NEEDED: One Pole Shed for equipment storage..

Between getting this project underway and reading The Code of Four, I got exactly NO knitting done yesterday.   I’m not exactly recommending the book, it was fun, leave it at that.  The new Harry Potter starts tonight (with luck). 
I loaded the Mehu Maija with elderberries at 7am.  The whole house smells of them now.  In another half hour, I’ll start siphoning the extracted juice into sterilized jars.  I can decide this winter if I need to make syrup or jelly or just use the juice (my favorite) added to soda water.  Very nice!  Elderberries are loaded with vitamin C.  There was a reason little old ladies made elderberry wine to cure what ailed them.  I picked berries off and on all weekend, stepping into a nest of ground bees (yellow jackets) in the process.  Sam and I were stung.  I’ve had a hand like a baseball mit for two days, he’s fine.  Now, picking is done in full dress, net helmet, rubber boots and gloves. 

I knew it was coming. The days are markedly shorter.  Sunrise is at 6:30am these days, none of
those ‘it’s 4:30 am and the sky is so
bright that I can’t sleep’ mornings now. The flowers are still blooming. In fact, some of the lilies are on there second bloom, the Turtlehead is
just beginning and Desdemona is in her prime. It’s been warm.  I’ve yet to worry
about covering the tomatoes for frost. But, the Hummers don’t care about the temperatures.  They’re guided by the length of the day. Yesterday, they said goodbye. I really hoped I was wrong. I was sitting on the porch, just out of the
wind, and one at a time, several of the hummers flew up to my head, so close I
thought they were going to land. It was
their goodbye. Then, they were
gone. I had thought all day to make a
new batch of food, add extra sugar to beef up their energy. I went in and heated the water, cleaned
their feeder of the old food and poured in the new. I saw only one hummer come during the
evening. This morning I sat in my usual
seat at the table, next to the window where the feeder hangs.  There
is emptiness to the air; no che-che-ing, no sounds of the vibration of their
wings. Then, I heard it, a sound like
packs of dogs barking. I went out to the
deck and looked skyward.  The geese were
in formation, honking and flying south. It’s coming.

 

Time for wool.

Don’t take your hummingbird feeders in yet. They’ll be on the move for a while, months
really. There will be stragglers; old
ones and weak ones. Everyone will need
as much food as they can get. The trip
south is very long.

…Cimicifuga

                
                turtle head…

"Dainty Bess" 
I’m going to put rubber bands on the ends of a short set of #7’s.  The circ’s twisting 29" band is making me crazy.

Nights here, in the country, are dark. During those times of the month when the moon
isn’t shining, it is incredibly dark. With no ambient light from nearby streetlights or even distant cities to
brighten it, the sky fills with stars; more stars than you can possibly
imagine. The Milky Way becomes a bright
river crossing the heavens. The pond fills with stars. It’s hard to find the place where the sky
ends and illusion begins. So here’s my
question: in the south, with the power outage covering such a large geographic
area and therefore very little ambient light, and so many people sleeping
outside, without roofs over their heads, many for the first time in their lives;
are they seeing the sky, are they seeing the stars, for the first time? Can they see the magic through the misery?

I knit the first 20 row repeat of ‘Bess’ last night. This morning, when I realized how much
laundry had been accumulating, I packed everything up, including ‘Bess’ and
headed to the nearest Laundromat (25 min.). That’s when I discovered two things. First, I had made a mistake on the second row and second that I wanted
to use a different yarn. Tonight, I have
wound another ball of yarn and as soon as I clean up, I’ll frog it.

With gas prices where they are tonight, I have decided to
hang real close to home this holiday weekend.  Probably as
close as the front yard. I’m working on
the hill garden. It’s looking more under control and I’m down to several iris
and two lilies that still need homes. There
are loads of things to be blanched and frozen. Lastly, spinning on the deck is sounding mighty fine.

Count your blessings, I’m counting mine.  If you can’t see a way to help the victims of Katrina now, don’t despair.  This is the proverbial tip of the iceberg.  Winter is coming.  With the rising cost of oil, everything else will skyrocket.  There will be many, many more people falling victim to this disaster.  Many of our neighbors will have to choose between heat and food.  There will be more opportunities to help than we care to think about now.  In the north, the opperative word here is ‘winter’.