The O-Zone

Saturday was an historic day. We got to meet a long time friend of mine for the first time, which sounds strange in a way. We met online at my most favorite website, and have been friends pretty much ever since. Nick visited Washington State over the weekend, from Sydney.

Since it was too far from Seattle to where we live for either one of us to go during such a short time frame, we met in the middle at one of our favorite State Parks. We planned our picnic for months.

It was raining so hard, the camera insisted on using a flash, which obscured the gorgeous greenery surrounding the covered picnic table. Nick’s wife, Linda, knitted his scarf. Beautiful! Love the colors. All my favorites.

We had black bean chili, with salsa and grated cheese; homemade bread; scones and a bunch of different jams; and hot black tea.

And the weather was perfect! Or something approximating perfect. Just keep thinking that….

From the top of the pass, looking down and across, you can barely see the top of the peaks through the fog and rainfall.

Looking uphill from the same spot on the road. See the track in the snow? Rocks were falling as the warmer temperatures, to above freezing, and heavy rain dislodged rocks, sending them skittering across the road. Some of the rocks were really big, and they always seemed to fall on corners. That added an extra level of adrenaline into driving through drenching rainfall. It was a long two hours to get out of the mountains.

Fortunately the snow plows had been somewhat active during the morning, cleaning the middle of the road, but leaving the sides and pullouts through the North Cascades National Park way too deep to attempt to stop and take pictures of the heavy snow falling on our way over to the west side of the Cascade Mountains.

On our way back, they had cleaned more of the road, and the heavy rains which fell during the day had melted the sides, so only six inches or snow remained in the pullouts, and we could take pictures.

We also planned a hike during the picnic but the rain was pretty heavy and the drive back was promising to be very hard (it was), so we didn’t venture too far into the old growth forest in the park, a temperate rain forest which was living up to part of its name.

It was a lovely day, even with bad driving conditions for all of us, and hopefully Nick and his wife will come back this way again someday and visit our place, and stay long enough to do some exploring.

Seeing snow did have a meritorious effect, which I will explain.

I never did post pictures of our greenhouse once all the plants got big and started producing. We’ve been picking swiss chard, tomatoes and peppers for a couple of months. It’s so neat to just walk out to the greenhouse and pick something for immediate cooking.

Big Beef tomato plants. They were slow in ripening, and we let the plants set too many fruit, which means they didn’t get as big as they could have. Lovely taste, however.

Chianti Rose tomato plant there at the end. Didn’t produce much at all, so we won’t be trying this variety again. We don’t think it likes the greenhouse.

Ilander pepper, such a pretty color. This variety produced really well and will definitely be planted again next spring.

Two of the Monica roma tomato plants. This variety produced really well, and we’ll plant it again. We planted six of them this year, and that may be enough to provide us with tomato sauce all year.

Jalapeno and anaheim pepper plants. I’ve been picking these for a couple of months, using them in salsa, and tofu scrambles.

I’ve been picking the roma tomatoes, as well, for salsa. We’re kind of addicted to this stuff.

Such a cheerful place to walk into, surrounded by green and growing plants.

The weather forecast for tonight was freezing temperatures (just barely), and tomorrow night is a killing frost. While the greenhouse can protect our plants near freezing, or even a bit below, 26F will be too far below that threshold. So, it is time to pick things.

And the drive through the snow in the mountains made us think. “Ruh row, winter really *IS* going to be here sooner than we think.”  Time to wrap up the garden!!

So on Sunday we went down to the garden and harvested all the remaining root crops. We dug up 120 pounds of potatoes, 15 pounds of carrots, and 4 pounds of beets, the keeping white onions (not the sweet Walla Walla onions which I picked a while ago), plus all the swiss chard which barely fit into two plastic kitchen garbage bags.

The Polaris Ranger proved its usefulness again, hauling up the root crops. Otherwise we would have been trudging up the hill, and I wouldn’t have felt anywhere near this cheerful.  We have two bins of Gold Rush potatoes (a russet type), five bins of German Butterballs; two bins of carrots (different varieties); and a partial bin of beets.

Then we went into the greenhouse and harvested all the ripe tomatoes, peppers, and parsley.

The green tomatoes will ripen over the next couple of weeks, and then I’ll finish processing them into sauce.

Today I have a lot of work to do, blanching and freezing all the swiss chard leaves, and blending the parsley leaves with oil to put into ice cube trays for adding to dishes over the winter. I also need to sort through all the tomatoes and lay them out on the dining room table, and then I have to make tomato sauce out of them.

