Monkey Business

Sock monkeys were never a part of my childhood.  I had a Barbie and a stuffed animal or two, although I don't remember what any of them were at this point.  But when I became part of this family (Paul and Peter), sock monkeys came into my life.  

Peter has a sock monkey made for him when he was born.  His Aunt Judy is the creator of this monkey.  His name is Blue Eyes and he is definitely part of the family.  Blue Eyes has a funny and distinctive personality, voiced by Paul.  I should explain.  

It all started with a couple of sock monkeys Judy and her husband, Tom, had long ago.  Apparently they would goof around and make the monkeys talk to each other.  Eventually along came Karen Monkey who was given to our niece, Lisa, by her Grandma Inez for Christmas when she was 6.  (She is now 21!) Tom immediately began making Karen talk and hasn't really stopped.  Karen has quite a personality. In fact, she has her own email, blog and Facebook page.  Honestly, I think Karen is Tom's alter-ego.  

Paul said he didn't really understand the sock monkey voice/personality thing until Blue Eyes came along (and Peter).  Thus Paul became Blue Eyes, rascal that he is.  Blue Eyes and his cohorts, Curious George the puppet and Jambo (another stuffed monkey), are constant sources of entertainment for Peter, even at age ten.  In fact, they are the main characters in the lunch notes Paul creates for him.  (click photo to enlarge)


As you can see, sock monkeys are a big deal around here.  

Now there is a new baby in my family.  My nephew has a 6 month old son who will be celebrating his first Christmas this year.  In fact, I will get to meet him for the first time this weekend.  In honor of his first Christmas, I made him a sock monkey.  Peter and Paul helped with some of the details so it has been a fun family project.  We're all excited about passing on the sock monkey tradition.  Now Paul will have to explain to my nephew about becoming a monkey.  Hopefully he will have as much fun with it as Paul and Tom do.

The Cactus Surprise

Christmas cacti are strange plants.  They are actually a genus called Schlumbergera and originated in the coastal mountains of Brazil.  I didn't know that until I just looked them up.  I have three of them, all given to me by my Mom.  One of them was started from my great-grandmother's plant.  It's the only one that has ever bloomed.  If I remember, it is a lovely dark pink color.

One of them is a large plant with very cactus like spines.  I hope it does bloom someday because the blossoms are HUGE, about 6 inches long or so.  

 The third cactus is blooming now, for the first time in my memory.  It is stunningly beautiful.  The plant is covered with buds and blooms.  The blooms are about 3 inches long.  I don't think I've ever seen a lovelier Christmas cactus. 

What a sweet Christmas gift.

Ho Ho Ho

As amazing at it seems, 'tis the season already!  I'm not one who goes overboard with the holiday stuff.  Don't get me wrong, I love the Christmas season and the many wonderful things it brings.  (See this post on toffee)  I am a firm believer in NCUAT (No Christmas Until After Thanksgiving)...but I'm not out on the day after Thanksgiving putting up lights and wreaths and blow-up plastic snowmen on the lawn.   Christmas at our house comes a bit more slowly.  I like to bring it out gradually, a few things at a time.  And there seems to be an order to what comes when, although it's happened unconsciously over time.
 

One of the first hints that Christmas is upon us is the Christmas dishes.  Over thirty years ago, my then mother-in-law gave me a piece of Spode Christmas Tree ware.  It was a lovely pomander which still smells of pine when I shake it.  I fell for the pattern and have collected bits and pieces ever since.  I don't have an overwhelming amount but enough to enjoy during the month of December.  

Interestingly, the original Spode factory closed in 2009 and was bought by another company.  

The pieces are now made in Malaysia or somewhere, so one must look for the "Made in England" stamp for the "real thing" nowadays.  I've noticed that it's become, let's say tackier, in recent years, too.  It makes my old pieces seem all the more precious somehow.



The next items to emerge are the Santas.   I did not set out to collect them but somehow, over the years, I have acquired many.  It has become an anticipated tradition for Peter and me to unwrap and display them together.  I love hearing him talk about them as they come out.  "Oh, my Santa on the tractor!"  To me Santa is the embodiment of the season, of gift-giving and generosity.  

