I worked at the Mountain Magnolia Inn last night. It was a big rehearsal dinner; what a lot of hard physical labor! Am I getting old? I am so whupped this morning! Left here at 2:30 yesterday afternoon, got home at 1:00 this morning. ED and I are getting ready to make a supplies run to Asheville; pick up groceries and animal feed, and some sort of surprise for YD, who is still pretty weak, but so much better. She was furious yesterday when she realized that ED was going with me to town, but she wasn’t. Said it wasn’t fair, because she was the one who was sick and stuck in the house all week: she’s such a party girl! I had to promise her a fun trip to town this week; maybe we’ll hit the Goodwill and Target, do a little clothes shopping. That girl loves to shop for clothes. She’s got to be some kind of genetic anomoly, because none of the rest of us like to go clothes shopping! Though I’m sort of starting to come around, just because she loves it so much that it makes it fun to go with her. To a point. ED and I like bookstores and tack stores and feed stores.
I feel almost human this morning: slept from 11:00 last night until 5:00 this morning, and then alternated between dozing and reading until 8:30. Probably a bad idea, since the book I’m reading is Patricia Cornwall’s Blow Fly .
YD is fine—what a relief! Now I have to regroup and figure out what I need to get done for Sunday’s party. Can’t mow today—it’s raining. Damn: I’m going to have to clean the house!
Sometime earlier this week I strained the fruit out of the wine-to-be and put it in two 5-gallon carboys, along with seven and a half pounds of sugar in each. I’ll add another two and a half pounds to each when the fermentation slows down a little. They’re both fitted with fermentation locks, sitting on the woodstove in the kitchen, bubbling merrily away. They’re the most astonishing magenta color!
The baby broilers were moved from their small very smelly cage in the front yard to the chicken tractor in the pen. They’re happier and I’m happier. I’m going to butcher them and put them in the freezer before we go to the beach at the end of September. I was hoping to butcher a goat (Tiny Tim) for roasting at the party Sunday, but I don’t know how that’s going to work out schedule-wise. DH is at work now, and coming home at 2:30 so I can be at work at the Inn at 3:00, where I’ll be until 10:30 or 11:00 tonight. Tomorrow ED and I are going to go to Asheville to pick up feed and groceries. Maybe DH can slaughter the goat while we’re gone, and I’ll skin and butcher when I get home(?). We’ll see how that works out!
Yesterday was awful. YD’s bug or whatever it was peaked with a nice bout of dysentery, which is sort of the next level of diarrhea, involving blood, mucus, and severe abdominal pain. At 1:00 this morning DH and I were feeling sort of panicky—she was miserable (and ED was freaking out). We read, however, that the chief concern with either diarrhea or dysentery is (of course) dehydration. So we made her a drink with one quart of water, 1/2 teaspoon celtic sea salt, eight teaspoons of honey, about a teaspoon of cinnamon, and a good pinch of dried coriander (for the pain). She’d been staying pretty well hydrated, but we got really serious about it at that point, and insisted that she drink a couple of good gulps of this beverage every time she went to the bathroom. I also pulled out the homeopathic books and tried to look up her symptoms, which is always frustrating, because a) it’s difficult, and b) it’s about a fifty-fifty chance that I’ll have the remedy. But I got lucky—Pulsatilla was implicated. It’s the remedy for dysentery that involves chilliness, gentle weepiness, and changeability (in mood and stool), all of which were very noticeable inYD during this illness. And I had a vial of it! She slept with me (DH slept uncomfortably on the couch in the living room) and got up five times to go to the bathroom during the night. By this morning she was much better, and when ED and I got home from market she was a new person. With a scary appetite! I’m so thankful!
So I am really looking forward to sleeping tonight—I’m feeling a bit haggard.
YD’s illness expanded today to include diarrhea, so a good bit of my day involved trying to just keep her hydrated. Poor baby—her morale is way down. She’s exhausted and feverish and headachy; plus she has to sit on the toilet for long periods of time. I feel this constant low level of anxiety when one of the girls is sick; what am I saying? Of course I do: every parent does!
