Berries

It's pouring today.

What else is new?

But I have found a bit of brightness and beauty: berries!

Snow berries and holly berries.

The berry-like non-berries that are really crocosmia seed pods.

The berries from the mystery shrub (could it be a kind of dogwood?) that looked like this just a short while ago...

...and after two nights of hard frost now look like this.

When I think of "berries" and "Mucky Boots" simultaneously what comes to mind are all the edible berries we grow: strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries, red currants, blackberries, huckleberries, Saskatoon berries. They're lovely, but they're long gone, and their memory (and even their jam) isn't enough to brighten a day like today. So it's nice to know their non-edible cousins have got this late season covered.

Smell-O-Rama

I haven't wanted to write much about this because I don't imagine the world is very interested in the state of my sinuses, but I had surgery on my shnozz a couple of weeks ago. No reconstruction - just a good scraping out of my sinus cavities. And now, after about a dozen years of chronic sinus congestion, I am happy to tell you I can smell!

This is taking some getting used to.

Some things stink. It turns out Frankie has really smelly farts. (At least Kim tells me it's Frankie.) And I had forgotten the distinctive smell of an orange growing green fur in the fruit drawer.

Some things smell marvellous, like Petunia's fur when she comes in smelling of wood smoke. A t-shirt fresh from a cedar-lined drawer. Hot water hitting coffee grounds first thing in the morning. I knew this intellectually, but there's a huge difference between knowing it, and remembering it, and actually smelling it.

If it wasn't late fall, and consequently cold and miserable outside, I would be spending the day taking my nose from plant to plant, sniffing up all the smells I haven't smelled for years. But it is late fall, and the nice smelling plants are asleep for the winter, so instead I have celebrated with a Smell-O-Rama Festival in the kitchen.

French onion soup, loaded with home grown onions and garlic.



Chicken pot pie, with my first attempt at gluten-free pastry.

Roast vegetables - an entire pan full, most grown right here at Mucky Boots. Amazing - the taste, as well as the smell. Did you know that sweet potatoes, squash, beets, carrots and rutabagas all actually taste different?



Apple crumble - apples, cinnamon, butter and brown sugar baking in the oven and filling the house with their aroma.

My heart is happy, but my poor nose is feeling just a little overwhelmed. I think I overdosed on lavender yesterday when I was making sachets, and even stepping into the room where I am storing all my (naturally scented) Christmas soaps makes my head hurt. It feels like there is a direct electrical connection between my nose and my brain and I keep getting zapped. But I keep sniffing and smelling, restocking my mental catalogue of smells.

I can't wait to smell the lilacs in the spring.

Reading in the dark

We had our first power outage of the winter season last night. It didn't last long - only about an hour - but it was a good reminder that we need to be stocking up on batteries and candles, not to mention making sure we know where the matches are.

The biggest inconvenience was our CO2 detector, which started chirping at about 100 decibels as soon as the power went  - and we could not figure out how to shut it up. We read the instructions and followed them carefully, to no avail. Of course we thought about simply removing the batteries, but that required a screwdriver we were too lazy to go out to the workshop in the pouring rain and dark to get. So we buried the thing beneath a stack of towels in the laundry room, shut the door, and let it chirp.

I wasn't worried about water - we still have some stocked from our water adventures a few weeks ago. And a fire had been burning all day in the wood stove, thanks to Kim the Lumberjack, so we had plenty of warmth. There would be time to sort things out in the morning, in the light, if it came to that. My laissez-faire attitude was probably influenced by the fact that I'm just back from sinus surgery in Vancouver (not entirely pleasant, but enough about that) and wasn't feeling very ambitious about power outage problem solving. But the one thing that absolutely had to get sorted out was how to keep reading, in spite of the dark.

We don't have any oil lamps - I don't have any experience with them, and I confess they make me a little nervous, especially with animals in the house. So our first anti-dark measure was to light candles. Fortunately our friend Linda loves candles, and loves gifting her friends with them, so we had more than enough to give us light to see by. But not to read by, unless we were willing to hunker down over the flames.

So we gathered up all the assorted battery-powered lighting devices we have accumulated since we've been here and power outages have become a more regular fact of life.

My preference has always been the headlight on a stretchy band, even though Kim laughs at me every time I put it on. It's perfect when I need to be moving around doing things, but it's not at the best downward angle for reading. And need I say it's not the most comfortable thing for someone with a sinus headache?



Kim's first choice was the light she uses on her music stand, and I have to agree it's pretty much perfect. The gooseneck allows it to be angled just so, and the light is really bright. The only disadvantage is that the clip is quite heavy, and it can be tiring to keep your book upright.

We also have a hook-over-your ear reading light, but its batteries were dead. Finally I scrounged through both bedside table drawers and found the nifty little lights we picked up at Home Depot, of all places. They are small and very light, and clip onto the arms of your eyeglasses. Plus, they swivel so you can choose the perfect angle for reading.

