Sweetfern, Comptonia peregrina, is neither sweet nor a fern. It looks like something the dinosaurs would have walked through, releasing the warmest, spiciest aromas of imagination.
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
mornings
Sunday, June 29, 2025
special delivery
I get a lot of deliveries. Without a vehicle, it's the only reliable way to Get Stuff Here. Some of the drivers will bring packages to the top of the driveway, which I very much appreciate. But I don't blame the drivers who choose to leave packages at the bottom of the driveway, and that's why there's a little plastic lawn chair visible from the road. In the Winter, I leave a sled down there.
Walking down the driveway to pick up a package, I spotted this:
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
batch batch cooking
Tortellini pressure-cooked in sauce, ready for freezer. |
I've been doing "batch" cooking for nearly as long as I've been cooking, because it always made sense: make the effort (and the mess) once, eat well, and have a few servings tucked in the freezer for another day. When I started using a "multi-cooker" - mine is a Gourmia brand, not the famed Instant Pot - I also started cooking batches in a sequence, with two or three things different things cooked over the course of an afternoon or even a couple of hours. For example, the first thing could be plain pasta, followed by a pot of bulgur, followed by winter squash or a pot of soup.
The speed of pressure cooking is what many people seem to focus on, and it's true that once you've waited several minutes for the pressure to come up, the actual cooking times are almost incredibly short and presumably energy-efficient compared to other methods. But a major advantage for me is the kind of attention needed: intermittent. Compared to cooking in a regular pot on the stove, there isn't any hovering or stirring or keeping an eye on. This frees up bits of time for little tasks, such as slicing apples for the herd or dealing with a sliding pile of mail or folding the laundry. I'm still in the kitchen but getting extra things done in addition to restocking the fridge and freezer. It makes the entire cooking endeavor feel more efficient and productive, and I love that.
Speaking of pasta, have I mentioned my new favorite shape? After decades of rotini fandom, a trip through the Aldi markdown aisle a couple of years ago led me to cavatappi:
And because I rarely have the chance to shop in Aldi, I bought a few boxes. By the time I'd worked out the best way to cook cavatappi in the Gourmia I had also created a new way to eat pasta: with a spritz of oil, a dollop of salsa, and a sprinkling of shredded sharp cheddar melted in. I've been cooking this pasta for two years now and have yet to put pasta sauce on it.
After running out of the Aldi boxes, I started looking for cavatappi online and couldn't find it anywhere. It seemed impossible, so I visited the Barilla website and started scrolling through pictures of their many pasta products. Behold:
Here's what cavatappi or cellentani looks like when it's been pressure-cooked for 3 minutes, then frozen, then thawed:
This week, in the interest of eating cold things, I've branched out from my usual salsa and cheddar method, and used the thawed pasta for a salad with tuna and mayo. If I'd had celery or frozen peas or corn, they would have gone in also, but it was good anyway. So good. This form of pasta just seems perfect to me: thick enough to have a good chewing texture but hollow, so not overly dense. Spiraled and ridged to hold whatever is added - salsa or mayo or even just butter. If you like rotini, I strongly recommend trying this. Hot or cold. Except today. Today is definitely a day for more cold pasta salad, at least here in Massachusetts.
~~~~~
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
more
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Sambucus watching the rain from a cozy nest in the Peace Pavilion. |
Another rainy night and day. So dark in the house that lamps are needed to see the other end of a room. Since morning chores it's been an indoor day, with my main responsibility being toweling off Moxie and Della every time they come in after brief forays in the saturated underbrush.
The barncams pay for themselves in terms of safety every single day, and on a rainy day (or night) they save me many uncomfortable trips just to check on the herd. Plus there's the entertainment value. After moving the cameras around from the laptop to check on every goat, usually from an overhead angle, it's always fun to suddenly have a face pop up right at lens-level.
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Violet on her bench of choice. |
Sorry to keep on and on about the rain.
It's the element underlying everything else here at the moment.
~~~~~
Sunday, June 15, 2025
garden snaps
And for everyone who has been sharing pictures of their tomato plants, here are some of mine, seeded directly into one of the tall metal beds back on the 19th of May:
Thursday, June 5, 2025
update
Lately we've been having rain.
Lots of rain.
My spiderwort plants, which do not grow in a tidy clump but rather seem to fling themselves all over the garden, have been sadly flattened by repeated rainstorms, despite my efforts to prop them up. Yesterday I was thinking there might not be any spiderwort flowers this year, but then I happened upon this one, supported by surrounding tall stalks of tansy. I'll bet that tiny bee was relieved to find at least one flower where there are usually dozens:
And here's some of the "wild lettuce" which seems to weather anything, and also seems to grow a foot overnight. I'm taking it out near the gardens because each plant produces roughly 2 billion windborne seeds and it spreads like crazy. I'd never heard of letting goats eat this - and it's got a very sticky sap - but another goat person, my long-time blogpal Leigh, saves this plant to use as a component of her homegrown goat feed, so I'm going to try drying some this year. (Are you here, Leigh? Please check me on this!)
