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| Looking west across the north field |
Even
as I write, I’m eating tasty sweet elderberry jelly on crackers. Wish you were
here.
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| "Motley Crew" |
I
made three batches of jelly on Wednesday using MCP pectin -- 3 cups elderberry
juice, ¼ cup lemon juice, and 4 ½ cups sugar. Taking MCP’s word for it, the
result was 15 cups of jelly. I had to finagle in order to put together enough
jars, and they stand a motley crew of various shapes and sizes. I was short
jars and regular rings, so I “robbed Peter to pay Paul,” removing rings from
jars already sealed. I also scraped open jars of jelly in the fridge into non-jelly
jars. There’s no reason not to buy more jars and rings. I just failed to
realize I would make so much jelly.
I
was tired as I made that third batch of jelly. Mistakes will happen when one is
tired, but nothing bad happened with the jelly. The trouble happened as
I made an Impossible Pumpkin Pie for dessert. When it came time to add the spices,
I decided to empty several small containers of pumpkin pie spice. As I measured the spice, I noticed one
container was lighter than the others but thought nothing of it, assuming it
was just my homemade blend.
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| Toward Little Canyon from under the maple |
As
the pie was baking, I gathered two small zucchini from my garden and set about
making my favorite zucchini mélange. That’s when I discovered I had
inadvertently used up the allspice in the pumpkin pie. A little allspice goes a
long way, so the pumpkin pie is spicy but not ruined. And as for the zucchini
mélange, which calls for a small amount of allspice, I substituted cinnamon and
it was different but good.
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| The Family Home in 1959 -- not so pretty now |
As
we left town on Tuesday, I called the roll of necessary items: phones, laptop,
iPad, iPod, glasses, camera, etc. I never would have thought to say, “dog food,”
but we had walked off without it even though it was packed and ready. This
kind of thing will happen, let me tell you. We had just enough dog food on hand
to feed Bess and Nell Tuesday night, so Mike went to Orofino Wednesday
afternoon to buy some. As he left the yard, I realized he wasn’t driving to
town. He was riding the 4-wheeler. I could just see the headline in the
Clearwater Tribune: “Warnock cited for riding 4-wheeler through town.” However,
he returned in good time, saying that he stayed off the main drag and no one
gave him a second look. He had ridden through my old neighborhood (Brown
Avenue) where he encountered swarms of blue aphids, and I was reminded of how
thick they were there back in the day. I guess some things never change. But other things do
change. He said that the old family home as well as the neighborhood in general
is looking really rundown. I know this is true, so I seldom go there,
preferring to remember it as it was.
And
as evening approached, we torched the slash pile above the lane. It was hard to
start and Mike admitted it didn’t have enough small stuff to ignite. He said he
wished Hallie were there to get it going. “Find some twigs,” he said; “that’s
what Hallie did.” So I picked up twigs and pieces of light bark, and the
bonfire was soon burning merrily. 
It’s good that we burned when we did. It
rained lightly at bedtime and when we got up, it was foggy. KW
