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Blog: Reflections from Rural Route 2
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Tomato Juice
I picked my tomatoes again on Sunday afternoon. Seems strange to be picking tomatoes in October. Before this, I have eaten the ones that I picked. Sunday I got about three gallons of red, ripe tomatoes. I also picked a heaping two-quart casserole dish of half-ripe tomatoes. I'm saving those to eat when they ripen the rest of the way.
The tomatoes were very slow to get ripe this year. They are all volunteer tomatoes. I have not planted tomatoes in years. Most of them are a cross between cherry tomatoes and roma tomatoes. I think they were so slow to ripen because of the cool nights we had in August and September. Now that it is October, I think we've had more warm nights in the 60s than we had in August, when most of the nights were in the 40s and 50s. We had a few cold nights last week when it got down in the 20s, but it warmed back up again almost right away.
I washed off the three gallons of tomatoes outside, then I took them inside and put them in my mother's big aluminum kettle. That kettle has done a lot of work in its lifetime. My mother always used it to bake bread, and she used it to make jam and jelly and to cook tomatoes. I remember that kettle when I was a kid, so it must be about 40 years old now.
I cooked the tomatoes down until they were nothing but juice and pulp. Then I got out the antique sieve strainer and strained the pulp and seeds out of the tomatoes. The sieve has been around for as long as I can remember, so I'm thinking it is probably more than 50 years old. It still works very well, and I ended up with surprisingly little pulp and seeds when I was finished.
When the tomato juice was all strained, I heated it to boiling, added lemon juice and put it in quart jars. I ended up with three quarts and a pint of tomato juice that will come in handy this winter for making chili. It's not a tremendous amount of tomato juice, but still, not bad considering that the tomatoes are volunteers. Unfortunately, there are about four times as many green tomatoes out there yet as what I picked, and I know that most of them will not have time to ripen before winter arrives.
Perhaps I should just dig up the bed next year and plant some roma seeds in March so they've got a good jump-start by the time I can set them out at the end of May. That's the only way I will get rid of the cherry tomato and roma crosses (maybe). I won't plant cherry tomatoes again. So many of them go to waste because as soon as they start to get a little ripe, they split. Very disappointing.
LeAnn R. Ralph
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Lady Bugs (Again)
The lady bugs are at it again. I wonder how many of the Asian Lady Beetles we have vacuumed off the ceiling and walls in the last week? They are swarming the house on any warm day with a little sunshine. Randy has been going out with the spray bottle that attaches to the house and putting laundry detergent in it and spraying down the sides of the house. This accomplishes two things: it washes the bugs off the house and probably kills some of them. It also cleans the outside of the house.
I don't really relish the idea of killing the Asian Lady Beetles. They are beneficial for controlling aphids. But by the same token, I also do not want hundreds and hundreds of them inside of the house. Just recently, I was talking to someone who was telling me about a neighbor working on his garage and putting new siding on it. When the old siding was pulled off -- you guessed it. There were thousands of Asian Lady Beetles huddled up underneath the siding. I have had that experience when pulling bales of hay out from the wall in the barn in the winter. The wall is solid lady bugs behind where the bale was.
The Asian Lady Beetles are definitely an example of an introduced, beneficial species that has multiplied to the point where they have become pests. A few Asian Lady Beetles are beneficial. Millions of them can clog up furnaces and laundry vents.
It is unfortunate that we have so many of the Asian Lady Beetles. They ruin what would otherwise be beautiful fall days with lots of color in the oaks and maple leaves and a golden landscape punctuated by the scarlet of the occasional maple and scarlet garlands of five-leaved ivy.
But when the bugs are so bad, a person doesn't even want to go outside much less be outside to enjoy the lovely fall colors. As soon as you step outside, you have lady bugs down your shirt and covering your arms and getting in your hair and behind your glasses. It is out of the question to even think about doing something like painting the barn or the window frames at this time of year. All I would end up with would be thousands of Asian Lady Beetles stuck in the wet paint.
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I'm not quite sure where the week went to. I interviewed a couple of people for the newspaper series I am writing on veterans. One was a Korean veteran. The other was a WAC during World War II. I also covered a couple of meetings for the newspaper. And I just generally tried to keep up with what I had to keep up with.
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The mold is getting bad now, I think. I can tell it in that my eyes itch and my throat itches and my nose drips sometimes when I am out in the wind. Sometimes my eyes water so badly that I cannot hardly see where I am walking or driving. And that's not good.
LeAnn R. Ralph
A Novel Experience
I had an experience Tuesday that I have not had in years. And that's not just a figure of speech. It is the literal truth: years.
Well, actually, it was a couple of experiences. The first was that I was not able to get myself or Pixie out for a walk Tuesday because it rained all day. And not just a few sprinkles, but a good, steady rain.
