Musings

The sound of split wood clacking as it lands on the wood pile. The sun is now much gentler than at mid summer. The warm fresh air that somehow hints that the end of its turn is nigh and cool will soon follow. The sense that flora and fauna are turning towards a quiet rest after fulfilling summer's obligations. The peace, broken only by the clacking wood pieces and their echoing back from the woods. The thought of cozy evenings inside by the fire. Today was the first day of wood stacking for the season and it feels good.

I ran across this poem recently and wanted to share it . . .

If

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

     Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

     But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

     Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

     And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

     If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

     And treat those two impostors just the same:

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

     Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

     And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

     And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

     And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

     To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

     Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

     Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

     If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

     With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

     And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

Many years ago, a dear friend back in Greenpoint, Brooklyn gave me the following typed out on a piece of hand crafted paper for my birthday. I think it, too, is worth sharing . . .

from Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino

The inferno of the living is not something

that will be; it is what is already here,

the inferno where we live every day,

that we form by being together.

There are two ways to escape suffering it.

The first is easy for many:

accept the inferno and become such a part

of it that you can no longer see it.

The second is risky and demands constant

vigilance and apprehension:

seek and learn to recognize who and what,

in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno,

then make them endure, give them space.

Borders

 

The borders for the quilt are being appliqued but I've run out of perle cotton for the stems. So even though two borders are appliqued, one is missing half it's stems. I'll continuing to applique while waiting for new perle cotton.

The finish line is coming into view now. I still have not sewn any blocks together but there's plenty of time.

This month has flown by!

Zucchini and cucumbers and tomatoes are coming out of the garden now and it all tastes so fresh and real. Luckily, there's a farm in Rumney, only 15-20 minutes down the road, that sells home grown produce; a great place to pick up fresh eggplant, peppers, corn, etc., etc. that I don't grow in my own garden.

The car needed to have a new rear brake line built and installed last week. Ugh. Would that cars were unnecessary!

Next week I'll start stacking wood to get ready for a new delivery in October.

I had to do some work in my piano a few weeks ago. I spoke to my technician about it before hand to make sure it was something I could manage on my own. The felt rings (called punchings) under the keys, in the center of each key where it pivots, were quite deteriorated and needed replacing. Along with the felt punchings are paper rings (called paper punchings!) under each felt that adjusts the height of the key. There can be none to many paper punchings under each key, depending on how much it needs to be lifted. The punchings come in various thicknesses from .003" to quite thick.

If the papers had had to be replaced the job would have entailed a lot of work to level all the keys, but I only replaced the felts and left the existing papers in place. Hence I ended up with just one key that needs height adjustment, by a minute amount. (I haven't done it yet since it's in a very high register and isn't off by much.) That happened because I found 2 stray papers and didn't know where they belonged.

I am glad to have had this experience. It felt empowering and I learned quite a lot about my piano.

Work on the melodeon proceeds but now waits until I can obtain some leather to replace the flaps that cover the holes between the bellows and exhaust bellows, both inside and outside. The one on the inside is quite deteriorated and not keeping a good vacuum. The one on the outside has mouse damage. Otherwise, the reed chambers have been cleaned out and they all work. It turns out one of the reeds is missing! It's a C, in the higher registers, so hopefully it won't interfere with too much music making. I'll have to improvise when that key is needed. I don't know if I'll ever be able to find a replacement for it.

I decided to start work on a needlepoint kit that I purchased at the thrift shop a few years ago. It is very unlikely I'll finish it this year, but it's fun to work on holiday crafts leading up to Christmas, and I'll be able to enjoy the finished work next year (hopefully!).

I feel like I want to be knitting something. I'll have to look at my list of favorite patterns to see what I might be able to cast on.

Quilt progress

 

Cows at the top of the hill

This here:

...is the last block of the quilt! I'm down to one leaf left. I can hardly believe it. How exciting.

Tomorrow I will start on the four borders. In fact, I've already started: I need 84 leaves for the borders so I spent some time this evening tracing them out on freezer paper. Cutting starts tomorrow.

I will also start sewing the blocks together, probably. I'm pretty much set on sewing them with the Wheeler & Wilson No, 8 from the 1870s. It's a joy.

All of a sudden, the summer seems to be speeding ahead of me. Almost half way through August? I need to turn my attention to the wood pile pretty soon. There's 2 cord delivered last year that needs stacking in the wood "shed" before a new delivery arrives in October. I don't want to leave it till the last minute. Why am I suddenly having images of wintery weather and cozy fires? Stop! It's only August, there's still "Indian Summer" to come, and autumn colors, and cider, and apple pies! I need to get a grip. It just feels like there's so much still to be done this summer.

