Long weekend was a battle with entropy and chaos. No attention to the fig tree which is covered with tatters of rotten and moldy and wasp eaten figs. (Slight exaggeration. But i have some suspicion that removing ripening figs stimulates more production?)
Despite heavy weed and cutleaf coneflower pressure the Lycoris radiata (Red Spider Lily aka Huricane lily) are blooming.
The owl cried in the distance as the first light from the sun turned the top of the pine snag red. It was one long hoot, but the end of the crickets evening chorus and the dehumidifier running to finish off three sheets of fig leather made it hard to capture as a recording. The crows, too, were hard to catch on Merlins, but then the Arcadian flycatcher set off and traffic picked up. There was no way Merlins was going to isolate those single haunting calla.
When i came out this morning to just cricket song, Jupiter shimmered in the top of the black cherry tree -- it's loosing its leaves already, as it does. (Which is why i hope it will be OK for solar if they stayed.) [At this point, search and read about black cherry log values.]
The tulip poplars to the west of the orchard have a few yellow leaves. I think the dogwood next to the deck is putting on such a vibrant show this year because we thinned the trees around it, and it gets much more sun. I ponder the tulip polar at the north east corner of the house. It does a good job shading the vegetable garden in the summer. I like that for working in the garden, but that might be why okra and tomatoes started dropping off. This summer, i've grown nothing but the native perennials and the strawberries and some dahlias. The dahlias either haven't bloomed yet (two new heirloom types that i suspect might have good tasting tubers) or have been swallowed up by the native kidney bean (which appears to have also overpowered the sunchokes).
8( Just used our snake grabber to haul a copperhead out from the garage. Also found a use for my hyper-local bitters from my own extracts, mint extract, green walnut extract, rose extract. The alcohol convinced it to move out of it's hidey corner and then -- once i had removed it, i splashed alcohol all across the garage door entry. Snakes. Adrenaline plus here tonight.
Christine finds snakes extremely distressing but we both held it together. I'm not *excited* about a copperhead in the garage at all. I want to get cinnamon oil and suffuse the house with it.
A hawk cried across the sky, screamed from the western pine snag, and has moved along. The crow calls have stopped as well, so i suppose they were threatening to harass it.
It is in the mid 60s (°F) outside and the nearest dogwood is fluorescing red as the green fades. It arches over the yellow of the cutleaf coneflower. I can't smell the figs this morning, but there are so many and I am so behind. The hornets cut through some of the organza bags, so i used the bags less, a bit. I can see, though, that the bags helped with fruit flies. It's just so slow to put on the bags, and so many figs to pick.
I made and had a 5 jar out of 9 success in canning the following sauce recipe on Saturday, and have a couple more quart jars of the dried figs. (More raisin-tender than the rocks I made when i was terrified of moisture.) I fermented some puree that i used to replace water in my buckwheat bread recipe after seeing recipes for fermented fig butter. Those recipes called for adding kvass, which sounds like essentially lightly fermented fruit jusice. Since the figs are fermenting fine, i didn't bother. I wonder though what the bright ruby juice that separates from the solids tastes like. I wonder lots of things but i also wonder if i have the time to experiment.
A reliable fig apple jam recipe for canning is surprisingly hard to come by. I shall wing it this week.
I had some self critical spirals that may be entwined with worrying about how i am bruising and developing petechiae. (From falling down and scraping up my arm and legs? No bruises from that. Tapping my chin on the ladder? A big black bruise on my chin.) I'm feeling a little better We had a short notice gathering with my sister and her family last night to celebrate their eldest who moves into his dorms at NYU on Saturday. He is such a great kid, er, young man. I love listening to him and Christine talk.
I've bought some seaweed foraged in Maine: Irish Moss, "Kombu" (given as Laminaria digitata so an Atlantic species), and a Soup Mix - "Wakame" (Alaria esculenta), Sugar Kelp (Saccharina latissima), "Kombu" (Laminaria digitata). Saccharina latissima ios also known as Kombu
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My idiosyncratic recipe development where i am trying to figure out how much of each recipe quality is needed so i can substitute and riff away, and also guestimate the quantity.