The second experience was that I had to have my windshield wipers on "constant" rather than "intermittent" while driving to a village board meeting because it was raining so hard. I really cannot remember the last time I had to turn my windshield wipers on "low" and leave them there.
The third experience was that I actually got quite wet when I came out of the village board meeting in the dark and had to fumble my key into the lock of my little pickup truck until I got the door open. I was wet enough that I was practically shivering and once the truck warmed up, I turned the defroster to high heat and turned up the fan. It's been years since I've gotten wet while trying to get my truck door open.
I should have taken my raincoat with me to the meeting, but it has been years since I have really needed my raincoat. I cannot remember the last time I had the raincoat out of the closet.
All together, I am estimating that we got about an inch and a half of rain. Incredible. It has been a very long time since we've had an all-day rain that lasted well into the evening. It also has been a very long time since it has been raining hard enough while I was driving at night to make it a little difficult to see where I was going.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Bugs!
The lady bugs are back. Monday afternoon I had to get the vacuum cleaner out and vacuum them off the ceiling both in the dining room and in my office. I also had to vacuum a bunch off the floor by the back door. I sprayed around the door, and when they crawl in through the cracks across the bug spray, they fall down dead.
It rained Sunday and some Monday morning (we might have gotten three-tenths of an inch or so), and then Monday afternoon, the sky cleared off and it got warmer. That's exactly when the lady bugs congregate around the house: sunny, warm days in October.
Going outside was no fun at all. There were thousands of lady bugs flying around, and if I was close to the house, such as coming up to the house to fill the horse buckets, I would be covered with lady bugs -- down my shirt, in my hair, behind my glasses. Ick. They are attracted to our house because it is white.
Randy is still sick with the virus he snagged two weeks ago. I am feeling somewhat better. It's one of those things that just hangs on for a long time. You don't get tremendously sick. But you don't feel very good, either. It seems like it settles in your chest and doesn't want to let go. (Ho-hum.)
Water Damage
There I was, in the bathroom Monday morning, getting dressed, minding my own business. All of a sudden, I heard this strange noise. A combination of a crash and a sploosh. I really didn't think too much of it. The kitties are always doing something. Probably nothing serious.
I stepped out of the bathroom a while later -- and walked right into a huge puddle of water. My socks were instantly soaked. A few feet ahead of me was the kitty and dog water dish, tipped over on its side.
"Who spilled the water?" I yelled.
There was not a kitty in sight. And Pixie was sitting out in the kitchen, looking nervous.
The water dish holds about a gallon of water. It's really a large, plastic mixing bowl. Pink to be exact.
"Did you do that Snowflake?" I asked. After all, Henry, Katerina and Dora were downstairs. So it couldn't have been any of them. Sophie was on top of the cupboard up by the ceiling. My sick kitty, Sebastian, crawled into the bathroom cupboard when I opened it to find a towel. He likes to sleep on the towels in the cupboard during the day.
I grabbed a bath towel from the bathroom and threw it down on the puddle of water. Then I gingerly stepped my way through the pond and out to the kitchen to get the mop. Between the bath towel and the mop, I was able to soak up the water without too much trouble.
As I picked up the pink plastic dish, I spied a small, green rabbit fur mouse in the puddle by the coat closet.
"Did THIS have anything to do with it?" I asked, holding up the mouse. Of course, none of them answered my question, but I have a feeling it all had to do with the mouse and Snowflake. Rabbit fur mice are absolutely Snowflake's favorite toy. She likes to bring them into my office while I am working and bat them around my feet. I wish a had a dollar for every time Snowflake has bit or clawed my feet while playing with her mice.
On a brighter note, I heard a tremendous crash from the kitchen a few minutes ago accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. Dora had knocked a drinking glass into the sink. I can quite honestly say that I have never had this much broken glass around the house (my big green vintage salad bowl, a lamp, a picture frame and two drinking glasses, all in the last several months). I think I'm going to have to resort to using pint and half-pint canning jars as drinking glasses. Canning jars are pretty sturdy and might hold up better. (SIGH)
LeAnn R. Ralph
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Observations For the Day
<b>The Juncoes have arrived.</b> I saw one out in the yard Wednesday morning. Juncoes are sometimes referred to as "snow birds." They come up around the yard in the fall and will stay until spring. They are so cute to watch while they are eating bird seed in the bird feeder. Like miniature gray/slate/black chickens scratching around.
<b>I am dismayed to see that the west end of the hayfield is full of ground-level Yellow Rocket plants.</b> I am hoping that they will not survive the winter. Certainly they will not have time to go to seed this fall, and with any luck at all, they will die out over winter. If not, I will have a lot of weeding to do in the hayfield next spring.
<b>There is once again a buck scrape on the ground by the Box Elder tree at the end of the hayfield.</b> There has been a buck scrape in that same spot for the past several years. The deer like to travel the fence line between us and the neighbor's palce. It would be fun to see what the buck looks like. I have seen a few deer beds around the edge of the hayfield, too.