The last of the firsts are the lights on the spruce tree in the garden.  About 19 years ago, Paul planted a dwarf Alberta spruce in the center of the garden beds.  Every year we cover it with little white lights.  As the tree has grown, we've had to add more nets of lights.  It is so lovely to look outside the dining room window and see the lights shining.  Because we are out in the country, you can even see the little white-lit tree from the road across the river.  Very sweet and festive. 

So Christmas is coming to our house, in small, treasured steps.  That's just how I like it.

Breakfast of Champions

Around our house the cold cereal of choice is granola.  We used to buy it in bulk from the Co-op.   Then, one day, I found a recipe for what looked like the same basic granola (Maple Almond) and decided to try it.  It was really yummy, especially after tweaking the recipe a little to suit our tastes.  Being the smart shoppers we are, we priced out the bulk vs. the homemade.  The homemade came in a few cents less expensive.  Plus, we liked it better.  Thus began my career of making granola for the family.  Even the 10-year-old likes it.  

Personally I like fresh fruit on my granola, when I have it.  Luckily so does the rest of the family, so no dried fruit in our cereal.   I also prefer mine with yogurt but milk tastes pretty darn good on it, too.  

This granola is really easy to make and fairly low fat.  I'm sharing it with you just in case you want to try it.  Plus it makes the house smell wonderful!

Dona’s Granola

3 ½ cups old-fashioned oats

1 cup sliced raw almonds OR coarsely chopped pecans

3 T. packed brown sugar

¾ t. ground cinnamon

½ t. ground ginger

¼ t. salt

1/3 cup maple syrup OR honey

2 T. vegetable oil

1 cup dried fruit, if desired

Preheat oven to 300º F.  Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment.  Mix first 6 ingredients in large bowl.  Stir syrup (or honey) and oil in saucepan over medium-low heat until smooth OR microwave it for about 10 seconds (This is what I do).  Pour liquid mixture over oat mixture; toss until well mixed together.  Spread on prepared sheet.   Bake until golden, stirring every 10 minutes for 30 minutes.  Place the baking sheet on a cooling rack.  Stir granola; cool.  Mix in fruit, if using.  Store in an airtight container.

Our latest version is with almonds but we like the pecans, too.  I think any kind of nuts would be fine.

We also switched from honey to maple syrup but we like them both.  I think the maple syrup version is slightly less sweet, which we like.  Also we don’t like dried fruit in our granola so we leave it out.  We prefer fresh fruit on top instead.

Enjoy!

 

Squirreling

It's that time of year again.  Time seems to rush by sometimes.  The first hard freeze of the fall was this past week.  We lucked out that it came so late (for us) since the growing season seemed to be rather late, too.  But now the garden is officially dead and done.  It's time to pull out the plants and put away the hoses.  

Then we start raking the leaves.  We have a LOT of leaves around our place.  Every year I waffle between waiting a little longer for more to fall and starting earlier to get them off the lawn.  I end up somewhere in between.  This is what I got done yesterday...

and this is what's left on the cottonwood.  Sigh...  
Many of the leaves go into the compost bins.  Many more make a thick layer on the garden beds to be added to the compost in the spring.  



It's time to prune back all those lavender bushes.  And chip the dried cornstalks, raspberry canes and those lavender clippings into the compost, too.  

The burn pile went up in flames.  A load of wood is coming soon and the energy logs are stacked in the basement.  This is a busy time of year;  the last flurry before the real flurries start.  

But there are still a few lovely surprises even among the dead leaves.










I like getting things ready for winter, packed up and put away, whether it's garden or wood or food in the freezer.  I call it "squirreling."  It's a satisfying feeling.

Stitching

I must confess to a small addiction.  I always have a cross stitch project going.  I find it a rather calming hobby.  I enjoy coming up with ideas for new projects.  I like the challenge of getting the stitches in the right place even though I sometimes end up pulling out stitches because of a miscount or some such thing.  It is the perfect winter pastime.  I suppose I could be reading more books and expanding my mind but I prefer stitching.  It's easier to put down at a moment's notice for conversation or whatever.  

