The O-Zone

The world anticipates the equinox and is practicing fall colors.

Golden clouds with a hint of umber...

intensifying to orange hues...

Fade to black and white with glimmering stars overhead.

I love fall.

There is a recipe in my new gluten-free cookbook that has intrigued me since I read it. Today I made a batch and just pulled them from the oven.

English Muffins

They are made with a light rice flour mixture, some garbanzo bean flour added for protein, and instead of shortening the recipe called for a nut butter.  I used a crunchy almond nut butter this time.  These are a yeast bread just like normal English Muffins.  I think they will be very good when they are split and toasted and have some margarine and orange marmelade on them.

Yesterday for dinner I fixed one of my oldest recipes from my collection.

Baked Lentils and Cheese

In a baking dish combine:

1-3/4 cups rinsed lentils
2 cups water
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 pound can whole tomatoes, chopped
1/8 teaspoon marjoram
1/8 teaspoon thyme
1/8 teaspoon sage
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, or more if you like it a lot
1 whole bay leaf

Cover the baking dish tightly with foil and bake at 375F for 30 minutes.
Remove the foil and add the following ingredients to the baking dish
and stir them in:

2 carrots, thinly sliced
1/2 cup thinly sliced celery

Return the baking dish to the oven and bake another 40 minutes,
uncovered.

Remove the baking dish once more and stir in:

2 tablespoons dried parsley
1 whole green pepper, seeded and chopped finely

Then cover the top of the baking dish with 3 cups (10 ounces) shredded
cheddar cheese.

Return to the oven once more for another 8 minutes, until the cheese is
melted and bubbling.

I made this without cheese and it is equally as good.  Yes, I keep telling myself that about recipes which call for cheese and which I now leave out.  Who knows, someday I might even buy into that theory!

Yummmmmmmm. This pretty much sums it up.

Just out of the oven.

Our early warning alarm system in the form of a macaw told us we had company.

Last year's baby, on his own and looking for plums.

This is the plum tree next to our bedroom, and most likely this is the same midnight burglar that was visiting a few nights ago.

Listening... "what the hell is making that noise??"

Trying to decide if it is safe enough to come closer to the house.

Terry was being quiet because she knew we were both aware of the bear.

So it was back to sniffing for plums.  By this time Dan had the bb-gun ready for action, and quietly opened the front door and managed to get one shot off.  This young bear, not very large, 150 pounds at most but very stocky and well fed, was outta here as fast as four wheel drive and strong muscles could manage it.

And, once again, Mishkin missed seeing a bear.  He did come downstairs to see if it was safe once Terry stopped yelling.  Good bird.

This afternoon Terry was out for some attention and Mishkin was really wanting to come over to the couch and participate in the attention. But he knows he isn’t allowed to come that close to his sibling.

He came as close as he dared, between the chair and the couch, and watched Terry getting her head fluffed.  I told him, “Don’t EVEN think about it.”  And he turned and scampered away.  He repeated this a couple of times, and he was really quite good about not approaching close enough to get into trouble, even though it was very obvious he wanted to be right up in my lap!

For a while he lay in the kitchen doorway, continuing to watch, and then he disappeared from view.  We could hear him beginning to play with his toy mouse that he had left under the kitchen cabinet.

And then he figured it out.  If he brought me his mouse to throw, that wouldn’t count as trying to get close to the bird.  That would just be bringing me his mouse to throw.  He had the most innocent expression on his little cat face.

What a smart cat!  I was impressed by his logic.

A cool morning, 41F (5C), and the house is delightfully cool.  There is only thing to do under such circumstances.  We must start a fire in the cookstove to take the chill off the house.  And then there is only one thing to do with a hot stove…  cook breakfast.

This potato pancake is my own recipe, modified to use rice flour now instead of wheat. In this particular recipe it makes no difference to the taste or texture.

Yummmm.   Water heating in the teapot for a second pot of tea, and the pancake is ready to serve to all and sundry.  Almost all, I should say.  The poor Mishcreant doesn’t get any potato pancake and he follows me around when I’m giving some to the birds.  Species discrimination, most definitely.

