That Blue October Sky

Try explaining how blue the October sky is, how it grips even the loneliest spots on Earth and in the mind until they glow and seem meaningful when the rest of the year we don't look twice. 

 

Driving home I saw this sight and could have kept driving but scolded myself, "Time was when you'd turn around, stop, park and stand in the road to take a picture to share with everyone so they could see what you see, feel the reverence, how great it is to live here and now. Is that time gone? Are you old or just lazy? Maybe taking it for granted? What about beauty? What about awe?"

 

So I found a place to park and backtracked up the road, walking past a field of dead sunflowers on long thick stems much taller than I, with weird little gray birds shooting in and out of them. I stopped and saw they were goldfinches, not lemon-yellow anymore but wearing their duller winter corduroy. High winds roiled the grasses and treetops and filled my ears. If a car were approaching I would have to feel it through my feet. But there was no other car and I got my photo. Happy October.

Making the Cut

I used to spend hours and days outside with these tools saving the property from invasive cedars and Japanese honeysuckle vines, and after about seven years the clippers and weed whip, dulled and unusable, sat in the garage until I realized a while ago, "I can now pay to sharpen these," and, to be honest with you, also thought, "When the apocalypse comes, any day now, I will wish I had sharpened these tools" to cut a clearing in the underbrush and clip and trim branches to build my lean-to, and so on.

Nobody else, I was sure, ever let their tools get so dull. Embarrassed to bring them to the sharpener, I prepared a fib -- "I bought these at a garage sale" -- in case the sharpener said, "Whee doggie. I've never in my life seen garden tools in such a deplorable condition." I wasn't sure whether the weed whip, my favorite, with its double-edged and serrated blade, could even be honed. I never knew anyone who cleaned or sharpened garden tools; Demetrius left his crusted with clay and soil. Also needing treatment were two lopping shears and a very old pair of hedge shears with wooden handles. The hedge shears were already here, rusted stiff, blades blackened with time and handles sticky with dust, when I moved in long ago. I wondered whether they could be salvaged. In the garage when I moved here was also a scythe, an actual scythe, but I think it's gone.

The sharpener sharpened and spiffed up all four and covered the freshly honed edges with paper, a courtesy unexpected and appreciated. Here they are back home, and out I go because I like cold weather for doing the heavy work of cutting.

Country Caulking

On a chilly night the new acrylic indoor storm windows leaked cold, so feeling around the single-pane window frame and catching breezes, I looked carefully and saw all three layers of the window frame needed caulking, right now, in the ever-narrower space in Missouri between hot summer and cold winter, neither of those good for caulking.

In September I spent three days caulking a historic single-pane window real nice (with "antique white"), but this one is 1969 in an aluminum frame and it rained yesterday and it'll rain tomorrow so instead of having fun I got the stepladder and drop cloths, plastic bags, nitrile gloves, wet rags and caulking gun and worked quick and dirty. Nearly every inch of this 85-year-old house needs caulking. Aproned and teetering and reaching overhead and messing up, I do it about every 10 years. This time I noticed caulk technology has changed; now soap and water will get it out of your hair and off your gloves and pants.

Inner critic: Your caulking stinks.
Me: Shut up. It's better than yours.
Inner critic: Should have cut the the tube a narrower tip --
Me: I didn't see you lending a hand.
Inner critic: Slow and steady. Don't smooth beads with your finger; use a craft stick! What a mess! Don't you have a sponge? Don't poke at that, it's almost dry! Now it's worse!
Me: The caulk didn't fill it up the first time.
Inner critic: It would have, if you'd been patient --
Me: Cram it.

The photo is AFTER I caulked and while it's curing. Yes, it's hoosier, but it looks a lot like the art downtown at the Pulitzer. In the right light.

C.S.I. = Can See It

Like several other deer around here, this one got hit by a car just before hunting season opened in November and lay dead on the road shoulder about 200 feet down the highway. This past season Franklin County, just inches to our west (I can throw a stone over the county line), had the biggest deer harvest in the state of Missouri: more than 4,000. Sorry, Bambi fans: The herd needed thinning. Worse than seeing a deer in the road shoulder is seeing half a deer.  That's to say nothing of the people in the car. Before you get all Awww about deer hunting, imagine your own car hitting a deer that rolls at 50 mph through your windshield onto you and your passengers.