I just finished another pillow.  It is a design called the Three Hares.  The design itself is quite old.  The first finding of it occurred in cave temples in China in the 6th-7th centuries.  It shows up in sacred sites from the Middle and Far East to England, in Christian churches and Jewish temples.  I find that rather amazing and intriguing.  When I first saw the design, I decided it had to be a pillow.  

I've been doing cross stitch for a long time now.  I honestly can't remember the exact year but I would say somewhere around 1995.  I've done more projects than I can count including this rug copy for Paul that took three years to finish!   It's actual size is 22 inches by 33 inches.  Paul has a rug fragment from around 1550 and he wanted to see what the rug might have looked like.  So he extrapolated the "cartoon"  from the fragment and pictures of similar rugs.  It was an amazing design feat.  That was the beginning of our working together on cross stitch designs.

Here is another favorite.  I originally found this saying on a bathroom wall in a small cafe in Salem.  I loved it and sat there on the commode copying it onto a piece of paper from my purse.  I had it painted on my kitchen wall in California.  When I moved here, I had to make it into a pillow so I could take it with me. 

Collaborating on designs with Paul is really fun.  I will come up with an idea and he will sometimes help figure out the design or, as in this one, create the design entirely.  This was for our dear friends, Christina and Roger, for Christmas last year.  The letters look like the Book of Kells and the adornments reflect their creative outlets, painting and jewelry making.  I love this pillow.



Now that the Three Hares is finished, I've started another pillow.  This one is a challenging design of fall leaves using 14 different but very closely related colors.  I may go cross-eyed but it will be lovely when it's done.  And I have at least three more ideas brewing for future projects.  It's good to have a hobby, right?

The Pick-up

When my late husband, Mark, found out he had terminal cancer, he decided to do a few of those bucket list things he hadn't done.  One of them was to own an old pick-up.  He had read The Bridges of Madison County and, being a bit of a romantic, thought it would be cool to have an old rig to tool around town in.  So, he bought himself a 1957 Ford pick-up.  Since it was white, we called it "Whitey Ford" after the old baseball player.  It was in pretty good shape and ran well.  Mark loved it.  Trouble was, he only drove it a few times.  Then it became mine.  I drove it to the Farmer's Market on Saturdays, a distance of about 1 mile, but that was about it. 

Six years ago, when I to moved up here to marry Paul, I decided to bring the pick-up along.  After all, now I would be in a more rural setting and a pick-up might come in handy.  So, Whitey came to Palouse.  Most of the time, it sat in the barn gathering dust and bird poop.  We would charge up the battery and take it out every fall to haul logs for the winter fire and then back to the barn it would go.  Not a very exciting life for a pick-up.  Finally, about a year ago, we decided it really should be with someone who would fix it up and take care of it.  Someone who would give it a life more befitting a wonderful old pick-up.  But other things kept taking precedence over selling it.  

Then, about a month ago, Whitey had a chance for  fifteen minutes of fame.  Bookpeople, our favorite bookstore over in Moscow, ID, was having a book reading/concert for Josh Ritter and wanted an old pick-up to use as a stage.  We volunteered and Whitey made the front page of the paper!  It also had a blow-out on the way to town though, which is how we discovered that the tires were no longer safe.  So we bought four new tires and made the decision that we really needed to sell that pick-up.







So, this weekend we took it downtown in Palouse and parked it on the street right on the way to the Palouse Days Car Show in the park.  People come from all around the state to this car show.  We put a sign in the window and hoped for the best.  And it happened.  A gentleman called on Saturday, came to drive it today and loaded it up and took it home.  He is someone who fixes up old cars and trucks and takes them to car shows.  He just loved Whitey which confirmed what we already thought, that it really was a cool old pick-up.