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
ayran time is here again
We're back to hot and sunny again, after many days of rain, and the mosquitoes are elbowing the blackflies aside to get to the local blood supply a millisecond faster. I'm watching the water trough and the wilds basin closely for signs of wrigglers, because that's when I start emptying them completely and refilling every day instead of just topping them up if the remaining water looks clean.
Speaking of water and mosquitoes...have you ever tried the mosquito "dunks" designed to be placed in water to keep wrigglers from growing up? Supposedly harmless to every other lifeform?
(Photograph from Chewy.com) |
Here's the product info, condensed:
For use in any standing water including rain barrels, bird baths, koi ponds, tree holes, stock tanks, planter reservoirs and rain gutters. Each dunk covers up to 100 square feet of water, regardless of depth for 30 days or more; for less water a portion can be used.
Deadly to mosquito larvae but harmless to other living things with the active ingredient Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti). When females lay their eggs in water treated with the dunks, the larvae will hatch and eat the bacterium.
I bought a packet in hopes of reducing the mosquito population in the Pocket Paddock, which is adjacent to my tiny wetland. The goats can't browse there for more than very short periods of time, because the hordes of biting bugs are unbearable. Unfortunately, it's also the best mixed browse on my property - a variety of herbaceous plants and also shrubby stuff like bittersweet; the things goat love, and which are very good for them. I'd love to be able to put the herd down there for half-days, without having to first spray them with bug stuff which we all hate.
The plan is to place a "donut" at the upslope end of the little drainage into my puddle. Today would have been an excellent day to do that, but an innate resistance to tinkering with a biological system has kept me from going forward. This sort of thing has always been a tough decision for me, personally and professionally, in part because the "cons" of such tinkering are so often nebulous beforehand and sometimes downright regrettable in hindsight. So I would love to hear from anyone who has used this or a similar product, or anyone who can speak to the biochemical safety - or risk - of this approach.
Meanwhile, now that it's hot again I am back to shaking up a daily jug of ayran - just plain yogurt, water, and salt - to enjoy in the heat of the afternoon. Such a refreshing beverage! If you make your own yogurt, it's also a great way to use a batch that didn't thicken as much as expected. This year I may even be able to add fresh mint to the ayran, as I am trying again to grow a supply of mints, both from seeds (again) and also from gifted plants (again). Is it beyond belief that mints, which always come with a "Will Take Over" warning, have a hard time establishing here? Many years ago there was spearmint growing wild right next to the house, but that went the way of the hens and I've never managed to coax it into settlement anywhere else. Not giving up though!
~~~~~
Monday, May 26, 2025
today
When I've posted my markmaking efforts over the years, often someone will mention in the comments that they would like to try - or get back to - watercolor or sketching or such. So when this crossed my screen it seemed like something that may be of interest. It's called the Sketchbook Revival Binge Fest, with free access from May 27th - June 9th to video workshops by over 100 artists.
I know there is an upgrade option for longer access than the two weeks, but personally I know that a 2-week free access window would make me much more likely to look for a workshop I'd like to see, and then actually watch it in hopes of finding a useful tip or inspiration.
Anyway, I thought it might be of interest to someone, so here it is. And it starts tomorrow, so I think today is the final day to register.
(And in case you are wondering with recent posts if I'm having camera issues at the moment...yes, very much so. But this post in particular seemed to need some sketching, so I looked in my photograph files and came up with this rough little video of a sketchbook from several years ago. It was, of course, an experiment, not meant for publication. But now? Send for the Understudy! It's time has come! I hope this works.)
Saturday, May 24, 2025
ai
There are so many aspects to Artificial Intelligence.
Here's one you may not have heard.
Professor John Hopfield and Professor Geoffrey Hinton were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”
This is Hinton's banquet speech in Stockholm, 10 December 2024.
It's less than three minutes long.
~~~~~
Friday, May 16, 2025
well sprung
Spring has lasted a long time this year. Possibly because so many things that were going on in April and May made time seem to stand still. Hazel's unexpected and rapid decline. Two drives halfway across the state that each meant several days of physical recovery to get back to baseline levels of pain and fatigue. A fostered rescue dog who was here for 10 very unfortunately goat-targeting days and 10 gruelingly sleep-fractured nights. And days of rain. Lots and lots of rain.
This year I waited so long to hear the first chirping of spring peepers during evening chores that I finally wondered if my increasing hearing loss meant I was simply unable to hear them: a thought that immediately led to scheduling a new hearing test. By the time the test rolled around - yesterday, in fact, and my hearing has indeed deteriorated further - the peepers were here and I had heard them, at least faintly, while walking the fosterdog at night.
The period of the annual leafing out of deciduous tree species felt delightfully long. It seemed as though a great many weeks passed between the first hints of color high up in the maple branches, and the pointillistic effect of entire mixed-species forests beginning to leaf out; one of my most treasured views each year.