Three, four, five days and I began to wonder: Who picks up the roadkill in Missouri?

Within a city's limits: Animal Control. (Hey, all of you who love to work with animals. . .)
On a county road: Missouri Department of Conservation, and don't call about anything smaller than a deer because they believe in nature taking care of its own.
On a state road: Missouri Department of Transportation.

They do it on call, but I didn't know that then. When scavenger birds picked at the carcass I looked the other way. Then I got all involved in whatnot and left town for a week. Came back and catching up on work barely left the Divine Cabin for a week to ten days. Then going for a walk I see this. Looks like a young deer (they're the most fearless and ignorant) who was broadsided.

R & R & T

I am a workaholic and realized I almost never spend whole days outdoors anymore. So out I go into the mists of October, scaring packs of deer who apparently thought this property was all theirs.

I have now re-engaged with recreation and hobbies. A two-mile walk today on an unexpectedly steep new trail I balanced with a half-hour of leisure in the zero-gravity chair with a pot of hot tea.

I'm taking Russian-language classes and barre classes. The Russian teacher lived four years in Moscow. She says, "Russia is the only country in the world where a poetry reading can fill a stadium." I plan to live on my Social Security in the lovely Silk Road city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. They all speak Russian, and I'm glad they do, because there's no Uzbek-language classes around here.

Barre classes are ballet-inspired workouts but without the impact. I bought a package of 10 one-hour classes to deliberately invest too much to waste them. One hour in class draws only the most determined and addicted, because barre is torture and whips up those endorphins like, whoo-ee. The regulars -- there are lots! -- are all trim through the middle and have built a genuine booty. That's right, a booty worth writing home about. If I get one, I will post it. Twenty years older than most participants, I sometimes lag but never quit and after three classes am catching on.

Later I'll practice my bongos.

Piety

Autumn brings church-sponsored come-one-come-all suppers of chicken, ham, roast pork, pork sausage (at Catawissa Union Protestant Church, $3 a pound to take home), and beef, advertised in the Events section of the local paper. I never like to take photos of food at these plentiful church suppers because it gives me away as an intellectual, but absolutely had to photograph this dessert table to show you, no matter what anyone thought. (The secret of life is: Nobody's thinking about you. Nobody's looking at you. They're all too busy worrying about themselves.)

Yet how to choose? Pumpkin, seasonal, one of the pleasures of late fall? Lemon, 'cause I get it so rarely? Berry pie, because the summer drought meant no berries in the meadow this season? Cherry, because it's always great? Peach, because you never know what you might be missing? Apple, because that's American? Exotic entry, Amish Pineapple pie? Coconut, or chocolate silk, or pecan pie? Custard? How about a slice of each? How about Union Pacific lays some railroad track out to my house and delivers me pie every day by the boxcar full? The only thing they didn't have was Concord grape pie, a New England regional specialty I liked to make from the purple grapes I and my friends liberated from abandoned grape arbors in upstate New York. I make a good one when I want to do the work.

On my deathbed I just know the pies of my life will pass before me.

If this photo does not make you want to go to church suppers than nothing will.

Hawthorn Berry

Hawthorn berries, currently ripening to a lovely carnelian red, are called "haws" and are both medicinal and full of cyanide. The seeds, if you ingest them, turn to a terrifically poisonous gas, hydrogen cyanide, in your intestines, and that is a stomachache you do not want to have. The flesh, though, is said to be good for blood pressure and heart issues. I think I'll leave all that to the experts and to the birds who eat these berries, and simply admire them.

Pluot, Spelled "Pluot"

They were the cheapest fruit and piled the highest, and I got the sense that nobody much was buying them, and being on a budget this month I loaded a bagful although I didn't know what to expect from a"pluot," a plum-sized red sphere with yellow speckles, and I supposed a cross between a plum and an apricot, and I've seen weirder things, so I took a chance.

They are delicious--juicier and sweeter than plums, are nothing like apricots (which I enjoy). I fell in love with my first pluot, nice and cold from the fridge, and with all the rest of them, and the feeling was mutual. I appreciate food. I'm delighted when it expresses appreciation for me. Also known as a "plumcot." Try one and let me know how you like it.

