Well, it has been a busy couple of days at The Havens.
Yesterday I processed all the apples we picked on Sunday. I ran them through the “apple machine,” which peels, cores and slices them in a beautiful spiral. Then I cooked them down for sauce, which required the use of two of my stock pots at once, one of them had to be loaded up twice. After they were cooked, I put them through the food mill. Then I canned them. I got 20 pints, which required three batches each taking 20 minutes of boiling. This was pretty much an all day process, given the fact that I also did six massages in between stages of the apple sauce process. I was so beat after all that I didn’t even take Ruby for her walk, and she fixed me with accusing glares all the rest of the evening because of my dilatoriness.
Speaking of massage, I had a transcendent massage experience this morning while I worked on a client who has multiple sclerosis. I was inspired by my reading of an article on Quantum Healing in my latest massage journal, and I found myself accessing a skill I learned in California way back when I was first studying massage, Core Energy Work. In addition to donig massage work to get her stiff leg and arm some motion and circulation, I allowed energy to flow through me to her during much of the massage. It was a truly beautiful experience, and she acknowledged to me how powerfully she felt the flow of energy and healing.
After her massage, we walked around the gardens a bit, which was pretty amazing because at her home she uses a John Deere Gator and her crutches to get around. This morning, after her massage, she walked all the way out to our vegetable garden so she could admire the new rock walks, and then back to the house with a side trip to the stroll garden. On the way back we stopped by the Sauna Garden and admired the butterflies on the zinnias.
The robins have been practicing flocking. They are a miscellaneous lot right now. There are adults of both sexes and young robins from every stage of half-pint fuzz heads to adolescents who are starting to lose their breast speckles. The grackles have a second bunch of rather good looking kids following them around. I haven’t seen any young cardinals yet, but mostly they hang out in the plum thicket behind the garden. The wren has decided that three batches of chicks was enough, and is hunting and eating to build her strength for the migration.
It was a cool day today. The weatherman thought it might rain, and he was right. We have had several heavy showers, and occasionally we see some lightning flashing off in the distance. Mostly it has been a drizzly day, which is perfect for the new plantings out in the stroll garden.
Oh, didn’t I report on that yet? I have been so frantically busy canning apple sauce that I forgot to mention that on Monday I completed the installation of the stepping stones in the area north of the rain garden. I am using the stepping stones interplanted with ajuga and a little beauty called Brass Buttons as a transition from the flagstone path to the grass paths that will be in the other section. So without further ado, here is how the Stroll Garden looks at present:
I can’t resist posting a “before” picture, this one was taken in October of 2007, just as we were getting the work well underway:
So, back to today. After I saw my client off, one of my friends dropped by to visit with a whimsical garden ornament. I liked it so much I ordered a couple of more pieces to accompany it. While she was here, we visited the vegetable garden yet again. This time, I pulled about half the carrots up, and brought them in to be cleaned. The left side of my sink is completely full of carrots.
Notice the rather relaxed “girl” carrot on the counter off to the side. Three people told me I should sell it on eBay. Whatever. It’s a carrot. We’ll probably eat it.
Jim made a delectable cheesecake today, in honor of my intelligent and lovely niece’s birthday. She actually got an afternoon off from the Barack Obama campaign office today, and elected to spend it with us. We had dinner rather late, since I had three evening massages today. But when we finally ate, it was worth the wait. A big dinner salad with grilled chicken, pasta, and every vegetable from the garden you could imagine and some melon too. This was accompanied by garlic/parmesan bread. Gorgeous.
Then we spent some quality time watching the Olympic 10m platform divers. Those athletes amaze me. I just wish Bob Costas would stop spending twenty minutes interviewing kids that have about thirty seconds of conversation available in their brain, all of it totally focused on their sport and how happy they are they got a (you fill in the metal) medal.
It makes me think that possibly Jeri and I are right. There should be an Olympic floating and gravel bar contest. The winner is the team that comes in with the most or oddest trash gathered, best photographic documentation of wildlife sightings, combined with the slowest and most relaxed time — that would be the execution score. Demerits for dumping the canoe, of course. The artistic portion of the score would be the judging of the coolest rocks and most varied bunch of feathers and bones and other nifty naturalist stuff picked up on gravel bars. Extra points for arrow heads or other stone age implements. I can hear the commentators now: “Look, Bob, they seem to be packing up their coolers in preparation for leaving the gravel bar. Oh, now look! She has a sparkly rock, and now they’ve spotted something down the gravel bar, and they are wandering off to see what it is. What are they pointing at up in the sky? A red tailed hawk or is that a vulture?” “Well, Joan, this is certainly a display of dawdling on an Olympic level. What are their chances for a gold?” “Oh, Bob, they went past a gravel bar up there even though they talked about stopping. I don’t know if they are up to the level of the Jamaicans.” “Well, yes, the Jamaican use of contraband substances certainly has given them the edge in dawdling technique. But look, look! That gal spotted a whole bunch of trash in that log jam! Are they going to stop and collect it? It looks like they might, this could give them the edge in points.” Etc. etc. etc.
Well, I gotta go. Time for beddy bye. Perhaps tonight I will be able to sleep. Last night was punctuated with regret and guilt over Mike’s life end, and after I dealt with that for a bit I segued into musings about Scrabble words, like what letters can you add to the word “row” to make other words, and why is it that if you add a “c” to it you get “crow” (long o) and as soon as you put an “n” at the end, the o changes to a short vowel and you now have “crown.” Is English a confusing language to pronounce or what? Don’t even get me started on “ough”.
Good night, and good luck.
Energy pours out of you ALL the time Ellie. That combined with how intuitive you are, plus your intense knowledge of the body is what makes you the best masseuse I’ve ever had. Your mind is a detector, not a hurdle. Some masseuses fight the body. They declair war on tension, and that creates a battle zone in the body. You treat the body like a garden. You certainly weed out tension, but it’s all a part of the transformative nature of using destruction for nurturing creativity. Your gardens are proof positive of your superb skills uses in parallel to your massage work.
Speaking of weird carrots, have a look at this one
If they had an Olympic event for how long it takes a family to take a “walk” through the forest, we would win the gold. As a wise boy named Calvin once said, there’s treasure everywhere!