At the very least it was yesterday

Weather reports in this day and age are amazing - and amazingly correct a lot of the time.  I know everyone claims the weather man is the only guy (gal) who can be wrong most of the time and still get paid, but by and large they are mostly correct.

That being said I know that most who read this blog don't know about a new post until the day after I publish it.  So since it's now "tomorrow" as you're reading this you should have been getting ready for our next predicted storm "yesterday".

I suspect that some are now immune to the reminders (call it nagging or whatever - you pick your own name for it) and turn a blind eye/ear to the concept of proactively staging your home and family in advance of oncoming bad weather.

But at the very least yesterday was the day to be preparing for today.  The day that the storm is supposed to arrive.  Really with the warning we get these days there is no excuse not to be ready days ahead of the storm's arrival.

And, remember, this isn't the end of the world (that's later) so you don't need 25 loaves of bread and 10 gallons of milk.  You do need a vehicle that is gassed up and ready for whatever and a pantry (does anyone even have a pantry any more?) that contains at the very least 3 or 4 days worth of staples and meals.

Perhaps some things that if you lose power you could eat them without cooking.

But I can assure you that today (yesterday) would have been the day to lay in some supplies if you don't keep a stock.

The only thing wrong with the above picture is it lacks the other 100 folks also standing around staring at the empty shelves!

Okay, it might be a slight overstatement but the point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't take very long to suck all the food out of any grocery store.  And a storm bad enough to disrupt deliveries would (notice I don't say "could") lead to the above situation is astonishingly short order.

If you don't want to be "that guy/gal" get ready for bad weather ahead of time.  At the very least yesterday was the day.

PS  If you did see this today then it's today and not yesterday to get ready.

Because I turned right

When I started writing this blog I really had no agenda - which was probably painfully obvious.  I swing from promoting preparedness for everything from a short power outage to some unidentified apocalyptic event and then flip over to one written because someone hurt my feelings.  Most of the things I write about just pop into my head - a memory, a scent, a song - anything can kick off a subject.

I have a nephew, Peter Greene, who is arguably a famous educational blogger and his daughter, Barbara Alfeo, on a hell bent mission to save the planet and with her ambition and smarts she just might make it.  Remember the "straw" rant?  But I am nowhere near as organized or focused.

Take today for instance.  I needed some stuff from the drug store so I girded up my metaphorical loins and headed out.  And turned right at the end of my road instead of left as I normally do thinking that perhaps that direction had less utility construction (no) and would be easier to navigate.

And then the memories kicked in:

The route took me past a pond where we used to ice skate as kids.  Back then the platform and sluice for cutting and moving ice blocks for summer storage was still there.  I vividly remember tripping on one of those uprights that was sticking up out of the ice when skating there -  painful to say the least.  It's all cabled off now - complete with No Trespassing signs - probably in fear of an accident and a lawsuit.

Up the road a bit is the little pond - more like a puddle - where I used to catch polliwogs (tadpoles) in the spring. If I was really lucky and it was early enough in the year I could find the actual frog eggs.  Take them home in a jar and watch them morph from eggs to polliwogs and eventually into frogs...it was really cool and I can still smell the funky odor of the marsh around the pond.  It's still there but I don't know if anyone even knows what a polliwog is any more.

Around the next corner on the left is the farmhouse that my parents rented while they were building their house back in the 1930s.  It's still there and still in the same family - although a couple generations down.  On the right is the farm that was owned by the brother - I believe it also is still in the same family.  I can remember going down there to watch Aunt Marion (not really my aunt - it was more of a respectful title) skim the cream off the great big flat settling pans of milk produced by their cows.

She would run the skimmer across the top of the pan just barely under the surface - any milk that got caught drained off through the holes but the cream was so darn thick it would sit there until she scraped it off into another container.

She would do this out in the "shed" between the house and the barn because it was cooler - and if it was winter or fall we would go back into the kitchen and stand around the wood burning cook stove and the warmth would just enfold you.  There would always be cookies or a snack and a feeling of belonging.

And if we were lucky we got to spend some time in the barn jumping from the haymow into the piles of extra hay.

Another farm on the left was where we would go to watch "Unkie" milk the cows by hand.  There would be a ring of barn cats sitting around him.  They knew he would squirt some milk on them if they waited long enough and we knew he'd do the same to us if we didn't duck fast enough!  We thought it great fun and so did the cats.

I suspect that children today might think that watching someone skim cream was boring and that hanging around in a barn a few times a week on the off chance we could outwit the milker would be smelly and not the fun we thought it was.

Yeah, it was smelly - it smelled like cows for crying out loud...we were in their house!  It smelled of cow poop and urine and hay and there were little bits of hay that would stick to your socks (if you had shoes on) and wiggle through and stab you later.

