Fast Forward

This year has everyone puzzled. Everything is happening too soon. Flowers that usually bloom in June have bloomed in May. Here, for example, is the wild rose in our pasture. Normally it blooms in late June, yet here it is in all its glory on May 31.

Raspberries that we usually pick in early July are ripening now and the yucca blossoms that normally appear in June are already past their prime.

The most dramatic illustration of this strange season is in the ripe wheat in fields all around the countryside. Harvesting has begun, a month earlier than the earliest harvest on record. Here is one of the many wheat fields in our neighborhood. I photographed it last evening as a big thunderstorm approached.

We may never understand the cause of this fast forward action. I've decided not to worry about it, but to accept it for what it is. Instead of worrying I want to feast my eyes on the beauty of a ripe wheat field.

Every year these fields remind me of the song, "America The Beautiful," lyrics by Katherine Lee Bates. Driving down the gravel road beside the fields I am moved to sing.

          O  beautiful for spacious skies,
          For amber waves of grain,
          For purple mountain majesties
          Above the fruited plain.
          America! America!
          God shed his grace on thee
          And crown thy good with brotherhood
          From sea to shining sea!

If, in 1931, "America The Beautiful" had been chosen as our national anthem instead of "The Star-Spangled Banner," would we have become a less war-like people? Would we emphasize brotherhood and beauty instead of bombs and rockets? Would we be more inclined to live and let live in peace? Having "America The Beautiful" as our country's theme song would give us a real fast forward.
          

Moth Festival Ends in Tragedy

The Moth Festival's last day drew numerous new participants.

Among those hanging out at the festival were Fancy Fan,

Pee Wee,

Helmet Head,

Mr. Stripey,

Delta Tawn,

Rocky,

Harelip, who brought his new pal Snowy.

and Brainless who brought his huge clan with him.

Tragedy struck when bandleader Skinny was attacked and killed by an assassin bug.

A pall having been cast on the festivities, most of the participants departed. Only Brainless and his clan remained, not having the good sense to get away.

Festival organizers said that they would tighten security at future events.

Moth Festival, Day Three

First thing every morning after I start the coffee I go outside to see who is attending the moth festival.

The large black and grey moths are always in attendance, but weren't featured in my first moth festival post. It's almost two inches long.

Several new varieties showed up this morning. They weren't wearing name tags so I've given them nicknames. This one is Triangles.

Next, meet Four White Dots, aka Bullethead.

 Here's Grey Fan,

As well as cousin Tan Fan.

Next comes Scallops.

This is Harelip, because the inner tip of one wing is malformed. If you look at the two large dots as eyes, you will understand the name. I would love to see the underwing with its red markings. Harelip is accompanied by an unnamed bug.

Finally comes Zebra. This isn't a very good photo because it was sitting high on the wall. I really needed to stand on a rock or something, but yesterday I fell backward into the chicken yard, hurt my back, and was afraid to risk falling again.

After documenting the moth festival I've spent the day with an occasional ice pack and a darned good book, Anne Patchett's State of Wonder.

Moth Festival

Walking toward our front door this morning I was struck by the large number of moths resting on the stone wall.

Up closer I could see that it was a moth convention, all varieties welcome to attend.

I've long been a butterfly lover, but moths are beginning to edge them out of favor. For one thing, moths hold still for photos, but the main reason I love them is their seemingly endless variety.

I didn't photograph each kind, but here are a few up close...

The fuzzy-headed one...

The apparently headless ones...

The most well-disguised...

The ones that looks like tree bark...

The ferocious one...

The girly one...

And the most spectacular, the male luna...

The male has feathery antennae, while the female's are plain.

That's all for today, folks. Aside from admiring moths, stemming the last of the gooseberries, tending the little chickens and making vegetable lasagna, I'm fervently hoping for rain.

