Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

In just a few days I’ve made a pickled zucchini salad, a spicy zucchini bread without oil (unlike all of the recipes I saw that called for over a cup of oil), and a zucchini salad with dill and sour cream.  I feel like a real farmer’s wife, happily making use of all the goods he brings home.  We’ll see if I can keep such calm when the tomatoes start to overwhelm our house later this month.

It’s almost August, time to start planning the course I’m teaching this fall, get in last-minute visits with friends, and get our garden ready for our school-year inattention.

Erin

When Sydney and I returned home to our garden, we discovered that we had zucchini awaiting us.  More than a dozen of them.  All piled together in Sydney’s arms they looked like a load of glossy green wood.  And then the age-old question arose: what to do with them?

Way to go, epicurious.com!  Within an hour, I had a great recipe for what amounted to a pickled zucchini salad that had great flavor and used up 7 of my zucchini.  I took that dish to a potluck, and I’m now staring at a much more reasonable mound of zucchini.  Sydney’s working similar wonders on the pile of colorful swiss chard in our sink.  We may finally be getting the hang of this garden produce thing.

Erin

Finished Harry Potter.  Finally satisfied.

I really miss my old job at the library in Hudson, though.  When I was working there I could share in the Harry Potter excitement of the kids, dole out the books to kids on the waiting list when they were returned, and answer questions that they brought in from their reading.  It’s a bit anticlimactic finishing the final book in grad school, the only Harry Potter lover in the house, and no kids to read aloud to.  Guess I’d better do some more babysitting.

Erin

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours.

His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live….

The two-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and other illnesses.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He’d sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

For the complete story, see here.

Sydney and I are eating dinner in our own home, after some unpacking and much petting of our cat.  We had a wonderful visit with Sydney’s parents (yeah, and you too, Nelson), and now we’re back home to a rainy Ithaca that encourages some sleeping and some reading.

That’s just fine by me, because my Harry Potter has arrived in the mail. 🙂 🙂  Sydney is a bit skeptical of the merits of the book series, but I am not inclined to hear much from him until he reads one or more of the books.  Of course, finding time to tuck in another book or two is something we have difficulty with, so our lists of books for each to read for the other are growing . . .

This visit we took the ferry from Digby, Nova Scotia to Saint John, New Brunswick.  After fitting our car in the bay we had three hours to wander on deck, sit and eat strawberries and chocolate (yes, now you see why we enjoy traveling so much), and listen to a museum guide give lectures about the marine life of the area.  We also saw some whales!  Apparently our visit coincided with their peak feeding time in the Bay of Fundy, so we were given a real treat.

Erin

We’ve had some interesting adventures during our first few days on the Penner farm.  As usual, I end up covered in dirt every time I step outside, and since the “experts” aren’t always dirty I can’t assume it’s because I’ve been doing some real farming.  But I’m learning!

And, also as usual, I’ve made vows not to eat three times my body weight at each meal, but it still seems to happen.  Sydney’s mom doesn’t seem to think seconds are enough (something tells me she wouldn’t think thirds were enough), and since I eat faster than anyone else at the table she has lots of opportunity to pile my plate despite my protests.  Not helping me in my efforts to resist is the fact that Nelson’s been making a lot of the food, so there’s really appetizing stuff on the table, begging to be eaten and enjoyed.

It’s been nice to spend our first few days just being on the farm with the rest of the family.  I suspect that some visits to aunts and other families in the community will be filling up the next few days, though, so the days of weeding onions, playing with cats, and hunting down tomatoes in the greenhouses may be scanter in the future.

This morning Sydney, Nelson, and I headed to the farmer’s market in Wolfville to sell produce.  It was great fun!  The boys, being the Penner men that they are, were more than happy to hand over the people-dealing to me, and though I had never really looked at Canadian money before I was soon happily handing over carrots and greens and making change.  It’s nice going to the farmer’s market; unlike time on the Penner farm, at the market I can step back and realize that I do actually know more about farming by now than many people on the other side of the table.  Interesting times.  Sydney’s hoping to capitalize on the people-rush I had this morning: if I let him buy land and work up a larger garden, then I can go sell produce at our own farmer’s market in Ithaca.  To me it seemed a bit cruel to take advantage of my people-high to get me entangled in major lifestyle decisions, but thankfully I had “no!” on autopilot.

Erin

Our garden is weeded and ready to be left alone for a while. My parents’ garden, however, has a few weeds in it.

Sydney

We’re off to Nova Scotia tomorrow for a visit with Sydney’s parents.  That means we’re currently running around, madly trying to get the garden in order before we go and packing haphazardly whenever we have a few minutes at home.  It also means that we’ll most likely be away from blogging for awhile.  Yeah, yeah, we know you had better things to do anyway.  I can’t say that the 93-degree weather isn’t making me eager to go.  Here’s hoping for cooler weather in Nova Scotia!

Erin

An activity so much more enjoyable for the back than strawberry-picking.  Finally, I’m no longer having to envy the five-year-olds for their proximity to the ground (and thus to the berries).

It was pretty amusing hearing family members holler across the field “Come over here!  These are good and [red, black, big, small, whatever attribute this particular person thought was ideal for cherries]!”  Ditto for parents giving their kids instructions on the right kind of cherries to pick.  Funny, if you compiled the comments, there seemed to be a great deal of disagreement about what kinds of things one ought to look for in cherries.  But I guess that meant that each person found his tree with a minimum of stepping on others’ toes, and all left the field satisfied with their pickings.

Erin

Each day on our way to school Sydney and I drive by a horse research facility.  Facing the road is a small paddock where we see a horse any time we pass during business hours.  One day the horse was small, with black mane and tail and brown-velvet fur.  It was a real cutie.  Another time we saw a large white horse with black patches and poufy (sorry, I don’t know horse terms for this) white mane, tail, and leggings.  If you pass it at the wrong angle it takes an extra second to reconfigure what you see into a recognizable animal.  And at other times there are penny-colored, chestnut, and chocolate-silk horses that tower over our little car.

Sometimes I wonder if they put the horses there just to remind us, “Hey, idiot, stop complaining about your work load and pay attention to this!”  Kind of a local reality-check and reminder-of-beauty.

Sydney says he thinks it’s a breeding pen.  Oh, that too.

Erin