I'm fortunate, I suppose, to be able to see that at least some of the places I remember as a child are relatively unchanged - even if crowded in between these giant houses that everyone seems to build today.  But the changes that have come over the last 70 years or so are sometimes overwhelming and depressing.  They tend to make me feel as if the world I grew up in is so long gone no one will even remember it.  That it slipped by when I turned my head and somehow disappeared in the rear view.

That no one will remember putting frogs eggs in a jar of water and waiting for the miracle of polliwogs and frogs to appear!

Dry gas -

Or gas line antifreeze or Heet or whatever they are calling it these days.

Get some

Put it in the gas tank of your car or truck

Fill up the gas tank with fuel

As the clothes soap ad says after the guy washes his little girl's princess dress - "you are now free to go"

This additive is actually worth the money (and it's short money) and will keep any moisture in your gas from freezing the gas lines.  I don't know if it drives the moisture out or just keeps it from freezing and I don't really care - I just know it works.

We do not commonly have temperatures as cold as today and the promised ones for tomorrow.

Gas line antifreeze (I grew up calling it dry gas) does just that - it prevents your gas lines from freezing up in the really low winter temperatures.  When they freeze up, the car stops.  No matter where you are.  No matter how much you want to keep driving.  And no matter how cold you get inside the car!

I meant to write this earlier to give you a chance to get it today.  But, better late than never, so if you are out tomorrow, please pick some up and use it.  Any automotive store has it and probably Wally World does also.   The temperatures that are going to be around deserve to be treated with respect and we have a whole entire winter before us.

Potty training anyone?

Last time around I asked you how far you'd get on the gas/fuel currently in your car/truck/SUV.  I'm sure that after reading that deathless piece of prose (not to call it nagging) everyone rushed out and made sure they had at least half a tank of fuel.  Also made a solemn promise to never let the gas gauge fall below that bench mark.

No one wants to be "that guy" sitting by the side of the road in an emergency!

Next up on the agenda is water.

I never can remember exactly how long a person can exist without potable drinking water before they run into serious physical problems like dehydration, confusion and, eventually, death.  I do know it's not nearly as long as you might think depending on physical condition, ambient temperature and so forth and so on.

Most of us now depend on electricity to get our water.  Whether it's from a private well or a public water system, eventually it all comes down to electricity.

So what do you have for water right now?  No peaking, what do you have in your house for usable water?

There are a ton of things that we use water for other than drinking:  sanitation (that would be toilet flushing), dish washing, hand washing, tooth brushing, showering, hair washing, cooking (and that includes coffee making!).  You probably notice a pattern here.  Mainly we use water to keep healthy, inside and out, as well as fed and comfortable.  I read once that one of the greatest advances in health was the invention of indoor plumbing.  Which, by the way, isn't much use without the aforementioned water!

Sure, in a pinch we could go back to the outdoor outhouse - I had one at camp for many years.  They have a bundle of drawbacks:  location (especially at 3 am in the winter), other occupants in residence (spiders, ants, bees!) and lack of sanitation - no running water!

Better than having to run outside (face it - we aren't going to have time to build an outhouse when the power goes out - never mind stock it with a cowboy!) is a plan ahead approach.  If you don't want to lay in a supply of big plastic bags and a five gallon can with a toilet seat balanced on top of it, how about just some water?

It doesn't have to be a fancy "system" to store water - I showed a whole bunch of potential containers way back in March.  Your storage can be as simple as using the big juice containers when you are done drinking the juice or maybe gallon containers that came with vinegar or anything else that, when you empty them, you fill with tap water.  A lot of the modern toilets don't take much more than a couple gallons of water to do an efficient flush.

If it's raining and you lose power you can put dish pans or big buckets outside under the drip line of the house and fill them in an amazingly short time.  I did that a couple years ago in a power outage and felt so smart I could hardly stand it!

Obviously toilet flushing isn't the only thing we need to have a water supply for but, as that obnoxious toilet paper ad says, "we all go, so why not enjoy the go".  And, believe you me, running outside in the middle of the night or in bad weather is NOT the way to enjoy that go!

And, P.S., none of the toilet water has to be potable (clean and drinkable) so think on that!

Preps can pay off short term too!

Sometimes I don't take my own advice quite as much to heart as I should.  I'm lax about keeping up with my look ahead storage (realized the other day that I only have two extra bottles of dish detergent), sometimes my Honda's gas tank gets down to half full before I fill it and occasionally I even don't know exactly what is in the grab and go bag if I have to bail out on short notice.

This week it has been brought home to me in No....Uncertain....Terms....that it pays to be prepared.

Most of the time I like to think I am as light as a fairy on my feet - graceful, careful and not prone to stumbling around like....er, an old lady.