By the time we had that all sorted out we got about ten minutes of reading in before the lights came back on again. So we kept them off for a while, just for the pleasure of reading in the dark.

Old dog, first snow

Frankie may be a little too stiff to go bounding through the first snow of the year the way he used to, and the flakes may blend a little more into his ears-turned-grey. But this morning's brief snowfall was still reason for our aging guard dog to assume his favourite position on the verandah steps to keep watch over the weather.

Our sweet boy is now on anti-inflammatories, which are helping what was troubling him in his lower back, but he is showing his age in other ways: he is quite deaf now, and sleeps much of the day. The time has come when I need to be sure I'm not letting worry over what lies ahead for him interfere with the joy that is still to be had every day.

Our dude. Our handsome boy.

Little

Big eggs are awe-inspiring. Big eggs make you feel the pain of the chicken who laid them.

Big eggs make you feel like a farmer.

And then there are little eggs. Especially the little eggs produced by a pullet just beginning the laying stage of her life. Little eggs make you want to go "oooh" and "aaaah". Little eggs make you want to snuggle up the pullet who laid them. 

Little eggs make you feel like a mother.

That's why they call it a big leaf maple

Big leaf: check. Maple: check. They got this one right.

Big leaf maples are generally considered to be junk trees, at least around here. Not good for much, with a talent for volunteering themselves to grow wherever the heck they want (which is usually where you would prefer they didn't).

But there are a few folks in our neighbourhood who tap their big leaf maples like our eastern cousins do sugar maples. The resulting syrup isn't the same - my one taste of it made me think of molasses, rather than maple syrup - but still, how cool is that? It might be a good project for the winter months when not much else is happening on the home front.

The fine art of Hosta Clean Up

We have an awful lot of hostas here at Mucky Boots. Many different shades of green, several different colours of flower, in every size from small to huge. They like the damp spring and fall, they tolerate the dry heat of the summer, and they're forgiving of wildly fluctuating light levels as the sun and shade-giving trees go through their seasonal patterns.

They're a workhorse of the perennial garden - they don't require fussing or attention, and once they're established they do a pretty good job of keeping my arch-nemesis the creeping bellflower in check. They really only require input from me twice a year: in the spring, when they get divided, and in the late fall, when they get cleaned up.

And since we have so many hostas, and since I have now cleaned them all up five falls in a row, I have learned an important fact about Hosta Clean Up: timing is everything.

If you attempt Clean Up too soon, you have to work your clippers through dense stands of stems. Especially if my arthritis is acting up, it doesn't take long before my hands start to cramp. On the other hand, if you wait too long, the foliage will have disintegrated into a mass of slime that makes Clean Up a wet mess.

But if you time it just right, it's a breeze. If your timing is perfect, all you will need to do is run your hand through the limp, floppy dead leaves...



...and they will pull away from the roots with virtually no effort on your part...



 leaving only the spent flower stems to cut down.



The only potential downside is that the dry flower stems are very tough and stick-like, and if you're not paying attention you could poke yourself in the eye bending down to get the last few bits. (Does it sound like I am speaking from experience?)

There. That's my little contribution to making the world of hostas a better place.

Water, inside and out

It seems like only yesterday I was complaining about how dry the garden was, and already we're getting tired of the rain. Drizzles, deluges, steady soaking downpours. But compared with everyone in Sandy's path it's nothing, so maybe I will merely say it has been raining every day. We're a little soggy, the chickens are a little muddy, but the garden is happy. That's the outside part of this post.



Which leaves the inside part. That story began on Tuesday evening when I came home and realized there was water dripping from a light fixture in the family room. Within minutes a long line of damp began to materialize along a seam in the drywall ceiling.

We turned off the water to the house, turned off the power to the family room, moved anything in danger of being dripped on to safer locations, and then began to search for the cause of the leak. Three days later, we still have no idea.

The insurance adjuster has come, the restoration company appraiser has come, the ceiling has been opened, water has been run and pipes inspected, and we are still clueless. So we're going to live with holes in the ceiling over the weekend, using water in the house as we normally would, and (strangely) hope for another leak to tell us what the problem is.



In other words, first there was water, then too much water, then no water, then water, and now we're hoping for too much water again.

It was interesting living without water for a couple of days. That's overstating it, because we could still get water from a tap at the pump house. We used our big emergency water supply jugs and a wheelbarrow to schlep enough water into the house to let us flush an occasional toilet, wash our hands and faces, and perform basic cooking in the kitchen. So it was an emergency preparedness test-run-with-training-wheels kind of experience, but even so, it was enough to convince me that we need to increase the volume we put aside for real emergencies.

It's also interesting living in a construction zone again. It made me think of my wise friend Jean, who, when I was crowing about painting The Last Wall, commented "The thing about painting is that you aren't EVER finished!

