Hello Monday...you again ?

   Whew. Yesterday I canned 14 quarts of assorted  beans.  Great Northerns, Kidneys, Garbanzos and Baby Limas.  Dried beans cooked into a state of submission by the pressure canner. I want to can more kidney beans if I can get myself dressed and go get some.  I still have about 5 pounds of pintos to can as well.  Having canned beans in my pantry as opposed to all dried beans (which keep great, I know. But it takes so much water and power source to cook them from there that having them already canned/cooked makes sense to me)  seems more convenient. 

  Canning beans is an almost canning meat-like endeavor. A few extra important steps when you can high protein foods, and a lot more time.  Each batch of quart jars takes an hour and a half at 10 pounds of pressure. So that's about 3 hours total by the time you get them up to speed, process them  and let them cool completely down. But worth it. I use a lot of pintos for refried beans or other yummy meals.  Garbanzos for salads or hummus, which we love.  Kidneys for chili or minestrone soup or salads. Great Northerns for Senate Ham and Bean Soup  (or just cornbread and beans sometimes).  Red beans for red beans and rice with a little cajun sausage (andouille)  thrown in.All good nutritious foods.  And ready to eat with little prep. And there you have it.

  We lost our last hen last night or this morning. She was terrified and would not come out of the coop and when I went out there this morning, she was dead.  It is done. NO more chickens for me until we get that coop completely rebuilt. It was not a raccoon this time, apparently a weasel. Chewed a small hole in the corner of the door and got in that way. Killed the chicken in their way and left the carnage like they do.  Then back out through the same hole, taking some of the electrical cord from the heated waterer with it. A year with no chickens... I find it hard to grasp. I have been raising chickens for eggs (and the occasional rooster for meat) for 12 years.  My daily routine involves chickens morning noon and night.  That's a lot of years of habits for an old dog like me to have to change... It's been a brutal taste of nature, I guess.  Survival isn't always pretty.  I've watched enough nature programs over the years (back in the days when we had tv) that you'd think I'd be better prepared for the brutality, but I am not.  Ever.   I am alternately heartbroken and relieved that it is over. That her terror is finished.  And right now, that's about all I can say about it...

   

   So, I'm off to a slow start this morning. So much tragedy in the world. My son's oldest friend died Saturday night of a blood clot in her heart. She was in her early 40's.  He is stricken.  And I know there is nothing I can say to him that will make it any better for him.  Or her parents, who were friends of mine from the 70's.  And when we lose people there is nothing to say. Just love the ones left behind. And that is all we can do.  Another tragic loss of a life with so much living yet to be done.  And it makes me hold my son so much closer and remind myself and him that we just never know when our number is up. That we must live every single day to it's fullest. And tell the people we love just how much we love them and do every thing we can to enjoy life and do the things we always wanted to do and be the person we always wanted to be. Every one of us only gets an allotted number  of trips around the sun.   And we'd best wring every little scrap of goodness out it that we can.

  Well, I've wasted most of a good day. lol  Or have I ?  I didn't go to sleep until 1 AM. Hadn't slept but about 2 hours the night before from coughing, so I took a dose of a night time cough syrup and it knocked me out. It was great.  I slept until almost 10:30 this morning. And then coffee'd myself up, tended the coop, got on the computer. Let dogs in, let dogs out. Breakfasted (lunched?) and here I sit, feeling the need to get some of this stuff out of me and onto the page. Good therapy. A friend of mine was carjacked yesterday at gunpoint but not hurt.  This morning they found her crashed car. She is shaken but okay.  That scares me. It was in a subdivision, in her garage.  25 miles from here.  And I think--well, I have no money, my garage is so full of crap that there's no room for a car and I drive a 20 year old car that looks worse than it drives, so maybe I'm safe.  But for maybe the first time in my life, I am not feeling generally safe.  And I don't like the feeling. Not at all.

   Okay. I'm off in search of kidney beans. Think I'll make a giant pot of chili today and can it tomorrow and have some for supper tonight.  THAT might be the best idea I have had all day...

  Later, taters...
 

Ambling down the backroads ...

