Category: Uncategorized

The fog finally cleared yesterday and after the run to the natural foods store for supplies, a garden venture was braved. There is evidence we received a light frost, about a week to 10 days before average, the tops of the Tomatillos are burned and the edges of the western most Thai pepper show some damage, but for the most part, I think we have a little more time. Peppers were picked as well as Tomatillos. The stink bugs seem to love the Tomatillos and many are damaged when I pick them, some so damaged they never fully develop. If the damage is light, I just cut it out before blanching them. If it is heavy, the fruit goes to the hens and as I toss them from 2/3 across the garden some miss. They will be next year’s volunteers. I probably won’t have to plant or buy Tomatillo plants next year. The three dill plants that didn’t come up forever were tucked under and between the Ground Cherries and the bush beans and they survived last night. Not wanting to risk losing them, they were cut and are drying in three small vented brown bags.

The mail brought next year’s seed garlic. The garlic I ordered and some I purchased from a vendor at the Farmer’s Market a few weeks ago will be planted in early November and covered with straw to become next year’s garlic crop.

It also brought the spindle I purchased at the Yarn Tools shop update early this week. This one appealed to me because it is Honduran Rosewood and one of my favorite excursions from our 40th Anniversary cruise was in the Honduras, where we rode horses on the beach and into the ocean around a small island and ate soft tacos in a beachside hut before returning to the ship.

Though the spindle on the left and the new one in the center are both Jenkin’s Finches, the weights are significantly different. The Rosewood one is more than 5 grams heavier and only less than half a gram lighter than it’s much larger cousin, the Aegean on the right. I was unfortunate or fortunate on how you look at it with the lottery. My name wasn’t drawn, so another spindle purchase this week didn’t happen. The fortunate is that I didn’t really need another, nor did it warrant spending the money.

The lack of a Farmer’s Market run and the cooler day inspired me to return to bread baking. It took a break during the hot weather and I would just buy a loaf of sour dough bread at the Farmer’s Market. Since I had pizza on the menu for the night and had to let the flours come to room temperature anyway, I mixed up a batch of yeast raised herb and onion bread and one of plain sandwich bread along with the pizza dough. It looks great and smells wonderful, but I was too full from pizza when it came out of the oven to even think about trying it.

We haven’t seen any Hummingbirds in over a week. They usually stick around until mid October, but not this year. The feeders were brought in and washed. Once thoroughly dry they will be stored away until mid to late April next spring.

All in all, it was a delightful, busy fall day. The hunters apparently were successful in the fog from their text as they left late in the morning. No hunting is allowed on Sundays unless it is on your own land and we neither hunt nor eat game meat, so the deer are safe today.

Last evening after the hunters were gone.

All week we were being threatened with potential frost last night and I had plans to cover parts of the garden. Yesterday, the forecast changed and it looked like the night time temperatures were going to stay above 40, so I didn’t cover anything except the fig is wrapped around the sides with doubled heavy mil plastic. When I got up this morning, the outdoor thermometer indicated it went down to 37 f and the weather app says there was frost warning until 9 a.m. It is so foggy outside that when I went over to feed and release the chickens, I couldn’t even see the garden. It is still densely foggy. If the sun comes out later, I will check for damage, possibly having to harvest the remaining peppers to oven dry. If the tomatillos took a hit, I will pick whatever has any size, and roast them to make a roasted salsa, or toss them in a pot with spices for another few jars of simmer sauce. I should have followed through on my original plan to cover it. Oh well, if it is the end of the season, so be it. I’m sure the peas will be fine and maybe we will still get a small fall harvest of them.

Today begins bow hunting season for deer. The two young men who sought permission to use our low field are down there in the thick fog. I can’t imagine they could see anything. It was thick enough that a deer could forage under their stand and they wouldn’t see it. Now, after 10 a.m., it is just beginning to thin enough to even see that field from the house.

I guess this wasn’t the ideal first day of hunting weather. Having them on the property with bows requires that I have to take the pups out individually on leashes.