*Aromatics & Spices (~ 0.5 cup)*
*
1/4 cup olive oil
*
1/2 - 1/3 cup fresh alliums (onions, garlic) Using *my walking onion tops* and bottoms
*
1 tbsp peeled and chopped ginger
*
/HEAT 7 tsp/
o
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
o
1 tbsp (1 dried pepper) ancho/poblano (/If using whole peppers, bloom with onions)/
o
/2024-08-17: used two of my 2022 cayenne peppers during the onion stage. Noticeable heat!/
o
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper /2024-08-17 used up the last of the white pepper. Meh. Had to add black pepper later./
*
Ground spices
o
2 teaspoons ground **my *coriander *
o
1 teaspoon ground cumin
o
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice /2024-08-17 used clove/
*
Umami
o
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
*
/2024-08-17: two eights of a preserved lime - So! Much! Salt!/
1.
Grind coriander seed.
2.
Measure spices into bowl
3.
Prep onions and ginger
4.
Heat oil in pan, add alliums, soften
5.
Bloom spices
6.
Add umami (and preserved lime)
*FIGS*
Two quart jars of very ripe figs ~ 3 - 4 cups as fig puree. Used 2.25 cooked ripe figs and pureed another quart jar with very ripe figs
*ACID*
2 3/4 cups of spiced and sweetened apple cider vinegar. /2024-08-17 left over from making spiced pickled apples. Had a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio with brown sugar. /
*Mustard (or 1 cup Dijon)*
*
2/3 c water in bowl
*
1/3 c yellow mustard powder
*
1/3 c distilled vinegar
1.
Assemble 15 min timer, whisk, measured water in vessel > 1 cup, distilled vinegar, mustard powder, 1/3 c measure.
2.
Add powder, set timer for 5 - 15 min, measure vinegar /2024-08-17 10 minutes was not too much of a kick/
3.
At timer, add vinegar to stop heat development
7. Add fig puree and vinegar
*Final adjustments* //
/Added black pepper , 2024-08-18/
*
1 tablespoon kosher salt
*
additional vinegar
* Processing *
Simmer until thick enough, well over 30 min, dropping a noticeable amount in the pot.
15 min water/steam processing of 8 4 oz jars and one pint, plus about 8 oz un-canned. (~56 fluid oz)
Spider season is here and a freaking large Argiope aurantia is on the north orchard fence which i weed whacked yesterday. I could see the spider from the bathroom at dusk as it hung suspended at the height of the garage eve , at least twenty ft away from me (but more like 25 ft). Spiders give me the heebie jeebies. These heebie jeebies are big.
Wednesday night we came home from the grocery and the bit of night was suspended in space above the path to the neglected and overgrown garden plot. It turned out to be a black morph tiger swallowtail that broke loose of the web when Christine went to check.
The survivor dogwood in the orchard and the one just to the south east of the orchard are turning red.
I saw one firefly high in the pines last night after weeks of no sighting. //
Between carrying the weed whacker and wearing a posture monitor, my right shoulder area is a painful mess this morning.I have also progressed from petechiae to tiny random bleeds. (I know mosquito bites and these are not mosquito bites.) Dear skin, please hold everything together so i can have a retirement of gardening. Dear muscles, i am sorry i didn't use you for ages. Please have some plasticity and learn to be used. Thank you!
As i tuck my legs under my nightgown's skirt, to hide from the mosquitoes and -- glorious! -- the 61°F temp*, i see whole snapper and imagine trying my hand at fish head stews. Later, in the fall. A sheet pan of tiny baked perch fillets will do nicely in the freezer as lunch time taco filling.
Marlowe is attacking Luigi more now. He's clearly less stable on his legs and has moved into some new stage of aging. Is she attacking because she senses something else wrong? We will so miss this sweet old man of a cat when he passes. He's so delighted to be between us on the couch at lunch and during the evening. He used to sleep with us at night, but i think adjusting to tossing humans is hard on him now.
Well, i've made little progress on morning to-dos, there are too many -- but i want to bag some figs before the wasps are out. I'm hoping the cooler morning has held them back.