No One Has Ever Been Happier

November 1 was a gorgeous 80-degree day, spent working, tooling around in the car on errands all midday and eating two mozzarella sticks and a tangerine for lunch, then getting minor foot surgery I have needed for seven years (no, it does not hurt) and unflinchingly paying cash I had saved for that: so satisfying. Then at 4:00 p.m. at home serving myself my real lunch out on the Divine Porch, watching beautiful birds occupying the golden atmosphere, and after that, dessert. I had bought Golden Delicious apples because a recipe specified them. Compared with the cloying sweetness of Red Delicious apples, these are wonderfully tasty.

Apple slices with my day's cup of coffee, espresso, in the tiny hand-painted cup I brought home from Portugal after touring a ceramics factory in Coimbra and watching eight artists wielding pinpoint-tipped brushes to build amazing, entirely original designs on cups, plates, pitchers, and so on.

Sitting in the rocker, taking in the sunlight and scenery, breathing the delicious scent of coffee in this unique and pretty souvenir of a wonderful country, I thought that no one has ever been as happy as I was at that moment.

A Neat Trick

Happy Halloween, when people dress in costume except when, like me, they are too much of a character already. This very fine Walking Stick I met on the door frame had its legs stockinged green to match the paint. How that happens I don't know, but it's marvelous and someday we humans will be able to do that.

Days have been wonderfully, exceptionally warm for October, and I deeply appreciate the warm weather extending until now, and perhaps until December. I've barbecued on December 6, and last December 21, the solstice, maxed out at 66 degrees (above zero), warm enough to sit by the Yule Log until long past sunset.

After we are into November, the solstice is only seven weeks away.

Cheerful

Carefully I select from my collection of 13 old restaurantware coffee cups the one which suits my mood or the one I think will alter it for the better. These are the three with airbrushing. The blue and red are from Buffalo China, the goldish from Shenango. Buffalo, Syracuse, and Iroquois were three major manufacturers in upstate New York and I started with six cups from Syracuse China while living in Syracuse 30 years ago in an apartment measuring 10 feet by 12 feet, not caring because I'd shared a flat for three years and wanted my own life. At the Syracuse China (now out of business) factory outlet with its bins of seconds, cups and saucers, I selected six different cups at just a few cents each; four survive intact, and I keep one that's cracked, hoping it will heal.

None of these were among them. Over the years I have eBayed, seeking mostly to replace the one Syracuse cup with a Greek key design around its edge, broken when a table collapsed, never found, but now and then falling in love with a cup for no good reason; I did not grow up in or near a diner, nor eat at any. My passion for them must be prehistoric. They are with me every day and never leave. They do not booty call. They do not come home at 3 o'clock in the morning and lie to me about where they were.

Fine china I never had, don't have, and don't want. It doesn't suit my knockabout lifestyle or keep the coffee warm--the whole point of thick-walled, thick-lipped restaurant china. The blue cup has a matching saucer, one of two cups in my collection that does.

Can of Beans Herb Harvest Salad

My sage bush out in the yard never dies and deer don't eat it; and in a freakishly sunny spot next to the house, a rosemary bush year-round provides aromatic needles for my cooking. I had my own basil leaves, frozen, from last year, and parsley. And I had a can of beans and not much else, because I'd just come home from four days away. So I was overjoyed to find a recipe that used what I had on hand. It's really tasty if you're harvesting herbs:

I gladly share my sage with everyone.

Warm Cannellini Bean Herb Salad (serves 2)


1 can white cannellini beans (also called "white kidney beans")
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped, or put through a press
3 Tablespoons chopped Italian parsley
handful of basil leaves, chopped
1 teaspoon finely chopped rosemary leaves
4 large fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup oil-cured black olives

Drain and rinse the beans; dry them on a clean dish towel. In a large saute pan combine the olive oil, garlic, and herbs. Warm over very low heat for about 4 minutes or until the garlic and herbs release their aroma. Add the beans, salt and pepper to taste, and toss very gently. Over low heat, cook about 5 minutes until the beans are heated through and have absorbed some of the flavors of the olive oil. Off the heat, add lemon juice and toss very gently.

Place on serving platter and surround with the black olives. Serve immediately. (I like to serve it on lettuce.)

Chokin' His Chicken

So I go to buy a pound of barbecue and. . .

No, that's not how this begins. Rather, this town has a scarecrow contest every October and all the local businesses create, dress, and put on the street their own life-sized scarecrows, all very fanciful, and then the townspeople vote for their favorite. The post office's scarecrow is dressed like a postman. The bank's scarecrow is a woman in a garden hat watering a money tree. The gym's scarecrow rides an exerbike. Some are so elaborate that the owners cover them like mummies in plastic when it rains.