 Having one of those days... you know, the kind where you fixate on something from the past and then start ambling through your memories and wind up miles from where you started ?  Does anyone else have those days ?   You're laying around, minding your own business, when a stray thought triggers something... a spark sometimes, a landslide other times... and suddenly it's like you are falling through time, through your life, through your mind.   The day started out innocently enough. Except maybe I didn't get quite enough sleep, lately I'm suddenly having a hard time falling asleep. Often I can't stay asleep, but lately it's been going to bed and tossing and turning, my mind going a hundred miles an hour. I lie there, thinking--Any minute it will stop and I can sleep. I know that if I get up, I'll have to contend with the dogs who are currently sleeping peacefully all waking up and getting their jig on, so it's safer to just stay where I am. Sleep finally comes, but this is something new.

   Anyway.   We've had a week or so of calamities of the sort of normal type (for us).  Chicken massacres, health issues, broken sewer pipes, nasty summer colds, truck repairs.  I was ruminating on how the problems today are so different from the problems of our past. Which led me to the impact age has on all the things we try to deal with, physically, mentally and financially.  Thinking of times when we had so much less money than we do now, and how much easier it was to deal. Sometimes. At least in my mind now. Maybe it really wasn't.  How different our life was before we came here. Thinking about those early years, when he was in college and I was at work and we managed to pay rent and eat well and and pay bills and still go to the movies once in a while anyway. About how many more bills we have now, between insurance and taxes and medical care and just, well--life.  How much the world has changed in 25 years. The things we think we absolutely can NOT live without today (cell phones, computers, central air conditioning, 2 cars, etc).  Thinking about how my dad bought a 4 bedroom 2 story Victorian house on an acre for 5 thousand dollars when I was 15.  And how,  40 years later I bought a 3 bedroom doublewide on a half acre for 15 times that much, because it was out in the country.  And this August 20th, it will be 32 years ago that I lost my dad.  That means he's been gone half my life now. My biggest cheerleader in life, The guy who always told me I was beautiful and smart and could do anything I wanted to in this life. That guy, who worked in a steel factory to support his family of 8 and never complained about a bit of it, because he felt like the luckiest guy on earth. He had been in the second world war and come back home again. He lived in America, the greatest country in the world. He had 6 wonderful kids that he loved with everything he had. Yup. One lucky guy.  Here he is in 1953, with his first child, a baby girl.  Me.

  I get a lot of my optimism from him. And my heart.  And every year about this time, I mourn the way too soon loss of a man who just turned 60 (4 years younger than I am now)  and wonder what he would think of this world of ours.  Wonder what his life would have been like. Wonder the same about my mother, who died 5 years before he did, at 55.  Rambling, ambling, walking through memories that never were.


  This morning I learned that a friend of mine (my age) has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  Another friend has it too, though I'm not sure of his age.  Other friends being diagnosed right and left with cancers, with aneurysms,  with assorted and sundry illnesses and ailments of a mysterious nature. My peers starting to die.  This is the stuff that I don't think about any more than I have to, except when it's right in my face.  One of the great things about being in a 12 step program is that they hammer into you how important it is to just live one day at a time, to focus on the present, to stay where your feet are.  That kind of thinking goes a long way in helping you stay sober in the beginning, and then not freak out about your life and the world later on. When you're sober enough to be scared shitless about what's going on, because you're paying attention. Like now. Today there was a mess in Virginia. A rather young man drove his car into a crowd of  people protesting a white supremacist rally. People are scaring me.  The tsunami of hate that has rolled across this country scares me. White supremacists scare me.  And someone like me cannot go around being scared through her life.  It's hard to hold fast to a faith in a generous and compassionate supreme being when stuff like this is happening. And at a time when I need it the most. 


   I am blabbering I guess.  What do you do ?  If I listen to my own noise maybe I don't have to listen to the ugly noise in the world. If I get lost in my thoughts and my memories and my little world out here on Honeysuckle Hill, maybe when I wake up things will have righted themselves and it won't be so scary anymore.

  But I'm not holding my breath...

