Time to Be an Ant!

Today we will begin with some wisdom of the ages as given in one of Aesop's fables, "The Ant and the Grasshopper."

"In a field one summer's day a grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest. "Why not come and chat with me," said the grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?"
"I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the ant, "and recommend you to do the same."
"Why bother about winter?" said the grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present." But the ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came, the grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the grasshopper knew: It is best to prepare for the days of necessity."

Each year we put potatoes, onions, and apples away for the winter, and then feel safe and secure that as the snow comes down, we'll always have some food safe out there in the woods, ready for us when we want them. The amazing thing is that when the grocery stores only have soft, wrinkly nasty sprouted potatoes each year to offer, we can wade through the snow, lift the lid, and pull our crisp, crunchy, delicious potatoes. Somehow these cans, buried in our sandy soil, just provide the perfect storage spot for them.

We now have three cans buried, the one Jim's working on has mesh bags of potatoes layered in straw to keep them separated, the can behind him has red and golden delicious apples, and the smaller one to the back has bags of onions. What more could we need?

The garden is winding down. We get a few things every day, but not much now. Today we picked a few tomatoes, one small cucumber, and there's a big bunch of green beans waiting for the time hunger for them strikes us.

We also have some things we planted recently coming on. The greens, peas, beets, radishes and lettuces will hopefully provide some goodies yet. This is our first year to try those, but they're looking good so far.

I thought this spot at the back end of the garden showed such neat color and complexity. In the very foreground is our new fence enclosing the garden. Then right inside that is the row of arched pipe supports I put up to hold the climbing green beans. Then the new patch of greens coming up for fall, and next to that, horseradish plants reaching for the sky.

The empty space is where the melon plants have been pulled, and now it's covered by grass clippings, enriching the soil for next spring's crop. The brilliant orange of the marigolds provides a backdrop of color right against the back edge of the fence, then the corner of the wild portion of our woods, to the right the tall yellow blossoms of the jerusalem artichoke, behind that the overgrown herb garden, blueberries, and the yellowing trees of the back woods. A whole lot going on in one picture!

The trees are dropping their leaves and bursts of brilliant color surprise us everywhere. The mosquitoes have finally left, the days are shirt sleeve warm, the nights are just cool enough to want to snuggle in deeper. What a beautiful time of year!

Fencing In the Garden

We've added a fence around the garden. Here's a picture of Jim watching as Anna digs with her blue plastic shovel in the soil of the garden. Notice how empty it looks now?
It's amazing how the garden goes through phases as it grows. Where they are working was a tangle of melon vines just a few weeks ago, now the melons are all gone, and they were delicious, and the vines cleaned up so we can toss the new-mown grass on the space to prepare it for spring.
The fence is a new thing. Seems like we needed to add some formality to the space, and give the plants a permanent trellis to climb on. Sort of like declaring this as an orderly productive place, dedicated to producing food for years to come.
Anna's outfit this day was funny. The mosquitoes are so bad this year, and we want to let her outside and are reluctant to put repellant on her, so we loaded her down with overalls and a sweater, and a big old soft hat, hoping to guard her from bites. She didn't care, and joyfully ran around digging holes, and peering out at the world from under her floppy hat brim. Didn't get any bites, either!

Where Did The Summer Go?

I can't believe the whole summer has flown! We've had a marvelously full summer with travel and lots of wonderful things happening around the old place. Two family reunions, a couple of nice trips, and lots of stuff sold on ebay, as well as a summer full of good stuff from the garden. Tonight it got cold enough here that we lit a fire and relaxed over our glass of wine and talked about what we'd plant next summer, and here I went to post a picture of our first fire of the fall, only to find that my last posting was the first tomato of summer! Where did it all go?

