From the new camera

from last night, a very suspicious 8 point buck has just discovered a strange critter in his woods

Whether its a large deer or a small cat, the body language apparently is remarkably similar. 

August twins

How they survive the winter is beyond me, they may get special attention from the rest of the herd, as to warmth and protection,  and they're still light enough on their feet to not sink in the way a heavier adult would, on crusted snow.    Pretty things, though, arent they. I couldnt get a shot of the two together,  sadly.  They are bigger than they look;  they've lost that Bambi cute part, and are now more like adolescent kids with a grown spurt.  =)

Head Shakers (Thursday13)

1. Clothesline is now being packaged and sold
in kit form, with a few clothespins, a small
length of clothesline, and (swallowing bravely)
instructions. I believe it also touts the benefits
of hanging your clothes out in the fresh air
but says nothing about 'restrictions in some areas
may apply".

2. In our now defunct old style hardware store they
were selling lamp oil in various 'weights', some in
designer packages with pretty colors and scents
to mask but not really hide the scent of kerosene...
I watched as a very nicely dressed lady debated
the benefits of each, and then chose the micro-
processed variety which clearly stated that it should
not be used in ceramic lamps, as it could bleed
through the pottery.  "It's safer", she said, firmly,
"than kerosene.  Less flammable."

3. City street detours that must have been  designed by
werewolves and malcontents--I was in one of these
 Moebius strip detours a few weeks ago,  and realized
the Detour sign was at the far end of a one way street
and the street itself was closed to traffic...

4. Two older people were in the dairy section of
the supermarket, debating the wisdom of buying yogurt
that was on the last "sell by' day.  "We'll never be
able to eat all that yogurt by tomorrow" the wife said,
the husband agreed, and they put it back on the shelf.

5. People in other,  more geographically organized states
who give bizarre directions to lost drivers: 'well you go
north for ten blocks and thenturn east at the first light
after that, and then south. You can't miss it."   Watch me.
First question, 'which way is north?"

6. You ask directions to a particular highway/street/etc. and
the clerk says, "see where that red truck is turning up there?
You turn there and you'll be all set."  yep.

7. On back roads with not a lot of wiggle room, you expect
the road crews to start (and most of them do) around 8 or 9
in the morning, after the school buses and commuters
have had their turn.  Now and then an over eager roadcrew
already has their gear firmly planted in the center of the
road by 7 AM, and its obvious they have been there since
dawn.  Why?

8. If you buy a loaf of fresh bread in the supermarket
and eat only half the loaf on that day, do you finish off
the loaf the next day, or do you toss it and buy another?
Isn't it now day-old bread?

9. One-a-Day multivitamins now come in Men's and Women's
bottles, the women's vitamins in pink and the men's in a
manly blue.  I thought there might be a difference in what's
in 'em, but the labels are identical.

10. People who think nothing about driving past parked cars
on a crowded city street,  but a car parked well off the highway,
clearly unoccupied,  causes people to shy like nervous horses,
pulling way out to drive around the vehicle, often  scaring
the bejebus out of oncoming traffic...

11. I can never decide if  "Road Work 1 Mile" means one mile ahead
or one miles' worth of it.

12. "Closed to through traffic" seems plain enough,  but don't you
wonder how many people pretend they're really just going down the
street, because this is where I LIVE, mister... and sneak out the
other end.

13. You are hopelessly lost. You aren't even sure what town you're in
at this stage, so  you stop at a convenience store.  "What town am I in?"
you ask, opening your map so you can backtrack....  There's a pause.
The girl behind the counter says,  "I don't know." She calls over to another
clerk and says, "What town are we in?" and neither of them has the
faintest idea.

Thursday Thirteen

Look what I found in Google Images

If you type in your blog's name, (along with maybe an image such as "ducks" or some other photo or image you have on the blog),  into google Images  I think youll see every image or graphic you've ever posted on that site (along with a few strays from other similar venues)

I tried this with Field and Fen cooking, and wow what a lot of food, lol.  Annnnd with "forest trees" and there were all my forest photos.

Liz, do NOT try this with just the name "boud' in the subject line. Trust me.

Full credit is given, but its still a bit of a jolt to see them elsewhere than where you expect them to be. The mind races...