* Dew point 60°F: it's dripping wet and there's a light fog between me and the clear sky and the sun lit pine tops.
Reread five novels and two novellas from the Miles Vorkosigan series from Lois McMaster Bujold.
We had three power outages, but i was away for the Thursday morning one.
* 2024-08-03 Sat 16:44 - 19:14 "caused by fallen trees or limbs damaging our equipment." * 2024-08-08 Thur 06:55 - 09:04 (During Debby) "was caused by fallen trees or limbs damaging our equipment." * 2024-08-09 Fri 06:50 - 08:38 (During Debby) "was caused by fallen trees or limbs damaging our equipment."
6.01 inches of rain (recorded 9:45 am Sat .97+.68+.99+.86+1.0+.77+.74 mostly clear, sun just coming over the trees)
15.58 ft height of Haw River at Bynum 2024-08-09 09:45
Gathering of twelve family members to inurn my mother at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday
Dinner on Wednesday and a visit to the National Cathedral on Thursday with ten family members
Lunch at a Richmond deli with six family members.
Around ten hours of I95 and I85 travel.
Eleven pounds of apples, at least two pounds of figs, 20 plus figs in organza bags on the tree, and lots of fruitfly and wasp infested figs to deal with. (Yay, the green organza bags don't stand out. Um, oops, i am now hiding the figs from me, too.)
Three 12 oz jars sealed of spiced apples in syrup, two failed seals, one quart i didn't even try to seal.
One sealed quart spiced pickled apples. Around three cups leftover sweet spiced vinegar brine.
One quart fermenting mixed fruit for vinegar. One quart apple cores with champagne yeast fermenting for vinegar. Third quart jar collecting apples cores and really ripe figs, with champagne yeast, to make more vinegar.
Four spice packs, a gift for Christine, two floor mats, a steam canner, and an electronic posture monitor ordered.
In good news, Dad's sweetie is home with mega antibiotics for lung infection -- but not TB. Which also means her dog Jenny is home with her, and Christine and i can quit strategizing about how Christine could take care of Jenny while Dad and I join other family in Arlington to "inurn" mom's ashes on Wednesday.
Wah, i took a major spill and scraped up both knees (blood dripping down my leg, hem of dress) and my left forearm. I did something to my right wrist, my back is complaining, and all together feel whimpery. ... And the mower battery failed to charge so i guess that's the universe telling me to stay in. This will join the flush of bruises and petechiae that splashed across me last weekend. At least i know where these marks came from.
Turns out the hydrogen peroxide expired in 2017. It stung a little -- although maybe water would have stung.
Also, it turns out bleach isn't reliable for disinfecting after 4 (or 6 ) months. The county hurricane preparedness guide notes to only use bleach less than 4 months old. I look at the barely used gallon of bleach that i do not know when i bought. Sigh.
The Frankfurt school of philosophy looks interesting. Christine is probably right that i am not up to reading philosophy right now. Maybe when i retire.
I've been meaning to dump some plant trays with water but now they are swarming with tadpoles. We'll transfer them to the small wading pool i have submerged as a test pond (test passed; don't have time or energy to go the next steps) sooner or later -- before they become interesting prey.
Merrill, Ray M., Spencer S. Davis, Gordon B. Lindsay, and Elena Khomitch. “Explanations for 20th Century Tuberculosis Decline: How the Public Gets It Wrong.” /Journal of Tuberculosis Research/ 4, no. 3 (August 9, 2016): 111–21. https://doi.org/10.4236/jtr.2016.43014.
I found it looking for a graph of the rate to TB in the US in the 20th century. This graph shows deaths. You have to take the authors' word for it that "The decline of tuberculosis in the United States is similar to that in England and Wales." They note, " Even with the use of the BCG vaccine in England and Wales, and the use of streptomycin in the United States, there was not a significant change in the rate of decline of tuberculosis deaths"
They put much of the decrease in TB deaths on improved living conditions, hygiene, and nutrition which reduced the transmission and strengthened people's immune system. Apparently there was lots of spitting in public.
I'm pretty sure this last round of public health training failed to get me washing my hands for twenty seconds, but i did get the elbow message.