The garden was amazing this summer, with all we could eat of greens, tomatoes, cantalope, watermelon, beautiful bountiful red sweet peppers, and just wonderful stuff. We even got ambitious enough to plant a fall crop when we'd pulled out some of the dead plants of summer. So even though I went out yesterday and harvested all the ripe tomatoes, that are right now simmering down into sauce with garlic and basil added, out in the garden we have radishes, three kinds of lettuces, garlic, peas, spinach and beets coming up new and fresh, for eating during these long, cool days of fall, and also a big patch of mixed greens.

What a bounty we have, and we're so glad to be here and able to work on it together. Our spectacular thing this fall is the castor bean plants. One plant is over 12 feet tall and still green and growing. I'll insert a picture of Jim as he stands by one of them, looking like he's being attacked and dragged off. It's amazing to see, and when his family was here, some of them wanted seeds.

We have great plans for next year's garden, and Jim's working now on a fence around it, to enclose it and give us a lot of space for climing trellises for cucumbers, peas, gourds, beans, or whatever else wants to climb.

So this evening it got cool enough to start a fire. We finished our dinner, rice pasta and polenta with fresh tomato sauce over it, and a great salad with feta cheese and other veggies. We also had a quick cracker bread made with manoic flour and parmesan cheese. Good stuff. We moved to our big soft chairs and lit a small fire built with small sticks from trimming the blueberry bushes in the spring. How relaxing, to finish our wine, watch out the window for the deer and talk about what we'll plant in next year's garden. A little chocolate goes well with it too. You've got to love the fire, it's just so very relaxing. And it all just makes me wonder, where'd the summer go?

The First Tomato of the Summer

Is there anything better than the first tomato of the summer?

We who garden, look forward to that bright red goodie from the time we tuck the first seeds in spring into that still cool ground. The spicy, rich smell of the vines cling to the peel and we cradle it in our cupped hands and inhale that perfume.

Just nothing better, and it's even worth paying extra for that cheater plant from the greenhouse with the blooms still on it.

Preparing dinner these days involves a slow walk through the garden, looking to see what is ripe today. We're not yet at those marvelous days when we're eating zucchini in 20 different ways, and foisting it off on friends and strangers, just trying to keep up with the bounty. Right now, we're just scoping it out each day to see what's ready to eat now. Yesterday it was just enough new tiny potatoes and some peas to cook together with a butter sauce for the two of us. Today, it was that precious first tomato, one small cucumber, and a handful of edible pod peas. Delicious! Life is very good!

It's the "Berry" Best time of Year!

Each afternoon, these balmy summer days, I take my favorite picking container and spend a half hour or so, walking around picking raspberries for our dinnertime treat. Such bounty, and we always feel so fortunate, as we finish our dinner with a small dish of ice crem, topped by those dark jewels. Is there anything richer than fresh berries and cream?

We didn't plant these berries, they just came up voluntarily, and grow a few canes at a time, all around the edges of our property.

As I stroll down the path, headed for the next patch of berries, I chuckle to myself as I see next year's berries starting. The raccoons, those bandits of the night, have been grazing on these berries too. What a cooperative venture it is between us, and I don't mind sharing with them at all. I can see by the flattened bushes and grasses, that the raccoons push into the middle of the berry snarls, where I won't go, to pick their share. Then they head back to their dens with full bellies, dropping their seed loaded scat as they go, planting next year's crop of berries along with a little fertilizer. The raccoons are sometimes annoying, and break into our birdseed and other supplies, but they do have their place in the life cycle of this place we call home.

We feel so lucky to be a part of the the life here in our wooded home place, and spend our days celebrating what we see. The birds, busy at the feeders, entertain us with their squabbles over their favorite perch. We've noticed too, that the mosquitoes and garden bugs aren't nearly as bad as they used to be. We believe that the healthy bird population here has helped keep them in check. I spotted the orange flash of a baltimore oriole as I went out to pick yesterday. They look like a living, flying flame streaking across the orchard area, and the hummingbirds and finches provide drama as they work to get at the perches for the food supply.