A few weeks ago we harvested the apples from our two trees. We got 35 pounds of apples, and I made an old-fashioned Apple Brown Betty. Delicious!

The carrots have been put into plastic bags and are stored in the bottom of the refrigerator for eating fresh or roasting over the winter. They should last until January, at least.

The beets were small this year, and I’m going to make pickled beets with all of those. They are in the fridge until I can get to them. They’ll keep a bit, so no hurry on that project.

The potatoes are drying on a tarp in the garage, and we’ll turn them over this morning to dry the other side. Then we’ll have to move all of them into plastic bins and store them in the pantry this afternoon as they can’t take freezing temperatures. They will last all winter, depending on how fast we eat them. The new variety we planted, German Butterballs, produced really well, and they are supposed to be good for both baking and cooking for mashed potatoes, and roasting. Can’t wait to make something with them.

So, thanks snowfall, for getting us off our duffs and inspiring us (or freaking us out, depending on your interpretation), into bringing in the harvest. See that? I thanked the weather gods, so they aren’t going to do anything nasty to us like snow this coming weekend, right? Right?

A few years ago I started making pancake sauces, instead of always having just plain old maple syrup. Yesterday I experimented with making a pancake sauce using Josta Berries, as this year we had an abundance of the fruit from our plants, and next year we’ll have even more as the plants start to hit their stride.  That’s actually kind of scary, but that’s another subject.

One bag of frozen Josta Berries makes four and a half pints of pancake sauce. I have lots and lots of bags to play with, just waiting in the freezer.

Anyway, I learned a few things. First, reminder to self:  Next time use a muslin bag for the whole cloves as spending an hour looking for whole cloves when it’s time to remove the vanilla bean, cinnamon stick and four whole cloves, is extremely boring, not to mention messy.

I needed to use two cups of water instead of one to get the proper texture.

I still like to put a bit of maple syrup on my pancakes, too, along with the berry sauce. The taste of this combination was simply amazing.  The pancakes have wild blueberries in them, which are very tart.

All in all, this particular science experiment was an unqualified success. Dan says this is his favorite pancake sauce ever, and I don’t ever need to make any other kinds. Cool!

So many peaches, it was hard to decide exactly what to do with them.

Sitting on the counter-top, calling my name.

So first I opened one of my gluten free yellow cake mixes, and substituted the liquid ingredients for two whole peeled and diced peaches, then baked it until it was completely baked, about 20 minutes longer than the recipe said due to the extra moisture provided by the ripe peaches.

I could dust this with powdered sugar, I suppose, but the naked cake is completely delicious all on it’s lonesome.

While the cake was baking, I peeled and pitted the rest of the peaches and put them into a large pan. Then I used my immersion blender and pureed the peaches, added four cups of sugar, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and lemon juice. And now I’ll reduce it by half, and the result will be Peach Butter. So delicious!

I need to get some jars boiling on the stove, but there’s plenty of time while this is cooking down.

Stir frequently to release the steam from the simmering peach puree, and the side benefit is the way the house smells while it’s cooking.

Doing her trick, “Wings!”

Our baby bird, who is going to be 30 years old next year, was busy making toothpicks out of a new toy. Doesn’t she look exceptionally pleased with herself?

Qiviut/silk yarn. This is just an incredibly soft wonderful yarn to work with. I’m not in a hurry to get finished. I’m going to enjoy the process as much as the final product, I think.

I started my knitting project and haven’t gotten very far on it, still working on knitting the bottom lace border, I’ve managed to get half way done with 17 of the 34 pattern repeats. Too much other things going on, but as Dan says, I won’t be able to say I’m bored for the next year.

This morning I set my laptop computer up in the kitchen, by the wood cook stove; it’s nice and toasty warm in the kitchen. I love using the the various levels of technology – wood stoves circa 1800’s and internet circa mid 1990’s. While I’m working, I’m also watching a friend playing in a world championship tournament, live 🙂

Wireless internet over a satellite, and next to a wood stove.

We escaped the freezing temperatures the last couple of days, unlike people in the valley who lost gardens if they weren’t protected. There’s something to be said about living on the side of a mountain.

Yesterday I finished processing the half case of pluots I’d gotten last week. I made Spiced Pluot Sauce, which is absolutely wonderful on pancakes, especially blueberry pancakes. Then I made a batch of Pluot Butter, a thick and spicy and lemon gooey delicious thing to put on English muffins, and I made a couple of jars of Pluot Jam.

