Last Post, Fear Not

A month ago, Mr. Squirrel was very busy,

He was not happy with my audience, but he performed anyway. They say busy squirrels in Fall means a long, cold winter, but for all you Mayan calendar watchers out there, get a clue from Mr. Squirrel. He knows to get prepared for something, but he would not bother if he wasn't going to still be here in Spring.

I finally got myself back to painting, these are from the last month,

The two landscapes are Cascade Lake and near Cascade Lake from reference taken on the same day, believe it or not. Just goes to show you how fast the landscape and the weather can change around here. Cascade Lake did not really turn out as I envisioned, and it did not photograph well. The flowers are Catalpa flowers on my street tree in June, I am happiest with that painting.

I feel on the edge of something, as I have this entire year, with the feeling getting progressively worse, like I am supposed to be getting ready for massive change, but I have no idea what that means. My astrology and my Tarot card readings agree with the idea of great change, but they predict psychic change, a destruction of old views, old ideas, an old persona, so that something new can emerge like a Phoenix from the ashes or transforming like the swan.

(Illustration by Lady Frieda Harris for Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot Deck, 1938 to 1942.)

The purpose of this blog has run it's course and I have been struggling to keep it up this year. I was hoping for a good ending, but I guess the adventure always continues and there really isn't one. I figure we are on the edge of economic collapse, and I am now uncomfortable with the idea that everything I write here is being stored for current or future use against me. Now I am in "wait and see" mode. Maybe I will pick up again next year with a new theme, or maybe next year we will live in a world that does not need blogs.

Fear Not,
What is not real, never was and never will be.
What is real always was and cannot be destroyed.
- Bhagavad Gita

Beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there's a field. I'll meet you there.
- Jalal al-Din Rumi, 13th Century poet and mystic

Mural and Summer's Over

The lawn started to recover from its fungus and then it was cooking hot for a few weeks and it dies again. It is just about all recovered now, just in time to die for winter. I figure I have one more mowing, then I am done.

It was a long hot summer and it is still unseasonably warm and five cucumbers and even more green peppers are making a race for the finish. Boise's average first frost is between October 11 and 20, so they have two weeks. My tomato plants are still full of green tomatoes and I doubt they will all make it to red in time. My friend tells me I can dig them up before the first frost and hand them upside down in the garage. They will still ripen and stay fresh. This sounds like an old farmer trick. I am also told that if I had potatoes and onions, I could just leave them in the ground and dig them up when I wanted to eat them, no matter what the season.

I am still picking raspberries every day, but they are slowing down. The arched branches that are hanging over the lawn started to grow side branches, which then started to flower, and the plant looks nicely full,

Those flowers will probably not have a chance to be berries, but when I cut back the raspberry for winter I will get to see the blueberry bushes again. They turned color last year and looked pretty longer than anything else.

It is definitely autumn, seasons change quickly here, it is cooler at night and the days are already dramatically shorter, but we only had one really cool night so far to inspire those leaves to change. If you look, you can see bits of a start of fall color, but not the panorama of color yet.

A few weeks ago I went out to Nampa, about 20 minutes west of Boise, to do my friend a favor. I decided most of Nampa is pretty dumpy. There are nice farms and a newer part of town that is supposed to be nice, but the town itself is sad. I did take some horses pictures, although not good enough to paint. They make the neighborhood look much more picturesque than it really was.

A guy at work that owns a laundromat wants a mural. This is my comp, pasted into the location,

I put off doing the comp and went through the expected pain of not being able to use markers and draw the way that I think I should. That is what happens when you let yourself get out of practice. I also have no reason to keep up my set of markers and realized I no longer have all the colors I think I need. I don't know what happened to my perfect blue sky marker, it probably dried up. The client was surprised to get something so detailed and in color, so I guess it did the job.

With the heat and the smoke, it was not a pretty summer in Boise this year and I am glad it is over. I still really like my job, and I like my boss. To have both at this point feels like a well earned miracle


.