But now the bloodroot flowers - which tell me that Winter is over - are just a memory, and the bloodroot leaves have grown into their remarkable sizes and shapes that seem just as fanciful and unlikely no matter how many times I see it happen. Jack-in-the-Pulpit has popped up in expected and unexpected places. The sugar maple leaves are still drooping a bit but are already far past the softest stage that always makes me think of the most delicate leather.
And two days ago we arrived at the point where looking out any window in my little house creates the feeling of being submerged in a wide sea of trees and green foliage. A bit like a kelp forest, but much brighter and more varied. I always look forward to this, even though it also means that the structural details of the forest canopy become largely invisible again until leaf fall, many months away. Something lost, something gained. Isn't that always the way? Maybe not always. Maybe just when we're lucky.
Now how are things in your neck of the woods?
~~~~~
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Hazel Catkin
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
then and now
That was 10 days ago. It was the third snowfall in two weeks.
This is now:
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
with feathers
My birdfeeders have never been busier than in recent months. I haven't totted up how many pounds of feed have been purchased, but I consider the cost to be my Entertainment Budget. And well spent.
This little nuthatch was perfectly still for about two minutes.
Saturday, April 5, 2025
happy new year
I've never felt the year turn on January 1st; always in the Autumn. Possibly a remnant of my way-way-back Celtic ancestry.
But last year, April 4th was such a watershed moment it overshadowed the rest of 2024. And the disruption of ordinary life caught a second wave with the shoulder injury in October.
So when I woke up yesterday and thought "April 4th...that seems like a significant date..." it only took a split second to remember why.
Update: the barn has still not been brought back to original condition, but most of the parts that have been replaced are much better-built than the original. So it's a matter of taking the rough with the smooth. (Oh, a bit of humor there, since the barn is built of roughcut lumber.) The barn served most of it's purpose fairly well through the Winter. Now that it's Sort Of Spring, there is plenty of time for more work to be done on the barn before next Winter.
It's so much harder to get things built or rebuilt when I can do almost none of the work myself these days. I just have to accept that, I suppose.
That last sentence suggests that I have not accepted it, doesn't it? Oh well. Anyway.
Since the 4th of April 2024 was such a dramatic day, I've decided to look at yesterday, April 4th 2025, as a turning of the year. Why not? Happy New Year, blogpals!
I rarely make New Year's Resolutions, and don't need to do so now because since the shoulder injury on October 8th, there has been a great deal of rethinking what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, mostly in small, everyday things. And small changes have been made, so...functional resolutions, one might say.
All that's left to do now is to celebrate!
~~~~~
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
triangle
Today is the anniversary of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, which left 146 dead. Ultimately, the Triangle fire was a major catalyst for changes in US labor laws.
It's difficult to write about this, not only because it was a heart-hollowing tragedy, but because of the complexity and sheer volume of contemporary accounts. Once I started reading, it was difficult to stop.
A summary from the Cornell website, which was my starting point:
The fire at the Triangle Waist Company in New York City, which claimed the lives of 146 young immigrant workers, is one of the worst disasters since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
This incident has had great significance to this day because it highlights the inhumane working conditions to which industrial workers can be subjected. To many, its horrors epitomize the extremes of industrialism.
The tragedy still dwells in the collective memory of the nation and of the international labor movement. The victims of the tragedy are still celebrated as martyrs at the hands of industrial greed.
The anniversary of the Triangle fire is marked with events each year, and this year I signed up for a project organized by Tatter. One hundred and forty-six volunteers each embroidered the name and age of one victim on a piece of white fabric. The individual pieces were then stitched together by other volunteers at Tatter, to be displayed as a banner during the annual commemorative event at the site of the fire.
As suggested by the Tatter organizers, I tried to learn a bit about Yetta Rosenbaum to personalize her embroidered panel. She had been in the US for 3 years and 9 months, so I began with her hometown (in current-day Ukraine) and soon got lost in its very complex history. Moving forward, I found maps and street photographs of the lower East Side of Manhattan in the late 19th and very early 20th centuries, and marked the routes Yetta could have taken to the factory. Did she take a streetcar? Or if the weather was nice, or she needed to economize, did she walk? Did she ever catch a glimpse of the Washington Arch before entering the factory? Was she excited when a movie theatre opened in 1910, right down the street from her home at 308 East Houston?
It's a fine line between feeling sympathy for a person one has never known, and feeling empathy for an imagined version of a person one can never know.
Many bits of documentation I found about Yetta Rosenbaum - even her age (21 or 22) and the spelling of her name - were contradicted by another account. Which is why I'm not including all those bits which would certainly add dimension but possibly with false colors. Does it matter? I'm not a 1911 reporter, repeating gruesome details and selling newspapers. Nor am I participating in the subsequent legal proceedings, presenting information with the sole intent to blame or exonerate. But when I found myself imagining the walk to the factory, I felt I was crossing a line into creating a fictional person, not learning more about the real woman who travelled to America and worked long hours at a factory and who died, tragically and horribly, at a very young age.
In fact, I cannot know much about that real woman.
But at least I can say her name.
~~~~~