My Milk Lady has returned! The cows calved and had a nice rest, and once again I’m getting my recycled gallon jar of milk every week. She had to raise her prices because the price of hay and fuel have gone up so much, and although I assured her it was fine, I understood, I still found a surprise present of a dozen duck eggs in my box last week. I don’t know if all the health claims for raw milk are true, but I do know that it’s worth what I pay for a real food product, produced and…
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Well, the dogs are on the mend — Ray’s stitches come out on Friday and I took Owen off to have his dressings changed today. I wish I’d had my camera with me — that external fixature is quite something. My little FrankenPuppy. His Fenatyl patch is also off, which is making him a little less groggy — thank goodness we have the mysterious “anaglesic elixir” because he’s still intermittently uncomfortable. In other news — the tomatoes are getting their true leaves down in the basement, although I didn’t have the germination rates with the pepper seedlings that I’d hoped…
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It’s snowing again. I woke up this morning to about 2 inches of snow and it was sort of exciting. I didn’t have a clue last night when I went to sleep that it was going to snow, so there was that little frisson of excitement, like the first snow of the year. It was pretty, every twig was outlined, and it’s not very cold. It’s still snowing — little tiny flakes. It’s a late spring this year and as much as I want to get out in the garden, well, I have a novel to write, and more sweaters…
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Here’s what I woke up to this morning — welcome to spring! It’s prettier than you can see in this photo (must invest in new camera) — that pretty spring snow that clings to each little twig. It’s still snowing as I write — nice wet spring snow that will nourish all those bulbs that are just starting to poke their little heads up.
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We’re having a real winter this year — four inches of new snow yesterday, 25 degrees and grey skies today (but at least the wind isn’t blowing). This is the first winter since I’ve lived in Montana that I’ve really wanted to jet off someplace warm for a shot of sunshine (or is it the first winter since I’ve been here that I haven’t gone to California for work?). My bulbs are just barely starting to peek up out of the ground — the last couple of winters have been so warm that they all bloomed early. The silver lining…
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Winter has arrived — after a lovely day yesterday — all snowflakes falling gently from a sky out of which no gale-force winds blew (a perennial winter problem here) — this morning dawned frozen and cold. Three below outside. I’m certainly glad I blocked the dog door with that very-swanky piece of styrofoam I cut to fit last winter — because even with the 2-foot square hole in my back door blocked off, it’s chilly in my house this morning. And poor Jacques, who is staying with me for the week while the MH drives the Famous Author to Arizona,…
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Fall has arrived here in Montana — the trees are turning gold, there’s snow on the peaks, and I found an 18-inch zucchini hiding on the backside of one of my feral zucchini plants the other day. We’re a tiny big behind the ball here at LivingSmall at the moment, so go look at the lovely photo of the Crazy Mountains and I’ll be back very soon.
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Fire season arrived in our neck of the woods yesterday. There have been a bunch of big fires burning west of us, over by Missoula, but until now we’d managed to duck the worst of it. A lightning strike set of a small blaze Friday afternoon and yesterday, the winds kicked up and it blew. Those aren’t clouds in the photo, it’s smoke. And you can’t really see from my point-and-shoot, but the clouds of smoke were tinged a weird orange from within, from the gasses burning inside them. Very spooky. And this morning we’re swimming in a thick layer…
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The heat wave in July was both record-breaking and unpleasant. But look what it brought. Tomatoes! Basil! Breakfast in summer is toast rubbed lightly with a clove of garlic, smeared with goat cheese, and topped with sliced tomato from the garden and shredded basil. A drop or two of nice olive oil and some fleur de sel and well … what more could anyone want for breakfast? For the record (which I’m terrible about keeping garden records), the first tomatoes this year were the Whippersnapper cherries, followed by Galina (a yellow cherry that spreads all over the garden, but produces…
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Hot. It’s hot hot hot here. We’re going into another week of 100 degree weather, and with the crazy pace my day job at the Big Corporation lately, I took the opportunity to prep some cold food in advance. I roasted a baby chicken one night last week when it wasn’t so brutal out, and so this afternoon I pulled the breasts off. I was going to make some chicken salad, but I decided that cold roasted chicken breasts by themselves would give me a wider variety of options (that’s how hot it was last week, pulling the chicken breasts…