Root Veggies

A black walnut tree stood on the edge of the garden I left behind when we moved. In spite of it, I was able to grow a fairly impressive garden. It took a few years to figure out which plants would grow okay near it, but once I had that figured out, most of my plants were healthy and productive. The only thing I had a really hard time with were root vegetables.

I am happy that root vegetables seem to be doing fine in our new garden. This is the first time I have successfully grown turnips and radishes since I left my parents' farm. Today I dug up the potatoes and pulled the last of the beets. We still have a long row of radishes in the garden, a few turnips, and a bed of carrots. I will leave them in the ground and continue to harvest them as we use them.

There are still lots of fall greens in the garden. Today I picked a bowl of spinach and a bunch of kale--but we also still have lots of endive, mustard, young collards, and more spinach and kale. I usually pick the fall greens until the end of November. I also found a little pumpkin hiding under the wilted and brown pumpkin leaves.

  I am delighted with my little potato harvest. I had intended to plant several hills of potatoes, but never got around to buying seed potatoes. I stopped at roadside stand to buy some cherries in early July and the lady had some shriveled up seed potatoes. I looked at them and asked her if she thought they would still grow. She said didn't know, but it wouldn't hurt to try and gave me one to plant. I took it home, cut in in quarters and set it out to cure overnight, so it wouldn't rot in the ground. As often happens, I got busy and completely forgot about the planting it. When I remembered 2 weeks later, and finally went to plant them,  the potato quarters were pretty much dried out. They grew anyway and today when I dug them I was quite surprised that the harvest was quite nice. In any case, it is a very good return on one free shriveled up potato that was planted a month and half late!

Potatoes roasted with rosemary and olive oil are on the menu tonight. It has been years since I've had a fresh dug potato. I hope they live up to my memory of fresh dug potatoes--especially since I have built them up to my husband who has never had a fresh potato!

Just Chillin'....

....on a chilly morning.

November Sky

 November is not quite here, but the sky and weather today was typical of early November. Strong winds the past few days have stripped the trees bare. There is a silent chill in the air and even the noon sun is pale, cold, and gray.

Silhouetted

Sandhill cranes against the evening sky.

The Farm Around the Bend...

You know how every now and then you find a place that touches a cord in your soul? Almost like you have found a place where there is a bit of heaven on earth?

There is a bit of farm land maybe 20 miles from us that does this to me. The farm belongs to one of my patients. I've been seeing him once a week for the past few months. Every time I go to his home, I drive slowly 'round the bend in the road that leads to his house, just savoring the landscape of gently rolling hills, red barns, sheep and cows grazing in the pasture, and the wind swept hay meadows.

I drive through a lot of farmland every day, but of all of it, this 100 acres feels like home.

The barns were built in 1830. The farmer who lives here now is the 4th generation and his sons hopefully will be able to take over from him. Due to poor health and family feuding a lot has been lost and, and the barns are not as well kept up as the farmer wishes they were. None the less, the place is clean and peaceful without the multiple pieces of large broken down and rusty equipment that most farmers around here seem to collect in plain sight. There are no, rusty old cars,  ugly metal sheds or misplaced outbuildings to mar the landscape.  Yes, the barn and old farm house are worn and are showing their age with missing boards and stones, but they have the simple beauty and grace that comes with aging with dignity.

I've wondered about the man who originally bought this piece of land. Most farm land around here is flat and easy to work. Flat land is desired as farm land. While this piece of land is beautiful, most farmers around here probably wouldn't prefer it because it is most definitely hilly.

Today I asked the great grandson of the man who built the barns and farm house why his great grandfather chose this piece of land.

The answer was simple, but made complete sense.

"Because it reminded him of upstate New York, where he grew up."

Ah, yes, I completely understand now.

                                                          The bend before the farm.

(I always hesitate to photograph anything that pertains to my patients, so I have not taken any pictures except this one, but one of these days I am going to ask him if I can come on out on one of my days off to take some photographs of his barns and the farm house.)

Sunday Sunset

Open Mouth Katydid

(Click on the photo to make it bigger.)

I didn't realize the katydid was sticking his tongue out at me until after I uploaded the photo to my computer. (What an interesting looking tongue!)

Abstract from the Vegetable Garden

Dew drops on red leaf lettuce. (My husband informs me that is photo is just weird, but the dew drops remind me of molten metal in fire, so I am keeping it.)

October Skeletons

The quaking aspens have flung down their golden leaves and now their bare white branches contrast against the colors of October.

Flaming Sunset

The Flying of the Cranes

(Click on the photos to make them larger and to get a better view of the cranes.)

There is a nature preserve only a short drive from us. It has a large reedy marsh that is perfect as a staging area for sandhill cranes as they prepare to fly south for the winter. In the evenings, October through November, thousands of them fly in small flocks from the fields surrounding the sanctuary into the marsh.  It is an awe inspiring sight to watch flock after flock glide through the sky into the marsh.

                  
                                 



Mud Lake Marsh---the staging area for the cranes.



The official viewing area. The tour bus brought seniors to view the cranes, many of them where in wheelchairs. There was a lot of oohing and awing from the group as the cranes flew over.

                         
From the Crane Sanctuary website:

"Late in the summer, Sandhills abandon their nesting territories and aggressive behavior and flock to staging areas such as Haehnle. Staging areas typically provide abundant food, protected night roosting sites and the benefits of congregating in flocks during migration. Here the routes and traditions of older, experienced birds can be passed on to less experienced individuals.


Cranes from southern Michigan migrate to Florida. Depending on the weather, most leave in November, but some have stayed through December. They usually return to Michigan in late February or early March.