Oh, Jean, I wish I had paid more attention.

I love my wheelbarrow

Of all the tools I use in the garden, this wheelbarrow is my favourite. I appreciate my other tools, for the ways they help me do my work, but I feel affection for this wheelbarrow. Not our plain metal barrow, or the heavy black one that we use to haul rocks, but this light, agile plastic green one. Somehow just seeing this wheelbarrow in the garden makes me happy.

I love its colours: green bucket and orange wheel. Throw in a blue-handled shovel and you have enough colour to brighten a gloomy October day. I love its graceful and simple lines - there's nothing bulky or awkward about it. And it's the perfect size and weight for me. Any bigger and I would end up pushing a load too heavy for my joints. This wheelbarrow keeps me in check, in a good way.

This wheelbarrow has seen me through four massive fall clean-ups of the perennial gardens, and is about to see me through number five. It's my partner in clean-up. When the job is finished this wheelbarrow and I will survey the garden we have put to rest for the winter and feel satisfaction in the job we have done together.

I love my wheelbarrow.

Knitting

Thanks to the inspiration of Ann at Shim Farm, who reminded me of the pleasures of Lopi, and my friend Elisabeth, who knits socks that are works of art, I recently rooted through my long-forgotten box of knitting supplies, dug out my needles and knit this shawl.

It seems the familiar Leave Things 90% Unfinished Syndrome that governs our home renovations applies to knitting projects, too. The shawl got almost finished quite quickly, but then it stalled, with strand ends waiting to be woven in and the fringe undone. Finally I got my act together and finished it off one day (and took the photo you see), only to come home from tutoring the next day to the news that Frankie had decided it looked awfully soft and cozy and had dragged it off the back of a chair with his paws and snuggled with it on the floor, in the process creating a number of pulls and bobbles. Oh well. Nothing that can't be fixed. After all, people (and that includes dogs) are more important than things.

I mostly knit the shawl in front of the TV, which made the process of watching the latest episode of Boardwalk Empire less of a frivolous use of my time. Does anyone just sit and knit, without something else going on? That's a bit too stultifying for me, and there's only so much TV I am willing to watch. So my new favourite thing to do while knitting is to listen to an audiobook on my ipod. Which I did on my recent trip to Calgary, which involved about 50 hours on a train. What a perfect combination: the rock of the train, spectacular scenery passing by the windows, being read a good book with a pair of needles in my hands, learning to cable knit.

And speaking of needles, I have learned of the pleasures of wooden needles, which somehow feel more fitting in my fingers than metal or (gasp!) plastic ones. They make it easier to channel the spirit of Laura, which is part of the fun.

The next project? Another scarf, with wool made of merino and silk, in a shade of green to bring out the sparkle in my honey's eyes.

Gossamer

If you're not tired of fall colours and the beauty of decay, here are two more photos for you, of a nameless scrubby shrub growing in the wilds at the front of our property. Judging by their ethereal state, especially compared to the foliage around them, I think these leaves might actually be from last year, somehow surviving through the winter thanks to the protection of the large trees overhanging them.

Click on the photos to see larger versions, so you can really appreciate the lacy beauty of these ghost leaves.



I'll be away for the next little while - I'm off the Calgary to visit family and attend parts of this. Until I see you again, stay warm and dry!

The colours of fall

For a recovering perfectionist, I think it's sort of remarkable that I love a garden in the fall as much as I do. After all, autumn gardens are full of falling over, turning brown, self-denuding plants.

There are still splashes of colour, like the rudbeckia and the asters, which bloomed just in time for the Big Party. (How did they know?)

The hydrangea are still going strong...



...as are the gallardia that I grew from seed this year.



But even the plants that have officially called it quits and are dancing slowly into wilt and decay have their own beauty, like the dogwood.

And the peonies! Compared to how this plant looked in June this may seem like nothing much, but as much as peonies are my favourite flower in the garden, I find I am pausing much longer to admire the beauty of the foliage in its last weeks of life.

It's awfully tempting to draw a parallel between my feelings about the fall garden and about turning fifty. But cliche or not, there's something to it. From this perspective, the June garden, as fresh and glorious as it may be, seems to shout "Look at me! Look at me!", which seems a little tedious from here. On the other hand, the autumn garden is full of plants that have a different kind of splendour - less show, more dignity. A kind of beauty that factors in the places the bugs have nibbled, the edges that have become crispy, the spots that are bare, and through the calculation that is life, comes to an answer even more precious than short-lived June blossoms.

My garden continues to teach me, and I am listening hard.

Dry

We haven't had any significant rain for months. People think of southern Vancouver Island as being wet, wet, wet, and it is (usually) through the winter. But our summers are traditionally hot and dry, and this particular summer doesn't seem to be ending when it comes to the "dry" part.