Slaving over a hot stove is a wonderful way to start my day on an early fall morning.  Dan told me not to get too used to this as the weather gods have plans for higher temperatures later this week.  Oh well.

Clouds have lifted from around our house and fog has settled into the valley. More brush is starting to change color, this time in front of our deck.

We can’t see the top of Mount Baldy; it wears a cloud cap this morning, no doubt warming its little baldy head.  My hope is the snow will be melted by the time the hat is gone.

Since it looks like rains will hold off for a while today, we’ll finish stacking the rest of the wood, and perhaps split another couple of wheelbarrows of firewood for the front deck rack to hold.

Mish has been playing vigorously with his toy mouse this morning, chasing it and bringing it back to me and hiding it in my slippers.  If I ignore him, he jumps up and grabs my hand with both paws, pulling it down and projecting mind control thought waves as urgently as possible.  He looks so serious when he does that.  What a funny cat!!

It has been raining here all day, wave after wave of storms rolling through, with sunshine breaks in between.  The sunshine, when it was here, was delightful!  I split a couple of wheelbarrows of firewood and stacked it in the rack on the front deck, just for exercise and so I wouldn’t have to move those few pieces of firewood from the pile to the woodshed.

Even with the breaks between storms, we couldn’t see very far to the west, and certainly not as far as Mount Baldy.  Until now.  The clouds parted and we saw this…

If I liked downhill skiing I'd be in heaven right about now.

I’m not ready for white.  Really I’m not.  We haven’t even had fall colors yet!  Ye gads.

Wood Elves are a tricksey species that make an annual appearance in the fall, usually before the Autumnal Equinox when they are widely observed dancing in the moonlight.  They provide things.  In our case they provide us with a lot of work to be done.

Wood elf spoor.

It will take several sessions to put this large pile of winter firewood away under cover.  We have already put away roughly half, stacked neatly in the woodshed overhang adjacent to the garage.  The wood elves will deliver two more loads of ‘work’ of a similar size before they are done for the season, the next delivery slated for next weekend.  There is an old saying that heating your house with wood warms you at least twice:  Once when preparing it for burning, and then again in the stoves.  I must say I’m really looking forward to having fires on a regular basis in the cookstove again.  Which reminds me, we need to clean that stove thoroughly and get some stove cement for the firebox.

Autumn is definitely beginning.

Under the canopy of pine trees, underbrush is turning to their fall colors. This hillside is covered with Ninebark.

The large fruiting bushes are covered with munchables, just the thing a hungry bear , bird or deer needs to fatten up in anticipation of lean times ahead in the coming winter.

Chokecherry have something astringent that is almost impossible for humans to eat. Bears love them, and so do a lot of bird species. This year the bushes are heavily loaded with fruit.

Another favorite of virtually everybody on the mountain from chipmunk to bear is Serviceberry. This is one of the primary ingredients in pemmican.

Normally, Elderberry is a smallish bush but occasionally it can grow to a tree. This particular plant has a trunk almost a foot in diameter, and the tree itself is over 15 feet tall. It took us a while to figure out what it was as we had never seen one so large.

All the above pictures were taken on our drive down the hill to pick up mail from the mailbox.  At the end of driveway, by our gate, are a couple of other plants which say “fall weather” to us.

Wild roses produced a lot of rose hips this year.

A non-edible berry is a Snowberry.

These plants completely carpet the aspen grove adjacent to our house. They also turn color as fall progresses.

Last night at roughly 1 AM Dan heard some noises from the plum tree next to our bedroom.  Lately the tree has been the site of nightly deer parties but this sounded different.  So he turned on the outside light, and sure enough, it was a different plum predator in action.  A two hundred pound black bear was caught in the act of attempting to climb the plum tree, having cleaned up the fallen fruit on the ground.  The bear was quite startled to be suddenly illuminated and when Dan opened the window to say “shoo” it was just too much to, dare I say it, bear…  yes I did.  The bear scampered off through the brush at high speed.

This morning when Dan was checking the weather report to see what was in store, he saw that there was a red flag warning for today for extreme fire danger from thunderstorms.

The bright white cloud on the right side of this picture connects to the bright white cloud on the left in the next picture.

