No Rain Here, Sad To Say

This is what the sky looked like about half an hour ago and Glen and I and the frogs too were all chanting, "Rain, rain, come on, RAIN!" and the thunder was rumbling and it surely did seem as if the skies would open up and release some of that precious sky water but no. It did not. 

Sigh.

The storm skirted us, once again. 

Hell, I even watered the garden in the superstitious hope that it would increase the odds of it raining but if it did, the odds were still stacked against us. 

I'm going to make this short. I don't really have the desire to bitch the way I did yesterday and I am, in fact, a little calmer. I managed to get some canning done- eight quarts and three pints of beans. 

And yes you DO have to see every damn jar of whatever I can this summer, just as you've had to see every damn jar of everything I've canned in the last however many years I've been writing this blog. 
A bunch of years. A bunch of jars. 
Also, yes, some of the liquid from the jars did leak out due to what I have read is rapid fluctuation of the temperature in the canner. These things happen. And the jars have all sealed so they're good. I need to regulate the dang temperature which is funny because Mr. Moon is always complaining about not being able to regulate HIS temperature, especially while in bed. He gets cold and covers up and then he's too hot and throws off the covers and then he gets cold again and...
Well. Proper temperature regulation is obviously important for both canners and people. 

So it's been a pretty good day, mostly because I got something done. It would very much seem that I have to feel as if I've been a least a little bit productive in order to feel okay about myself and how my day has gone. I started my puzzle in that I'm sorting out the edges which is how I always begin. Do you? If you do puzzles, that is. I feel like it's a good way to begin knowing the picture as well as forming the borders. I am a very non-visual person in some ways and jig-saw puzzles are especially difficult for me because I can't just look at the picture on the box and get an idea of the image in my head. It takes a whole lotta studying. 

And a whole lotta time. 
But it was a good thing to do while I had different steps of the canning going on, timing this and timing that and waiting for pressure to rise and waiting for pressure to go down. The actual filling of the jars when I'm doing plain old green beans is easy once they're snapped. But I suppose I need to work on my temperature fluctuations, don't I?

Mr. Moon dealt with more of Tom's situation today. This is not easy, people. It involves legality and rationality and reality. And a lot more. Some of it you do not even want to know and I don't even need to tell you. And yet the man, the Mr. Moon man, takes it all on with calmness and gentleness and kindness and the determination to do the right thing. 
Right things. 
It's all a lot. 

Are you going to watch grown men beat each other to bloody pulps on the White House lawn on your Tee Vee tonight? What kind of a person celebrates his eightieth birthday cheering for such base and cruel entertainers? 
You know. 
I could puke just thinking about it. No need for me to see the bloody bashing. Simply knowing it's going on is once again proof to me that there is no depth to which this man will sink. 

I could go into a whole other string of curses and cusses and profane observations but I won't. You already know what I think and what I'd say and how I'd say it. 

That's all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

 

Look. The Language Here Tonight Reflects My Mood. You Have Been Warned

 

The wild phlox has started blooming and that's always a happy sight for me but I seem to have a powdery mildew situation going on here in my yard. It started a few years ago with some plants I'd bought at a very well-regarded nursery that I'd potted up and put on the porch and it seems to have spread to whatever is vulnerable to it, the phlox being one of those things. It's sort of crept up on me and is now doing what every invasive thing in this yard does which is to quickly get beyond my control. I realize I should prune back everything that has it and also spray the leaves (both sides!) with a mixture of something like baking soda, Dawn dish soap, and neem oil but Lord have mercy- that would be a lot of work. And I'm sure that one application of the preparation would not get the job done. I'm really not seeing any on the porch plants now which is good but it's going pretty strong in the little kitchen garden area, that area you see above which is next to the kitchen garden, and also along the fence in front of the house where it's showing up on the phlox I've planted there along with the fire spike I've also planted. 

And really, it's too damn hot outside to do any sort of yard work as far as I'm concerned. I spent another hour in the garden picking beans and once again, I wasn't sure I was going to make it. Turned out I really needed a second basket but the thought of walking ALL THE WAY back to the house which is really not far at all was simply too much and I started stashing beans in my pockets. I was hoping I'd get whatever I picked today and what was in the refrigerator canned this afternoon but by the time I'd snapped the new guys, it was too late to start that project. In my opinion, at least. I have about eight pounds of snapped beans to pressure can and I think that'll probably just about equate to another seven quarts or so. 
While I snapped, I finished watching a movie I started yesterday which I've been meaning to see since it came out in 2018, "Green Book" which is a story based on true facts about a Black pianist named Don Shirley and his driver and body guard, an Italian American bouncer named Frank Tony-Lip Vallelonga when Shirley did a concert tour in the deep south in 1962. The movie won a lot of awards including the Academy Award for Best Picture. I don't know why I'd never watched it. "The Green Book" refers to a publication called The Negro Motorist Green Book which was published from the 1930's through the 1960's when segregation was still very much in force and was full of information regarding where Black travelers could find overnight accommodations as well as places to eat. And so forth. 
The movie was not bad although I felt there were a lot of tropes happening but supposedly, it was written based on interviews with Shirley and Vallelonga who became friends on the road and remained lifelong friends, literally until their deaths. It gave a very good picture of what it was like for a Black person to try and just survive on the road in the south and a few of the things that could and did happen during such a trip. And I cried at the very end. Not a whole lot, but I did cry, sitting there on the couch with a bowl of green beans in my lap. 
The truth is, people flat out died just trying to get a meal or taking a piss if their color was the wrong one in certain areas of the country and I can't help but think of how the very same things are happening now, especially with immigrants who fit the profile of being "illegal" or "criminals" or "drug mules."
Whatever. 
Fuck ICE. Fuck racial prejudice. Fuck ignorance and hatred and the inability to feel the least bit of empathy. 
I could go on all night. 
I won't. 