It has been so dry people are worrying about the state of their wells and aquifers, and some communities that haven't ever been to Stage 3 water restrictions are now on Stage 4, which means no outdoor watering of any kind for any reason. It has been so dry there are concerns that our local river, the Cowichan River, doesn't have enough water for the returning salmon to make it upstream for spawning, so volunteers are hand-carrying salmon in crates up the river.

But now - now there is this.

(Thanks, www.weathernetwork.com.)

If you can't quite read it, don't worry, The important part is the row of weather symbols along the top. Can you see it? Rain! Three days of rain, beginning on Friday.

Of course forecasts and reality are sometimes different things, but the regular appearance of the rain icon over the next fourteen days is giving me hope. I'll let you know what happens.

Now I just have to find my umbrella.

Jam, jam, jam

The windows are a bit steamy these days thanks to all the canning that has been going on, starting with a wheelbarrow full of Cox Orange Pippin apples and 20 pounds of crab apples from the trees here at Mucky Boots.

And then there were those 45 pounds of Italian plums courtesy of my dad's plum tree.



Yes, you read that right: 45 pounds. Last week we spent an afternoon picking them and then two days making plum butter and a couple of kinds of plum jam. Kim, bless her heart, split and pitted somewhere between 850 and 900 plums, and together we cooked and mashed and stirred and processed, and now we have 50 half-pints of plummy sweetness filling the shelves in our cold storage room.



The crab apples have been made into juice, which has been canned until either I have time to make it into jelly or we drink it (which, since it is unsweetened, should send the Tart Meter into the red zone).

We have only just begun on the apples: one big bucket-full has given us almost two-dozen jars of dark, spicy apple butter, and there is an awful lot left to process. The rest will go to apple sauce or will be dried. And even though we'll have plenty for ourselves and to give away, we're feeling a little sad that this year's harvest is less than half that of previous years, because our beloved grand dame Pink Lady tree has succumbed to the massive damage done when a bear climbed it last fall to get the two apples we hadn't been able to reach at the top. As Harry, our master-pruner friend said the other week when he had a look, the tree had been living with a minor case of blight which speedily took over the tree once it was damaged, and now even the few limbs that survived the bear are dead or dying. The tree needs to come down, and that will be a sad, sad day at Mucky Boots.

As if to compensate, our other distinguished old tree, the Cox Orange Pippin, presented us with a bountiful barrow-full of big, fat apples. They are a more utilitarian apple than the Pink Ladies: they are naturally much drier, and consequently good for dehydrating and storing. They don't have the sweet, juicy flesh and amazing flavour of the Pink Ladies, but we're grateful for them nonetheless.



And so the pantry is filling up again with jars and jars of jam, jam, jam - far more than we could ever eat. But half the fun is giving them away.

Can you say "Christmas presents?"

Melon

I grew melons this year.

I still can't believe it. I can't believe it's possible to live in Canada and grow melons. I grew four of them, only the size of a softball but full of melon-y fragrance and taste. The essence of melon-ness.

Next year I'm trying pineapple.

Finished

Please understand that "finished" is a flexible term here at Mucky Boots. By "finished" we generally mean something that is functional and largely complete except for a few details we'll eventually get around to. We hope.

Our goal was to get the Last Big Project completed before the big birthday party, and even though it was a lot of work, and an ambitious deadline, and we both got really tired and grumpy, we got it finished. Er, sort of. We still need to sort out how to change the fluorescent light fixtures in the mud room and the laundry room to something more charming, and then do a more straightforward light fixture change in the powder room.

Speaking of the powder room, here's what it used to look like. If you're not a really long time reader of the blog, you might want to check out the story about the day we removed the old sink, only to discover that not only had it been tiled in, it had been drywalled in. And, even worse, the studs had been notched out to accommodate it. My oh my.

Finally, two-and-a-half years after demolition, here's the after. If this photo looks strange, it's because it is strange: the room is so tight I had to stand on the verandah and take the photo through the window screen.

By the time we were ready to install the new vanity we thought we were coasting downhill. I should know by now that's a dangerous thought. Because the drain pipe coming from the wall was low enough we would have had to drill a really big hole in the shelf of the vanity to allow enough room for the p-trap. Naturally, we didn't want to do that, so we got clever and sawed an inch off the legs instead, and opted for a p-trap without a clean-out which saved us another inch. Problem solved! Of course the whole thing necessitated five trips to the hardware store, but that's just par for the course...

Now that The Last Big Project is done - sort of - what's left are a myriad of odds and ends. A bit of trim left to paint. A transition strip to install. Some baseboard that needs nail holes filled and painted. One interior door that somehow got missed when all its neighbours were painted. But all that feels really, really minor. 

I didn't know how good it would feel to get the house finished. I look around and instead of seeing projects left to do, I see home. 

That feels pretty darn good.