OK–I’m obviously too out of it to be doing this right now—’night all.
YD decided that the one thing that would make her feel better was homemade ice cream. So she and I made a batch of cinnamon goat’s milk ice cream while ED and DH did evening chores. Strangely, she does seem to be feeling better!
I love these two girls. I don’t know how I got so lucky.
YD has some sort of bug today—she has a fever and a headache. DH and I seem to have a much milder version of whatever it is—we both spent a goodly portion of the day laying around, and/or sleeping. ED says it was the most bored she’s ever been in her whole life!
Had two guy friends come up and do a bit of weedeating this morning. One is a farmhand over at Let It Grow farm—he went up the mountain, making a path and a mowed clearing for the moon viewing Sunday. The other is a really nice young guy–almost 16–who is our neighbor’s grandson. He cleaned up around the firepit, also in preparation for Sunday’s party; I think he’s going to come back tomorrow and do a little more. (We’re paying him 7 bucks an hour.)
We’re having one of my most, most favorite meals tonight; it’s very high in carbs and I don’t care! We’ve always called it Trenette con Pesto, though I think that’s not technically correct, because I think trenette is a type of pasta, and we’re using linguine. So maybe I’ll call it:
Linguine con Pesto
Make a batch of pesto, aiming for one and a half or two cups. I am reluctant to give a recipe for this, since it’s something made mostly by feel, but tonight I used lots of basil (maybe a quart and a half, loosely packed?); a good handful of parsley, just because it looked so green and juicy in the garden tonight; three or four cloves of garlic; a cup-ish of toasted pecans; coconut oil instead of olive oil, since I forgot to buy olive oil last week (heresy, I know); a squeeze of lemon juice; some celtic sea salt; and a cup and a half or two cups of grated parmesan. Blend until smooth.
ED went to help our neighbor pick beans today and came back with a peck basket-full. So she sat at the kitchen table and snapped me a quart of beans while I made the pesto. Then I cut up a half dozen of our Yukon Gold potatoes. I cut them in half lengthwise, and then in half moon slices about 1/8 inch thick. Meanwhile I’ve got a big pot of water on to boil, lightly salted, and when it does boil I dump in the potatoes and beans. When the potatoes are nearly tender (ten minutes? Fifteen?) I add 16 oz of dry linguine, and boil until it’s done. Drain and mix in the pesto. It’s helpful to mix the pesto with a little (1/2 cup or so) of the pasta boiling water so that it will coat the pasta. SO GOOD!
Even feeling lousy, YD beat DH 3 out of 4 games of speed, our family’s current favorite card game. Poor DH.
So, my friend A* is not only moving to a new house, she’s got a new place on the web! Check her out: Littlebear Holler
Welcome to the neighborhood, A*!
And finally, I must make note of a wonderful, glorious milestone: I finished the winter’s laundry. Yesterday. Finally washed the last of the wool stuff, flannel sheets and corduroy. Sunday, July 25th.
Mozilla Firefox just will not work on this computer—it’s so unbearably slow I could scream. So yesterday I downloaded Internet Explorer 6 and it’s working so much better—I can even blog! Graham at Blogger tech support said that there are some problems with IE5 and Blogspot (no kidding!); anyway, I’m happier now, though I’d rather have Firefox—I just love some of its nifty features like tabbed browsing. Oh well, someday…
The whole house smells like very yeasty wine; I think it’s a good smell (not sure). Maybe today we’ll strain it into the carboys and add sugar; DH is very antsy to get it in the carboys—I’m not sure why. I feel that the longer (within reason) it works with the fruit in it, the better. I think the next batch of wine may be apple-elderberry. We’ll see.
OK—time to get my lazy butt out of the house and into the garden. There’s a whole lot to be done in the lower garden: weeding, taking old plants out, preparing beds for fall crops, mowing, weedeating…. Maybe I’ll start fall stuff in flats today—broccoli, kale, collards, chard, beets etc.
DH isreplacing the barn floor today–hallelujah!
August
When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among
the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.
Mary Oliver