<b>The pocket gophers are digging at the edge of the hayfield.</b> They are digging in the lawn, too, by the drainfield. Randy has been setting traps in the lawn. Nothing yet. Little Sister caught 6 or 7 pocket gophers this summer. I wish she would get after the ones digging around the edge of the hayfield and in the drain field.
<b>The blue birds are here yet. And so are the robins.</b> I heard them twittering while I was outside this morning.
<b>The geese, however, </b> are flying south in increasing numbers. I always think it is such a lonely sound to hear the geese honking as they fly overhead, going south.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Rat-a-Tat BANG!
Whenever I am outside, I often hear . . . BANG! . . BANG! . . BANG! . . BANG!
It is the sound of acorns falling off oak trees and landing on the tin roof of the neighbor's garage across the road.
The trees have grown up now between us and them. Two box elders at the edge of our driveway. And a grove of aspen trees along the south fence in Isabelle's pasture. And pine trees along the road. And trees in their yard. I cannot really see much of the neighbor's place anymore.
But I can hear those acorns . . . BANG! . . BANG! . . BANG! . . BANG! The acorns start falling in late August and continue on through the fall.
And what can be more "fall" than acorns? Sometimes, when I am walking up the dirt road, acorns fall off the oaks there, too. So far I have not yet gotten hit with one, though.
I am feeling under the weather. Randy snagged a cold virus, brought it home, and now I've got it. Ho-hum.
LeAnn R. Ralph
One Lucky Little Chipmunk
Friday evening, Randy stepped off the porch and then started doing a shuffling sidestep. The sun was about to set, so it was right around 7 p.m.
"What is that?" he said, looking down at the ground.
A tiny chipmunk scurried through the grass. With our gray tom Gabriel right after it.
"No!" Randy shouted.
He gave chase to the cat who was chasing the chipmunk. It was just a baby. The chipmunk sped across the driveway and under Randy's truck. From where I was standing, I could see that he gotten up on the wheel.
"He's up in the truck," I said.
Randy took off his cap and threw it at Gabriel, who scurried out from under the truck and sat a ways off, watching Randy.
Our black tom, Rocky, hearing the ruckus, came to investigate.
"Get someplace safe, little guy," Randy said as he moved away from the truck.
A couple of minutes later, we heard a commotion near the truck.
"Oh, no," Randy said. "Rocky's got him."
"Rocky!" I said. "Drop it!"
The cat came from beneath the truck, carrying the little chipmunk in his mouth.
Randy charged toward Rocky, who looked up in surprise -- and dropped the chipmunk.
The little guy scurried toward the rock flower bed, with Rocky in hot pursuit and Randy right on Rocky's heels. For a tense couple of moments, man, cat and chipmunk engaged in a dance that would have been funny if it had not been a matter of life and death.
Finally the little chipmunk scurried up one of the jack pines. Gabriel, who had initially found the chipmunk and brought him up to the yard, stayed well out of the way.
"Leave him alone, Rocky," Randy said.
The big black tom, realizing that the chipmunk was now far out of his reach, sat on the ground, looking upward.
"It's just a baby, Rocky," I said. "We don't have that many around here."
In times past, we used to have many chipmunks running around. Now we hardly ever see one. And it's not just around the yard here, either. It used to be whenever I walked up the dirt road or rode a horse up the dirt road, which is about a mile up to the corner, I would hear chipmunks scurrying and scolding and chattering all along the way. Now I hardly ever hear them. I don't know what has happened to the chipmunk population around here. But clearly, the population is way down.
I thought the matter of the baby chipmunk was resolved -- until I was out in the backyard Saturday morning. Rocky's sister, Juliette, who spends much of her time outside, was in the backyard, too. Four years ago, the two kittens fell out of the nest in the barn when they were a day old, and I brought them up to the house to take care of them. I didn't know where the nest was, but even if I did, I figured if I put them back, the old mother cat, who is a cranky old thing, might not have wanted to take care of them after we had handled them and then disturbed the nest putting them back.
Anyway, Juliette was out in the yard Saturday morning, when all of a sudden I heard a tremendous amount of squeaking over by the jack pine.
Juliette had the baby chipmunk in her mouth.
"Drop him, Juliette!" I cried, hurrying across the driveway.
Juliette looked up at me -- and dropped the chipmunk.
The little fellow scampered toward the jack pine again, with Juliette right on his heels.
"Leave him alone, Juliette! He's just a baby," I said.
The poor little chipmunk. He made it up the tree trunk about two feet four different times, and each time, Juliette would jump up and grab him. Finally I was able to get a hold of Juliette for just long enough to allow the chipmunk to climb all the way up into the tree. Once he got up toward the top, he sat and scolded. And scolded. And scolded some more.