The disappearing wood in New Hampshire (6WS)

Not what you might think, however.

One of the most appalling things I can think of to happen to a tree (I think some part of me is part Druid...) is the way they harvest them today, and demolish trees into wood chips, from whole trees to finished product in a very short time.  The trees are sucked out of the ground by huge huge machines,  roots and all, and chipped into, er, chips.  This is where your pellet stoves come in.

We have two power companies in NH, one is the one we use, New Hampshire Electric Coop. Nice folks. really into recycling, reducing costs, waste, and such.  The other company is Public Service. They announced last fall or last winter that they were converting their coal fired plants to wood pellets, in an effort to conserve our non renewable resources.  Sounds pretty good doesn't it.

All them trees, yessah. Chip, chip, chip.

Now.  People have been told for years that burning wood is almost a mortal sin, as it adds pollutants to the air. (apparently oil and gas don't, isn't that good to know) and we could be shut down at anytime by the EPA, there is even a LAW against owning or using a non-approved woodstove.  And along comes Public Service to do the very thing we are told we shouldn't be doing and isn't it SWELL?

The drawback to this dance is that most of the loggers are now heading to PSNH with their truck loads, since apparently the money is much better and no one has to spend their days bucking this stuff up,  splitting it, dealing with customers, trucks, splinters, mashed fingers, and weather.  So they take their logs to a wood chipping facility instead and then race back home for more.  It hurts the people who sell wood to home owners and it hurts the homeowners like us who depend totally on wood for fuel.  By the first of July we were scrambling to find enough individuals who have a  cord here and a cord there, to spare.

We have also been told (and it does almost make sense) that selling seasoned wood is cheaper than selling green, simply because it can be stockpiled  and sold year-round, and they can charge more for seasoned.  You takes what you can get, I guess.

But what bothers me is all the wood that will be cut down, now, "in the name of' Public Service of New Hampshire".  Once that's gone (and the amount of wood chips per hour that get used for this sort of thing is appalling) what will they use?  I don't quite know how the system works on a large scale, but I do know that anyone who uses wood chips or pellets in their pellet stove has to rely on electricity to run it.  And if PSNH is using electricity to run their giant Pellet Stove in the Sky, well...

porcupines from the wildlife camera

Now we're havin' FUN--the baby must have told his family, and they decided to see what was going on...he's on the right in both of these.  Got 27 pictures last night on the game camera, everyone of them with at least two porcupines in it, chowing down...

If you've never seen what a wildlife camera does, it operates with infrared light, which accounts for the "bug eyed monster" syndrome in these.  It also allows easier spotting of dark animals, you just look for the little white dot

Book titles

"Paws"   the real story of what happens Out There in the dark

"Lord of the Rungs"  Ladder dancers. Illustrated. 

"Stranger in a Strange Band"

"Lord of the Fries"  never touch my fryolater

"Withering Heights"  One woman's struggle with Osteoporosis 

"Thirty Nine Stops"    A bus driver's life  "as told to..."

"Lady Chatterley's Loser"

"A Rivet Runs Through It"  Shipbuilding , the Basics

"20,000 Legumes Under the Sea"  Hydroponics at Work For You

"The Tide Machine" one setting, one detergent 

"The Quiche and the Dead"-- The Cook's Confession

"A Brief History of Lime" --there's  just so much one can say about lime...

"Oliver Twit"


Thursday Thirteen

Baby Porcupine and Pear Branch--(still life with fruit)

We have an old pear tree in the yard, and due to this year's bumper crop of fruit one or two branches just peeled off the tree.  Last night this little guy, no bigger than a  softball,  showed up for his own private feast.   When they eat fruit, they spit out the icky skin, and rotate the piece of fruit in their paws the way we do corn on the cob.  And they eat all of it. Not just bits.  In the bottom picture he  has finally found the branch, and a pear nearly the size of his head.  Happy porcupine. 

What are you reading these days

Started up reading after I quit the RailNation game, and haven't let down yet. Plowed my way through Lee Child (who seems to be a successor to Robert Parker) , several of John Grisham's huge and extremely gory novels (guttural screams in the night seem to be a favorite of his)  and Neil Gaiman first novel, "Neverwhere" which is the most satisfying of his books that I've read so far, since
it trusts the reader to understand where he is, if not where the book is heading, and the ending works. I found his other books sort of left you hanging three feet off the ground at the end, with nowhere soft to land.  This is the first I've ventured to take on in a long time.