 It's currently 85 degrees with 70% humidity. A bit stifling and makes this summer cold of mine even harder to bear.  I need to be out there picking green beans, but I was out twice already and had to come back in because I'm wheezing and my chest hurts. I've been on slow for about 3 days now. As you can imagine, it makes me impatient. lol

 Getting ready to finish off the peaches.  Lost part of the second box because I just couldn't get to them. But did can 24  jars of peach jam (some pints) and 4 quarts of frozen peaches, not to mention the peaches and whipped cream we've had for dessert a couple of times.  I may get more and can peach slices, haven't decided yet. I'm feeling like such a slacker this year... and it's partly me but it's mostly the crazy growing season.  Everything is so late and not especially great quality. We had way too hot temps way too soon and then it got downright cold. Then uber hot again and now, in August it's in the low 80's and high 70's. And overcast a lot, so the tomatoes aren't ripening right. I am going to get some tomatoes from my go-to guy who sells at farmers markets just so I can at least can some diced or whole tomatoes. 

  I am in the process of really  inventory-ing my pantry right now...to see what there is and and what I need. I spent an unprecedented amount of money (for me) this past week at the grocer buying stock-up items for the freezer and pantry.  I have a very uncomfortable feeling about world events right now and I think to not keep an eye on these things might be tragic. Last night we watched a really great movie called Into The Forest, about a family of 3 (dad and two sisters) living in the Pacific Northwest  and the power grid went down on the west coast and more. The timeline is about 18 months by the end of the movie.  Really got me thinking (again) about these things.  Definitely recommend this movie... At any rate, I feel like I have been lazy and am looking at the big stack of bags of beans [for one thing] that are sitting here that I could can and use less water, power, etc to be able to make a meal should the need arise.  And those green beans out there aren't going to pick themselves. 


 We have been engaged in a war with a chicken killing raccoon  and finally found the spot last night where he is getting in. Himself went out to put them up and he was inside the coop door, eating another chicken, he scurried out and went up to the very top of the wire roof where he had torn a hole in the chicken wire that we couldn't see when we've been searching for where he was getting in. I only have 2 chickens left.  Unless he's been back since I was out there this morning. I have a heart full of dread every time I go out there...when these hens are gone, there will be no more chickens for at least a year I think, until we can completely rebuild the coop and run.  This is the life we have chosen. It often isn't pretty.  Everybody is food for somebody.  And that includes us, in extreme circumstances (bear ?  sharks ? mountain lions ?)  But I'm having a hard, hard time with this one...

   So tell me...what are your thoughts about the state of the world and what you are doing to ready yourself for unforeseeable circumstances ?  The movie last night brought home some things that I have known but not thought about in a while. Like, if the power grid goes, there will be no gas pumps working.  If there is no gas, there will be no grocery deliveries. Your average big box store carries approximately 3 days of inventory on it's shelves. What then ?  Do you have a water supply ?  Do you have alternate cooking and heating sources ?  Do you have the kinds of food on hand that you can eat without extended cooking ?  Nourishing food, not just lunchables.  Do you have a back up of paper or paper alternative products ?  (Thinking toilet paper mostly--every thing else you can probably live without)  I have a stash of clean rags too, that can be used, washed and reused if necessary.)  Have you thought about your pets ? This is a thing I continuously overlook, and you know how much I love my animals !!   I need to buy some cases of canned food that will keep for a long time. Those could be supplemented with rice or oats if necessary.  There's a lot to think about, when you ponder the possibilities  Do you know enough--or at least have a book or two-- on foraging edible plants ?  I also have a couple of small plastic back-up boxes that contain Vitamin C, a multi vitamin and aspirin...as well as toothbrushes. bandages, neosporin, etc.  And don't forget antacids -- anxieties will be running high I suspect. Do you have an emergency plan in place at your house that your whole family understands and can carry out ?  Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, famine, war,  and even just personal catastrophes...these are things we need to plan for, and not just wait until it's too late to do anything. We have stopped learning things that mean survival because we live in a world of conveniences.  We have dumbed down way too much for own good.

  On that chipper note, I'll go.  But think about these things. Not sure why I woke up thinking along these lines, but it could be the looming  possibility of a nuclear war with North Korea. I am not paralyzed with fear, but I am uneasy. And I am going to do everything I possibly can to make sure my family is alright.  How about you ?