I've been in a bit of a mood today anyway and a little while ago I was contemplating this and wondering why and thought to myself that it almost feels like being premenstrual although I will never be anything but post, post, post menstrual for the rest of my life and then I remembered that due to the fact that the doctor's office which prescribes my hormones is once again being incompetent when it comes to renewing my prescription, I've been taking half my regular dosage so as not to run out entirely before they get their shit together and that may explain things.
Or, I could just be in a bitchy mood for no apparent reason. 
But I'm also absolutely ready to get rid of half, at least, of the stuff in my house from books to tchotchkes, whether on shelves or hanging on walls or in closets. I feel weighed down and burdened by all of it and all of it needs cleaning and dusting and I have no desire to do any of that. Even though I did a bit of a weeding in the library within the last year (or so, to be honest), I still have books in there I've never read and am never going to read or have read and will never read again and not all of the children's books are books that have any real emotional meaning to me or any sort of real value in any way and they're just sitting there, collecting dust and all of the words within them are not doing me a bit of good. There's just clutter everywhere and why is it so damn hard for me to let it go? 
I guess I need to read that book about Swedish death cleaning or something. Look- I have things stashed away that I really have no idea where they came from or how I got them. Or why in hell I kept them. Did someone make me this scratchy shawl? Surely I did not buy it. It must have some meaning, some history which once was important to me but fuck if I can remember what that was. 

But it's all so overwhelming. 
I do not think I'm a hoarder but I know I have some of a hoarder's traits. I hold on to things that there is no way I'll ever need or use again. I do not like this aspect of my personality and I do not like living with the results of it. And let us not forget that my husband is even worse than I am in some ways, happily acquiring things all the time that he dreams he will be using in future projects while there are enough unfinished projects in that garage to last a lifetime. And what the hell is a lifetime at this point in our lives? 

And this is where I am today. Despairing over powdery mildew and the lack of rain and the heat and the mess and the clutter and the weird pain in my left leg and my seeming inability to make myself exercise in any sort of regular way and the mildew which is not powdery and on plants but is in my house (and please do not go into a a treatise about how dangerous mold and mildew are, just don't) and how badly my refrigerator needs cleaning out and how I hardly have a leg to stand on when it comes to mentioning Mr. Moon not finishing projects because I am probably five times worse than he is when it comes to that and...oh yeah, also things like the East Wing on the White House being reduced to rubble and fucking cage fighting (whatever the fuck that really is) on the White House lawn with ads for various products stamped all over that horrid, trashy cage thing and millions being spent on gilding horses (not to be confused with gelding horses) and the 39 times Trump has insisted that we are THAT close to signing an agreement with Iran and people dying in what are essentially concentration camps with no visible hope of any sort of legal resolution and Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire and the lies and deceit and outright theft from the American people while the richest bastards in the world get their tax rates lowered and yet groceries and gas are unaffordable to the masses and let's not even talk about health care. 

Hormones or just trying to shift my fears and anxieties and rage from what's going on in this country to something I actually do have some control over like all the shit hanging on my walls? 
Theoretically.

Meanwhile, Mr. Moon is on his way home. From what I gather it wasn't the best day of fishing but at least he was out on the sea with his line in the water rather than being in a rehab facility trying to make a friend understand why he needs to be there. Or here at home with a wife who is just this side of irrational. 

Or maybe just that side. 
Who knows? 
Not me. 

I do know, however, that this picture makes me happy.

Mama and son at the library. 
Okay. I'm all right. That much of the world, at least, is good.

Love...Ms. Moon

 

Word And Picture Splatter

Here's Magnolia eating her fish and macaroni and cheese dinner. It all turned out quite well, including all the vegetables I cut up to go with it. Raw vegetables with ranch dressing seem to be the young ones' favorite vegetable side dish and that's fine with me. Sometimes I do the same for Glen and me when I become weary of the same five green vegetables and/or salads. Glen's as happy with it as the kids are and I really don't care one way or another. Raw cucumbers and carrots and cherry tomatoes or steamed broccoli? 
Pass the raw vegetables, please. I think if we call that a deconstructed salad it will get more respect. 
And by the way, those items of clothing on the old chest behind her were on the back of a dining room chair waiting for some mending assistance. That chest is sort of a catch-all for projects in process and art supplies and god knows what else. 