I received notification that the spindle I got in the Yarn Tools shop update earlier in the week will be delivered today, and I sit here waiting for the random drawing from their shop to see if I earned the right to purchase one of the ones I picked from the lottery. They are on the west coast, so the posting won’t occur until noon or after here in the east.

We chose not to go to the Farmer’s Market in the cold fog this morning. Later today or tomorrow, I will venture to the Eats, the natural foods store for a little produce, local cheese and local(ish) tortillas (they are made in Virginia a couple of hours from here).

After a few restless, sleepless nights recently and feelings of stress over the daily onslaught of bad news, I concluded that I had slipped back into a habit of too much caffeine. My single morning mug of coffee had risen to two or three. Each day I was making a pot of tea that I drank iced though out the day. This required me to take drastic measures and enduring a caffeine withdrawal headache for a couple of days, but I am limiting myself to 1 mug of coffee and not making a pot of tea that is so easy to just pour and drink. If I want tea, I must brew a single cup and enjoy it hot. For other hydration and thirst, I am drinking our well water, which I find tastes good. With dinner, I add a splash of pomegranate juice to the water. I have slept better the past few nights and feel less stressed.

Another 11 grams of the braid I am spinning was spun yesterday and a few grams of Jacob on my “car” spindle, though not in the car. I really like the way this part of the braid matches the spindle’s colors. I am spinning it in the gradient, and will ply it that way, but don’t know what it will become. I also spun nearly a bobbin full of a much heavier yarn to be plied with another singles hopefully to be Aran or heavier weight to knit historic style hats.

The fog is finally lifting, I think I will go check on the night’s damage to the garden.

Stay safe out there.

I have just finished listening to a very thought provoking Podcast, hinting on a topic my husband and I have often discussed.  Though the Podcast was not directly on the topic, it sent me here.  The topic is societal fear, the Podcast actually was on the history of public bathrooms and how we got where we are now with sex separate facilities and the issues they cause for transgender, non-binary, intersex, and disabled people.

It takes me back more than 3 decades when as a  Mom with young children, I was faced with having to take a son into the women’s room or hubby having to take our daughter into a men’s room because we didn’t want them going into the other facility on their own or leaving them outside to wait while we went in.  Even then, the idea of single the sex bathrooms seemed absurd to me.  You don’t have them on buses or airplanes.  We share bathrooms in our homes and in some small businesses that have a single facility, why can’t we have bathrooms that accommodate everyone.

The answer is fear, unreasonable fear.  It has been pervasive in history.  When bathrooms were a privy, everyone used them without regard to gender or color, then indoor bathrooms came along with water and sewage infrastructure, but women were basically kept at home.  As women entered the workplace, the system changed, but only for privileged white America when we unnecessarily segregated a whole population out of fear.  Building code was written to mandate separate sex bathrooms. Then after desegregation, the fear switched to AIDS, could you catch it in a bathroom?  Then more open acceptance of same sex marriage, or has it just fomented more irrational fear as the issue of which bathroom a transgender, non-binary, or intersex individual must use.

I think most of what drives today’s issues is fear of change, fear of what people perceive they can’t control but shouldn’t control.  Fear caused by generations of ignorance by people raised to believe that anyone of a different race, religion, gender identity, or nationality is alien and suspect if not outright dangerous.

Back to the Podcast, the code, through the efforts of lawyers, researchers, and architects who are themselves in one of the categories in the first paragraph or at least open minded and not driven by fear, has changed to allow new building to have one large bathroom with grooming areas, hand washing areas that vary in height and are  long “sinks” angled away from the user, and toilet areas with stalls of varying sizes to accommodate everyone regardless of size or disability.  This would work, it would be as they put it in the podcast, “more eyes” to prevent unwanted behaviors, but unfortunately the code doesn’t mandate this change, just allows it and as long as the FEAR is there, it will continue to be a problem in our society.

It is time for our small-minded fear to be cast away and recognize that we are all humans on the same planet and can benefit from each other’s cultures, beliefs, ideas.