Last Saturday I blew a hole in that theory that I could have walked through....well, if I hadn't been lying prone...or is it supine?  Anyhow, flat on my face on the porch outside my house.

Still not exactly what went wrong....yeah, I know, I fell,   I mean I'm not sure what the instigating event was.  I suspect it was the old deal where a person thinks they can take the dog out on a leash, open the door to do that and talk on the phone all at the same time.  At least one of those didn't work.

I fell flat on my face...actually trending more to my right side, hit my head a resounding whack on the porch, knocked the breath out of myself to the point where I couldn't even gasp cause that required more breath than I had and lay there like the proverbial fish out of water.

However, I did not drop the leash!

Gathered myself up, completed the "take the dog out" maneuver and put an ice pack on my head.  Friends were dropping by and hung around long enough to be sure my eyes were still the same size etc and that I wasn't going to become an inert lump on the floor.

I'll keep the rest relatively short - I hurt, I hurt a lot....couple days go by I don't hurt so much until I coughed.  Then I felt like someone who really disliked me had stuck a knife in my back...repeatedly.  Perfectly in time with the coughs.

So go to the Redi-Care, get poked and prodded and xrayed all to find out I have three broken ribs. Reasonable I suppose...most anything would break if I hurled myself onto it!..

The point is (drum roll as long as you do it, I can't move that fast) that I have enough food and meals so I don't have to go anywhere for a few days.  My friend brought me milk and half and half but otherwise I'm all set for the duration and so is the dog.  Might have to make an emergency trip for fresh vegetables and wine but otherwise I'm good to go.

If I was as slack about food as I am about some things I'd be, to put it impolitely, screwed...and hungry or, worse yet, dependent on the kindness of others!  And we all know how New Englanders love having to ask for help...not!

So, especially if you live alone, think on this.  It doesn't have to be a disaster to leave you wishing that you had a few groceries and maybe a bandaid or two (did I mention my scraped knuckles?) as well as perhaps an ice pack in the freezer.

So think ahead at least short term, ok?  And keep track of your feet better than I did this time around!

P.S. Surprise!

Howdy,

As a Post Script to yesterday's blog post I have to mention:

The evacuation of the homes near the train tracks where there was a derailment including train cars carrying propane.

The forced evacuation of homes near the fires in the southeastern United States.

Not much warning there, guys, hopefully their vehicles were fueled up and ready to rock!

Gas - it's a delicate subject

I truly wish that I could see how many of you who read my blog just jumped to absolutely THE wrong conclusion based on that title!  I admit I was hoping for a "gotcha".

At any rate, I'm talking about gas in your car - or diesel if that is your fuel of choice.

There are a lot of reasons to keep your car/truck/SUV gassed up and ready to go.

If you had to leave right now with what you have for fuel, how far would you get?  Do you even have any idea?

It doesn't have to be the apocalypse to cause an unexpected road trip.  Could be a regular old evacuation (if there is such a thing) to get away from rising water or toxic fumes or just that annoying kid next door.  Admittedly the kid might not cause an emergency (depending on how loud he's screaming) but the other things are a potential for all of us no matter where we live.

Among other things, at least half a tank of gas helps keep condensation in the tank to a minimum and that's a good thing.  It also potentially could at least get you far enough away from an emergency situation and into an area where gas lines aren't two miles long.

And how about all the fires down in the southeast?  Do you think most of those people expected to have to load up and go with little or no warning?  Probably not.

I'm struggling to find a way to convey how important I think it is to be prepared for the unexpected. Hell, if it was "expected" it wouldn't be an emergency, right?

You do not want to be the one sitting by the side of the road because you were going to get the car gassed up tomorrow.  Perhaps on your way to the grocery store to finally get some extra provisions in case of - ta da - the emergency that I've been nagging you about for a year now.

So if you don't want to be "that guy".....

Keep the car gassed up!

When you lose someone

When you lose someone close to you do you cling to the common everyday things that remind you of them?

Obviously I do if you read my posts on the baskets.  Every time I use one I am reminded of my grandmother, my mother and my dearest friend, my Aunt Emily.

She was (well, I guess she still is) my mother's younger sister.  She was an amazing person - worked in Washington, D.C., acted as a courier for sensitive documents during the war ("who would suspect a young woman of doing something important" she told me when I asked) and traveled the world with my grandmother on her vacations.  She rode camels, sailed around the Horn and just generally kicked the ass of every stereotype in existence - all the while being the perfect lady.

She actually ended up in D.C. because she went to take a government test with a male friend of hers just to be moral support.  She got the job.  He didn't!

