in which our plucky heroine rather flails a bit...
This month has been rather hard going, with worry internal, external, and global, and I've not been anywhere near as "productive" as I prefer to be, compared even to September. I've been starting projects and not finishing them, even the one or two actual work projects are all in pieces still. Maybe November will turn the tide. At least I have plenty of ideas for things to do. It is time, for example, to start creating drawings for a 2022 calendar, and other sorts of scribal art.
I'm also really finding great pleasure is mulling over dollhouse options, for later this winter when I start building the wooden cottage. I am currently thinking of a sort of Tudor/Craftsman combination, with deep eaves, and decorative rafter tails, roof beams, a stone fireplace and
a decorative printed frieze all along the upper edge of the main room walls.
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beauty in the time of isolation:
The small strawberry plant did well in the hanging planter. Squirrel depredations were thwarted, there were a few sweet berries, as well as many new runners and baby plants. Now winter is on the way; leaving the plant hanging on the porch seems less than ideal in wind and stormy weather, and freezing ice. Somewhere in the yard, in a planter, and with some suitable encagement to keep the bushy-tail tree-rats at bay, and replanted next spring, with fresh soil and plenty of compost.
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It will be good to see friends this weekend, to (fingers crossed, hopefully) get the new stove functional, to have some just for visiting and chatting in person time, albeit outside in the rainy front porch. Maybe we can sit indoors? If I open the windows wide? We are all vaccinated, but run in different circles. I wish I felt confident as to what is the most appropriate way to act anymore. I feel like any contact with other people is a huge risk, and am permanently apprehensive about what formerly and still is a true necessity of life. Zoom meeting is not at all the same, but levels of community transmission are still very high, all over Oregon.
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This evening, after watching
a video about how to know when they are ripe, (they more easily come away from the branch), I went and picked most of the quinces from the tree. Some are beginning to be fragrant, some others had obviously been bitten into by varmints of some kind, and need cut up and processed before they get moldy. I tried
the technique suggested here, with one of them, and indeed it made the fruit easier to peel, though only a bit easier to cut up. Baked a second time in the lil convection oven, a mixture of chunks of quince and chunks of apple made a great dessert. I added a dab of butter and brown sugar at the end. It'd be even better as a crisp, with some oats and pecans as well.
Here's a bit of fruit harvest statistics: rather a bit more than 10# of quinces from the young quinceling (planted in 2018), at least 50#+ from the persimmon tree in the parking strip, and an unknown amount of the plums from the plum thicket. Plus enough windfall apples to make 22 half pint jars of applesauce. Not bad at all
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~ creativity challenge ~
This miniature cat head candy bucket was an experiment in hollow form spun cotton. Difficult, but doable. The next experiment is a jack-o-lantern, which will need painted, and a sort of tabletop making use of a flickery LED tea light...
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Still hanging with no return call from my primary care doc about the various test results. Apparently the bones of my wrist are all as they should be. I could have told them that without the x-rays, since that is not where the problem is! Sometimes the flow charts are useful, and sometimes they just add layers of time and expense between what is wrong, and seeing someone with information about what to do about whatever is wrong. The lump on the back of my hand continues to enlarge.
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October SMART goals (x=extra)
| # | THINGS MADE | THINGS FIXED | THINGS GONE |
| 1 | tie-dye top
| sample leaf and stem
| yard waste bin
|
| 2 | knitted elephant
| pruned Japanese maple
| recycle bin
|
| 3 | - | assemble OMAR
| recycle bin
|
| 4 | - | repaired door closer
| yard waste bin
|
| 5 | - | picked quinces
| - |
| 6 | x | x
| x |
| 7 | x | x | x |
| 8 | x | x | x |
| 9 | x | x | x |
| 10 | x | x | x |
| 11 | x | x | x |
| 12 | x | x | x |
| 13 | x | x | x |
| 14 | x | x | x |
| 15 | x | x | x |
today's gratitude - another pleasant surprise today, when a small package of Goya "alphabet noodles" showed up on my doorstep, a gift from my sister. Now I can make the Trick Or Treat banner for my tiny friends!
p.s. Sister Gigi told me that she was able to find some canning jar lids in the grocery store where she was shopping, so more will be coming my way! And my friend Tamra found some as well... dare we hope that the strange almost two year shortage could be ending?
