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Autumn + Thanksgiving = Perfect excuse to be in the kitchen. Thanksgiving dinner was a braised turkey; Stu found the recipe in the NY Times and asked me to make it. It was quite delicious and, since it uses parts instead of the whole bird, can be cooked more often than "feast" days. After dinner, I made a pecan pie with rum in a spelt crust devised from pieces of two or three recipes. Friday morning three varieties of heirloom apples went into an apple crisp. And today the leftover turkey became a turkey hash to accompany fresh eggs over easy.
More prosaic but still very tasty treats await the coming week as there are mustard greens and string beans in the produce bin and some cabbage and (yet more) broccoli rabe out in the garden, waiting to mingle with barley or brown rice for some slow simmering.....
We've been taking walks through the long holiday weekend, as the days start in the chilly low 40s but warm up to a very sunny clear 60. Our goal is to walk all of Ukiah. This may take a while, as my knee only likes about 1 - 1.5 miles at a time. This is another advantage to having moved to a small town. Before we left San Francisco we had discussed essaying this project there.Here it is actually something I can put my head around as doable. Our walking so far has focused on the scenic, older northwest side of town, and we keep finding neat little things. Today it was an unmarked public greenspace that starts in the middle of a block as a narrow path running alongside Gibson Creek and ends up coming out a long block away as a tiny park.
This is a detail of my current sewing project, a quilt for the guest room. Pictured is most of a patchwork, 12 squares x 12 squares, that is the center medallion to be set on the diagonal and surrounded by...something else. The color palette is meant to reflect autumn in Ukiah.
I am profoundly thankful for so many things
food & shelter of quality way beyond what is needed
husband, family, friends who love & accept me
a job that is meaningful & enjoyable
disabilities that remain minor
pain meds that work
the ability to do creative work
the ability to train in aikido & be part of a dojo community
the cats that share our home
the birds & lizards that visit our yard
the worms and bugs that make our compost
the hills, the trees, the sun, the fog, the rain, the stars & especially the moon --
May your Thanksgiving day and all the seasons ahead offer you much to appreciate.
There's a little notebook in which I started making notes about what vegetables were being planted, where, and when, at Stu's suggestion, in order to track what works and what doesn't and how things progress.
There's been an ongoing list in the computer of birds seen in/from the backyard, going back to 1999. This month, besides "the usual" I noted a white throated sparrow foraging with the golden crowns, the return of the chickadees, the departure of the goldfinches; last week a sharpshinned hawk leisurely flew across the yard at eye level while I was on the phone with my mom, and today a red breasted sapsucker was busy on the apple tree.
It struck me that I would like to make regular notes on the vegies, the birds, and also the front yard as plants there make it or not, and that starting it on January 1st would be a nice starting point. My thought was to do it as a word processed document, like the bird list. But today I realized it would be a very good use for this blog (um, pretty obvious, right?), so I think that's where it is headed.
These are two shots of fall color taken today while on a truck run for more fir bark. Do click to see larger versions. If I remember to carry the camera to work tomorrow and Wednesday, there will be more.
After putting in the fir bark, we went to the nursery for cheap flats of bedding annuals to fill in empty spaces: put in pansies, snapdragons and stock, plus some more small natives I'd grown from seed (Calfornia bee plant, rosy yarrow, and cow parsnip) so all of a sudden there is color in the front yard beside the one glorious California poppy that started blooming three days ago.
