surprises

 Sometimes, you get a surprise that is not quite what you were hoping for.

Last night, the First Ever Melon was hanging stoutly on it's vine.

I check it daily, every time I walk by the terrace garden.

Exciting stuff!

This morning, it was gone.

I poked around through the tall vegetation outside the fence,

where that massive thistle used to be,

and found several wilted melon leaves.

As if someone had been tearing leaves off the plant, but not eating them.

Then I poked around the garden vegetation inside the fence, and found it.

Intact!

But detached.

The size is fine for this type of melon, but is it ripe?

Or will it ripen off the vine?

I don't know how to tell whether a melon is ripe,

and judging from the behavior of melon-shoppers at the market,

neither does anyone else.

(And by the way, it took me three tries to figure out how to spell "whether,"

because usually I'm writing about the wethers, Acer and Betula.)

~~~

Speaking of the wethers - and also the weather, ha! -

a thunderstorm came up suddenly on Tuesday, and I had to hustle
 to move the wethers up from browsing the Lower West Side
to their shelter on the Upper West Side.

All the other goats were in three paddocks,
with the connecting gates open between
and four available shelters of various sizes.

By the time Acer and Bet were all snug and comfy,
munching hay and jawing about the time they Almost Got Rained On,
I was soaking wet.

I am always the wettest of the group after these operations.

In fact, sometimes I am the only one who gets wet.

Go figure.

Back in the house and dry clothing, I checked the goatcam.

And found...

to my surprise...

for the first time in the history of Cloud Harvest Cashmere...

NINE goats

QUIETLY resting

in ONE SHELTER:

I hope you aren't disoriented by overlapping, distorted, wide-angle goatcam snaps.
It's an overhead view of the 10x10' east stall in the new barn. It's square, honestly.

For a person like me,

who values a Peaceable Kingdom above many things,

a moment like this is pure magic.

I hope you enjoyed it, too!

~~~~~ 

flowers and food

Blooming!

Just one clump of flowers survived the bank-clearing operation.

I pointed out the young leaves to the man with the brushcutter, and asked him to cut around them. He nodded. Then as he got closer to them, I pointed out the leaves again. He looked at them closely. I agreed that yes, it would be very easy to confuse these plants with the wretched bittersweet growing right next to and all around it, but that it was very important to try. He did a good job, and the buds are becoming blossoms. I am so happy to see them!

And I'm not the only one.

I don't know the name of this flower, but it was growing here when I bought the place.

It has thrived and spread and made me happy every year since.

I was thrilled to see a few stems bravely poking up this Spring!

It would have been very sad if it had been completely lost to the snowplow.

Soon the survivors should be moved a bit farther from the driveway.

Maybe sometime this Autumn? 

If anyone knows what the plant is, and if digging it up is a good idea,

please speak up in the comments!

I'd appreciate it very much.

~~~

Coconut custard pie, hot from the oven...
this is what happens when I think about not eating sugar.

Earlier this evening I started writing a wandering ponder about food and health issues, and a couple of dietary programs I've been reading about. And I was hoping for your input, because I'm not sure I should (or could) do a strict elimination diet. But in the process of all that meandering, at one point I suddenly lost the entire page (hello again, new laptop!) and only later discovered that I has accidentally published it. So if anyone saw the page of fragmented goobledy-gook, I apologize for that frightening glimpse into the way my mind works. 

And now I'm starting over, with less meandering.

Briefly: I'm considering doing the "Whole30" program, which is a 30-day elimination and "whole food" diet, to see if changing the way I eat may help with some chronic pain issues. It's kind of a tough program, in the sense that I already have a simple diet, yet Whole30 eliminates a great deal of what I eat. Which I suppose is the point.

Whole30 was created by the authors of the book It Starts With Food, but there is no pressure to buy their book; the Whole30 program and online resources are free. It is set up to guide people along the 30-day process, and there is a forum where people post recipes and so on.

I can already see that following the diet would mean spending a LOT more time thinking about food, every day. Also, making at least a couple of trips to the "real" grocery store, an hour away. And getting in the kitchen and cooking daily instead of when I feel like cooking. And so on.

For the first time in my life, I can really understand the lure of healthfood/spa-type places, where people go to deliberately relinquish control of their own decisions. Because if all I had to do was wait for some lovely person to bring me platters of "compliant" food, I'd eat it and be (probably) pretty happy. Confession (although no surprise to those of you who have read some of my "recipe" posts): I am so lazy when it comes to food. I like to cook when I feel like cooking. I like to eat when I'm hungry. And I eat mostly good things, and mostly organic: vegetables, homemade kefir, juices, homegrown eggs, etc. I don't eat a lot of sweets or "junk" food...unless I start thinking about it. For example, a few weeks ago I had an encouraging conversation with some friends on ravelry who have had great success lowering their arthritis pain levels by totally eliminating sugar from their diets. And at that time I said, "I don't use much sugar, but maybe I should try eliminating it completely."

And whammo. I have been craving sweets ever since.

So...I'm a bit anxious about what might happen if I suddenly eliminate, among other things, all sugars, all shelled legumes, all grains, and - gulp - all dairy.

On the other hand, I feel like an awfully whiny and entitled wimp to even think how "hard" it would be to eat "only" the things on the very extensive and healthy-sounding list of acceptable foods.

But...one of the most rigorous eat-for-health people I know (also one of the fittest and happiest for all the years I've known her) told me she had done a strict elimination diet years ago. "It was really hard," she said. Then she frowned and shook her head. "It was really, really hard. Whew."

So...I feel that I'd be foolish not to explore this avenue, but I also feel some trepidation about it. If any of my lovely readers has experience, pro or con, with an elimination diet, I would love to hear about it!