As the pumpkin lattes, pumpkin beers, and pumpkin snickerdoodles come out, so do the scarecrows, and the barbecue place took its scarecrow out of storage and this is the first I've seen of him--the swine! So I thought I would overshare. He reminds me of someone I used to know. The expression on the chicken's face is precious, so here's  a close-up.

I'm so grateful I moved to Missouri where there's barbecue and humor.

Turning Over a Leaf

Saw the pink and silver fallen leaf. Beautiful. Took its photo. Turned it over. Then I couldn't decide which side was more beautiful. Only photography can bring us both at once.

Cirrus

To get a photo of this magnificent cloud that looks so much like the spirit that rose from the remains of this cornfield -- knowing that cirrus clouds are in fact formed of ice crystals -- first I stopped the car and stood in the middle of Highway 109, and then in case I didn't quite get the cloud, I drove to this rise, got out of the car and knelt in the field. Then I drove a ways down and took photos of the cloud from a slope overlooking a farm, and was barked at by a lady's dog, all jowly from fat. The lady came outside, of course, and I explained before she said anything, "That cloud is so beautiful I want to take its picture." "It is beautiful," she said, and she and the dog went back into the house. I wondered if they were the sole occupants of that house, and if they had only each other, and if so, how beautiful and how sad that was at once.

Reasons Not to Rake This

While convalescing I sat out in the sun, on a folding seat on the stoop, and took a nice long look at the work I had to do, like, to properly shove the door open and enter and leave the house: oak leaves, twigs, hickory leaves, acorns, hickory nutshells. I enjoy looking at work I can put off until later, when ALL the leaves have finished falling. Why rake twice? Why rush things? Why not enjoy the riches some people don't have -- trees and autumn leaves around their front stoop? Why not imagine each leaf is a dollar bill?

"Tastes Like Wald Hick'ry Nuts"

Come a certain week in autumn it's World War One around here with "Bang! Bang!" on the cabin roof and people jumping out of their skins, but it's hickory nuts raining down from the shagbark tree. Can't help but think of Euell Gibbons, a famous wild-foods expert who late in life did commercials for Post Grape-Nuts cereal and, in his Texas accent, bawled the immortal lines, "Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible," and "Tastes like wald hick'ry nuts." He'd be proud that I finally tasted wild hickory nuts from my own tree. They tasted not at all like Grape-Nuts. Furthermore, Gibbons did not die, as was rumored, of stomach cancer but from a ruptured aorta.

Two autumns ago in a trance of delight that lasted two weeks I gathered in a basket several pounds of hickory nuts such as you see here, most from the shagbark just outside but also from hickories in the woods, where I found nuts walnut-sized and walnut-shaped -- every tree's fruit sculptured a little differently. Left them to dry in a basket until Christmastime when they agreed to be cracked -- a little. It took hammers and dental tools to get the tiny, brain-shaped meats out, spraying shards of shell all over and me stepping on them, and about 3 pounds through the pile I gave up and tossed the other nuts out the door for the varmints. In winter now, my favorite wild food is the chives that grow in snow.

Glorious October

We've had a fabulous first 15 days of October. Unfortunately I haven't been able to enjoy much of it because of flu (get your shots!). But for the 14th year now, I'm still living in the most beautiful place I've ever been. And can still see October's beauty even if I'm not outside in it.

Turkey and Crow Calls

Saw turkey calls for sale in the farm & home store and couldn't imagine how they worked and was too embarrassed to ask anyone. That issue got cleared up this weekend when I got to see and toy with a variety of bird calls. Two of them, top and bottom, work on the same principle: friction creates a throaty squeak. The coffin-like "fool proof" wooden box and the disk that gets scraped with the drumstick sound alike to me, but I'm told that every turkey hunter knows the difference and has a favorite, including the kind that are like a trumpet. The gold whistle in the middle is not a turkey call but a crow call. Why anyone would want to call crows when they could call turkeys, I don't know, and was too embarrassed to ask. Demonstrated also was the very slight difference between a tom's call and a hen's -- hers is warbly, more chicken-like. I am told that upon hearing it the excited tom "will come all over himself" to find the hen. There's so much to learn.

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