of SUNY.  Also this burg is the seat of government for the county.  The ‘Taste’ was to showcase all the Catskill Mountain made products.  There was a plethora of cheeses, milks, yogurts, jewelry, food dishes to consume now, food to eat later, teas, coffee and hand-made articles of wood, stone and fabrics.  What caught my attention were all the artisan distilleries represented.  There were makers of gins of varying proofs with clever names, potato or sugar cane vodkas of maple and other flavors, elixirs from herbs, plants and berries and lastly a liquor of fermented honey. To me they all tasted like Virginia Hooch or moonshine.  It was a clear indication of what happens when the winter is full on and everyone is house bound.

A new friend invited me to be a guest at her writer’s group.  They meet twice a month at the library in a nearby town.  Presently there are 9 members but over the past 20 years apparently there have been many aspiring writers who attended for a while and then moved on – to other pursuits.  It was informative and in some cases delightful to hear the results of the work of putting pen to paper by 6 of the members.  Each person brings something they wrote to read aloud.  After listening and before we all went out together for supper at a local restaurant, I was asked what I was working on and had I ever been a member of a writer’s group before.  i gave a brief history that I had indeed at various times,  been part of such a like-minded group and that after listening to them this evening perhaps I would revive  one of the proverbial bottom-left-hand-desk-drawer-manuscripts of which I have more than one.  The particular one I had in mind, when I had finished it years ago, I shopped around as fiction, while it was based on fact.  Someone substantially plagiarized it.  At the time, years ago,  the advice of my attorney was, ‘Let it go’.  ‘Your story is better and you will only increase his sales of what is not a very good book and an even dumber title.’  So I did nothing.  Buried the manuscript, the music CD that went with it and all the photos which were never included, but should have been.  Into storage where it waited. Today, with a bit of effort I found it.  I have yet to open it past the title page.

Sitting in the wing-backed-leather-chair in my kitchen late at night, minding my own business, I see something move, out of the corner of my eye to the right.  It is a spider crossing from the vicinity of the back door.  Before I can get up and pick up my slipper it scoots under the refrigerator.  Have you ever seen a can of ‘spider spray’?  Me either.  There are all sorts of other varmint sprays,  but no spider.  The refrigerator is now ringed with ant and roach spray.  The hidden creepy-crawly has not reacted.  Perhaps it is communicating with the 4 inch long dragon-fly that flew in via the back door yesterday and has not been seen since.  You remember the big ‘german bee” that buzzed in the night of the WW event and was never found?  The housekeeper happened to mention that she found a large-dead-bee….

Some, not all of us, like to have a clean car exterior.  The house in is on a dirt road topped with gravel.  The nice man down at the local office for the township assured me that the spreading of calcium would keep the dust down.  Down to what was the question I should have asked.  This road on a very rainy day has patches of mud. Drive on the mud surface and both sides of car are caked.  On a dry, hot sunny day, it has patches of billowing dust.  The dust collects primarily on the rear of the car.  It covers the hatch and the back window.  Sometimes the use of the window washer and wiper is necessary to just see out. That results in rivers of tears running through the rest of the collected dust.  Am a frequent client of the local car wash which is a $2 – 4 minute application of rinse water via a wand.  I heard myself complaining for the 2nd time to a friend about the state of my car.  She lives in town and so doesn’t have to deal with the dirty-car-syndrome and wouldn’t care if she did.  After hearing myself moan, decided this would get old really quickly and I needed to find a solution.  What a solution: 32 oz of No Rinse Wash & Shine.  Read all the reviews and Voila, it really works.  It takes no time at all, just 3 cap-fulls, a bucket and dry and wet micro-fiber towels.  Could not be more pleased, and no need to grouse.

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The plan is to make sauerkraut.  The attraction to cabbage is not to be explained, don’t understand it myself.  All cabbages are not equal.  WW have invited me to visit farm stands they know and at each one I seem to walk out with a $2 head.  Here is the harvest so far.  The small green orb in front is a regular-sized lime. 

The simple thrill of excavating my choice of vegetables right out of the ground.  A local organic farmer who has joined the WW group, has a dig-your-own-day every Thursday and Friday now until I don’t remember when.  You give the farmer $20 and the farmer offers you a knife and a brown paper bag.  The knife was quite different from the knife I thought I was so smart to bring.  Having never done this, I had no idea that the best knife for the job is similar to what a machete would look like if you cut it bluntly in half.  At first glance I was tempted to fill my bag only with fennel, parsley and celeriac.  But the temptation was great and two bags later I had harvested the above plus: a red cabbage that looks like a rose, a leafy white cabbage with the finesse of a B. Potter illustration, 3 heads of lettuce in 3 colors, the smallest of turnips which just popped out of the soil when you gave a small tug on the leaves, they look like white marbles glued to tender, leafy stems, purple kale leaves, green kale leave, leeks, dill, rainbow chard, green chard, 2 Italian chicory heads, 1 frisee  head and 5 sunflowers peeking out of the top of the bag.  Oh yes, and the farmer added 6-large-just-dug-potatoes to the mix.  Company was on the horizon and this was going to be a feast.

They just keep appearing.  Added two new woman to the roster and neither knows anyone else that I could name on the list.  Both of these women have lived here 25 or 30 years.  Why they likely do not know the others is due to the niche they take in the community.  What fun!

gender? perspective? is there a right and wrong?  Attended a small black box theatre performance of three – 2 act plays in a nearby village.  Two pieces were written by newer, but older,  playwrights and both were men.  The premise of the first play was about a traveling professional woman [tpw] who set up one-night-stands specifically with married men.  A few days later she informed them she had AIDS [she did not}.  She was ‘teaching them a lesson’.  On this  night, a man she met, comes to her house, where she is chatting with her sister.  The man enters, the sister leaves and the couple exit stage right.  Act 2.  Sister returns and the two enter from stage right – the bedroom.  The three sit to chat and the suitor takes up the story begun in Act 1 about being in town to bury his brother.  The plot line reveals the brother committed suicide.  The suitor takes a letter from his pocket and begins to read… it is the ‘I’ve got AIDS’ letter written by the tpw.  The letter threatens to tell the wife and other dire consequences.  At the letter’s end, the suitor says, ‘Now you do have AIDS’ because I do.  Go have yourself tested and you’ll see.’  There was room for a rewrite as some ins and outs required too great a suspension of belief, but the turn of events made my opinion from the first act that she was indeed ‘teaching’  to question who was teaching whom a lesson?  The cheating husband was being exposed, but the question put forth by the script was she on moral high ground or was she to blame. It was a surprise food for thought – which was the title of the evening’s program.