Sandhill cranes prefer to migrate when the sun causes warming thermals to rise and there is a tail wind. By taking advantage of tail winds, flying in formation and by soaring, they are able to reduce energy expenditure by up to 30%. Flying at speeds up to 50 miles per hour, they can cover nearly 500 miles a day. Often they reach altitudes of over a mile."

Fresh Water Mussels

Nemo

Of Apple Pie, Bad Odors, and Spider Webs....

For the past week my husband has been complaining that something smells bad in the kitchen. He swore it was coming from the fridge. Okay, so there was a decaying package of tofu in there (don't ask!). I removed and fed it to the chickens who went crazy with delight over it (you just never know what might tickle a chicken's taste buds). Apparently that didn't take care of the problem, though.

Terry continued to complain of the stench coming from the kitchen--and it was he was sure it was still coming from the fridge. He even went so far as going through every item in the fridge and throwing some things out, even though he kept telling me he couldn't find the one item that was causing the problem. I couldn't smell anything until yesterday evening. When I came in after being gone most of the day I was hit with this overwhelming foul odor as soon as I walked in the door. And it sure didn't seem like it was coming from the fridge. Of course I was too tired to do anything about it and even though Terry complained about it some more, he didn't seem motivated to do anything about it either. (He worked hard on fixing and cleaning my car all day so I'm not complaining--I'll take a clean car that runs any day over a clean house!)

This morning I got up and went off to work. On my way home I stopped a neighbor's house and we both agreed that we ought to get together more often. A spur of the moment decision was made to invite another neighbor that Terry and I hadn't met yet over to our house for pizza. She would bring the pizza and I would provide a clean house to hang out in (my house was a total mess when we made the arrangements, but I was planning to clean this weekend and what better motivation to clean the house the is there than to have people you've never met over?)

When I walked into the front door, that mysterious odor hit me stronger than ever. Oh, crap. I had totally forgot about it. If I hadn't forgot about it, I might not have been so quick to volunteer my house! Terry and I had a long discussion about possible sources. He still firmly believed it was the fridge. I was sure it was coming from the carpet and found a wet area on the carpet under the rug that we hadn't noticed before (both of us firmly deny any knowledge of how that area got wet!)  He declared the carpet didn't smell and I couldn't smell anything in the fridge.

In any case, we had two hours to get rid of the obnoxious smell before any arrived. I opened all the windows to let in some fresh air and  started cleaning out the fridge and Terry response, "What are you doing that for? I thought you said the carpet smells, not the fridge!"

"Well, you seem convinced it is the fridge, so I'm scrubbing it out!"

In the meantime he set about cleaning the large wet spot on the carpet, even though he still wasn't convinced it was the problem.

An hour later we had a sparkling clean deodorized fridge and still damp, but fresh smelling carpet. And just in case there was any remnants of odor left, I threw together an apple pie and put it in the oven to bake--while I quickly straightened up the rest of the house. My entire motivation for making the pie was its air freshening, odor masking effects. (It smells way better than artificial scents from a can and people don't wonder what it is that you are trying to cover up!). Plus, a homemade, from scratch pie always seems to be an effective way to impress upon  people that you are an amazing home maker (while in reality, right now in my life, it seems like nothing could be farther from the truth!)

Anyway, they loved the pie and the kitchen no longer seems to stink, so life is good. :) Now if only I could have enough energy to keep the place clean longer than a few days...

I will leave you with a lovely spiderweb I photographed a few days ago...maybe spiders have the right idea--make a home that lasts a day and make a new sparkling clean one each night, then at least you would never, ever have to vacumn....

First Frost of 2010

Little Grey Elves

Sandhill Cranes in Flight

(Click on the photos to to see full size--and to get a better view of the cranes.)

Green Lake Camping Trip--part 2

The evening sun reflected on the clouds and lake.

This hickory log was completely covered with little puffballs.

The woods were full of bits and pieces of discarded items--broken crocks, pieces of metal, colored glass, old zinc and glass canning jar lids, etc. According to my husband, this is an flat belt driven fan and would have been part of a old machine.

There weren't a lot of perfect fall leaves (almost everything is just yellow and brown!), but this hard maple leaf is about as perfect as you can get.

The woods where full of lots of tiny white asters, and one lone bumble bee.

This stand of red osier dogwood was practically glowing in the morning sun. It had lots of long straight twigs, and I kept looking at it thinking how pretty they would be woven into a basket!

Camping at Green Lake--part one

I'm on vacation this week and we kicked it off with a weekend camping trip on a nearby lake. The nice thing was that the campground was close enough to home so that I could run home each morning and feed the chickens and kitties. I took about 300 photos--now I just have to pick my top few favorite ones to share.

Green Lake

 I spent quite a bit of time just laying on a folding lounge and watching the shadows from the hickory trees surrounding our campsite.

The woods surrounding the lake where beautiful. There were several kinds of birches. This fungus is growing on a white birch log.

I found a stand of black birches. These have evergreen flavored twigs and my siblings and I would chew on them when we were growing up. These are the first black birches I have seen in Michigan. I want to go back and find a seeding to transplant to our 13 acres.

There where also a few yellow birch trees. I think these are the first I have seen in Michigan as well. My brothers used the curly bark as tinder to start flint and steel fires. The bark is oily and is very flammable, even when wet, so it makes wonderful tinder. In the long past, I made a few containers from the bark. It doesn't peel off in sheets as well as white birch does and isn't as durable, but the color is very pretty.

                                This fungus is growing on a still standing dead black birch.

                               There were lots of grapevines draped gracefully through the trees...

 This fungus reminded me of butterflies--and was a lot easier to photograph as it stayed put and didn't keep flying away!

Stacked Rocks

Along one of the trails near Green Lake.