These clouds are rumbling and producing a lot of wind, and some rain, but not lightning. Whew!

Earlier today a much larger and darker thunderstorm rolled through, and it did have lightning, hail, rain and heavy winds.  It moved so fast.

Spoke too soon, lightning has arrived.  Better post this while I can!

An exciting day.  Mish doesn’t seem to care about thunder and lightning; what a strange cat he is!  The birds never have cared about storms.  We theorize that it is because we watch too many movies with car chases, and explosions.  We may have warped their little minds.

Few things in life are a joyful as a macaw taking a long hot shower.

She has lots of new pinfeathers and the warm water helps her to get over this feather growing stage.

She likes it when the water is deep enough to spread her wings and pretend she is flying through the water.

She drinks a lot of water when she’s taking a shower.  A wet bird, inside and out.  It takes her many hours to dry completely, and she just gleams with iridescent blues and golds.  Opal was worried when I put Terry back into her cage.  Her comment was a very concerned, “Good bird?!”    She hoped she was not slated for a bath.  Oro also got a bath and was quite pleased with that development.

Yesterday was our 34th anniversary.

Dan was 26 and I was 18. Were we ever really this young? It still feels like we are most of the time, which is a good thing, I think! It does explain the childish behavior.

I still like to stand on things so I’m taller than Dan.  Some things never change.

Today we had a chipmunk figure out what windows are for.  The little guy hopped up on a windowsill and posed, ready for action.  Mishkin charged the window, and the chipmunk hopped down onto the deck, and scratched his head vigorously while looking back at the cat.  Then he hopped onto another windowsill and repeated the pose.  Mish, of course, complied by charging the window again.  The chipmunk was amused, as was I.  Terry thought it was funny, too.  She says, “What’s that??” and these days inevitably when she makes that remark, she is referring to the cat.  Opal just squeaks about things.  Eventually Mish retired from the field of battle and went upstairs where he was safe from mocking chipmunks.  That was hours ago and he hasn’t returned downstairs yet.  I’m sure he is busy dreaming of a different outcome.

Less smoke in the air today, but very warm temperatures.  This coming weekend the forecast is for a radical change in weather, thirty degrees cooler and rain.  That may be the real end of forest fire danger.  Hope so!  Our firewood is supposed to be delivered this coming weekend, and we will spend many hours moving it from a large pile to under cover in the woodshed.

Speaking of riots, last night we had a deer party under the plum tree.  One doe with a fawn has claimed the bounty for her own, and she spent last night chasing interlopers through the brush.   She was not being quiet about it either.  It’s amazing how loud her hooves are on the packed ground, when crashing into twigs and branches.  This is going to continue for a while as there are many plums yet to fall.

Soon we will have fall foilage to take pictures of; it’s my favorite time of year and it is just around the corner.

This is Mishkin’s favorite sleeping position on his blanket which resides on the couch…

We call this sleeping position "roadkill." Cats really know how to relax and sleep.

Both our computers have webcams and when the program doesn’t freeze solid it takes an ok picture.  It also takes little videos but we haven’t figured out a way to convert them to a format anybody besides us can see.

Me and Terry; she was more interested in trying to get to the keyboard than she was posing nicely for the camera.

And here she is again…

She sits peacfully on Dan's hand, doesn't chew on things or try to get into too much mischief.

We have been noticing a tree in our front yard which has flowered every year since we moved here but until this year had never produced any fruit.  Well, surprise, surprise.

This tree is over twenty feet tall and the fruit is way up over my head. We thought it was a Quince but my friend Diana says it is a Shiro Plum.

Our little tiny fruits, roughly an inch long and almost as round, are starting to fall off the tree onto the ground.  They do have a nice floral smell.  Interesting!  Maybe this next year we will give the tree some food and water it to see if it will produce fruit again.  It explains why the fruit is falling on the ground.  We did taste one and sho’ nuff it is a plum.  The guy who built this house planted plum trees all over the property and it makes sense this would be another type of plum.  I have such smart friends 🙂

This is a very pretty tree, flowers in the spring, amazingly enough fruit! in the summer, and gorgous color in the fall.