The goats, chickens, and alpacas cleaned out the garden thoroughly (see photos from previous post),
Mike tilled in the few remaining stalks,
and we planted garlic just in time for the first snowdusting up our canyon (bulb-like as it is, you plant garlic in the fall, mulch well and it sprouts in the spring and ripens in summer).
We started using the wood stove. And bought two tons of hay. Sounds like a ridiculous amount, I know, but it ends up being maybe 40-50 bales and should last us all year. Previously we had been buying hay patchwork, either by the bale from the feed store or by the pickup load from hay farmers, but it meant that we constantly had to be on the lookout for hay -- either on craigslist direct from the source but requiring a borrowed pickup truck, or at the store, pricier but doable with a car. And then we saw an ad for someone with a huge trailer who would pick up hay for you, deliver, and stack it, minimum amount 2 tons. We figured we'd try it.
The delivery guy came up with his two daughters and a lot of hay. We were having people over that evening (I turned 34 in October and Mike turns 31 in December, so we had decided to have a joint "retirement" birthday party since our ages added up to 65), and I was making brownies. They were ready just about when the hay delivery arrived, so I pulled them out of the oven and put the pan on top of the stove to cool while Mike went outside to start helping unload. I put a big pot of water on the stove to boil, but then thought maybe I should go out instead and help a bit or at least take photos and document the process.
Although I thought twice about leaving the pot on the stove while I stepped outside, I figured I'd just go out for a few minutes and then come back in (red flag red flag, I know, but the story doesn't end too badly so no worries). Went out, took a couple pictures,
tried to help unload bales, found that at 80-100 pounds a bale I wasn't much help, and then decided instead to distract the daughters (ages 3 nd 5 maybe) so they didn't end up underneath bales or getting sent by their dad to sit in the truck and stay out of the way. I asked if they wanted to go into the goat pen and see the animals. They of course said yes, and so I told them to ask their dad if it was okay while I went in and turned off the stove.
I had been out for about 5 minutes, and when I went back in I found not a boiling pot of water, but instead an unexpected scene. Turns out I had accidentally turned on the wrong burner when I left -- not the one under the large forgiving pot of water, but instead the one under the glass pan of brownies. The electric burner had heated up and exploded the pan, sending glass shards everywhere and melting the remaining glass underneath the brownies, which had inturn lit on fire. Oops. I turned off the burner, the fire died down, and I tried to move the pan off the burner, but it was too melty. I thought about cleaning up the glass and then decided better of it, checked that all the burners were off, and left the house, closing the door behind me and hoping none of the visitors would need to come in for a bathroom.
Now, granted, it's a bad bad idea to turn on a burner and leave the house. We all know that, and yet it can be good to have a reminder every once in a while, especially a reminder that turns out so well considering. If I had to leave the burner on under the brownies, I was glad I had come back in after 5 minutes to check on the "boiling water," rather than forgetting about it or assuming that there was enough water to boil on its own. Thankfully too no one was in the house when the pan exploded (including the girls who had come in to use the bathroom 10 minutes prior), so the only casualties were the pan and the brownies. And so, when all the hay was unloaded and everyone had left, I brought Mike into the house to show off my damage... I wish I had pictures of the flaming exploded brownie pan to show you, as it was fairly spectacular... somehow, though, I didn't think to pull out the camera at the time. We aired out the house, threw out the brownies, and cleaned up glass from as far away as the bedroom. In the end it was a nice party, even without dessert.
Small town connections
I got a phone call the other day while at work. I picked up and heard "Hi Nadine, this is Rick from the car mechanic shop. Sorry to call you out of the blue, but I have a question for you." I didn't need anything fixed on my car, so this seemed strange, but... He continued, "I found a jump drive (small computer disk-like-thing) and when I plugged it into my computer, there were a bunch of photos on it. I recognized you in some of them, and your husband too, he's the one with the big beard, right? Also another of our customers at the shop. So I was wondering if the drive was yours." Funny. I hadn't lost a jump drive, but I went down to pick it up and see what I could figure out.
The drive he gave me looked familiar, so I wondered if it might be Mike's. If not, maybe I could figure out whose it was from seeing whoever else was in the photos. Rick continued "Yeah, I was trying to figure out whose this might be, and I recognized your husband first but couldn't come up with his name. But I knew you guys had a green Honda civic... and then I came up with your name and looked up the records and gave you a call. Small town, you know..." And then, "You know where I found the drive? On the floor in the hall of the Firefly building downtown" (which is on the complete opposite end of town... but happens to be the building where Mike now works) Aha, I figured, it must have fallen out of his pocket one day.