There are more goodies to come. The blackberries are still totally green, and it will probably be at least 3 weeks before they're ready.

The blueberries are coming along well this year. They now have a few in each bunch just beginning to ripen, and the birds already are enjoying those and scolding us when we walk too close. The interesting thing is that those that ripen early usually have a small worm inside the center of them. That means that the bad berries ripen early and feed the birds, and are out of the way before we are ready to pick the main part of the berries. Isn't that a wonderful plan? We are left with the bug free, healthy berries, and the birds get their share early and control the bug population. Life is just great, how it works out.

The main part of the blueberries have that white, frosted look that means they're about a month or less away from ready.
It's a wonderful time to be in the country. The garden is coming along well, and we're only about two days away from our much anticipated first tomato. We've been eating salads for a couple of months now, the radishes are done, gone to seed and pulled, and each night we have something from the garden's bounty. The zucchini, green onions, summer squash, edible pea pods and cucumbers are all coming along well and providing something fresh for dinner each night. The three rows of collard, turnip and mustard greens are done now, but we ate them almost daily for weeks, feeling really healthy while we did.

And best of all, there are tiny cantalopes and watermelons coming on. Oh, Boy!

It's all coming up green, all green!

It always happens this time of year, and it's always a miracle, each and every year. The garden is coming along well, with tomatoes forming on the plants, green onions spearing toward the sky, pea plants reaching around with their little curls, looking for something to grasp onto and reach for the sky.

The grape vines have tiny bunches of grapes, hanging there ready to get bigger and sweeter all the time. All the salad greens are producing well, and we can go out before dinner and pick through all the different kinds of greenery, then add a few small crisp radishes and a couple of green onions-then we're on to the herb garden to pick some fresh flavor to add to whatever we're cooking. Yummmmmm.

The blueberries have finished blooming, and are starting to swell. Soon they'll start to turn darker and look frosted. They won't be ready to pick until late July or August, but the birds will have them staked out long before they're ready and those bushes will be the most popular perches around. When we go out to pick, they'll retreat just a few feet and sit there, scolding us for picking their berries.


The Firepit area that we cleaned up recently has been rebuilt with new structure, built with cement blocks because they allow a good draft of air passing through to feed the fire. We've already had a family group roasting marsmallows around the new setup, looking like our very own Hesston Stonehenge, and it all works well.

The trees are greening up more all the time, and the underbrush increasing, so last month's sighting of the deer as they wandered through becomes less possible all the time. Still beautiful though.

It's a Hootenany at Owl's Haven!

What an exciting night! We have several barred owls living in our area, and most nights we can hear them calling. It's a very calm, distinctive call, and sounds like they're asking, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?" Nice, and their music makes our lives much richer. We enjoy it so much that we named our place, Owl's Haven. It's a good thing to live in a place that is frequented by owls.

Last night it was different. I woke up in the middle of the night to this incredible racket going on all around the house! There were at least 5 owls calling, not in their usual calm call, but a "Who-Who-Who-Who-Who-Who?", traveling up the scale and faster as it progressed. One would start it, then others chime in until it was so loud that I was surprised Jim was still sleeping through it. The whole thing would go on for about 5 minutes, growing louder and more raucus. You could separate the voices too, closer to the house and further away, higher, and more bass.

Of course, I had to wake him up, he just couldn't miss out on that kind of concert. I thought it was a mating frenzy, with a bunch of males competing for one female, and when it finally fell silent, after about two hours, I could imagine the triumphant male and the one who caused all the furor, snuggling down in a nest with smiles on their beaks and smoking a cigarette.

Jim thought that instead of a mating fury, it was an invader in their territory and they were ganging up to chase it off. I don't know, but we sure did enjoy the concert.

