Firewood

Today was nothing like the one when I took this photo.  Today was cold and rainy, maybe the last day like that for the season?  We did have a fire going and it was welcome.  The forecast has us in the upper 70's by next week, that will be a balm. 

We are mighty proud of this wood pile, been working on it all winter long and still have one more oak to cut up, complements of the windstorms last summer that brought a record number of big trees tumbling down. Together with my brother Chris and his father-in-law Ray, we cut, split and hauled at least three times as much as you see here.  I attribute the current backache to having evolved somewhere in the middle of the firewood procurement!  We now have three houses in the 'hood that will have enough firewood for two seasons down the line, that's a good feeling.

It's sad that it comes at the expense of all those fallen trees, but the interesting thing is that each and everyone of them as we were cutting them up, had some kind of problem, a split causing rot inside, or fungus or other issues that were causing the tree to be weak or to be dying, for some it may have been old age, they were very big and old.  So mother nature was doing her work when she brought that wind and blew those old boys down.  And we were doing our work to harvest them and will put the carbon to use one more time.

On Turning Fifty

It was my fiftieth birthday on Saturday. I believe I won't live to 100 so I'm shooting for 75 as a ripe old age to wind up at. That means I've only got 25 years left to finish what I've started and everything I try to do seems to take longer than it once did. Oh well, we can only accomplish as much as we possibly can.

In honor of the day I took a long walk around the land, visiting all my favorite power spots and thinking about what I wanted from this year and the next third of my life. It was a phenomenal day which I took as a good sign, sunny and clear, blue blue skies, the trees still turning. Dogwoods flame with the lower leaves yellow and upper leaves red.

The Ginko Biloba on its' way from deep green to lime green to yellow to gold. We are placing bets on which day this week all the leaves will drop off, they tend to fall almost simultaneously.

On my walk down to the creek I drank in the gorgeous day. Dry leaves were swirling around and down, making a crinkling sound as they fluttered out of the trees, through the air and landed crisply on the ground. A giant oak fell across the creek in the hurricane Hannah flood making a perfect bridge, so I scaled it and crossed to walk with a new perspective from the other side. Over there the bottom land is broad and flat with tall trees, on our side are steep mossy bluffs, rocky and veined with ropey beech roots.

I wandered on down to the big rock bluff, getting there is treacherous, the path now so narrow that you can only put one foot in front of the other, 6 feet above the water on one side, a steep bluff on the other offering no reprieve, nothing to hold on to. But I precariously made my way along the ledge and then scrabbled up the steep slope to sit on top of the big rocks and study the way the big beech branches wrap around them at the top and the roots of the sycamores across the creek grow around the rocks below.

The water was flowing beneath the rocks at the bend at a level that created an echo and reverberation amplifying the burbling, gurgling creek, sending that music up to me as I sat on top, watching the leaves fall, feeling the air on my face, the sun on me and feeling pretty damn good about the place I am in my life right now. A pileated woodpecker called and flew across the sky, a portent of good things I'm sure.

The day progressed into a clear and starry night filled with friends and laughter, champagne and good food, fire and fireworks to send me into a festive new year and new beginnings. The 40's were my best decade of life so far and I think the 50's are going to be even more miraculous.

Celebrations continued into the week, between the fabulous election results- Go Obama!- and my B'day, I've drunk more bubbly in the past week than in the past two or three years, I'm drying out now and moving forward to bright days ahead.

Autumn Gluttony

Gluttony takes me over in the fall. I just want to cook, eat and sleep. In between, I take long walks in the woods and work in my yard. Free from chiggers and ticks, I bask in the clear, dry days, I even lie down in the cool grass.
I walked up the mountain today. I don’t go there in the summer, too steep, close, buggy. Tree trunks felled ten years ago in hurricane Fran still lie like corpses striping the hillside, granite boulders breach through a sea of brown leaves, lichen patterns their surface like barnacles on a whale. Oak and hickory seedlings and low bush blueberries crowd the path, acorns crunch under my boots.