I can't begin to accurately describe her really - for starters she was one of the least judgmental people I have ever known.   She was able to talk with anyone from a congressman to a truck driver.  She never married and when I asked her why she opined that "there was a war on - shortage of eligible men, you know?".  No matter what crazy idea I got in my head she was always there supporting me - I would like to learn to hook rugs?  Next Christmas I got the whole enchilada:  frame, hooks, pattern and wool.  I would like to get a commercial truck driver's license?  Check in hand she urged me on!  Oh my god, my poor mother must have wanted to squash us both!

I could go on for half of forever about her but all this is leading up to the small things that remind me of her every time I go to my cabin.

When the dust had settled on her passing and everything had been parceled out according to her desires no one wanted the pots and pans and utensils from her kitchen.  Yeah, they were very well used - not to say pretty much worn out.  We're dealing with a dyed in the wool Yankee here:  some of the knives were so thin from being sharpened hundreds of times that you probably could have snapped them in half.  And some items were of a design not seen in probably 50 years!

So I gathered some of them up and took them to my cabin in Maine.

Some of the pots I use every time I cook and other things were just so cool that I had to use them for decoration!  Take a good look left to right.  Who now has a spatula that you can scoop something up with and hold so the fat drains off through a hole?  Just me!  And a flat whisk?  Stir, whisk, strain, you name it and it does it.  The single mixer?  Look closely - it's made so you can push up and down and it rides up on the shaft and turns to whip up whatever needs whipping up.  The big knife and the ice pick are just that:  big knife, ice pick.

It was a standing joke between the two of us that we would sit at her house in "our" chairs and she would listen to all my woes and triumphs as if they were actually important.  Within 15 minutes I would be yawning and totally relaxed. She would accuse me of thinking time spent with her was boring...far from it, I think that being in her presence was my safe place and god knows I loved that woman.  To this day she is probably the person I miss the most as the years go by -  always my first thought is to ask her or tell her or show her.

 Just one more time.

I think it was toilet paper

Last December when I first thought about trying to inspire a few people into being more prepared for emergencies,  my first question was about toilet paper.

Not about quality so much as quantity - actually more like "do you know how much you have and how long it might last?" quantity.  Far be it for me to pry into how much you actually use but I'm sure you realize using pages from a magazine or a catalog or, heaven forbid, actual tree leaves doesn't begin to compare to the real thing, right?  I don't care how many cute bears they use to advertise it either! I'm guessing that even a bear (if they had to use TP at all) would prefer the real thing.

However, I begin to wander more than usual!

Now it's almost a year later and I wonder if I joggled anyone into thinking about being prepared for that time when they might not be able to just run out to Walmart or Market Basket or the vendor of their choice to buy all those essentials that we are all so used to, well, using.

Not much chance in the next few weeks of some major snow storm - so does that mean you should wait until you are looking at one before you consider being ready for it?  I notice that even the Weather Channel is already beating the "be prepared to take care of yourself" drum.  Also during that Matthew thing there were several state governors who came right out and said, if you're not ready (or evacuated) when we tell you, you are on your own!  I think it is finally dawning on the powers that be that putting emergency personnel in jeopardy because the general public is too lazy or too stupid to do their part is just wrong.  Not doing your part to prepare for the unexpected?

Worst

Idea

Ever

I did open up my blog to accept comments (thus exposing my tender ego to bumps and bruises)  but either no one has anything to add or, like a couple of people, they prefer to privately e mail me.  I've always said that this isn't War and Peace - just one person's take on a mix of topics.  I think I'm probably supposed to have a theme so I try to return to the "are you ready" area at least occasionally.

How about take a look around at your basic supplies - easy to prepare foods and maybe even some water?  And don't forget the pets - unless you want to share your beans and rice with Fido or Kitty Cat you'd best lay in some food for them too!

On that note I will go out and attack the leaves in my yard - but I hope that this "reminder" (I hate the word "nagging") will help you at least consider making a few preps for the upcoming winter!

I will keep it short

  I'm sure there isn't a living soul in the US who didn't know about Matthew the Storm coming towards out southeast coast.  It was hyped for days ahead and followed more closely than a celebrity stalker to a Kardashian.   The news was everywhere for days in advance.

As it should have been - it was a dangerous storm that did a huge amount of damage.

That being said, while we were watching that right hand, the left one was sneaking up on the Carolinas - especially North Carolina.

There are people in North Carolina in a flood situation that is unprecedented - places that have never flooded and that are continuing to flood even now - days after the skies cleared and the sun came out. I heard this morning that there are people still in shelters and, more to my point, sheltering in their homes, unable to get out and without any services in many cases.

So here comes my point:  winter is coming and if you were told tomorrow that you have to stay in your house for the next two weeks using only the provisions that you have now....how would that strike you?  As a great way to diet?  As a cosmic joke played on you the day BEFORE you were planning on grocery shopping?  How about as what may very well happen sometime this winter?