Then this morning, as we were heading out to talk about projects for the day, Jim discovered a two foot long black snake in our front yard! We watched as it slowly climbed the magnolia tree and moved out onto a high branch. I was almost too late in thinking about grabbing the camera, but fortunately a combination of the zoom on the camera and the snake's cooperation made it possible to get a picture to post here. Just as I was ready to snap the picture, it looked down at me, flicked out it's tongue and said "cheese!" Honest it did!

Ahhhhhh! Spring!

Finally! It's warm, things are growing, and all's right with the world, well, my back's out and I can't walk very well, but other than that, life's good! The garden is growing, lots of things are up and growing well, and it won't be long before we can walk out before dinner and see what's ready, then graze for our supper. What a wonderful time of year! The air is just full of promise.

And besides our own joy in the garden, there's teaching our Grandaughter to love gardens too! Grandma planted strawberries with her to harvest later, and she and Grandpa planted a big fat, cheater tomato plant with blooms already on it.

When it came time to clean up, there was a handy birdbath! The birds won't mind, will they?

What a Lovely Evening!

We've been working for quite a while, to clean up an old brush pile and some rotted logs around our old fire pit. Partly to get the space ready for our upcoming family reunion, and also so we can see back into our little woods from the house.

We've always known that there were deer wandering around our property, and occasionally saw them come into the back yard, but we've never seen them until they came out into the open. I've always wanted to see them just comfortably wandering around, at home in the woods.

We spent hours yesterday, tending the fire to burn off the old wood, raking and cleaning around the fire pit, and finally, after dinner time, the fire was down to one tidy pile and we took the last of our dinner wine out to relax and watch the last of it burn.

What a magical time! Evidently we were screened by the smoke from the fire, and the deer didn't see us as we sat quietly sipping in our chairs. Four separate times, deer walked into the woods, and just wandered around, not alarmed at all, but just nibbling and strolling through the trees. They seemed to see the fire, and didn't come closer than about 20 feet to us, but we could clearly see them as they strolled around our woods. Their tails never went up, they didn't hurry, but just wandered around, totally at home and relaxed. How nice!

Then, just as the sun was going down, the light turned magical. We were facing east, so the sun was behind us, and as it neared the horizon, it strengthened, finding its way under the trees in the area and lighting the scene before us with a rosey glow! Beautiful! Each tree was highlighted by this rich pinkish light, and the back sides of the trees were in shadow! It was like everything, for that moment, had crisp, clear edges and my fingers itched for a paintbrush and canvas to try to capture it. Of course, I've never tried painting, so wouldn't have done justice to the scene at all, but I really wanted to try.

What a very special time and place we live in!

Now, How does this work?

Ah, the joys of Spring, and a grandkid!

She saw us using the hose and just knew there had to be a way, so she studied, and looked at it and.............

There's the way it works! Of course, we didn't show you the picture where she shot herself in the face first, and had one side of her hair standing straight back and all wet, but she didn't give up.

Then we had a great time digging up worms and trying to figure out just why they wiggle. It sure is fun being a Grandma.

The Good, Bad and Ugly Faces of Spring

This sure is a time of hope. After the long dark winter, each year these longer, warmer, breezier days just fill me with possibilities and new energy. I find myself bounding outside, as I did Saturday to rake all those sticks off of part of the back yard, sweep all the accumulated branches off the roof, and clean out the chicken coop. Somehow it always surprises me, this quickening in all my muscles and the lift that the sunshine brings to my spirits.

These little snowdrops are always the first flowers of spring and just always sneak up on me with unexpected beauty. How brave they are, sliding out from under last fall's dead leaves.

The next picture is the ugly and the bad of spring. The dirty, slippery nasty ice that hangs on as long as it can. Our driveway is bordered on the south by huge old evergreens, so the sun never touches the driveway until it's provided weeks of scarey mess in the form of slowly melting ice, giving way to gluey mud. Nasty.

But the best of spring just keeps going. Out in the garden, where there's more sun, we've already covered the raised bed with plastic, shoveled out the snow, and planted the cold-tolerant crops.