Indian Summer and Cascade Rafters

It is Indian Summer here, my favorite time of year. The days are warm, but not hot, and the evenings are cooling off. The garden is coming to an end, although I will have an overabundance of tomatoes and raspberries for at least another month. I don't remember how many tomato plants this is, maybe 3,

I tied up the tomatoes and the raspberries the best I could now that they are huge, I will do better next year,

I do not understand what the blueberry is doing. It is huge and has tall ends that look like seed or flower pods, nothing like it did when it bloomed last spring,

Here is one day's harvest last week, including a tomato mutant,

Hey, did I harvest some honey? No, my neighbor's friend has bees and more honey than they know what to do with, so Sarah brought me some. It is raw, but not still in the comb. I remember eating honey still in the comb on toast in Michigan. It is still one of the best things I ever tasted.

Here is Cruiser banished to outside, so Spit can finish her dinner in peace,

Saturday morning I decided to take that trip to McCall and get away from the smoke. It was hazy there and way too crowded for me, so I left and stopped along the Payette River on my way home instead. Cascade Raft and Kayak was just upstream and the river was full of rafts and kayaks for the holiday weekend.

The rafting and the kayaking looked fun, but sitting on a beach in the shade with a cool breeze waving at people as they floated by was as better.

In the end, it was a beautiful, perfect weather weekend in Boise. The geese are back to honking as they fly overhead. It was cool enough today to resume my walking and the cemetery is full of geese again, waiting for me to tell them how much I missed them.

In So Cal, Indian Summer can go into November with some trips back to summer in between, but not here. We are predicting a short autumn, because of the long, hot summer, and some think there will not be much autumn color because the summer was so dry. Even I know from experience that winter comes overnight at the beginning of November. So that leaves a few more weeks of summer, but it is hard not to think about spending some of it preparing for winter.

Corn Failure and Two Year Anniversary

Everyone is happy to see the broccoli go. The bush beans have quadrupled their production. The beefsteak tomato is taking over. The green pepper is full of peppers. The carrot seeds I planted more than a month ago are trying to be carrots. The bush beans, tomatoes, and raspberries are this year's successes, the broccoli, cauliflower, and corn are this year's failures.

This week I came home to a nasty looking brown patch on one of the small corn ears and the stalk crawling with ants. I harvested the one almost good ear and ripped out the plant.

Who knows what the problem was. My guess is that the corn ran out of room, the ears seemed to get to a growing point and then they just stopped. Those that know predicted a buggy summer and I think the corn ran out of growing room and stopped growing, which made it vulnerable. I will try again sometime when I have more planting room. I saved the good ear, but have not cooked it yet to find out if it tastes good, despite missing half of its kernels.

The cucumbers are much smaller than last year and taking longer to grow. Maybe it will do better now that it does not have to compete with the corn. The tomatoes are excellent. I bought some good bacon and had BLTs for lunch this week. They were messy, but really good.

The sliced tomato had a suspicious hole in the top, but you can see it did not do any harm to the insides.

The landlord is coming for a walk-through Monday, so I did not go to McCall yesterday like I wanted to do. I stayed home to fix up the yard and clean the house and I am glad I did. By 9 am yesterday morning the air was full of smoke again. I don't know if it is the same in McCall, but I would have hated to drive all the way there and look at the view over the lake full of haze.

The two fires north of Boise have now burned almost 220,000 acres, Trinity Ridge fire, 119,706 and the Halstead fire, 100,187.

For my two year anniversary in Boise last Tuesday, I was feeling really grateful to be here, despite the smoke. I went to Goodies and ate homemade chocolate almond ice cream on their sunny patio and watched this girl make homemade caramel corn. The job is a big difference, even though getting it seems to have taken great persistence. I can see myself still interested in and challenged by this job 10 years from now. My physical health is the other big difference.

Last summer I started doing the 5 Tibetan Rites every day and I drank a case of Joint Juice. I am attributing both of those with keeping arthritis at bay last winter. My first winter here I had such an aching hip that I could not cross my legs, but last winter I had no problems. I stopped doing the Rites every day because I was getting a bit too buff. Last spring I stopped drinking milk with hormones and started drinking local milk and eating eggs from grain fed, cage free chickens, which I can get at the grocery store here. This took a while to get used to, probably hormone withdrawal, but now I feel healthier than I have in a long time. I'm sure all of those fresh fruits and vegetables all summer helps, too.