~~~~~

fumbling friday

Well.

I've got a tiny new laptop and I'm trying to find my way through a new Operating System, a touchscreen that makes things appear and disappear when I swear I did not touch anything, and the mixed blessing of adding familiar software but not having any of my preferences (such as toolbar arrangements and fonts) come along with it. Then there's the disconcerting way my open source office software (LibreOffice, which I love) is crashing every time I open a document. Every. Time.

Well.

Look! It's the Mystery Bugs!

Also, going from a 15" to an 11" monitor has drawbacks. Some of it is a simple trade-off, such as the aggravation of miniature (and therefore unreadable) drop-down menus versus the comfort factor of a lightweight laptop.

Close-up!

I'm certainly enjoying the light weight, so maybe it's worth keeping a pair of embiggening glasses at hand, just to reduce the amount of time spent randomly selecting things from a drop-down menu I cannot read? But some issues are proving more difficult to work around. Some applications - for example, my photo-editing software - have a disorienting, wrong-end-of-the-telescope quality that may not be easily overcome. Reviewing images to transfer from my camera has become quite a challenge.

Is that a picture of Piper?

Or a piece of oak bark?

Or one of the chickens?

Oh, I think it's kale!

Oops, too late...the photograph has disappeared from the screen,

replaced by that doggone giant clock again.

And I swear, I did not touch anything!!!

It's early days, so it's reasonable to assume that many hours of poking around and modification will be necessary. But I can only do so much of that at one time before I start questioning the application, the computer, my sanity and, by the way, why haven't I heard anything from the goats in the past two hours? Even Campion the Champion is suspiciously - not to say ominously - silent. Maybe I'd better just put the tiny laptop away and stroll out to the paddocks to see what they are up to.

And then maybe Piper and I will go for a little walk in the woods.

Ahhhhhhhhhh.

~~~

 I hope you are having a lovely Friday, as practice for having a lovely weekend.

And I hope you can read this, because to me, right now, the text I'm typing looks like tiny little ants have walked through ink and are tap-dancing across my itty-bitty screen.

Happy Weekend!

~~~~~

bits and pieces

Remember #DrawingAugust?

I'm sorry to say I haven't managed a daily sketch.

But I've drawn or painted something most days,

and I've been having fun!

Would you like to see one?

~~~

Now, in (less fun) tech news:

My laptop has been abruptly folding its tent on a daily basis for some weeks now. Maybe even months; I'm in a Timewarp of Denial about it because I did not expect to replace this laptop so soon.

I haven't posted more goat videos despite the apparent appeal to my non-goatherding readers because even hinting at loading a video of any kind makes the screen go black and the hard drive produce the computer-equivalent sound of water being sucked down a drain.

So...no inspiring YouTube recipes, no late-night-can't-sleep Netflix, no delightful videos on other blogs. And it's not just videos; but apart from videos, the implosions seem random. Repair efforts have been futile. With fingers crossed, I've been recovering my most frequently accessed files (like my cashmere records, for instance) several times weekly. It's been...interesting.

Last weekend (the tax-free weekend in MA) I finally forced myself to make a decision. On Sunday night I bought a little laptop online, in part because I would be able to pick it up at the retail location the very next morning, while doing monthly errands in the same town. Huzzah!

Early the next morning, however, I got a text informing me that the laptop was, um, actually, not in stock as, erm, promised a few hours earlier. But it would be shipped to the retail location within 3 to 6 days at no additional cost!! (As if that was doing me a favor.) And could I please confirm the purchase so the shipping process could begin?

Well, disappointing, but no point in getting upset. I called the store to confirm, and asked that it be shipped directly to me. Was told, no, this was not possible, because I had asked to pick it up at the store.

Yes, I said, because I had been told I could pick it up the very next morning. If I had expected to wait for shipping, I would have had it sent to my house. Of course.

Nope.
Impossible.
Can't be done.
Even though it has not yet been scheduled to ship?
Right.

Well, that makes zero sense to me.
As usual, Dara, we are in total agreement.

A week later, the package is on a truck somewhere in Massachusetts, so that's progress. And not a moment too soon, because today my laptop is making a Constant Noise. Sounds like someone using an electric hedge trimmer some distance away. It's a bit alarming. I spent two hours this morning backing up files and images on an external hard drive.

I mention all this in case there is a Total Irretrievable Meltdown before the new laptop is here and loaded and running. (The fact that the laptop folded once while I was writing this little post seems rather ominous.) So...if I don't post here or comment on your blogs for a week, it will probably mean I am temporarily between devices and incommunicado.

Don't you hate it when that happens?

Oh well. I'll catch up!
And to close on a cheery note, here are a couple of snaps I took in the gardens this morning:

The edge of this squash blossom is  the size of a dinner plate.

No exaggeration!

I wonder if it is an indicator of the eventual size of the squash?

And the first-ever adorable melon continues to grow!

~~~~~

life in the garden

 Tomatillo flower!

 The first baby melon!

Crikey, look at the armor on that thistle!

This is the first thistle I've ever seen here,

and I've been watching it grow with a sort of horrified fascination.

It's massive now. Taller than me.

And it is beginning to go to seed because

every time I gear up to tackle removing it...

...I find a butterfly or a bee reveling in the flowers.

So I decide to wait another day or two.

If I have thousands of thistles next year,

it will be entirely My Own Fault.

Even the goats did not tackle this plant,

and who can blame them?

Yeah! Who can blame us?

~~~~~