Some one of the talking heads over the past couple of weeks stated the obvious (they are good at that) - it is much better to prepare before the emergency than to be the proverbial chicken with no head running around when it's here and happening.

Take a look at your supplies - food, water, medicines (even over the counter ones), sanitation supplies - all that stuff!  Do you have at least the recommended three day supplies - which is ridiculous in my opinion - when can you plan on a three day emergency - like a curtain goes up on the fourth day and it's all better?

Check it out, guys - and be ready for whatever little surprises the winter may gift us with.  And, by the way, North Carolina's problems had nothing to do with Matthew - so keep your eyes on all the balls, not just the one bouncing in front of you!

 And even if you could get out?  This might very well be what you find....just sayin!

Garlic's Promise

How strange it seems to be planting something while looking fall and winter dead in the face.  Years ago I tried to grow garlic - obviously before the great god Internet because I planted it in the spring and then stood over it wondering why the heck it never amounted to anything!  Today, of course, I would just "google it" and become instantly wiser.

My initial failure would be because I was planting it the wrong time of the year...who knew?

I'm sure that there would have been planting instruction if I had bought from a garden supply house.  But I suspect at that point in my "gardening" it was more of a point and shoot kind of thing:  buy garlic in the grocery store, put it in the ground in the spring and go from there.

Now that I am at least somewhat wiser (and definitely older) I not only buy from accredited sources but actually read the instruction/informational sheets that come with a product!  Amazing information to be found there.

It was a total polar shift when I found out I was supposed to plant the garlic mid to late October and that miraculously by the following July or August I would have lots and lots of....drum roll:  GARLIC!

So, as it is currently the middle of October it's garlic time.  I ordered the smallest quantity I could (a pound) and today was planting day.

A pound of garlic is actually quite a lot - ended up with 6 "heads" of garlic - each of which has to be broken up into all it's little cloves for planting.  Fortunately I have a friend who will take some so my garden next year won't be exclusively garlic.

I even followed the instructions that said to add aged compost to the bed prior to planting - my compost bins are finally starting to produce some wonderful compost.  For a while I thought everything I threw in there was going to retain it's original form and composition forever.  But time does indeed rot all things so I added several shovels of the compost to each of the two beds I planted today.

Put compost all along the middle of the beds and then spaded it in, smoothed it out and set the little garlic babies in place.

And, yes, I put in markers just because I can see myself planting something on top of them come spring and then wondering what those garlic looking things are.  Memory lapses are common at my age but I take it to new levels occasionally.  Anyhow, I marked the rows just in case, put the cloves in their assigned spots and then pushed them into the dirt.

Next step was adding a layer of mulch to protect them through the winter.  I will probably add more but this is a start.

It's eminently satisfying on a blustery fall day to tuck something into the still warm ground, cover it with soil and mulch and walk away secure in the knowledge that in the spring the cycle will continue and there will be garlic.

This has been a hectic summer for me in many ways.  Health-wise it was brought home to me in some not so subtle ways that an apple a day doesn't always keep the doctor away.  And it is quite possible for that same doctor to come up with some potential diagnoses that you never even heard of, never mind considered actually adopting as your very own.

So doing something like planting garlic which has the implicit promise that in the spring no matter what else is going on, the garlic will arise like a green phoenix out of the dirt is comforting.

Not to mention setting the stage for some kick-ass stir fries!

Quiet month

There is something about writing a blog that leaves a person thinking that they should have something important to say with some degree of frequency.  At least that's how I feel.  Not sure what the protocol is but especially when the rest of my biological blogging family members crank out deathless (truly) prose as if they had a direct pipeline to the information of the universe I feel somewhat lacking when days go by and I have nothing I think is worth sharing.

That being said, lately I seem to be too scattered to be able to focus on any one thought long enough to get it written down anyway.

The gardens are winding down - more tomatoes into jars - either as salsa or just plain tomatoes.  Relishes of various kinds all socked away in the cellar with an eye to Christmas presents or, at least as importantly, my consumption throughout the winter.  And enough pickled beets to charm even the most voracious pickled beet aficionado.

Strawberries in the freezer in jam sized packages are starting to haunt me.  I should be making that jam.  Once upon a time a friendly shrink of mine told me that sentences that start with "I should" refer to things that (a) you probably don't want to do and (b) might not even "should" do!  I cherish that thought whenever I'm putting things off that I "should" be doing.

Babying the well has taken up a good part of my time these past several weeks.  Not knowing exactly how much water is in there or how fast it's going to be replenished means that I have to treat it as if it is going to momentarily run dry.  Don't run the water while you are doing the dishes - just enough to rinse.  And save the rinse water for the gardens!  Don't squander it while you are brushing your teeth - don't do laundry just because you want a particular item of clothing.  Find something else to wear and wait until you have a full load.  And showers?  Fastest.  Ever.