This life ...

 

   Not been blogging along, have I ?   I have been feeling a serious need to write of late and then when I tried getting back it wouldn't let me into any of my 3 blogs. It would let me read but not do anything else.  I added a second email to my Google account because I am the recording secretary for our Area AA and needed a separate account so's not to lose any of the forty million emails they want to send me every week. lol  It's been all uphill from there, as this new email account has taken precedence over the old one and shows as my primary email and ...oh...never mind.  At any rate, I think I fixed it and here  I am and so there you go. lol


  It's been a crazy summer.  Again.  The weather has been insane, gardens didn't get in until very very late. Weeds went wild. It was prematurely scorching hot, the cold again. Then rain rain rain. Then none. In 2 months we got 2 days of rain. We need more, but it's not looking good. It was in today's forecast, but the sun is shining and the skies are blue.  And this seems to be what keeps happening.  I have not canned one single vegetable from my garden, though I have lush looking green bean PLANTS out there, but very little beans themselves. I have usually canned 40 quarts by now...

 Everything has seemed  almost surreal this year...we got a new puppy in late March (and why oh why did I think I needed a puppy??)  and she has been alternately a blessing and a nightmare. She is now 7 months old and is still not potty trained. It is driving me insane. AND she is a chewing destroying everything, little monster. I have come home to things like this more than I care to say 

 Last week a raccoon (or something) killed all my chickens but 1.  It was horrible. This is the second time we've had this happen. And leaving one chicken alive, by herself, was just cruel. She wandered despondently around until I found a local with some 1 year old Gold Laced Wyandotte layers for sale and brought them home yesterday. I've never had that breed before.  Now there are 5 chickens out there again, and none of them seem to know what they're doing. I figure I give them a few days to settle  down  and figure things out. Hopefully this will work out, as I had to buy eggs and I do not like that. lol  We had 2 plus weeks of 100 degree plus temperatures and I did very little cooking. Too too hot when the humidity is in the 90's.  Now we are having unseasonably cool temps, in the low 80's for gawdssakes, in August.  It's crazy, I tell ya...

  So, as you can see, life here at Honeysuckle Hill has not been dull.  I have been extremely busy it seems, with not much to show for it.  I'm really missing the blogworld and the people I used to read regularly. But sometimes life just gets in the way and that is happening to me. I am feeling like maybe things will slow down as I am making some pretty serious decisions about the direction my life is taking. Here I sit, halfway to 65 years old and  thinking about changing the direction of what is left of my life.  That's almost funny...

   I'm eating celery sticks stuffed with cream cheese and peanut butter (separately) for breakfast and having my second cup of coffee. It's almost lunch time, lol, but I hope to get a few things done inside and a few things done outside today. Who knows ? Have to figure out what to feed himself for supper, keep checking on critters of various and assorted types, start some laundry so I don't have to do it on the weekend, field some phone calls and probably clean more carpet spots and pick up tootsie roll sized puppy poops.   Yes, this is my life. 

  Good thing I got that college degree...

  (Oh yes--here she is when she still weighed 5 pounds. She weighs 12 now. She's a MinPin and Miniature Beagle mix, and her name is Myma (mee-mah), which is Irish Gaelic for "Beloved".)

Rainy days are the best...

  Hello there. I've been missing in action the past couple of months, I know.  I'm starting to feel like the boy who cried wolf, so I won't even say that I'm going to do better, or get motivated or any of that. lol   It just is what it is. And today it's rainy -- a soft rain, thankfully --  and I have a touch of a cold,. so I am more than happy to stay indoors and putter.  I'll probably be lying around a bit and maybe even sleeping some.  I'm not real sick, and I'd just as soon not get that way. I started drinking Golden Milk when the first sore throat symptoms appeared 3 days ago.  It's a mixture of almond or coconut milk with turmeric, ginger, black pepper and honey. A great immune booster. An anti-inflammatory. Anti-oxidant.  So not only are the cold symptoms relieved, but my joints aren't hurting either.  The osteoarthritis has been one giant flare this summer and fall.  It's been a strange year...