In the background, you can see the beehive, very busy these days as those little workers scurry in and out, looking hopefully for anything blooming this early. As I move around the place and wander the woods, I frequently am buzzed by these little busy bees, hurrying around looking for pollen. The barred owls are at it too, frantically whooo hooooing their mating calls in the evening air. We haven't seen any sign of the big cat recently, but four deer ambled through the woods last niight.

Under that cover, nestled in the rich black dirt, lie carefully scattered seeds of Bibb lettuce, Romaine lettuce, spinach, beets and marigolds. I'm stretching it a bit, I believe only the lettuces will honestly take off, but Spring holds such promise, I just can't help offering more seeds to the chance to grow with the kiss of this gently promising sun. Keep your fingers crossed with me, and soon, we'll crunch on salads with the green freshness of the most hopeful, blessed season of the year.

This is the good face of Spring, with all that promise surrounded by rapidly melting pools of snow. Promises everywhere--life indeed, is very good.

Road Trip!

It was a great day to escape, and make a quick trip to Indianapolis. A visit to the wonderful Trader Joe's to stock up on our favorite wine and cheeses, then a visit to the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Who knew! I had always heard about what a terrific museum it was, but had no idea it was that great! It's one of the largest general art museums in North America, and hosts over 50,000 pieces of art. The best part is how they're exhibited. Things are arranged by period, with generous descriptions and explainations for each. So on one short wall, were three paintings by Monet, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. Amazing, and showed the way they explored their subjects, and obviously discussed their work and shared their thoughts.

What a terrific day, and we had a marvelous time, and came away with our heads filled, with new understandings of art. Now I want to paint! This is one object that captured my interest for quite a while. A little salt glazed pitcher, the simple graceful ornamentation just captured me for a long time. I'm thinking that I need to put this ivy on one of my scarves.........and soon.

Can that be Spring we smell in the air?

It's not really warm, but getting there. It got a little melty today, you could see it in the snow slowly sinking down into dirty mounds, the icicles growing skinnier and shorter, and around the base of each tree, a little bare ground.


Somehow it just smells a little different, and things are moving a little faster. The bees are active, sending little scouts out to see if anything is blooming yet, and the deer are moving around too.
















Jim spotted 5 deer beds, all together in one spot in the back woods-like they'd gathered for a group campout. Maybe a deerish Jamboree?

We felt so hopeful, we scraped the snow off of the raised bed and erected a plastic cover over it. In a day or two it should warm enough to plant lettuces in that bed and get our delicious Spring salads started. Yummy.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! And it's Warmer!

When you see by the morning thermometer that it's 12 degrees out, and that's warm, you know it's been waaaaay too cold! So we put on all the layers and go out to see the fresh morning world, feed the cats, water the chickens, and check out the animal tracks left from last night's ramblings.




This space in Spring is a lush green row of blueberry bushes, in late summer a place to pick dark, delicious blueberries, in fall, a blazing red row of bright beauty. Now it's a stark row of bare twigs that the deer love to browse on. Notice the regular highway of deer tracks leading north.
Notice the long shadows? This was after 9am! That's how low in the sky the sun is this time of year. I shot my own shadow in this picture.

This thinking bench is a quiet place to rest and solve the world's problems in the warm months, but not now. With these temperatures, you just have to keep moving. This morning we found bobcat tracks in the snow, leading right past this bench. What fun to follow the tracks as it wandered through the trees, accelerated to a lope with prints 4 feet apart, leaped up into a tree, then dug for prey. All that drama, living out in our little woods.

Reading the Morning News-

Most people read the morning paper to find out what's going on in the world. Here in our little place in the country, we do it a little differently. This morning we put on warm clothes and boots and set out to see what was going on in our little world. We scarcely set out onto the path when we scared up a herd of 5 or 6 deer, who'd been bedded down and were snacking on tender twigs before heading back to the deeper woods.