This afternoon I have peaches to work on. I’ll make both Peach Butter, and some Peach Jam.

And then I’m done with fresh fruit.  I can start working on the fruit I froze over the summer.

Strolling up the hill in front of our house, following the deer trail, and his nose.

Second black bear we’ve seen in as many days. This one is the smaller of the two, a good 200 pounds, he’s very rolly-polly. The one we saw yesterday was a large bear, and we had an earthquake at the same time we saw the bear, so there was much excitement around the house at that moment. Pretty sure he wasn’t so big that he was causing the earthquake….

I didn’t go outside of the sunroom this morning to take pictures as I didn’t want to scare him away before Dan could get to the BB gun, and send him on his way up the hill at a high rate of speed. So the pictures are a bit fuzzy. He came up the hill right next to the post where we hang the bird feeders in the late fall, after the bears have all gone sleepy-bye.

Mosey mosey mosey. Don’t worry, JW….

Pretty animals. It’s always kind of fun to see one when the macaw does NOT see them. She makes a huge amount of noise.

Mishkin was being oblivious this morning, and missed seeing his natural prey. He always growls at bears, “I can take ’em.”

“Ruh-row.” Bear hears the sound of the BB gun being pumped up, and scampered away as fast as those little feet could move.

They are kind of cute, even if they are a bit of a pest at times.

The blackberry jam turned out absolutely delicious! Can’t hardly wait for more berries to get ripe. When Dan was a kid, Mom used to make a blackberry cake.  He can’t remember if it was his dad or brother that always lobbied for a blackberry cake. That sounds utterly delicious. Might have to give that a try with the next batch of fruit we pick.

Looks like we are going to get our Indian Summer after all.  Woo hoo!!  That means the tomatoes in the greenhouse ARE going to get ripe.

This is the fun time of year for gardening! All the colors of fruits and vegetables are just beautiful.

The star of the harvest today is definitely the blackberries!!! We’ve tried to grow blackberries for six years and this is the first time we’ve gotten any fruit off of the vines. This is just the first harvest. Depending on how much time the weather gods give us, we may have more blackberries for me to play with later this month. Today I have enough to make jam, and so that’s on the top of the list, bumping the pluots and peaches into second place.

We picked beets, slicing cucumbers, Yukon Gold potatoes, yellow wax beans, a few swiss chard leaves, three varieties of peppers (mild and hot), and some Roma tomatoes.

The peppers, tomatoes, a Walla Walla onion I picked the other day, and the swiss chard stems and leaves are destined to be lunch today. I’m making a tofu scramble, which features a lot of vegetables.

While we were in the garden harvesting things we also each ate a handful of raspberries that the wasps hadn’t gotten to yet, and picked a couple of carrots.  The carrots were almost as sweet as the raspberries.

It is just so much fun having a garden, even if it is a lot of work. Our wire cages have worked a treat – the pack rats have been foiled!!! Yippee!!!

Today I made an apple pie which is always a chore using gluten free pie crusts. I mutter a lot of bad words under my breath and occasionally chuck the entire mix into the garbage, but today I was feeling less frustrated so I persevered.

Fortunately it always tastes good, even if the crust is a real pain to work with. Dan says the crust is kind of hard this time, and the apples are a bit chewy but still it tastes good. He loves pies.

I also made some pluot jam with some golden pluots we picked up at the fruit stand. Pluots are a cross between plums and apricots, and they come in a lot of different colors. I’ve never seen golden pluots before, so I had to get some to make into jam.

I divided the pluots into six batches, and started a pot of water boiling on the stove. I put 10 pluots at a time in the hot water, and as soon as the skins start to split, I move them to a cold water bath.

Then it’s super easy to peal them, and cut them up into little pieces.

Once all the pluots have been deposited into the pan, I start the heat under the fruit and get it nice and hot, and then I add all the sugar, a cup at a time, stirring constantly until it is all incorporated into the fruit juice before adding another cup of sugar. I don’t use pectin, so it takes a while to cook it down. Because I don’t use pectin, I don’t have to use as much sugar.

And then the jam just gets cooked down until it is thick enough.

While the fruit is cooking, I also have jars and lids boiling in a large pan, waiting for the jam to get thick enough, and when it is, I put the boiling hot jam into a hot jar freshly removed from boiling water, and set the filled jars on a tea towel to cool. The fun part is waiting for the jar lids to say poink!  That sounds announces the jars have sealed and I can label them and put them away in the pantry.