"My wife and I own a little knick-knack shop in that back of that building, so that's how I saw it," he said. I told him that Mike now worked there too. "Funny," Rick said, "I haven't seen him there." "Oh," I said, "he's only worked there about a month... and actually he shaved off all his hair and beard this summer so he's probably a little bit unrecognizable." And indeed, the jump drive was his, and had traveled all across town to be returned via a combination of car repair circumstance and small town inevitability.
Walla Walla, Washington
I remember learning about Walla Walla, Washington in elementary school social studies. Probably when learning state capitols, many of which are now rusty (in my brain). I remember Walla Walla, although it's not a capitol city, probably because the name is so funny. Later I heard about Walla Walla sweet onions, which do indeed grow near Walla Walla. Meanwhile, Mike and I have been trying to take quarterly weekend trips around the state, since there are so many neat places to visit. And this quarter was Walla walla. It's about a 3 1/2 hour drive from Wenatchee, and as it turns out, really nice. Probably one of the few places so far I've seen in Washington besides where we live that seem intriguing to me from a standpoint of living (rather than visiting, for which there are tons of great places).
Walla walla is of course, onion country, and it is also winegrape country. And wheat country.
Cute downtown...
And outside the downtown there are some residential areas before it quickly becomes country. Not the mountain foothills of Wenatchee nor the desolate scrub lands high desert areas of much of the rest of eastern Washington, but rolling hills, greener, and pretty. Quite rural, and yet with the amenities of more urban areas, primarily because of its wine-region-tourist-destination status. We went to a new-ish private winery owned by the retired brother of a friend from Wenatchee. He gave us a nice little tour.
He and his wife then sent us, of all places, to the small airport on the edge of town, where there are dozens of small former warehouse buildings that have been converted into wine "incubators," places where winemaker-wannabees can rent space at reduced (then gradually increasing) rates for 6 years to get a start in the wine business. If they do well, they move to downtown and leave the space open for a new person. If they don't, they close up shop and call it a day.
We had been wine tasting in Washington state a few times previously, but what was different here was that most people tasting were young 30-somethings, who perhaps had seen the movie Sideways and were doing the slightly-more-sophisticated-seeming version of fraternity style bar hopping. Kind of neat, but I have to say, after three wineries over the course of two days, we were pretty done.
The 400 fly
I swim a couple of times a week early in the morning at the high school pool with the "Masters" swim team, i.e. swimmers over 18. It's a pretty open and non-competitive group, except that the coach used to coach the high school swim teams, and she is (lovely and), well, very coach-like -- getting everyone in the pool, doing drills, going to meets so our team can earn more points and beat the other teams in the region... except that the swimmers are not in high school, but rather range in age from me and mike (at the young end) to 76 and 78 year old swimmers and beyond (well, not really so far beyond, but you get the point). Mike and I have gone to a few of these meets, which turn out to be pretty fun, and the last time we went ended with really good Korean food in Spokane.
Anyway, sometime I'll write more about swim meets, but instead here we'll profile an annual swimming event of the Masters team, the birthday celebration of a 76 year old Korean woman who very slowly and very methodically swims a mile of butterfly stroke every day. With a dramatic flair, she every year says, "I don't want anything for my birthday... all I want is for everyone to swim 400 yards of butterfly in my honor." And if you do it in less time than it takes her to do it, you are rewarded with chocolate (and a trophy if it's your first time, and last year a sweatshirt because it was special birthday number 75). Then we all sing happy birthday from the pool and she smiles and looks overwhelmingly pleased.
Now, for those of you who don't swim competitively, which I never had before this team, 400 butterfly is a lot. There are no 400 butterfly events in a typical meet, 200 fly is the longest event. No one swims a mile of butterfly (besides Peony), no one even swims 400 butterfly. So this is actually not just some little request. But in the end, it turns out to be quite a nice request, in that it shows you that you can do things that you usually think of as too hard, and really, they're not that hard at all. If we can be doing it at age 76, that'll be the real feat.
With that, I leave you with a couple of pictures of how our yard looked as we left home for Seattle to fly east for Thanksgiving.
Oh, and a cute picture that Mike's old coworkers staged at the get-together they organized for him when he changed jobs. Til next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment