Winding Down

I’m about ready to wrap it up for this summer and head south with the pelicans and geese. It isn’t just that that the desert life we live in Tucson is calling me, but I’m also getting tired of canning and freezing food. Unlike the squirrels, who go on burying nuts until the nuts run out, I don’t have to preserve more food than we can consume even though the garden is still producing.

Tomatoes have been a disappointment this year for the first time since we’ve been gardening. These tomatoes look fine, but they have little taste. Instead of slicing them to serve as side dishes or as BLT entrees, I’ve been lightly stewing a quart or so – mostly Romas – at a time and freezing them for use in winter soups and sauces.

Finally, I’ve had enough of putting tomatoes away and, athough tomatoes were still coming on, Dennis pulled the plants and threw them in the compost pile. I’ve dusted my hands of tomatoes for this year. I may also be done with roasting and freezing sweet yellow, red, and pimento peppers. More are developing in the garden, but those we will eat fresh. They will keep in the fridge for at least two weeks.

All summer I’ve been on a binge of making jams and jellies, beginning with strawberry in late April. Dennis has helped with filling and sealing jars of gooseberry jam, seedless raspberry jam, red plum jam, wild plum jelly, and just yesterday, a second batch of jalapeño jelly.

Dennis says our basement pantry shelves are full, so it’s time to quit that, too. However, our sole jalapeño plant has produced enough to eat fresh, to make 10 half-pints of jelly. I also pickled a few jars of sliced peppers, but that’s enough. I’m finished with peppers, too.

Yes, I could go on canning and freezing, just as our squirrel population keeps busy bringing pecans from our neighbors’ grove to plant in our yard and garden. Let them, but for me, it's time to wrap it up for 2016, get outside, and enjoy the beauty of autumn. It’s time to wind down along with the year.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer

Old Dogs, Too, Can Learn

The longer we live, the more tricks of living we learn, it seems. I have a fair repertoire of tricks, such as hot to easily remove burned on food from cooking pots*, but recently I’ve learned a couple of new ones.

While we were in Tucson last winter, visitors came from Italy – a three-year-old boy and his parents, both of whom are nurses. One evening, while we were sitting around the cimenea** in the back yard, the boy touched the hot metal and burned his hand. He wept with pain and his parents asked if we had a raw potato. I thought this odd, but supplied one. They cut off a small piece of potato and laid the cut side on the boy’s hand. After a few minutes he stopped crying and contentedly fell asleep in his mother’s lap. The next day I was amazed to see that his hand appeared perfectly normal. Not only was it not blistered, it also showed no sign of redness or swelling. He said it didn’t hurt any more.

Since then, I’ve had several occasions to use the potato cure (yes, I am clumsy) and it has worked like a miracle every time. I wouldn’t care to recommend it for a serious burn, but for minor ones it certainly does the trick.

My visit to Maine yielded another trick, this one for salvaging rusted dishwasher racks. Our dishwasher, which has been going since 1987, was showing severe rusted areas on both the upper and lower racks. In Maine, I noticed that Carol’s dishwasher’s white racks had numerous areas covered with blobs of bright pink and green. Carol said she thought the blobs were Play-Doh. That got me wondering if there might be a way to salvage my dishwasher racks back home.

Cruising the web I found Rerack, a product for that very purpose.  All we needed in addition was a metal brush with stiff bristles to remove all the loose rust. Applying Rerack was rather like putting on several coats of nail polish. After drying overnight the Rerack had hardened and I ran a test load. It proved to be very effective and a great way to avoid buying a new dishwasher just because of rusted racks.

So, old dogs can learn new tricks, and at this stage of life, I’m in great need of tricks to make things easier. Bring ’em on.

* Of course I’m not going to withhold this valuable information. When food burns onto a cooking pot, fill the pot with enough to cover the burned-on area plus a half-inch more and add a tablespoon of baking soda. Bring this to a boil, lower the heat ant let it simmer for half an hour. Turn off the heat and let it sit for a few hours. Most of the burned-on food will easily come off using a pot scrubber. Stubborn spots maybe re-treated for additional removal.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer.

Corn Harvest, Now and Then

Saturday afternoon we took the back roads to town. These roads were originally the roads early settlers created in order to travel about the countyside There were no bulldozers then, nor combustion engines. These pioneers, using teams of horses and lots of manual labor, rationally chose the easiest routes. The roads wind around wooded hillsides, dip down to creek beds, pass acres of native prairie, and pass many old farmsteads.

Rain was imminent, so farmers were working to get corn harvested before the stalks and ears of corn got wet. We stopped to watch the progress of a farmer harvesting a rich bottomland field of corn. As it came down the row toward us we could barely see the corn picker.

But when it reached the end of the rows, we saw its true proportions. The eight conical projections from the front thread between seven rows, enabling a highly efficient process. (John Deere also makes a harvester that picks 14 rows at one sweep.) The machine cuts the corn stalks, chews them up, separates the ears from the stalks, shucks the ears, shells the kernels from the cob, spits out the pulverized stalks and shucks and cobs, and spews the corn kernels into the bin on top.

The farmer backed up the picker and turned to go in the opposite direction the length of the field. 

In a twinkling the bin was full and he headed to a waiting semi with a grain trailer attached. The truck took the harvest to a grain silo in a neighboring city, probably Topeka, where great rows of silos line the Kansas River.

As we drove on toward our destination I told Dennis how my dad’s corn harvesting experience was so different from this farmer’s. Dad didn’t plant many acres of corn, just enough to feed his hogs and chickens.

Harvesting the corn was a long and laborious task. He hitched Babe and Belle, his gentle old workhorses, to the wagon and set out for the cornfield. There, Babe and Belle waited while he used a corn shucking glove to free the ears of corn, snapped the ears off the stalks, and tossed them into the wagon. As he moved along the row he whistled to the horses, signaling them to follow along behind him.

When the wagon was filled a few hours later he drove Babe and Belle back to the barn, where he tossed the ears into the corncrib. Every morning and evening thereafter he filled a bucket with dry ears of corn and tossed them over the fence to the hogs to supplement their troughs of slop.

In later years, when the first mechanical corn pickers became available, Dad and another farmer bought a John Deere together, which greatly simplified their work. That picker wasn’t very efficient, often dropping ears of corn on the ground. Dad, ever one to think of those less fortunate, let a poor man, who lived in a shack nearby, glean those ears to sell.

I think Dad would marvel at today’s ultra-efficient harvesters. I know I do, and I never observe a corn harvest without remembering my sweet, hard-working Dad.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer

Lost Opportunities

When opportunity passes by there’s no satisfactory way to get it back. I find myself in that position now, due to a weird, non-life threatening, physical problem that has kept me from posting most of the summer. Frankly, I was so filled with dread that I thought of little else.  The problem was a Zenker’s diverticulum. It obstructed my breathing and caused me to choke on food and drinks, eliciting embarrassing coughing fits. Eating was so hazardous I lost my appetite and began to lose weight.

A throat specialist assured me he could repair it using a high-tech endoscope. I’ve had a good many surgical repairs to my fingers, toes, wrists, shoulders, knee and hip. They never worried me, but this one was too close to my body’s essential organs, my home base. I dreaded not only the invasion of my home base but also having general anesthesia for the second time in three months. It makes me tired for weeks.

My worry was for naught. The repair didn’t work because my mouth was too small to accommodate the instrument. (My mother would be please about that. I once embarrassed her by winning a big mouth contest.) The surgeon was able to stretch a stricture in my esophagus, however, and that’s been a tremendous help. The first week after surgery I gained back all the weight I’d lost and breathing is much easier.

What I regret about this summer is the lost opportunities to share highlights of the summer here in my journal. I can’t write all the posts I’ve missed, but here are a few highlights:

Tiger lilies I planted in a rotting stump many years ago have multiplied so that they make a bold statement against the woods.

Wild American bluebells showed up all over the place this summer. This clump by the driveway thrilled me every time I walked out the front door.

I finally found a really good recipe for naan. The taste and texture are perfect. I like it especially  with a few cumin seeds rolled into each naan. Now I need to work on form. 

The summer Kansas skies, dramatic and varied, always intrigue me. No two are ever alike. This one showed up on Massachusetts Street in Lawrence one evening when a storm was brewing.

While visiting Carol and family in Maine, I found that eating kale salad need not be like chewing rubber bands. The secret is using baby kale, not the full-grown leaves. This one made with baby kale from a Brunswick organic farm was quite delicious.

Finally, and this is the lesson I’ve learned this summer, I see that I’ve wasted many opportunities by letting my thoughts dwell on the future – fearing the surgery kept me from living fully in the present. The Power of Now, recommended by Carol and given to me by Barbara, helped me see the light.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer

Prayer before Surgery

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written in this journal. I’m having computer problems, but that’s not the main reason I’ve fallen silent. Mostly it’s because I’m facing yet another surgery and I’m worn out with getting my weary old body repaired. What’s more, I have other surgeries awaiting attention. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. (Thanks, Gilda)

This afternoon I’ve been pretty low and found myself seeking help from the higher power.* 

Oh! God, I need a pep talk.

I’m feeling kinda low.

You see, I just turned 81 a week or so ago.

I’ve been repaired so many times,

But still have more to go.

Should it be my bad left knee,

Or maybe my big toe?

But wait, there’s more!

What about my cataracts?

What about my throat?

I can only mount a few attacks!

So, God, give me the courage

To see this old life through.

I’m pretty well exhausted.

That’s why I turn to you.

Amen.

*I've used the word "God," but there are many names one might use. Really, the higher power has no name.

Copyright 2016 Shirley Domer