Never ever water the gardens with the hose - only use the soaker hoses and do it early in the morning and run the timer so you don't accidentally run the water too long

My well water is never deep so there's no sense in taking the cover off and peering down there.  The real question is the replenishment one.  I'm on top of an old river or creek bed full of sand so as long as the creek runs, I'm good.  But all the water restrictions in the area, never mind the official "severe drought" warnings, make for a very uneasy time.

Been experimenting with essential oils in various ways.  Some of them seem to actually be of benefit while on others the jury is still out.  But there is no doubt that historically there is a lot to be said for a gentler way to manage life than throwing more chemicals at a given situation.  Besides, most of them smell really good.

Along with everything else I have been finding out some fascinating (yes, that is sarcasm) facts about a variety of weird things that can happen to a person's health.  No details to follow but I can tell you I do not recommend prednisone as a way of life!  I'm sure it could be held accountable for a number of otherwise unexplained actions committed by those formerly considered fairly rational!

On a brighter note, here is a picture of probably my last canning effort - unless I do end up pickling those hot and sweet peppers.  It's my green tomato relish with just a hint of jalapeno pepper.  Every year I swear I'm not going to do it but those otherwise going to waste green beautiful tomatoes seduce me every time!

So let's do the proverbial girding up of loins and get ready to head into fall.  It's my favorite time of year and I look forward to riding my motorcycle, getting up to camp for some final fishing and being able to walk outside and actually breath the air without feeling as if I have to chew it first!

The third basket

When I wrote about my grandmother's baskets and how much they meant to me in the context of family and history, it seemed to me that something was missing - almost like I was a basket short.

It's a truism that you can walk by something every day and never see it.  Or look for something in the same place 100 times and not find it.  From time to time I actually prove that to myself.

Yesterday when I was picking up my dog's toys and putting them away - it became very clear to me where the other basket was!

It's now officially the toy basket & has been for so long it had "disappeared".

It might seem to some (hopefully not my family members) that this is desecrating a family heirloom.  I prefer to think of it as finding a loving ongoing use for something I cherish.  Nothing damages it - Joey is very careful when he takes items out of it and he clearly knows that this is where "his" things belong.  I have yet to see him take any interest in replacing them IN the basket but he loves choosing a toy to take out and play with.

This basket, like one of the others, is pretty old - no nails involved in the making of it.  Just the material that it was constructed with.

So at any rate, now I feel that the circle is complete and this is the "rest of the story".  Being a practical woman my Aunt Emily would no doubt approve of my using it - for some unknown reason she actually approved of almost everything I did!  One of the many reasons I loved her and miss her to this day.

My grandmother's baskets

There are many things that bind generation to generation. Sometimes it is the seemingly insignificant items that forge the strongest links.

My mother grew up from the age of two in a big old farmhouse dating from the 1800's that is located about 2 miles from where I live now.  It came complete with the shed between the house and garage and then a big old barn attached on the end of everything.  The barn was where my grandfather, who was a doctor, kept the horse and buggy that he used to do his rounds back in the "old days".  In bad weather no one had to go outside to get from house to barn - it was all connected. The shed even still had the privy back in the corner - left over from the no plumbing era.  Unused by the time I was a child except to store old canning jars and the like.

In the shed that connected the garage and the kitchen end of the house there were lots of interesting things hanging from the beams over head.  Among them were the baskets that my grandmother and then my Aunt Emily in later years used to gather vegetables from the garden.  They were there handy when you came out the kitchen door on the way to the gardens and out of the way up above your head when you didn't need them.

When my aunt passed away and the household goods were spread around though the family, those baskets were close to the only things I really wanted.  They spoke to me of tradition and daily life through the years and into the bargain they were useful!

Easy to see that they have some age on them because there aren't any nails at all in the lower one pictured and only tiny brads holding the edge band on the top one.  Considering how long I personally know they've been around they are in amazing shape.  They weren't for decoration, but to be used.

So now when I head out to my garden it's one of these baskets that I commonly grab to bring with me.

Even if I'm heading down cellar to get canning jars they come in handy.

It gives me a feeling of connection to the people in my family who are no longer physically here with me to use items that were dear to them.  It's important not to lose the sense of continuity that comes from cherishing and using things that come from your past.

At the risk of sounding trite, in this day and age of disposable and replaceable and "Made in China" I want to be able to put my hands on the same handles that my grandparents did and use these baskets daily as they did.  Sometimes I stumble trying to explain how this makes me feel but in some ways it's as if I am holding their hands down through the years and not just a basket handle.

Not really a mystery

I suspect that when I mention "canning" and "making pickles" or "zucchini relish" a lot of eyes glaze over.  Thoughts of "all that special equipment" or "how would I even know where to start" are, I suspect, the first things that cross your minds.