In my training class a few weeks ago someone was talking about something that would make them happy. I was eating vanilla Greek yogurt with fresh blueberries. I said blueberries make me happy.

After a week of feeling grateful to be here, I am afraid this weekend I am thinking about the things I wanted to be different that still are not. Spit got stung by a wasp and Cruiser is whining and getting on my nerves. Oh, well.

On that note, I will leave off with another great Buddhist story,

Once upon the time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“Maybe,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

“Maybe,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“Maybe,” said the farmer.

Boise Surrounded by Fires

Last Tuesday, the Idaho Statesman predicted a breeze coming in Wednesday that would blow away some of this smoke. They hoped for a northwest wind, since that was the only direction that did not have fires. Hours later, there were fires in the northwest. I guess it was not just Idaho fires that caused all the smoke in Boise, it was smoke blowing in from Nevada, Northern California, and Oregon. Here is a good firemap,

http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/wildlandfire/latest-news-map.html

Boise is surrounded. We did get some relief on Wednesday, but it was brief, this morning it smelled like smoke and I could see the smoke in the air at 9 am. They do not expect the fire burning near Stanley/Sun Valley to be out until autumn.

Fortunately, I got the electric bill. All this heat and I felt like the air was running all the time and my electric bill would be huge. It was $35. I forgot how much cheaper electric is here. I am running the air as much as I want for the rest of August, even it went up to $40, it would be worth it to sleep at night. Gas is a bit more, my highest gas (heating) bill was $61, and that is keeping the house no warmer than 68 degrees.

The raspberries were arching to the ground, so I made an attempt to lift them up,

I will need to do better at staking them as they grow next year, since they are now full of nasty thorns and bees.

The blueberry is still going crazy,

This one is sitting next to the sprinkler, and blueberries are waterhogs. The other blueberry looks fine, but is sitting there the same size.

I started harvesting the tomatoes,

These are beefstakes and dark red on the inside. Some of them get cracks in the skin, which do not affect the taste of the tomato. To my relief, I have not seen one tomato worm. One of these on the windowsill has a suspicious hole on top, but I have not cut it open to investigate, yet.

I bought a plant stake/ring for the bush bean. These have big leaves, but not very strong stems, and half of the plant was flopped over. The ring is supposed to be for perennial flowers, but seems to work. It is a metal ring, about 1' in diameter with three stakes that hook on the ring. Here you can see it works, with just a bit of one stake showing,

That is the cucumber creeping in on the left. Removing the broccoli and the cauliflower exposed some carrots I planted that could not grow in their shade, they are now perking up, but I am not sure they will make it before winter. I am going to plant some spinach and some onions in the now empty front space. These are late growing and may extend this year's garden experiment into October.

The landlord finally sent a form for me to renew my lease for another year with now increase. It looks like I am in this place for another year.

Tuesday, August 21st is my two year anniversary, two years living in Boise. I will have to do some kind of review next week.

This is last Friday's harvest,

Hey, those tomatoes are green! My plants are full of big green tomatoes, so I harvested some that were growing close to the ground. I ate about half of that broccoli, too far down the stem and even fresh, it's tough and stringy. If I was a pioneer, I probably would have eaten it, but I'm not. I was going to pull out the rest of the broccoli plant, but spotted Mr. Frog,

I let him enjoy and waited to pull out the broccoli until today. I've read that frogs are disappearing like the bees, but not in my yard.

Yesterday I sliced up the tomatoes and made fried green tomatoes,

Some of the tomatoes were turning red in the middle and I learned these are too soft to fry. If I do this again I will use more batter and get over my issues with not using hot enough oil. The last of the batch came out better because they fried faster when the oil was hotter. I used a Southern recipe, you dredge the slices in flour, then dip in egg/milk, then cover with a mix of salt, pepper, cornmeal, and flour. The cornmeal adds a nice crunch. I expected them to taste like fried zucchini, but they tasted like lemon. Tomatoes are a fruit, you know.