I have mixed emotions today.  I'm really glad that someone bought the truck that appreciates it and will take good care of it.  On the other hand, I'm a little sad to see it go.  But it was time to turn that page.  So long old pal.

Birthday Cake

I don't know about you but I think that when you're a kid, your birthday cake is a big deal.  I remember a doll cake made by Mom that was beautiful, or so I thought.  My Mom is a professional cake decorator.  She's been doing it for over 40 years!  She's made some gorgeous cakes in that time.  So cakes were always kind of a thing when I was growing up.  And there were always scraps of cake to be slathered with a bit of icing to eat!  Funny thing is I don't even like cake that much but I can't resist it that way.  

This week was Peter's tenth birthday...double digits for the boy now.  Because he is into all things related to airplanes, especially WWII airplanes, I suggested an airplane cake for his birthday.  He was very excited about the idea.  I think I made a few stepmom points for that one.

Paul has a great artist's eye so he started designing the structure.  After the pirate ship cake fiasco a few years ago, he's now more aware of the limitations of the medium.  (The back end of the ship collapsed at about midnight the night before!)  He decided on the appropriate plane and sketched out a pattern for getting all the pieces out of two 9"x13" cakes.  Here is the beginning of the cake structure.

Once the basic structure was figured out, I crumb iced the cake.  Crumb icing gives the cake a thinnish layer of icing to catch the crumbs and keep them from getting into the decorated cake. 









Next we had to create just the right color for the airplane.  Something drab green without being unappetizing!  I iced the cake and then worked on smoothing out the icing and adding the details.

 

Finally, Paul added the propeller and tail, red for the Tuskegee Airmen, and the P-51B was finished.  (Click on the photo for better detail.)

Thanks to Mom for all the cake decorating skills-by-osmosis.  By the way, Peter was absolutely thrilled!  That's a good thing to be on your 10th birthday.

Sweet Success

 
I am a farmer's daughter...a farmer who grew sweet corn, among other things.  I have many memories of moving irrigation pipe through the maybe 6 foot tall corn field, early in the mornings. The corn would be wet and the sharp-edged leaves would slap me in the face. 


Imagine walking through a field of this at about
5 a.m.  It is not one of my most pleasant childhood memories.  But we had lots of fresh corn on the cob to eat, which I love.





So an entire bed of our garden each year is devoted to sweet corn.  Paul grew it before I got here but the expectations were high when I started planting the sweet corn, given my heritage and all.  Well, the first year was a disaster.  I'm not sure why, but the corn patch was spotty at best and, maybe, produced a couple of ears.  When my Dad saw it, he said (kidding) he couldn't believe I was his daughter.  Thus the challenge was on.  I found corn seed that was supposed to grow in areas with a shorter growing season (that's us).  No offense to my Dad, but everything will grow in the Willamette Valley! 

The next year was a little better but not much.  The third year the patch looked really good and the ears were starting to look like they were getting ripe when a flock of blackbirds came in and decimated the entire patch in an afternoon.  I was so mad I could have spit nails.

The next season, quail came in and ate the little corn sprouts as they poked up through the soil.  I replanted and put bird netting over the entire bed until the corn got tall enough to fend for itself but it didn't really do well after that.

Last year, I covered the bed before the sprouts came up and I covered it again to ward off the blackbirds.  But in all my efforts to keep the birds out, I neglected to check the corn often enough.  We had ears but they were really over-ripe, in my opinion anyway.  

 
Now this year it appears as though I may have  finally succeeded in growing a nice patch of corn. 










Today I picked the first ears and they look perfect. 

There are many ways to eat corn but nothing is better than picking an ear, shucking it and dropping it in a pot of boiling water for about 5 minutes.  Slather it with butter and salt and take a bite.  Pure heaven for this farmer's daughter.  I think, this year, Dad would be proud.