A chain saw growls from the Peabody’s side of the mountain, the sound of hammers on wood cracks through the air from the site of our newest neighbors’ soon to be house. As I walk along the trail I lose my way at times, the fallen leaves camouflage the path. The top of the mountain is covered with towering oaks and jutting granite rock outcrops. I sit to rest, breathing hard. It’s still shrouded in leaves up there, in another month a view to the east will be unveiled that includes the dome on the Moorhead Planetarium and the steeple of the First Presbyterian Church on Franklin Street.

The architecture of the forest also begins to reveal itself. The height and drama of tree trunks come back into focus, the lay of the land apparent again, a rise here, rutted road bed there. The trail follows a ridge down from the mountain. Before it drops down to the creek bottom, there is an old fire ring made of stacked stone, set low in the center of a group of large boulders. I like to picture hunters 50 years ago, or even Native Americans 500 years ago, camping there and staying warm in that protected spot.

The dry rocky creek bottoms fill with brown leaves. On the way back home I cross the pond, the beavers are building a new lodge in the face of the dam, with a long tunnel that stretches out into what little water is left. White throated sparrows and kinglets are back and they call to me from the witch hazel thicket at the marsh end of the pond. They flit through the round-leaved shrubs, teasing me to try and find them.

At home I’ve been busy with the activities of first frost and tonight possibly our first freeze. I’ve made green tomato and lemon marmalade, green tomato and apple chutney, and green tomato and chile salsa. I made one last batch of pesto and roasted and froze three dozen poblanos and a big bagful of serranos. It’s dangerous for me to go to the grocery store. The fridge and freezer are overflowing with food and I just want to buy more.

I ran in just for some milk yesterday. I already had a fridge full of chickens I bought on sale, waiting to be cut up for the freezer and their backs turned into stock. I bought two packages of boneless beef short ribs, reduced for quick sale, and two packs of mushrooms. I imagined how rich and good that would be on a cold night, cooked together in a broth of red wine, with a few late season red tomatoes and fresh herbs. I threw in a package of egg noodles, thinking that a perfect accompaniment.

Our garden still looks phenomenal. Despite the drought, we have watered the vegetables from the well so they are lush and green and tender. In early November we are eating beets, spinach, lettuce, cilantro, parsley, arugula, carrots, Swiss chard, kale, turnip and mustard greens. I am holding out hope for the broccoli, heads now the size of a ping pong ball and the cabbage, about the size of a baseball, even though they were chomped by a groundhog during their formative stage, they are trying their best to make. The Brussels sprouts, planted late and also devoured by the woodchuck, are less promising, the petit chou are only the size of a pin head.

I’ve been slowly planting shrubs that have been waiting in pots in the nursery, some of them for years. Some we bought, some are seedlings and many my sweetie pie started from cuttings of other plants. Thanks to a three inch rain last week I can actually dig. I spend as much time reveling in the day as I do working. I get lots of exercise walking back to the shed for a forgotten tool, and switch tasks frequently to provide my out of shape muscles with a little variety.

Get some tools, dig a hole, shovel a load of manure and dump it by the compost heap. Gaze at the trees and sky for a while. Plant the shrub, get a load of mulch, put some on the shrub and take the rest for the compost heap. Get a drink of water and do some “yard yoga” maybe a little warrior or triangle pose. As I lean forward and twist, my right arm reaching towards the sky, I see two hawks circling, they look like dragonflies they are so high up. Carry water from the rain barrel to the shrub. Cut back the dying tomatoes into small pieces for easy decomposition and layer those into a new compost pile with the wheelbarrow loads I brought down earlier. It’s a dance, waltzing from one task to the next, blue sky above me, leaves swirling down.

Daylight savings time is over, so by 3:00 the light is long, by 4:00 it begins to feel dark and by 5:00 I’m thinking about supper. What delightful combination of rib sticking item will we pair with what green veggie from the garden? How will we wile away the evening after the meal has been savored? Most likely loitering on the couch with a book or TV, until it’s late enough to justify slipping into the sheets to slumber until next light.