There are some specialized pieces of equipment you really do need to have but surprisingly not all that much.  With that in mind I took some pictures that I hope will help dispel the notion that canning is outside your area of expertise.  And, by the way, if you have a friend with any of the "special stuff", perhaps they would be happy to share some of it with you so you get a running start without having to buy much of anything but the jars & whatever you want to can.

So here we go - the picture quality might not be great but if you squint it helps:

Only special equipment here is the jar holder (has the yellow ends to grab the jars), the magnet on the green plastic stick and a wide mouth funnel - and , of course, the jars and lids

Nothing special here except the jar rings in the bowl and that funnel

If you take a good look at the above two pictures you will see that aside from the jars, the jar holder (to take the jars out of the boiling water bath), the magnet to get the hot lids out of the hot water without burning your fingers and that funnel, most of the equipment is utensils that you probably already have!

The other two items you really do need to have access to are the big kettle (ok, it doesn't have to be that exact kettle) and the racks to hold the jars during processing.  The one on the left is the really old rusty one that I prefer - it has dividers to keep the jars from touching each other.  I haven't been able to find another one quite like it - most of them are similar to the one on the right and I guess you just have to hope they stay in place while processing.

Let's say you choose to pickle beets, first you need the beets...

That was easy!  Next you need to wash them and cut off the tops (leaving a couple inches of the stems) and cook them just until they are barely tender.   I have found that a kettle the size of the next one pictured makes about 5 or 6 pints of finished beets.

Still not a special piece of equipment!

Cover them with water and when they are done cooking, dump them carefully into a cold water bath to stop the cooking and make it easier to get the skins off.

A dishpan full of water is definitely not special equipment

The skin will actually slip right off - cut off the tops and the roots and cut them into whatever sized pieces you want the finished product to have.

Follow the recipe (I will do a separate post of the recipe if requested) and pop them into jars, cover with the liquid, wipe the rims off and put on the covers.  They are now ready to be processed!

See how nicely that rack keeps itself stable and above the water - especially good when taking the jars out of  the water.

Once the jars have boiled for the correct processing time, take them carefully out of the water (that jar holder is really indispensable - it holds the jars securely and as hot as they are that's important).  Put them on a covered surface (wood if possible) and cover them with a towel until they have cooled.

Draft and peeking free!

Once they are cool leave them overnight - check the seals and label the contents - you only think you will remember when you made them and what they are.  Beets are pretty easy to identify but wait until you graduate to relishes and salsas!  And, by the way, if you put the label on the lid you won't have to scrape it off the jar when it is returned for a refill.  Everything but the lids is reusable but they are a one time thing.

So all in all that's all!  Part of the trick to angst free canning is to have all your materials laid out ahead of time - nothing is more anxiety producing than juggling a hot container of product while you try to figure out where that funnel is!

Too early to think about winter?

I can hear the groans from way over here!

You don't have to think about winter weather or gassing up the snow blower but if you followed any of my advice (not to be mistaken for nagging) last winter about stocking up on a few essentials in the food and water departments, now might be a time to check them over.

The theory on buying some extra "grocery store" types of foods is to get things that you will eat. Sounds pretty basic but surprisingly enough many people (and, yes, people DO prepare) put in supplies of things that only an emergency would force them to eat!  The idea is to eat up your "preps" as you go along and replace them so they never get too old to use.  This way you have your emergency supplies always fresh and current.

But here some of us are several months later with a wonderful supply of brown rice and un-ground wheat and other rather less than appetizing sorts of foods.  Not to mention the 50 cans of kidney beans that are now nearing their expiration dates!

Before these things expire how about take a few minutes (depending on how many cans of those beans you actually laid in) and check for expiration dates.  Local food pantries and shelters could use them all up before they were officially not good (which really isn't real but that's another discussion).

So why not check through your stash (you DID put in a stash, right?) and take the almost obsolete items to a place that will be more than grateful to get them.  And on your way home perhaps buy a few things to replace them.  Face it, you never needed 50 cans of kidney beans but if you got 10 cans of the beans along with some canned tomatoes and tomato sauce all you would need is the meat and you'd be all set to make several batches of chili.

I am not going to go into whether chili should or should not contain meat - or for that matter, beans. That also is a discussion for later...or never!

I'll keep this short and sweet - my point is (here it comes) that the time to think about what you will have for supper when you are housebound and that damn nor 'easter actually arrived isn't just after you have shoveled off the porch for the third time in 2 hours.  It's now.  Take a look at what you have, donate the things that are nearing their expiration date or, in some cases, that you know you would truly rather starve to death than eat.

The whole process will give you a warm feeling of doing something for someone else along with giving your family a running start on the food storage for the winter!