Somebody (I suspect the ones with the bushy tails who come to feast on the bird food: 'fruit and nut') decided to eat the green tomatoes off the 6 vines I had in planters on the deck. Cheeky thing(s). Luckily, I have 9 plants in the garden and I don't think they'll touch those, they're removed from the bird feeders.

A melodeon

Cielo and I have regrouped and settled after our stressful adventure last month. It's almost hard to imagine it really happened, but happen it did!

The height of summer continues. The Shasta's, Monarda's, and Hosta's have joined the chorus of light.

... and there have been a good number of visitors this year which makes me happy.

I made a new purchase last week.

This melodeon was built by Mason and Hamlin, a Massachusetts company that still exists and makes pianos today; a friend of mine owns one of their grands.

I came across it at a local consignment shop. A brief inspection left me with enough doubt to leave it at the shop while I had a weekend ponder; I was not ready to pay the asking price. Mouse activity within the instrument was apparent; sawdust and a chewed section of a swell flap were visible. After going back and forth in my mind, I decided to make an offer in consideration of it's condition. So on Tuesday last I went back to the store and presented my offer. It was accepted. Yay!

The instrument is marked number 753, which places it's year of manufacture in 1857. That's almost 100 years before my birth year of 1956.

There is a small plaque inside, placed there by a couple who restored it in 1978. (Coincidentally the year I moved to NYC.)

There are also 2 sets of handwriting. One message indicates it was repaired by [someone whose name I cannot make out] in March of 1873 (March again!). The other message, in quite beautiful script, is very difficult to decipher, it's quite worn. "4th" is clear, "93" is also legible, there is a year (possibly), 1833 or 1855. 1833 would pose quite a mystery because Mason & Hamlin didn't exist yet. The company was founded in 1854. I will continue to study this writing to see if I can figure out exactly what it says.

I have wasted no time tackling the restoration as I would like to have it working by Christmas. Removing the music stand, key rail, and keys illuminates most of the work to be done. There are mouse chewings floating around clogging up the reeds; some reeds do sound, but some do not. They will all need to be pulled and the chaff blown away allowing them to vibrate freely again. I will lay a new piece of felt (or velvet, seeing that's what was used at the time) for the reed bed.

I will also need to remove the keybed from the bellows to access the palettes underneath as a few of them have dislodged. I don't think I will need to rebuild the bellows just now, they seem to be doing quite well.

I consider it a good omen that the current issue of the Reed Organ Society Quarterly which I received in the mail this week is dedicated to Mason & Hamlin! Nice coincidence.

Cielo

 Cielo (meaning 'sky' in Italian) shortly after he was given to me about 9 years ago. His previous owner was Italian. He was hand raised and very human friendly. We've shared hours and hours of time together. So very sweet:

On Monday, the situation arose where Cielo was out of doors in a non controlled scenario. It was my worst nightmare come true.

I had gone downstairs to put laundry in the washing machine. Cielo was on my shoulder and we set to the task together as we have done many times before.

My basement gets very wet in the spring. In fact for the first several years here, it flooded every spring. Since I had the sump pump installed, it doesn't flood but it still becomes quite damp, so in the late spring/early summer months I leave the far door open for air circulation. Normally, at this time of year, it would have dried out already, but at some point over the past few months a slow leak developed in one of the shut off valves, perpetuating a damp climate.

I traced that valve to the line which supplies water to the outside spigot. Seeing how I couldn't focus on the problem right away, I looked to see if there was another shutoff upstream that I could turn off to stop the leaking. There was, and after I had loaded the washing machine, I tried to turn the valve shut but it was stiff and hard to turn. It was higher than my shoulders and I couldn't get good leverage on it so I decided to pull up a chair that was nearby. As it's been so damp down there, the chair had weakened and it buckled when I stood up on it. Buckled in half right down the middle of the seat. I couldn't catch myself and tumbled backward and in the commotion Cielo got spooked and flew off my shoulder. That wasn't surprising. I expected to find him on one of the shelves, but I couldn't find him. I looked several times, slowly realizing the worst of my fears: that in his state of panic he'd done what birds do: fly towards the brightest light. I've witnessed this phenomenon many times upstairs when a bird that is unfamiliar with the living room, flies out of the bird room and doesn't know how to get back. They always fly towards the brightest window.

At one point I noticed that the cellar door from upstairs was still open and the stairwell was quite bright so I hoped against odds that maybe he'd flown upstairs. But he wasn't there. Disbelief was settling in. He couldn't have flown out. Please let that be the case.

There were moments of desperation as I imagined him outside, and being disoriented, flying and flying further away. I could barely let myself think of it. Philosophical thoughts raced through my mind.