We found where they had slept the night, and there was still no snow in their spots. We could clearly see where they had stepped when getting up and heading out for their breakfast.

Other tracks crisscrossed our usual path-rabbits scooting quickly out to nibble on some green shoots growing in a sheltered place before scurrying to safety under the brush pile.

The determined straight-line track of a fox, as he made his rounds, probably explained the blurred marks of the rabbit.

Before we headed back inside to stoke up the stove and warm up with a second cup of coffee, we stopped at the root cellar to bring in some onions and potatoes from our snug supply.

How about that? Morning news, a nature lesson, exercise and shopping for tonight's dinner, all without leaving home! Life is very good!

Soooooo Cozy

I know, I know, we said we were going to travel after I retired! But it's cold out there, and with this warmth inside, and eight inches of snow out there-why go anywhere else?


There's the cozy fire, with my terrific husband doing the work of keeping it stoked and the warmth rolling off of it. A big pot of soup bubbling on top, and the teapot steaming, ready to make a cup of hot tea. Maybe we'll travel somewhere tomorrow. For now, yawn, I feel a nap coming on.

Check out this goofy character sitting right off the edge of the patio! It's our cast iron chiminea that we use in the summertime. We keep a blue ball in the top of it to keep rain out of the ashes. The snow blew onto it and makes a cap for the top and the drift around the middle makes it look like a shmoo, with a fat belly. Life is Good!

THAT"S More like it!

Winter time is supposed to be snowey! Fresh, clean, white crispy snow. Snow that makes everything look clean and new, and envigorates kids to run and play outside.
Sends us old folks out to wander around in the cold and take pictures and marvel at the beauty of ice crystals in treetops.

Now I'm not really complaining that we don't get several feet of the white stuff anymore, I just miss this silent beautiful world that we used to enjoy. It's actually better now, when it comes down in a few inches at a time.

Pretty, isn't it?

I'm Retired!

Well, it's finally happened! After working all these years, and planning, hoping and saving toward it, I retired the first of the year. Wheeeeeee! As this picture shows, is the strongest emotion I feel, plus a whole heaping bunch of sheer joy.

Now that we're back home from our annual vacation to the beach, I'm rattling around the house, unpacking, laundering and putting away stuff, taking down the Christmas decorations, and testing my feelings to see how I feel about this new status.

It's a strange, unconnected feeling. Not bad in any way, I love it, but I have the feeling, for the first time in my whole entire life, that if I just simply stopped, it'd be ok. I mean, walls wouldn't crash down around us, and clocks wouldn't stop spinning, and it would just be ok! What a luxurious feeling. Kind of a delicious, easy, soft feeling. I like it!

I hope I don't get lazy, or too comfortable, and do nothing, but if I sleep an hour later in the morning, the world won't end, it'll just be . . . . . .ok!

We plan to travel a lot, but for right now, it's kind of nice to just be here, and I'm spending lots of time tidying my office and neatening the world around us, putting things into order that I haven't been able to do-ever. No time before.

What I'm hoping is that once I get things put to rights and organized, all my tools put where I can find them. I'll have this surge of creativity to take advantage of this lovely time I've been given. In the meantime, a nap feels really, delicious.

Life is very good!

Our Magic Carpet

Can a magic carpet be made of steel? Sure it can! Here's our dream vehicle, finally found and home. We've been looking for just this camper van for quite a while, planning on retirement travel. We just brought it home this weekend, and we're still so excited. Jim's got the maps out, and I'm planning on just what goes in each cubbyhole.

It won't be long now until we're on the road for far travels.

We'll be sure to post pictures here so you, our reader can follow.

FALL = FUN!

Who could have more fun than a two year old playing in the leaves with her silly Grandpa?


Unless it would be the lucky Grandma with a camera?

This was a great day under the big maple in the middle of the back yard.
Anna even got to climb her first tree all by herself.