A Room of One's Own

Everyone needs a space of one's own...someplace to relax surrounded by things you love.  I was a little concerned moving to this house that Paul had been in for 14 years.  I wondered how I would fit in and where that space of my own would be.  Paul has the studio, his sanctuary. Peter has his bedroom, his sanctuary.  Our bedroom belongs to both of us, our sanctuary.  I voiced my concern to Paul and he immediately said that the space at the top of the stairs could be mine.  At that time, it was fairly unfinished and a blank canvas.  The only parts that were done were the floor, the drywall, a large window and two skylights installed but not trimmed out.  We talked about what I wanted and needed in my room and Paul went to work.  And work he did.  The room needed so much done that it's taken him about three years worth of time to finish it.  But finish it he did, today, in fact.  It is indeed beautiful.  
 


An amazing bannister of maple and fir leads up to the room.  That in itself took an entire summer!  

There's a shelf at the side of the stairway that holds pictures and treasures.  There are banks of the old bolt cabinet drawers that appear in the kitchen, too.  








 

There is a bookcase to hold my books and stereo and the TV we never watch.  My comfy couch is just waiting for me to sit and read or stitch or sip a beverage and contemplate my next project.  

The knee wall is covered in lovely maple and fir with doors for access to storage.  My desk is there for working or setting up the sewing machine.  

It is truly my space and I love it.  Paul promised me when he started that he would make it beautiful for me and he did.  There is love everywhere I look in that room.

Purple Passion

It's lavender season...finally.  I love lavender!  In fact, there are two plants that I always plant in my garden, no matter where I live.  One is a Cécile Brunner climbing rose.  The other is lavender.  

Lavender has an interesting history.  It is known for it's soporific and medicinal properties.  The smell of lavender blossoms will relax you.  We have lavender-filled bags to put over our eyes during savasana at the end of yoga class.   It is so soothing.  

Lavender is also known as an antiseptic and anti-inflammatory.  I read that essential lavender oil was used during World War I to wash down hospital walls and floors.  A bit of lavender oil on the temples is said to help a headache.

The word itself comes from the Anglo-Norman French lavandre, which, I think, means to wash.  It was often added to bath water or water used to wash linens to add a sweet scent.  At any rate, lavender is a pretty amazing herb.

When I moved to this place six years ago, there were two lavender plants here.  They were given to Paul by a friend.  They are the most prolific lavender plants I have ever seen.  There are now around fifty lavender plants growing on the property and they are all from seedlings started by the existing plants.  This doesn't count all the baby lavender plants I have given away.
 
And now that they are all blooming, the plants are abuzz with honey bees!  When I walk out to the garden, it sounds like a little freeway humming out there.  Bless those honey bees and more power to them.  I just wish I knew where to find their lavender honey!

Life is Just a Bowl

When I was younger, I was not a big fan of cherry pie.  I'm not sure why but I would usually turn it down if offered to me.  I have seen the error of my ways!

We have a good-sized pie cherry tree.  In fact, it is what I see when I look out the window sitting at our table. 

Right now it is loaded with beautiful red cherries.







The first couple years I lived here there were enough cherries for pie and freezing for future pies.  But the last three years have been quite disappointing.  For two years there weren't even enough to pick.  Last year we got only one pie's worth of cherries.  We were beginning to think something was wrong with the tree.  Perhaps it had was old and had given up producing cherries.  Whatever, we were discouraged.  But this year it has made up for lost time! 

I've already made two pies in one week!  And for some reason, I now like cherry pie.  As our friend Thomas said,  "It puts me in an Allah mode!" 

Garlic Goodness

The curlicues you see here are garlic scapes.  They are the buds of future blossoms on the garlic in our garlic bed.  Until a couple of years ago, I pretty much ignored them or cut them off so the garlic would develop underground.  Then I found out that garlic scapes are great to eat.  They can be roasted and eaten just like they are or chopped and added to dishes.  I have a new recipe for garlic scapes and white bean curry that I want to try this year.  

However, our favorite way to eat them is in garlic scape pesto.  It's a simple pesto of 1 cup chopped garlic scapes, 1/3 cup walnuts,  juice of one lemon, 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup olive oil, and salt and pepper.  It is delicious on pasta but amazing on pizza.  We spread the pizza with the pesto, add mozzarella cheese, some chopped proscuitto, diced bell pepper, blobs of homemade ricotta cheese, and a dusting of pecorino Romano cheese, in that order.    