For my 60th birthday present to myself, I ordered some qiviut/silk (50/50) yarn, enough to make whatever size of lace shawl I want. I have transformed the first skein of yarn into a ball and put it in my yarn bowl. I’ll be using size 1 US needles for this project. The color is called “Kodiak” – named for the largest brown bear.

I thought I’d fiddled around enough with the chart I’ve made on my computer that I could just dive right in, but looking at the chart again last night, I decided I need to do some more work on it before I get started. I’m still not sure if I like the border pattern, and I may just start from scratch on that part of my project-to-be.

Like Dan told me, for the next year I won’t be able to say I’m bored 🙂

Speaking of bored, Mishkin wasn’t when I took this picture. Doesn’t he look like he’s ready for trouble? Mish is all perky because Dan just had him upside down in the chair, rough-housing with him. Dan left and Mish is saying “hey, where’d ya’ go?” He’s all ready for round 2, or 3, or whatever round it is today.

Our orange tree has six oranges growing on it, in various sizes. This is the largest one. And it isn’t the least bit orange. Maybe by the end of the year we’ll have one to share between us.

Last night we had a really nice sunset. This time of year we get some of the best sunsets. Just as the sun was setting last night, a good size 300 pound, or thereabout weight wise, black bear strolled past the sun room windows and our macaw saw it from her windows.

The bear could not figure out what was making that horrendous noise so it stopped right below the birds’ windows to try to figure it out, which of course did nothing to improve the noise levels inside the house. Dan opened the window behind the bear and said scram, and that bear went poof! Obviously that was a noise he recognized.

We saw the same bear again this morning when we went down the hill for our morning walk, on the road right below our house, ripping up a chokecherry bush. There is so much fruit on the bushes right now, the bears are going to get very fat this fall.  Which is, if you’re a bear, the name of the game.

People are always impressed by massive construction projects undertaken by groups of people, and lasting years. I’m beginning to think this house could qualify for that sort of designation.

We had a water softener installed on Monday. Yay!

The measure of hardness in water is particles. Anything over 11 particles is considered hard. Our water has 64 particles. But it doesn’t have uranium! Yay!!

As with all improvements for the house, in order to accomplish that water softener project, we had to do some other things. First, the water softener needs power, of the 110 AC variety. There is a light in the crawl space door to the immediate right of the water softener. But alas, it is low voltage 24 volts, to be precise.    That means breaking sheetrock and running a new electric circuit around the room. So, for now we are running the water softener off an extension cord.

Second, we have a wood stove in the basement which was in the way of the water softener, and that meant disconnecting it and moving it a few feet across the floor, and then replacing the stove pipe with some angles. Sounds easy enough. But wood stoves are very heavy, too heavy for us to be messing with, it turns out. That’s another story.

And when we disconnected the stove from the stove pipe we discovered that a House Wren had had delusions of grandeur as to what would make a perfect nest. And he had filled up the stove pipe and stove with twigs!  Needless to say, if we had tried to start a fire in the stove this coming winter, we would have only discovered this when the basement filled with smoke due to the stove pipe not drawing worth spit.

Pick up a twig, fly to the roof and up on the stove pipe, drop it in the hole, and check to see. “Is it full yet? No :(” Repeat. Thousands and thousands of times.

What a mess that made. The amount of time that small bird devoted to this massive construction project is really quite astounding, considering the stove pipe is two stories tall.

All in all, that makes the stove pipe an ‘attractive nuisance’ and we are going to put in a propane wall heater in the basement, instead of using wood heat. That way we can simply remove the stove pipe, fix the roof, and the nuisance is gone forever.

But that means we first have to move the freezer which is completely full of fruit from the garden, and a storage rack, both of which are in the area where we want to put the propane heater. Where to put the freezer is a subject of debate but we’ve decided to put it where the wood stove is located now, which means another electric outlet but since we’ll already be breaking sheetrock on that wall, that’s not much extra work.

But that means the woodstove has to leave the basement and we can’t do it. And that means finding somebody else, actually two somebody elses who are large economy size guys, to do it.

See? Massive construction project.

No sign of momma, but baby has been here a while, munching on bushes.  Now he or she is taking a little rest next to the sidewalk right outside the front door.

White-tail fawn, still has lots of spots. Great camouflage against the green grass, eh?