adventures in strawberries

It has been an especially long hiatus since my last post--almost a year, in fact. And so, there's much to catch up on. In early July, my dear friend Gwen came to Seattle for a visit and we went strawberry picking. We headed up to an organic farm about 45 minutes north of Seattle prepared to pick at least 3 or 4 pounds of berries. (We wanted some for eating and some to make a little jam) There was a man at the farm who showed us where to pick the strawberries. He pointed to the field we were standing in front of and said "Over here are probably the sweetest berries...", which made us raise our eyebrows in excitement. But no sooner were those eyebrows raised then a deafening explosion nearly knocked us off our feet. The man said, "Oh, that's just the bird cannon to scare off the birds...don't worry about it, it'll go off every few minutes". Then he pointed out the field furthest from the cannon, where the biggest berries were growing and we promptly set out for that field, determined to get there before the cannon knocked us down on its next explosion. It was not the most relaxing berry picking experience, particularly because every time the cannon went off we were both close to dropping our baskets of berries on the ground.

In the end, we went back to the farm store with our berries, only to find that we had gotten carried away with our picking and, instead of picking 3 or 4 pounds of berries, we had picked 22 pounds of berries! Upon getting home, we started cooking down the berries as quickly as we could--we had a lot of jam to make! Making jam was hot, sticky, and tiring, but when we were done we had about 21 small jars of jam and a GIANT bowl of strawberries that we ate until we were all sick. Gwen, being somewhat allergic to strawberries, walked a fine line between enjoying her berries and breaking out in hives. When she left Seattle, we packed her a carry-on bag with 6 jars of jam, a jar of dried oregano from the garden, and some eggs from the chickens to take to her mother. It didn't occur to us that jam was considered a liquid and would not make it through security at the airport. And so, alas, all of Gwen's jam was seized by the airport security man who, though very apologetic, refused to take the jam and eat it himself. 6 jars of lovely jam into the garbage! Luckily, I was visiting Gwen in New York two weeks later and was able to pack bubble-wrapped jars in my suitcase which made it through the trip unscathed.

When I got back from New York, Eric and I were planning to go raspberry picking to make raspberry jam. Instead, we were at the vegetable stand near our house and raspberries were $3 for a big flat. We bought two flats and made quite a bit of raspberry jam to put up for the winter. This week, blackberries are in season and we're going out to a park nearby to pick blackberries for a third round of jam. We've got pears out on the tree in the front yard that are just about ready to pick. Last summer, we made apple-pear sauce that was hands-down the best applesauce I've ever had. It seems to be almost that time of year again. There's something really satisfying about canning food for the winter. Seeing all the jars lines up on the shelf with different colored foods inside, waiting to be eaten, ready to sustain you during the winter when fresh foods are harder to come by.

maizymaizymaizymaizy

The people who had Maizy as a puppy just mailed me a disk of photos of her childhood. She is almost unbearable cute as a puppy. Right now, she's sleeping on the living room rug and her lip is twitching with whatever dream she's having. She snores and paddles her feet occasionally as well. Today we (maizy, eden, abigail, charlotte, emily and i) spent a good part of the day outside painting the trim on the house. It's turning out very purple! The house is all green now (we've pretty much finished the body) but the purple trim is extremely time-consuming. Anyway, I think everyone had a nice time outside. Abigail found a pet water fountain on one of the neighbor's porches and was having fun sticking her paws in that and eden kept emerging from dark places with cobwebs on his whiskers, wondering where his dinner was. I'm trying out a pho recipe today. I got some bones and all the right spices and things and I've been cooking the broth all day. It smells good and every time I taste it, it has a little more flavor.

Oh! And a report on Maizy, since I think I haven't said much... She is so awesome. We take her to the dog park and all the dogs love her and want to play with her. She loves to play with Jelly Biscuit next door (an english bulldog). She watches t.v. on the couch with us and sleeps on the bed on her back with her feet sticking up in the air. Occasionally she has a run-in with the cats, but they scratch her nose and it's over pretty quickly. As for the chickens, she shows pretty much no interest in them. She's really smart and she's really lovey and I'm so glad she lives with us.

sparky returns!!