  The garden wasn't much to speak of this year. Very little canning have I done, except for a few green beans and lots of pickled beets.  I have plans to can pinto and Great Northern beans in the near future. I have canned chicken breast too, about 10- 1.5 pint jars. Somebody has some beef roast on sale this week and I might buy some of that and can it too.  I have been dehydrating and freezing some mushrooms. In fact the dehydrator is full of the first of the years chicken of the woods right now and I need to jar that up. The dryer is stopped so there are clothes to fold. Something about today reminds me of that wonderful song by Carrie Newcomer, Holy As A Day Is Spent:


*******************

Holy is the dish and drain
The soap and sink, and the cup and plate
And the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile

Shower heads and good dry towels
And frying eggs sound like psalms
With bits of salt measured in my palm
It's all a part of a sacrament
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the busy street
And cars that boom with passion's beat
And the check out girl, counting change
And the hands that shook my hands today

And hymns of geese fly overhead
And spread their wings like their parents did
Blessed be the dog that runs in her sleep
To chase some wild and elusive thing

Holy is the familiar room
And quiet moments in the afternoon

And folding sheets like folding hands
To pray as only laundry can

I'm letting go of all my fear
Like autumn leaves made of earth and air
For the summer came and the summer went
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the place I stand
To give whatever small good I can
And the empty page, and the open book
Redemption everywhere I look

Unknowingly we slow our pace
In the shade of unexpected grace
And with grateful smiles and sad lament
As holy as a day is spent

And morning light sings 'providence'
As holy as a day is spent

*********************************************

   And so it goes...this life on Honeysuckle Hill. The laundry room ceiling collapsed a couple of months ago and yesterday was the final day of getting the roof replaced.  It has been a mess (still is out there, although I spent a part of the morning  picking up shingles and boards and plastic  from all over the yard) but now it won't leak (I pray) and the hammering and sawing has stopped. I didn't realize just how much I value the peace and quiet of my life. It has been stressful and expensive and daunting.   And now it is finished. The gutters still have to go back up, but the rest of it is done.


  So, feels like a soup day, with temp highs in the 60's.  Not sure what kind, but something. I made a Tuscan Tortellini soup last week and it was excellent. One of the many reasons I love this time of year.   Soup.   Yum.  


...Good to be back.  



Namaste
.

A hot summer's day...

 Not so hot really...mid eighties.  But the humidity is through the roof and the sun is shining brightly. 


  I've been busy all morning and trying to do about 3 things at once, which is always a sort of kerfluffle.  I'm dehydrating and cutting up watermelon. I'm cleaning up the mess in our bedroom and trying to get things ready before the carpet cleaners come next week. (Happy Mothers Day to me from my boyo).  I'm doing all the little day to day things that need doing (or at least thinking about doing them). The dogs go out, come in, go out and come back in.  lol  The chickens are crazy about the watermelon rinds, so I have made 3 trips out to the coop. 2 trips to the mailbox down at the end of the road (putting Netflix movies in to send back and retrieving the mail a couple of hours later. Junk mail, I might add-hardly worth the trip).   I am also getting ready to pulverize a bunch of the dried tomatoes I have in the pantry into powder, to use as a spice ingredient and as an addition to soups and stews, and get ready for this years tomato crop. I think I am going to have a bonanza--lots of them out there. I picked 3 bell peppers earlier, thinking I would make chicken fajitas for supper, but it turns out I have no small bags of chicken breasts...only one with about 6 breasts in it. I could make a giant batch, but I hate to do that, although the Irishman will always eat it in his lunch. Unless I can break them apart...hmmm...


  It's been a busy summer so far, with one thing and another. The weather has been strange as ever...extremely high temps and no rain for weeks...or deluges day after day. It has now dropped into the mid to high 80's, which is rather odd for the middle of July around these parts. But it is welcome.  I haven't done a bit of canning yet. Normally I would have been at least canning green beans since the last part of June, but not this year. The plants look great out there and are loaded with flowers, but still no beans.  Curiouser and curiouser. And so it goes...