I went back in the house but kept looking out the window from time to time. Juliette continued to sit under the jack pine and look up to the top. Eventually, when I looked outside, Juliette was getting a drink from the water dish.
The baby chipmunk was a lucky little fellow once again. For now.
I am hoping that he has learned from his experience and will stay up in the trees. It's not often a chipmunk can say that it escaped from the mouths of three different cats and lived to tell about it.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Murphy's Law
Murphy's Law was in operation Wednesday morning. While I was feeding the horses, I decided to dump Isabelle's bucket and clean it out. She still had 3/4 of a pail of water, but there were a number of little black bugs floating around in it, not to mention a couple of spiders.
I dumped half the water on the deep purple lilac we dug up from Randy's mom and dad's yard. They have a full-grown deep purple lilac and it is beautiful. This one has been here for four years and has hardly grown at all. For one thing, it's been too dry, I think.
Anyway, I dumped half the water on the deep purple lilac that I hope will have flowers *someday* and I dumped the other half on my peonies. Or what is left of my peonies. I chopped them off with the mower a few weeks ago because they were looking so bedraggled and pathetic. I am hoping they will come back next spring.
After I dumped the water, I headed up the hill to the house to the faucet out back. I cleaned out the pail and dumped the rinse water on my other 'little' lilac planted by the graves of Lady, Tiger Paw Thompson, Nightshade, Guinevere, Winifred, Duke and Simon Peter. The lilac by the faucet is not so little anymore, and I am proud of the way it has grown and thrived.
When the bucket was clean, I put it under the faucet to fill it with fresh, cold water for Isabelle. I turned off the faucet when the bucket was full. And wouldn't you know it -- just as I finished turning off the faucet, a spider dropped from the faucet right into Isabelle's pail of fresh water.
Jeepers. That's why I cleaned out her bucket in the first place was because of bugs! Her bucket stayed bug-free for, let's see, all of a second and a half. It was as if the spider, albeit a tiny one, was just waiting for me to shut off the water.
<b>We finally got some rain.</b> It was so hot and humid on Tuesday. The high was 86 degrees. The sky clouded over completely by 5 p.m. Randy checked the weather radar on the Internet, and there was a line of rain moving east from the Twin Cities. It rained for a brief period while we were feeding the horses.
We turned on the television, and weather forecast said it would be raining more later in the evening. Since the bulk of the rain had not yet reached us, we took Pixie for a walk. She enjoyed herself, snooping along the edge of the road and sniffing all kinds of different smells.
By the time we were headed back, the sky to west and north looked very dark. It was about 7 p.m. when we returned, and it was not long until sunset. Just after we got back into the house, it started to rain quite hard. Periodically for the rest of the evening, it rained in hard showers.
By morning, according to the water in Charlie's dog dish, which we have left sitting on the ramp, neither of us has the heart to move it, it appears that it rained about 3/4 of a inch. Not a terrific amount, but more rain than we've had in quite a while.
I wanted to get Isabelle out and work with her Tuesday, but the rain was too close. She hates getting wet and at the first little sprinkle will run for her shelter where she stays until it stops raining. About the only time she has been outside in the rain was when we got that very large hail earlier in the summer. I would imagine it was too noisy in her shelter then. What a dilemma for Isabelle. Wet outside but noisy inside.
LeAnn R. Ralph
<b>AUTOGRAPHED BOOKS MAKE GREAT GIFTS!</b>
<a href="http://www.ruralroute2cookbook.com"> Click here to order the Rural Route 2 Cookbook </a>
<a href="http://www.ruralroute2.com/dairyland.php"> Click here to order LeAnn's other books </a>
Thanks a Bunch, BobbyCat
I had a disgusting experience when I took Pixie outside late Monday evening. When I come back from checking on the horses and after I have given the kitties their canned kitty food treat in the basement, I go outside and come up in back of the house. Charlie always made a trip around the house at night when I let him out, and I feel compelled to walk around the house from the east side yard.
I think there's some part of my psyche that figures *someone* ought to check around in back of the house, and if Charlie is not here to do it, then I should. Anyway, when I came back up from the barn Monday night, I noticed that there "something" on the rug by the back door. When I opened the door, from the light from the kitchen, I could see that it was a pile of innards. BobbyCat strikes again, I think. She often will catch a mouse and then eat it on the rug by the back door. It seemed like an awful lot of innards for a mouse, but anyway.
I made a mental note that when I took Pixie out, I should step off to the side to avoid the innards. Of course, a while later, when I went outside with Pixie, I forgot all about the innards. SQUISH with my rubber boots. Ick. Ick. Ick. Ick. Ick. Ick.
I made quite a production of sliding my feet through the grass to get the bottoms of my boots clean. We haven't had much dew because it has been so dry, and I would imagine that sliding my boots through the grass was pretty much an exercise in futility.
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