Gooseberry Fool

Gooseberry fool is an English dessert dating back to the 15th or 16th Century. Basically it consists of gooseberries stewed with sugar, mashed or sieved and mixed with heavy whipped cream. I've never made it or eaten it, but this morning the phrase popped into my mind in a different, personal sense.

After the last gooseberry harvest had been stemmed and bearded the berries, they looked pretty in the Dansk colander I bought in 1958. (Turquoise was a popular color back then, remember?) These are wild gooseberries, which are much smaller than the domestic Pixwell. Many, many wild berries are needed to make a pie.

When I measured the berries to freeze for pie-making later, I was just 3/4 cup short of having enough for two pies. I wondered if we might have overlooked a few when we were picking, so I went back to the bushes in our front yard for a second look. Sure enough, we had missed quite a few, more than enough to finish out the second pie.

While I was picking the berries* I suffered several stab wounds from the thorns that line each branch of the bush. I took this photo with a macro lens, which greatly enlarges its subject. The thorns are about half an inch long and sharp as needles. They tend to grow in groups of three, protecting the branch from all sides.

Back to the house I went, with blood running down my hand, to fetch a bandage and the gloves I should have taken with me in the first place. It was at this moment I began to think of myself as a gooseberry fool. What kind of nut would suffer this pain, disfigurement and labor for a few gooseberries?

Now there's more stemming and bearding to be done.** Each berry has to be trimmed at both ends. We used to do this with fingernails, but my finger joints are too far gone and last year Dennis hurt his thumbs while doing the entire harvest by himself. Loath to give up gooseberry pie, I came up with a solution: snip the stem and beard using scissors with pointed blades. This method takes just as much time but protects hand joints.  In this photo you see why it's important to remove the "beard," which is the dried up gooseberry flower petals.

When I was a girl my dad brought in buckets of wild gooseberries. After supper our family – children, parents and grandparents – sat around the kitchen table, stemming and bearding gooseberries and talking. This as well as other occasions such as snapping green beans or shelling peas, were times to tell family stories or, if it was a presidential election year, speculate and argue about who each party would nominate. (My dad was a Republican, my mother a Democrat, making for a lively discussion.) Few occasions in contemporary life offer these benefits. Maybe those happy memories made me the gooseberry fool that I am.

Now that I have more than enough berries for the second pie, I may try my luck at making gooseberry fool. I think I know how that dish got its name.

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*There's a technique to picking gooseberries. Using a gloved hand, grasp a main branch from its top and lift it. Most of the berries will dangle and are relatively easy to pick. Each main branch has side branches. Let your eye travel from the tip of the main branch, picking as you go. When you reach a side branch, pick those berries. Then back to the main branch and so on. Keep holding the main branch up until you have picked the berries from every side branch.

**One important note if you're going to try this at home: do not wash the berries before stemming and bearding them. Wash them afterward. Otherwise the stems and beards will stick to the berries and you'll have a heck of a time getting them off.

Jammin' in Paradise

Things are hopping in the kitchen. We can barely keep up.

To start things off, we bought several pounds of strawberries to make into jam. While I was cooking the first batch a neighbor called. Their cherry tree was loaded with fruit. They had picked all they wanted. Would we like to have the rest? Well, of course.

Dennis picked the cherries that evening and the next morning we got out the cherry stoner. An hour later four pies-worth of cherries were ready to go in the freezer. We couldn't figure out how to fit the stoner back into its box, advanced degrees notwithstanding.

I went back to jam making.

Shortly after the ten pints of jam were finished Dennis started picking gooseberries. Now we're removing their stems and beards, a time-consuming but worthwhile task, considering how we love gooseberry pie.

It's been a fruitful week.

Nature's Art

No human can rival Nature as designer. The variety seems endless. Here are two examples – moths on our screen door this morning. Moths fly mostly at night. During the day they sleep on surfaces that complement their natural camouflage.

This one is pretending to be a dried leaf.

This one is too spectacular in design to hide itself successfully on the screen.

I don't know the names of these moths. I only know that they live their lives as art.