 I feel like there's not much to talk about. I finally got my car road ready and a bearing went out ion the front hub. Getting it repaired next week.  It's still driveable, but makes a hell of a racket. I am ordering the AC control panel tonight and hopefully that will fix the AC problem. Everything considered, I am still happy with the purchase. Trying to stay on the sunny side of the street, lol.  

  I have a pot of partially cooked beets on the stove that I need to attend to...a gift from some friends...too much to eat and not enough to mess with canning, so I'll figure something out. lol  Trying to watch the sales as it's about time to restock the freezer with meat. I'm down to a few  packages of pork chops and some chicken. One store near me (that has a GREAT meat department) is having a sale on some beef, which I rarely buy, but just might look into this time. I think I have some canned pork in the pantry still too...I could fix bbq pork sandwiches for supper, couldn't I ? With a nice side salad and some Harvard beets. Ooooo...there's an idea.  I would barely have to cook if I do that.  With a nice ripe bowl of watermelon for dessert. 

  I love summer meals...


 Namaste.

Come out, come out...wherever you are...

   Somedays it feels as though I am in a tunnel, rushing forward through time...Dip, dodge, duck and dive. Life flying at me from all directions. And then, suddenly, it stops. Dead still. Unmoving.

 The shock from that is enough to throw a girl off her feed.I'm trying to think of anything that's happened the last few months that was so earth shattering that I'd stop blogging. But I can't. There wasn't anything really. I've spent the last months healing, recovering, and being a slow and contemplative kind of person. Sort of.  I've been laying low and hiding out some. I've been dealing with some other issues. My car blew the engine.(240K miles. It was bound to happen sooner or later).  It took me a whole month to get another car, because I wanted something I could buy outright and not have a car payment. Still trying to dig our way out from under the massive medical bills from the last 3 years. My choice to get this older used car...just tired of having to pinch every penny to make it through the month. So--reduced insurance bill and no car payment--works for me. lol

  My son's step brother had a 1997 Chevy malibu that he would sell me for 1100 dollars. Has had lots of work done on it and he wanted to do some other work too *brakes, water pump, etc) to make sure it was a good car for me. I appreciate that. But it took them a MONTH to get everything done.So I was stuck out here (more or less) in the sticks with no transportation to speak of. Amazingly enough--I didn't die. lol  I also didn't do much of anything else. Still recovering from February's knee replacement. Having some other health issues of late.  Some old stuff resurfacing, some new and exciting stuff (not).  Feeling face to face some days with being in my 60's. For instance, in about an hour I have a chiropractor appointment to try to deal with this damned occipital neuralgia that has been killing me for over a week now.  Had an appt last Wed too, and it didn't help much. I have dealt with this for years and usually it's a 2 or 3 day thing. Never lasts this long. My fear is that the degenerative discs in my neck are teetering on oblivion. Let's hope not. I am SO not up for another surgery right yet. And I have always said I would NEVER let them cut my neck, but this pain is pretty rough.  Blah.

 On a bright note, here is my new car...

That's her...my $1100.oo car. Well, 1500.00 now, with the work I've had done in the past 2 days. But still... beats the heck out of 5 years of car payments. AND my insurance went down 5 dollars. lol Winner winner chicken dinner !!


 So, the day is winding down and the chiropractor is either killing me or curing me and right now I'm not sure which it is.  It still hurts, and he said it might for 24 hours. Seems the C-2 vertebrae and the C-1 vertebrae are twisted in different directions, causing the base of my skull to pinch the nerve. The pain is a little less intense than it was, I think. Ugh..

  I made a lovely vegetarian Pad Thai with peanuts and fresh basil for supper.  We ate and watched some Firefly and then took a little drive. When we came back, we walked into the backyard and watched the fireflies decorating the treetops like Xmas lights--it was breathtaking. Our little drive through the country saw lots of them in the fields and trees, as well as a Song Dog (coyote) trotting through the soybeans.  It was hot today and muggy and the garden is overgrown with weeds (well, the tomatoes anyway--everything else that got put in is mulched). The yard needs mowing and the house needs cleaning and some days it's so overwhelming I just want to stay in bed.  But...I don't.  I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, trying to outwit Mother nature and keep my basic needs met.

  That's a full time job, sometimes...





Namaste