And never one for much biography,  I finally finished John Matteson's "Eden's Outcasts", which is basically the life stories of Louisa May Alcott and her father Bronson.  Not a book to sail through on a slow Sunday afternoon, and it took me over three weeks to finally sit down and finish it.  Funny, and sad, and extremely well put together, two complicated people in a complicated family.   If you like biography this is the one to dig into.

I find when I revisit books (especially the series books like LOTR and the Discworld series) they are slightly different each time I read them.  LOTR I first read when it first came to this country in the 1960s.  I've read it several times since, and this last time, after a hiatus of maybe 20 years, picked it up last summer, read all four books in the trilogy, without stopping.   The books haven't changed, but I have, so what I bring to them and what I take from them are quite different now.

Same for the DiscWorld series. I read that as an ongoing project for the better part of the year, and each time I find new things to wonder at, and be amused or moved by.

Internationale

English muffin
French toast
Dutch courage
Irish stew
Chinese Pie
Scotch Whiskey
English Ivy
Welsh Rabbit
Tasmanian Devil
Hungarian Goulash
Brazil nut
California raisin
Canadian bacon


Thursday Thirteen

Winter Poem for A Summer Saturday (6WS)

Untitled

Having fallen off the edge
of winter I have become
the unraveled rim of a basket,
the moonstone missing
from a favored ring.

 
The earth fills up with snow,
edge to edge, level as a knife
across a cup of flour,
featureless as death.

There is no here, no there,
no past beyond my own construction.
Hindsight is a greedy crow
and every time it flaps its wings
I remember what I've missed

 
Small pieces sliding into place
make sense at last, connected
like dried leaves trapped
in a thawing stream
as silent as the possibility
of what comes next

s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g a bit for this one

bluebird

red-headed woodpecker

yellow goldfinch

scarlet tanager

black capped chickadee

white dove

grey goose

purple finch

lemon meringue pie

pink flamingo

black and white warbler

indigo bunting

ruby throated hummingbird

Thursday Thirteen

Right time, right place, no regrets (6WS)

My mother was a city woman, and the city held no terrors for her:  (this was also the 1950s, a very different animal)  when we moved there the year I was 9, I was stunned to realize that I was given almost complete physical freedom without the annoying mummy-daddy thing going on.

In the country,  where I started out, I was kept on a really tight lead:  my folks bought into the idea of lecherous truckers with candy and cute little girls at risk--it was drummed into me that you never never talked to strangers.   If I went anywhere, it was in the company of an adult.

The transition for a soon to be 9 year old girl was incredible. I must admit, I spent half my time lost in a school that had 1000 kids (four times as many kids as the pop. of the town I came from) or trying to find the Principal's office, or  learning city rules vs. country rules, but still...

In the city I acquired two bands of girlfriends, and I became a marauding, wide ranging kid, all over the streets, I had shortcuts to the library, the church, the school...god help people's lawns, lol--on Saturday I would disappear after breakfast and not surface until nearly supper time, just in time for Roy Rogers.  Never once did my mother quiz me (and a good thing too) about my day, she seemed blithely unconcerned.  Not speak to strangers?  my GFs and I spent all one summer making and selling potholders, door to door, 2 for a quarter.  We cleaned up.  If we'd had baby sisters or brothers we'd have peddled them too.

That was where I learned to ride a bike, and that, surprisingly, was limited to our parking lot (we lived in an apartment) and never on the street.

When we returned to NH the clamp came down again, but now I could ride the bike anywhere I wanted, even to school, 8 miles away.  Go figure.

I never had another bike and by the time I was 15 or 16 it was just too much effort to haul me and the bike up our steep hills so I became a walker. But the difference in attitude was stunning.

Those two years in the city were, as a kid, two of the happiest and scariest  years of my growing up. I wept when we moved back here...=)  sometimes I wonder what might have happened if we had stayed:  obviously there's no way of knowing,  or even guessing, but I would not be the me I am now. That much is clear.  What is also clear,  I have no regrets.  Right time, right place.  No regrets