Busy Busy Busy My day job is in one of those crunch cycles, so no blogging for a little bit because my head is cluttered with the technical details of running telephones over the internet. Back next week …
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The End of the Garden I pulled up the tomatoes this afternoon. All day it looked like it was going to snow, and there I was out there in the backyard in a sweater and my down vest. I figure, if you’ve got a down vest on, it’s time to harvest all those green tomatoes. (Plus, I have to go to San Jose for business next week, and my brother was afraid he’d kill them all and I’d be mad.) As I was working out there, the weather got even worse, and I had to go put on my gore-tex…
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Johnny’s gone home to June Oh — Johnny Cash is dead — it feels like a loss that should be met with wailing, with rending of garments, with church bells tolling. While I’m happy for him, because he seemed so bereft without June, I am so so sad for the rest of us. That voice, that gravity, that deep sense that absolute ruin was just a moment away. I think that’s what I loved most about Cash, his music doesn’t just acknowledge that we can all fuck up our lives beyond repair, but that we are always just a few…
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Ordering a Lamb Well, I ordered a lamb yesterday. It “won’t be ready” for a couple of more weeks, which means it’s still out there at the Schilling’s ranch, eating and growing and being a lamb. Which not only doesn’t bother me, it reassures me. It’s a happy lamb. It lives in my neighborhood. It’s being raised by responsible ranchers. And it’s a meat animal — that’s its purpose, so I’m not sad it’s going to die. I’m just relieved to know how it lived. When it’s big enough, about 60 pounds, it’ll go off to Big Timber to the…
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Box of Fish Yesterday I bought 25 pounds of salmon from a guy on the other side of town. He fished for it himself, in Alaska, and then had it processed, boxed, and shipped home where he sells it out of his house. I love buying food from the person who actually produced it. I paid six bucks a pound, which seems like a bargain to have one of your neighbors go to Alaska and catch wild salmon. So in my basement freezer is now enough fish for a year. Clean, wild, sustainably harvested salmon — salmon that never lived…
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Summer is really over I finally spent some time on the Yellowstone River this weekend — went boating both days, actually. Unfortunately, summer is most definitely over — We got rained on both days. Saturday was just sort of gloomy weather, with little sprinkles, and Sunday was gorgeous until the thunderstorm blew up. Oh well — next year I’ll have to try a little harder to get on the river in that short season between the time the floodwaters recede and the weather turns cold. Saturday my friend Wendy-the-Buddhist, who has just returned from a year’s exile in California (they…
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Brother Al has Died When I first moved to Telluride in 1988, Brother Al was still shovelling walks on Main Street. He was an old man, wearing raggedy clothes, with wild hair and a beard to match. He looked like an Old Testament hippie, and I was, frankly a little afraid of him. Plus, I was young and mostly interested in skiing, finding a boyfriend, and taking care of the kids for whom I was a nanny. I didn’t really pay much attention to the slighly scary old man who shovelled walks. But then, like most things of importance, Brother…
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Summer’s Over Summer appears to be, rather suddenly, over. The temperature dropped early this week, and this morning my (highly unreliable) thermometer reads 50 degrees. Highs have been only in the 70’s and with the light rapidly receding, well, I’m not feeling hugely optimistic about all those green tomatoes out there. We had hail on the solstice, and here at the end of August I would estimate a hard frost is only a couple of weeks away. The challenges of short-season gardening. Sigh.
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Granny Got A Brand-new Hip My 93-year-old grandmother had her hip replaced on Monday because she wants to ride again. It’s been three years since she could sit a horse, and since riding is her greatest joy, she willingly went in and let them, well, cut her leg off and put it back on again. (Although my cousin Jason tells me that her old horse, Ben, died last month. He swears he’s not buying her a new horse, but I have a hunch there will be one in that barn soon.) And since she’s 93, they didn’t want to risk…
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Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwiches It’s that time of year — there are ripe tomatoes in my garden, which means, it’s time for BLTs. Because what’s the point of a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich that isn’t made with a real tomato — a tomato grown locally, a tomato grown to ripeness and juicy perfection? A BLT made with a supermarket tomato is a travesty. It isn’t a BLT at all, it bears the same relation to a real BLT as silicone breasts do to real ones. It is a Bad Thing. Whereas a real BLT, made with a real…