The good news is that Sparky came back recently. It has been an ongoing struggle since then to get a picture of her in her newly-returned state for the blog. Since there is no picture, you will all simply have to imagine her. To aid you in your imagining, I wanted to include the messages my pa sent to his neighborhood listserv about this whole situation. I found them to be completely delightful. First:

"Missing Cat"
My little gray cat with white paws--white also underneath on chest and belly; short hair, sleek and small, a little gray 'panther' named Sparky--went missing sometime after 11 pm this past Saturday night from the 5900 block of Hampton (betw. Highland and Euclid).
I can't believe she ran off or got lost. I imagine she was kidnapped, perhaps by some of those kids who routinely walk on Hampton from Highland toward Negley in the wee hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings, walking often noisily down the middle of the street, homeward bound from weekend revels. Sparky just had her first birthday, but she's still small enough to be taken for a kitten, awfully cute and with a fateful friendliness. So I imagine she's now being held captive somewhere between Highland and Negley on, or just north of, Hampton, hopefully by kind people, but you never know. And indeed, this is all wild speculation on my part, the only certainty being that Sparky is gone and her sister Blue and I miss her most grievously.
Any information would be gratefully appreciated.

And second:

"Sparky's surprising return"
I want to thank those of you who contacted me about my missing cat, Sparky, even though the messages mostly reported sightings of wild geese. I was actually on the verge of adopting a gray-white kitten one neighbor had been sure was mine when Sparky returned by herself, trotting into the backyard one afternoon about a week and a half after disappearing, looking very emaciated, starved for affectionand quite dirty--her white paws were a shade of gray lighter than the rest of her, and, after a few moments of joyful, hyper-ventilating affection, I realized my mouth and eyes were taking in quite a lot of grit. She got a bath she did not like at all and then some rare culinary treats prepared especially to her taste. She's been meowing more than she used to, but she's still too dumb to tell us anything about her adventure. To my relief, she's been staying quite close since her reappearance. I guess she's down at least to eight lives now.Thank you again for the messages of aid and interest, one of the nicest experiences in my 37 years in this fine neighborhood.

do you have some sunflower seeds???

That is one crazy looking chicken. She really looks totally insane. It's been raining a lot the past few days, which is quite unfortunate for them since they hate being out in the rain. They've been cooped up and might be going a bit stir crazy. They're happy for the breaks in the rain when they can dash out into the yard for a quick dirt bath and scratching in the tomato bed. The tomatoes are really ripening now and we'll soon have more than we know what to do with. We had some pickling cucumbers, but we haven't tasted them yet. Hopefully they're not bitter, because they sure are cute. I remember we made pickles at Sarah Lawrence in a big jug and they turned out surprisingly well. I do love pickles. The zucchini plant isn't so productive this summer. Last summer we had some 5 lb zucchinis!

Abigail is back at the vet today :( She's much worse than she was before. She's spent the day at the vet, having some pain meds and antibiotics. I'm actually really irritated with the vet for not catching the problem on Thursday when she was there for the entire day and they ran all kinds of ridiculously expensive tests.... Anyway, it's been incredibly stressful and I feel just terrible for the little fluffy goose. She's just been having such a rough time. Poor Abigail!

big cat, tiny box...

need I even comment on this picture? eden really loves a good box.

against all odds....

Maizy gets crazy in the backyard. She runs around wildly and chases the chickens sometimes and digs holes and rolls in the dirt. We have this half-barrel that we're using to grow a water lily and one of her favorite things to do is jump in the barrel and run round and round splashing water everywhere, getting muddy and tearing up the leaves. Sometimes I think she's a tazmanian devil in disguise. Anyway, despite her romping around in the waterlily, we managed to get a flower! Here it is!

our first dozen...

This happened a while ago, but with the long vacation from blogging, I haven't posted it. This was our official first dozen eggs from the chickens. They've been laying one each per day now. They're pretty much the most perfect eggs I've seen. Such pretty shades of brown. Sometimes they're still warm when we get them. They've worked out a laying schedule. Charlotte lays first in the morning and then Emily lays at around noon or one in the afternoon. They're quite delicious and it's fun to be able to give eggs to the neighbors. Hopefully it helps them cope with the noise the chickens make at 5am!