After twenty minutes I heard him call and saw him fly: from the backyard up and around the house. I ran to the front yard and heard him in the woods across the lawn. I called and called, and continued calling hoping to get the message to him that he was in the right neighborhood. Then I didn't hear him any more. Then I did, but it sounded like he was in the woods above the house. When I heard him again, it sounded like the woods across the lawn. Back and forth it seemed. Acoustics were playing a game and I found it very stressful. His calls finally did settle and seemed to emanate from the woods across the lawn. By now, almost an hour had gone by since the calamity.

Eventually, I saw him in flight again and was able to keep my eyes on him as he alit in a tree directly on the edge of the lawn. A very tall tree, at least 75 feet tall, and he was way up in those unreachable heights. But he was in sight and as long as he was in sight I had hope, and it steadied my nerves. I could see him, and he could see me. I continued to call and call, using tones of voice that I use everyday in hope that he'd recognize one of those lilts of voice and respond by flying down. This was the scene for at least another hour. Some strong breezes would come along and he'd sway back and forth on those thinner branches at elevation. I kept talking to him, not wanting him to get spooked by the wind. Finally, he flew off. I'm pretty sure he flew in a downward direction, hesitatingly, but 'corrected' his flight upwards. He landed on the apex of the roof of the house. He could hear my other birds through one open window of the bird room and that window was on the other side of the house, so I ran up to the back field.

Another hour passed with him calling and responding to the birds in the bird room and I calling and calling. I'm pretty sure he didn't know that the way to get to the bird room was to come down. He was running on instinct since getting spooked. I kept calling. Eventually, I decided to go indoors to open the window on the other side of the bird room to see if that would help. Moving myself again to that side of the house, I continued to try to get him to respond to some familiar tones of voice. But he stayed near the peak or just below the chimney. I was ready and willing to spend the entire day out there, and night if need be.

In falling from the chair, I had scraped my right calf quite badly and it had been bleeding and I finally decided I should steal a few minutes to go in to clean it and spray it with Bactine. I didn't want to. I didn't want to lose sight of him. I feared he might fly off while I was in the house and I'd never see him again. No, I couldn't think of that. I rushed a quick clean of the wound and when I went back outside he was still there. A moment of thankfulness.

After a considerable time I figured he might be getting hungry so I quickly went in and got a small bowl of seed. I went out on the deck where I'd be closer to him--though far from reach--held the seed above my head and shook the bowl. He immediately looked down and.... oh, can it be?... he started inching his way down the roof. There was a tense, deflating moment when he stopped and started climbing back up, but it was brief and he turned to continue making his way down. He finally made it to the eaves, so close... yet so far... but a moment later he flew over and landed on my head.

I wanted to immediately raise my hand to grab him--instinct--but reason prevailed (a sudden movement of grasping from me could well have spooked him again) and I simply, calmly,  without faltering, moved to the door, opened it and stepped inside. Then I raised my hand and he stepped on my finger. I brought him down and kissed him. Blessed be. Emotional moments.

The far cellar door will never, ever be open again if Cielo accompanies me to do the laundry. It's not that he'd fly off my shoulder for the outdoors--he's accompanied me many times when that door was open--it's the unforeseeable possibility of something spooking him and instincts taking over. Dearest, dearest Cielo.

Daylily Season and Recipes

 The Daylily season is upon us. They provide lots of bang for the buck and are quite dependable up here. I have heard that in some mid-Atlantic states they are considered invasive! Count our lucky stars that they are well behaved stalwarts up here.

There were several lilies on this property when I moved in. Some of them are scented and produce the most heady and chic parfum for the yard. It smells like a high-end counter at some posh department store when I stroll down the alley towards the car in the early evening, when the scent is most pronounced.

I have also planted several hybrids since moving here. A good handful of them are my own creation, so to speak, in a vicarious way. I hand pollinated a plant several years ago and several offspring was the result.

The old Clematis has also blossomed in the past week and the Hollyhocks have started their show as well.

I'm trying to decide whether I should enclose the above area with a picket fence to make it look really cottage-y. I'm rather fond of the idea; it would surround the beds which contain vegetables in addition to some perennial flowers. The only hurdle I have to clear in my mind is whether or not it would chop up the space too much. I'm trying to visualize.

I binged watched this video the other night and it was, despite the difficult subject, very inspiring. Well worth the watch. I don't want to be pessimistic, but it can't hurt to have some fore sight if the world suddenly decides to turn upside down. Everything seems so unstable at the moment. You'll have to click where it says, "Watch on Youtube" because the owner of the video has not allowed remote viewing. The video is "The Wartime Kitchen and Garden"; really interesting and honestly, quite inspiring.

This Sangria recipe is quite good. Worth keeping around...