It has been a hot, smokey week with fires all around Boise. The air looks like the San Fernando Valley in the 70s. I am afraid I am not motivated to do much.

Anyone notice that the price of walnuts has gone way up?

Here is some commodities report from Dutch Valley Foods:

The walnut crop came in smaller than expected. Actually even less than last year’s crop, which had sold out early. A significant portion, about 60%, of the walnut crop has already been sold. The industry is stating that walnuts could literally run out, or at the minimum some cuts will not be available, before new crop in late fall. Walnuts are expected to remain expensive.
(http://www.dutchvalleyfoods.com/home/quarterly-commodity-market-update)

I guess raisins are going to be a problem, too.

Anyone notice that you can't buy Excedrin or Tylenol anymore? I did not realize when I turned in my recalled Excedrin earlier this year that I was never going to get any more. Supposedly the Excedrin plant closed because the FDA found problems in the Novartis manufacturing plant in Lincoln, Neb., where they make Excedrin. That goes for Bufferin, too. Whatever the problem was, you would think the plant would have reopened by now. Seems fishy to my conspiracy theory mind.

According to the Post-Tribune:

The story behind the low stocks of Tylenol is also the story of how its maker, Johnson & Johnson, found itself overwhelmed by quality-control problems known to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which in 2009, pressed the 125-year-old company to start voluntary recalls amid growing complaints about a musty, moldy odor in many Tylenol products.
(http://posttrib.suntimes.com/news/12996510-418/spate-of-recalls-keeps-tylenol-off-shelves.html)

And from the Legal Examiner:

The report details the numerous recalls that manufacturer Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has implemented over the last couple of years, due to complaints of a musty, moldy odor in the products, and later reports of contamination from a pesticide and preservative used to treat wooden pallets. Because of these various recalls—26 in all from 2009 to May 2012, affecting Tylenol and other similar J&J products—the shelves are a little light when it comes to Tylenol and Tylenol combination cold and flu solutions.
(http://newyork.legalexaminer.com/fda-and-prescription-drugs/shortage-of-tylenola-good-thing.aspx?googleid=301878

Hey, there's the FDA again! This must be why we keep hearing about drug shortages this year. Note the Tylenol brands include Benedryl, which I also recently had a tough time finding, now I know why. At least I found some.

So, there you go, two more businesses shut down by the Feds. Thank goodness I do not get migraines.

Record Heat and Cauliflower Failure

The average July temperature for Boise was 81.3 degrees, 5.5 degrees above average.
Boise’s five warmest months since 1864:
1. July 2007 83.1 degrees
2. July 1874 82 degrees
3. July 2006 81.5 degrees
4. July 2012 81.3 degrees
5. July 1960 80.7 degrees
The mercury hit 100° nine times in July, including a scorching 108 degrees on July 9 and 12.

Today's high was 106°, beating the record high of 104° in 1892.

It is too hot to do anything, but I was restless enough to try at trip to Lake Lowell last Saturday. Lake Lowell is next to Nampa, about 30 minutes West of Boise if you drive through farm country and stay off the freeway. It was not a great picture taking day, here is the lake and some of its flowers,

Bass fishing starts on Lake Lowell in July.

Due to my lack of experience, I have no idea how the record heat is affecting my garden.

The cauliflower that I grew was self-blanching. That means that the outer leaves curl around the head to keep it white. Without self-blanching, you have to tie the leaves around the head yourself, or the head turns yellowish brown. This is July 30th,

Once the leaves curl around the head, the cauliflower should be ready for picking in about a week or two. I thought it had been two weeks, and although the head still seemed small, it looked pretty yellowish brown, so I picked it on August 6th,

After picking, you soak it in salt water to remove any nasties for 30 minutes. After soaking, I tried a piece raw and it was so terribly bitter, I spit it out. It will get bitter if it is on the plant too long, or maybe it was just bitter. It looks better, whiter on July 30th, maybe I should have picked it then. I was happy to dig up the big cauliflower plant and give the green tomatoes more sun,

I pulled up the peas that could not grow in the shadow of the cauliflower and started some late season seeds indoors, spinach and onions, to put in place of the cauliflower and the broccoli.