It tastes even better than it looks.

I love cool and interesting culinary surprises...like eating the buds of garlic blossoms.  Breath-wise, just make sure everyone at the table eats it!  

Small Town Girl

I grew up in a small town (sounds like the beginning of a John Mellencamp song)---St. Paul, Oregon, population 320 or so it was when I was growing up.  Actually, I grew up on a farm 5 miles outside of St. Paul near Champoeg State Park.  But St. Paul was where I went to school.  At the time, St. Paul had a gas station, hardware store, bank, barber shop, farm implement store, feed mill, post office and two taverns.  It is also home to the oldest brick Catholic church this side of the Rockies.  But its claim to fame is the St. Paul 4th of July Rodeo. It is a big event, an honest to goodness PCRA rodeo and organized completely by the community.  
I used to usher at the rodeo when I was in high school, attired in my "Buckerette" outfit (short skirt, Western shirt, vest, hat, and boots).  Yep, we were the St. Paul Buckaroos!  (They still are.)  Most of the people in town are part of the "Rodeo Association,"  the group that puts on the rodeo.  Everybody has some job to do and everyone works to make the rodeo happen.  It brings thousands of people into town over the 4 days it goes on.  It's amazing to think about such a large undertaking being shouldered by such a relatively small group of people but that's how it works in a small town.  It is a community...a place where people work together to make things happen. 


Being part of a small town has its pros and cons.  Everybody knows everybody, which can be both good and bad.  There aren't as many opportunities for expanding one's horizons. As soon as I was out on my own, I moved to a small city.  I loved being where things were "happening."  There was always something to do and places to go.  I met lots of different people, many of whom are still friends to this day.  I really liked living there.  Then I moved to a smaller town, which was a little less hectic but still lots of fun.  I really liked living there, too.


Now I live in Palouse, Washington.  At about 1,000 people it's bigger than St. Paul but it's still a small town.  I'm back to being a farm girl, taking care of about 3 acres (along with Paul, of course).  I'm doing lots of gardening and enjoying being in a quiet place again.  It seems I've come full circle and I'm quite contented with my life and where I live.  Someone I know wrote that those of us living here make a choice to have fewer choices.  I really like that idea.

One thing I've noticed is that this small town has that very same sense of community that I grew up with in St. Paul.  People here help each other out.   Folks wave even if they're not sure who you are.  They show up at events to support each others' projects.  They work together for the sake of the community.  I would say that most folks here in Palouse are happy to be a part of this place, to be living in a small town.  I know I certainly am.

Company

You know what happens when you're going to have company?  You clean house, right?  Sometimes we laugh and say that's the only time the house gets thoroughly cleaned, although that's not really true, but it does get that little extra spit and polish when you know someone else is going to see it.  I know you know what I'm talking about.  

The past few weeks we have been doing lots of spitting and polishing around here.  We were invited to be part of the Palouse Home and Garden Tour this year.  It is a fund-raiser for a local group that is preserving a lovely small old church here in Palouse.  We like to support community events and agreed to do it...even though we wished it was two years from now when things will be more finished and lush and impressive.  Actually we were kind of surprised and honored that they asked us.  So we have been weeding and mowing and raking gravel and painting porch step risers and washing windows (you get the idea) for the last couple of weeks.  Whew, it was a lot of work and, at times, we wondered if we had done the right thing.  But today proved that we had.  




We had women from the church preservation group here to help, which was great.  They checked people in at the front walk. 









 



I gave tours inside the house and then turned folks over to Paul, who covered the gardens and prairie part of the tour.  It got pretty busy during the afternoon and the last people left about 4:30 (it ran from 11-4).  

 








It actually turned out to be a fun experience.  We met lots of really nice people, some local, some from farther away.  Everyone was complimentary and, seemingly, impressed with our little piece of Palouse paradise. 

Even though it was lots of work, it was worth it in the end.