1/2 bottle of red wine (I use Cabernet Sauvignon)

1/2 cup sugar (next time I will reduce this to 1/3 cup and see how that is)

1/2 cup brandy

1 lemon, sliced

1 orange, sliced

Club soda

I make it by mixing everything together except the club soda and leaving it in the fridge. When I want a glass, I fill my glass half full with the wine then top it off to full with Club soda, a 50/50 ratio, but of course, you can adjust the proportions to suit your taste.

I made Grilled Polynesian Shrimp for dinner this evening and it was absolutely delicious. I left out the Papaya because I was cooking for myself only and didn't want to buy such a large fruit and not use it all. But I have a mind now to hold a dinner party for the neighbors and I'll make this, with the Papaya. Honestly, it was so good without it, I can hardly imagine how much better it will be when included. I found an old game of Password (based on the '60s television show) at the thrift shop a few months ago, it will be fun to host dinner and an evening of Password.

The recipe comes from a book entitled, "Cooking At The Academy" (1991) (The California Cooking Academy) which was apparently based on a PBS series. I never saw it.

Grilled Polynesian Shrimp with Fruit Kebabs

Skewers

20 large shrimp (for 4 servings)

1 medium Papaya

For the Marinade:

1 small pineapple
1 large green bell pepper
1/2 small onion, peeled
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons tomato sauce*

The book suggests serving with cellophane noodles, but I went for rice.

Peel and devein the shrimp, leaving tail (I used frozen and this was already done.)

For the marinade, cut the pineapple into chunks and put half of them in a food processor, set the other half aside. Cut the green pepper into chunks and put half of them in the food processor with the pineapple and set the other half aside. Chop the onion into chunks and add to the food processor. Process for 1 minute until coarsely chopped but not completely liquified.

Mix the vinegar, brown sugar, and tomato sauce*, add the pureed fruit/veg and blend well. Marinade the shrimp for no more than 1 hour.

Thread the shrimp on skewers. (You can also thread the shrimp before marinadeing.) Thread the reserved pineapple chunks, papaya, and pepper onto separate skewers.

Grill or broil the shrimp for 3-4 minutes. Turn the shrimp and add the fruit kebabs to the grill (or broiler) and cook everything another 3-4 minutes. (I removed the shrimp at this point but left the fruit kebabs under the broiler a while longer so they grilled well.)

* I didn't want to open a whole can of tomato sauce just for 2 tablespoons so I used ketchup. It worked.

A small bouquet of flowers from the garden last month:

Brunch on the Deck

 A quick update on the quilt progress... I have completed another block since this picture was taken and that leaves 7 blocks left to make; nearing the finish line. But then there are four borders to applique. These blocks are trimmed but not sewn together yet. (click to enlarge) Quite a riot of color, but that's what I like.

I hosted brunch on the deck for my neighbors on the 4th of July. It was a fun prep and gave me an opportunity to show off my Staffordshire "Liberty Blue" stoneware which was produced for the 1976 US Bicentennial. I hadn't used it in a while and it was a treat to have it out. It's very pretty. I'll be making it my everyday china again, at least for a while. Also taken out of the cupboard was my set of sterling and I realized, now that I'm approaching 68, that I should use it... every day. Because otherwise, when?

I was all set to take some pictures of the tablescape but wouldn't you know the battery on my camera was dead. So I re-created a setting on the dining table just now so I could take a picture. These are the pieces I used, opting to use the mugs instead of cups. The silver is Chippendale by Towle, except for the coffee spoon, which is Mappin & Webb. I made the placemats and napkins several years ago on my 1880s sewing machine.

It was a success! Everything was well liked and one neighbor even said it was the best quiche she's ever had! It wasn't quiche but that doesn't matter, it was very similar. I made a casserole from a recipe I derived from a handful of recipes I'd read online. It really was quite good if I do say so myself. Meat was separate, sausages and bacon. Sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. Coffee, juice, fruit, croissants, pastry, and a fabulous coffee cake which also got raves. Recipes follow.

Breakfast egg and cheese casserole

6 to 8 slices of white bread cut into .5" cubes
1 cup milk
1 cup cream
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
1 cup monterey jack  cheese, shedded
.5 tsp dry mustard powder
.5 tsp worcestershire sauce
.5 tsp onion powder
dried oregano
12 eggs

Put bread cubes into a 9"x13" oven proof casserole
Spring oregano over the bread (to taste)
Sprinkle both cheeses over the bread
Beat the eggs and add the milk, cream, mustard, worcestershire sauce, and onion powder to the eggs
Pour the egg mixture over the bread and cheese
Cover and refrigerate over night (or bake right away)
To bake, preheat oven to 350F and bake 50 minutes to an hour

This fabulous coffee cake is a keeper. Really good!

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

I made it the night before and put it under a cake dome when it was cool. It has retained it moist texture very well. Not too sweet, nice crumb. Yum!