On my drive to Lake Lowell I saw a whole lot of corn and I notice they grow them really close together, like maybe 6 inches apart with a few feet between rows. Mine is doing really well,

The raspberries are full of new ripening berries, which is making them arch down almost to the ground. Underneath, one of the blueberries is growing more and getting flowers,

I don't remember the blueberry doing this last year, and the other blueberry looks the same. Today I sat underneath the raspberry arches and trimmed the grass underneath them. This is very hazardous, due to the happy bees buzzing overhead, but I do not want rampant grass stealing water from those raspberries until I am done eating them.

As far as the broccoli, I chopped off the rest of the sprouting center and am giving the side branches a little more time,

You do not get as much (what do you call it, head, flower, sprouts?) on the side shoots, I think you eat the stem. I should have the broccoli harvested by this weekend, then I will pull it up, although I am not having the same trouble that I was with aphids. Maybe it is too hot for them, too.

Basque Day

Every year in July, the Basque block in Boise hosts a Basque festival, the San Inazio Festival to honor St. Ignatius of Loyola, the patron saint of the Basques. St. Ignatius of Loyola was the Spanish founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He was canonized in 1622 and declared patron of spiritual exercises and retreats by Pius XI. His feast day is July 31.

Late this morning, I decided to check out the Basque festival before it got too hot. Then I came home and watched the film, The Way. I knew The Way was about a pilgrimage, but I had no idea it was a pilgrimage through the Basque country. That was weird.

As intended, I got there in time to watch the kids dance,

The two girls in blue that were closest to me were having a great time, despite wearing all those clothes, hats, stockings, and petticoats in the 90 degree heat. Here are some of the littlest ones taking a water break,

You have to love the hats. The cooks had just finished adding the shrimp to the paella and were now adding mussels,

They said it was about 15 minutes away from being ready and it smelled awesome, but it was too hot to imagine eating any of it. Those Basques seem to know how to cook for a crowd.

Here is last Monday and Friday's harvest,

I had a heck of a time trying to learn about my broccoli, so I think I will save my pictures and write a review. My broccoli is a sprouting broccoli, you mostly see a purple variety, but mine is green. It does not grow compact like the broccoli you see in the store, and the sprouts are big. I found hardly anything to tell me when it is ready to pick. I found something that said I can pick when the outside sprouts are loose, but the center is still compact, which some of mine were, so I decided to just pick a few branches. Maybe once I pick the center sprouts some side ones will grow, otherwise there really is not much to eat on this big plant.

Broccoli is a perfect food, as are tomatoes, but I am not a huge fan. I steamed the broccoli I picked and it really was the best I ever had. So were the bush beans, which look like snap beans to me.

The strawberry plants sprouted the sorriest group of pea sized mangled strawberries in June and I was going to throw out the plant. Then it got another round of flowers, so decided to let it live. Now it has a new collection of berries, much bigger and better than the first round.

The tassel top on my corn seemed to be struggling to be a proper top. My neighbors have shorter corn, but their tassels have been proud tops for weeks. I tried to help mine, which I can barely reach, and all these seeds came down. Hey, corn isn't grown from seeds, corn grows from kernels off the ears. Did you know that one corn stalk is both the male and female plant? The male seeds from the top tassel sprinkle down to the female silk waiting at the base of the leaves, where they meet the stalk. If the tassel springs up and the seeds sprinkle down too soon, no corn. Mine had good timing, I can see at least three ears ready to grow. The female silk must be that same stringy stuff around the outside of the ear after you husk it, the stuff no one likes to have to clean off. Once the tassel sprinkles it's seeds, then it straightens up like a proud father.

Proper farm girls cannot be afraid of bees. They are all over the raspberry, the strawberry, all the vegetable flowers, and I've learned to water, prune, and harvest in harmony with the bees. I've been stung recently enough to remember how much it hurt, but I also know I would not have the bounty of my garden without them. Except maybe corn, corn doesn't need bees.