Wednesday, September 22, 2010

No one is watching

These are one of the many nights I just love living in the country.
It's too late to go to bed "early" but too early for temperatures to be in the upper 30's (and dropping fast). It seemed awfully chilly when I let the red puppy out for one last time around the yard before retiring to her kennel cave for the night. But I was surprised to note that it is 38 degrees.... already. The moon is completely full and so clear it surely sings. I can hear the coyotes voicing their mournful songs way off in the distance and my breath shows itself in little puffs around my face when I sigh. It's going to be a cold one and I once again wish that my mountain boy were home to keep me warm on the first real night of fall.

Because anything left outside will certainly freeze, I quickly shift six pots of important plants that-I-just-couldn't-bear-to-loose, one at a time, into the warm kitchen. If we lived in the city, I'd have to explain my actions to the neighbors the next time I bumped into them. I'd have to tell them how I had several important plants that-I-just-couldn't-bear-to-loose on the porch that wouldn't make the night and they all had to come into the house at almost midnight. Because I didn't know it was going to freeze, again. So soon in the fall.

But since we live in the country, no one is watching and I can tippy-toe out onto the almost freezing cold porch in my bathrobe and wool socks to rescue a few scraggly plants that mean nothing to anyone......but me. And since we live in the country, I don't need to explain anything to anyone because no one is watching. And if my mountain boy were home, I wouldn't have to explain to him either. Not because he doesn't care but because he'd already know.

4 comments:

  1. Hope your Mountain Boy can return home soon. Mine is leaving tomorrow on a 3 day primitave trek (wool blankets, parched corn and a blackpowder shot gun) with his buddies. Keep the home fires burning!

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  2. Sounds like your man is on an adventure. Is this one of those things he does once a year?
    My Mountain Boy returns home from the Great White North TODAY!!!! The house is clean and smells like brownies and the bed is made down in sheets blown dry in the cool mountain breezes. We'll pick the kids up from school and start the next two weeks as a family should....together! Yea!

    Thanks for the comment. The home fires are a bonfire!

    Elizabeth

    PS Can you tell me how to make parched corn? I've always wanted to serve corn this way to my family but don't really know anyone who can give me details......
    Thanks.

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  3. We re-enact the fur trade era as our hobby. Every spring and fall the guys go off on their own.

    I cheated on the parched corn this year because we did not have any spring and very little summer so I bought a bag of frozen, organic corn from costco. Put that bag of corn into my dehydrator until dry and crisp. My husband likes it just dried, most people, when ready for parched corn will fry up a slice or two of bacon in a pan, take the bacon out and then toast their corn in the grease. I will put a handfull or two of dried corn in the hot pan and stir it around until it looks a little brown, take that corn out of the pan and put it on a paper towel, if there is still grease in the pan I put a handfull more corn in and toast it too. You have to play with it and taste it to see how toasted you like the corn. There is no exact time to leave the corn in the grease, you don't want to burn it but want it toasted. You also don't want a lot of grease in the pan, some people just use oil instead of bacon grease.

    Your posting of your boy with the turkeys reminds me of my boy when he was that age with our geese. He is 28 now and a good young man with a wife and a home of his own.

    I enjoy your posts, thankyou for doing them.

    Shirley

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