Just sayin!

Nothing to do with gardening

Once upon a time we went on a road trip to nowhere in particular.  Probably took the dogs, I don't remember really.  At one point somewhere in southern Maine we came across this house.  Obviously fallen into total disrepair - even the mailbox was sad looking.

When I see abandoned homes I always wonder about the lives that were lived there - what were the hopes and dreams that didn't come true and what caused the families that lived there to walk away. Did they leave for a better place or did they just give up in frustration and grief?

Below is what the house said to me  -  actually it nagged at me until I put in down on paper (or a screen).  It's a snapshot of a day in the life and probably wildly inaccurate - but this is what the house told me to say:

This old house -

Pushing aside the faded curtain she looked out over the field towards the river.  Bending forward she leaned her forehead on the window pane - briefly enjoying the cool feel of the glass against her skin.  “If I just knew what happened to him”, she mused silently – “if I only knew”. 

The field had no answer for her – no more than the river ever did.  She remembered how in the beginning they’d chosen their building site together because of that river.  You could look down across the field in the morning and see it glistening in the sun – walk down in the evening and watch the fish jump or, if it was a hot summer, jump in.  She half smiled as she recollected how scandalized the neighbors had been at the idea of a woman actually swimming!  He hadn’t cared a bit what they thought – just told her to at least keep her shift on!

Turning, she looked around the kitchen – it looked shabby even in the dim light that filtered through the grimy window.  Time was everything was spic and span but, then, it was a lot easier when the boys were still home.  Gives you something to go forward for when someone needs you.  They were sad when it happened but young appetites still had to be fed, clothes had to be washed, chores had to be done and somehow you put on a good face just so they wouldn’t know how bad it really was.

Now, of course, one was in the Army and the other was God knows where.  An occasional letter with a smudged postmark arrived saying that all was well but to really know how he was –impossible.  At least with the Army you knew where a body was - even if there never seemed time to come home. 

She remembered how she had felt at first. Looking back through the lens of years it hardly seemed more than yesterday.  Grief had moved with her through the days and grief lay down by her side through the white nights of sleeplessness.  It was like a macabre dance that could never end – a healing step attempted, sorrow pulling her back.  There was no escape from the cycle.  Unable to sleep she had fantasized that she would eventually be consumed and all that remained would be a fragile envelope of pain with nothing human remaining within.

It had amazed her that a loss could trigger such actual physically blinding pain.  You think of crying and you think “tears” – but you should be thinking “scalding” or “burning” or “bitter” because that is the way the acid tears of grief feel on your face.  You think “loss” and you imagine emptiness in your life.  You do not imagine an abyss that has swallowed up everything meaningful while threatening your very existence.  Grief was a void that opened under her feet until the very act of walking seemed to endanger her. 

A bit of then and now

Sometimes early in the season it's hard to visualize how things are going to progress.  It's part of the reason that I sometimes end up with plants too close together.  As long as I've been doing this I just can't imagine they are ever going to fill in that whole space.

So how about we check that out:

Started out looking pretty sparse - cucumbers and peppers

Hiding behind cucumbers now

Cucumbers overtaking 

So my thought at this point is if the cucumbers come to fruition I can cover the world! Cause they are growing out front too!

Started out looking pretty controllable:

Now they are exploding like the ones out back!

No telling if every blossom will produce a cucumber but I tend to plan as if they will.  My highly regarded and extremely sought after Bread and Butter Pickles look to be a good bet for this Christmas - and well into the new year!

The tomatoes appear to be following the same pattern although I see signs of the leaf yellowing that sometimes can overtake an entire plant and destroy it:

Freshly planted tomato plants and hot peppers - looks like a lot of room for not much!

And now my biggest worries are finding the actual tomatoes 

And for a last look - how about those spindly little onions lurking next to the peas?

It was an experiment and I really didn't expect much at all

 They are actually onion-ing!

If it appears that I am bragging it's that I sort of am.  Things can still go south on me - there are a lot of factors involved in gardening.  But so far the combination of the water cannon and the Epsom Salt watering have produced some amazing results.  Last year the bed where the beets are growing got eaten to the dirt by the woodchuck (I do wish I lived farther from the police station and my 22 had a silencer) but this year:

Just look at them suckers!  Three meals of greens with beets so far and hopes of a lot more

I may even have enough home grown beets for pickled beets to can - pretty cool, I'm thinking!

So if you are still traveling along this trip with me now we just have to wait and see how things go.  Judicious watering and the addition of a lot of compost from my bins have carried me so far -  hopefully the plants will continue to play on the winning side of this game!

In a world where the bad news and confusion and angst sometimes seems to be all there is - cruelty to man and animals alike - some days you just need to go weed the garden.