Maggie was a very, very good houseguest. After supper Boppy made her a purple cow which she enjoyed and then she took a bath in the big old clawfoot tub in my bathroom. After she was all cleaned and pajamaed and liberally patted down with my Caswell-Massey Elixir of Love dusting powder, she got into the bed and allowed me to read her two books. We read "The Owl and the Pussycat" in tribute to her mama's new tattoo and then we read "The Relatives Came" which she says I've never read to her before and I suppose she's right but Lord, I have failed her. 
She turned off her light at eleven which is early for her and she got up around 8:45 which is also early for her. The Hartmann's are taking summer vacation seriously. I think Owen stays up all night and sleeps most of the day but he's a teenager and that's what teenagers tend to do when they can get away with it. 
This morning Maggie wanted her pancakes and bacon and a cheesy omelet which I had first told her I wasn't going to make because pancakes and scrambled eggs should be enough, along with the bacon but of course I caved and made her a cheesy omelet which she did not like because it was TOO CHEESY. 
Sigh.
Mr. Moon finished it up for her. He's thoughtful and helpful like that. 

I washed the sheets and towels while she was still here and hung them on the line. I asked her if she wanted to help me hang laundry but shockingly, she said "No thanks." 
While I was doing that though, she got out some of the old toys and I was so happy when I found her in the Glen Den, playing with Lincoln logs and the little forest animals AND the Fisher Price farm. 

I had asked her if she still played with her dolls and she said "No, not really," which about broke my heart. 
I guess it's a lot to ask of a ten year old to still want to play with dolls. 
However, when I found that she had done this, I was more than a little thrilled.

She'd found Babar and Zippy and put them both in the high chair and I swear, I could cry. I don't know if she's still pretending or not and I know that if she is, it's not anything like the deep pretending she used to do where she'd get so involved with her doll and animal characters that I would think she was talking to me and when I'd ask, "What, honey?" she'd say, "Nothing. I'm just playing.

Playing. What could be more beautiful to a grandmother? To know that the child is capable of creating and living in different worlds, populated by stuffed animals and dolls has been one of the best parts of my life at this stage for sure and for certain. Is it any wonder that I am so very, very loathe to pass on the toys and the high chair? 
And the books! I was in the library today and while I was waiting to self check-out, a mother with three children was checking their books out and one of the books was "Danny and the Dinosaur." I have a copy of that book in my library and all of my kids and some of my grandkids have loved it. It was published in 1958 so it's hardly a new book and I was flabbergasted that not only did the library have a copy, but that someone was checking it out to read to her children. 
So how can I get rid of the children's books? 

Well. Eventually. Eventually I will have the strength and wisdom to pass on at least the toys. As for the books and the high chair- well, maybe not. Perhaps by the time I die, one of the grands will be having children of their own and they will want these things. 

Or is this just a grandmother's martini-fueled fever dream? 

I took Magnolia home and got to see Lauren and Gibson. Owen? Yeah, still in bed. Oh well. I've seen him this week and gotten some hugs so I'm good. Then I went by Hank and Rachel's to drop off Hank's birthday card and the "flat gift" within it. "Flat gift" is what we call money folded into an envelope. Or gift cards. You know. I didn't give it to him on Wednesday, the actual birthday, because somehow, between home and the restaurant I could not find it which caused a small amount of panic. I found it later underneath the front seat, safe and sound. 

I went to the library, I came home, I snapped more beans, I went out to the garden and took a few pictures. 

One of the candy-cane zinnias I planted is blooming and I could not be more delighted. I could, however, be more delighted with my old phone camera. I think I'm going to put this new one on ice and switch back to the old one. It is possible to take extreme closeups with this new one but it takes so much fiddling AND two hands and who has time for that mess? I do like the shadows of the open disk florets. I had to look that up. I would have just called them those little flowers within the flower. 

Oh, Zinnias! What joy you bring me. 

A not-too bad shot of a cucumber vine creating a cucumber flower. 
I think that's what it's doing. It could be trying to trap garden fairies and eat them for all I know. Whatever it truly is, it's pretty gnarly, isn't it? 

And another photo of a cucumber blossom. 

I got the sheets off the line, I made up the bed. I folded another load of laundry I'd put in the dryer and put that away. 
And I admired my new puzzle which got delivered today.

I cannot wait to get started and yet, at the same time, I want to work on my hibiscus. What an abundance of riches! 

I did have patching Mr. Moon's oldest overalls on the agenda but after studying them more closely, I have decided that no, they are done. There is no reason to attach good fabric onto completely worn out fabric. At this point it's no longer just one tear or rip, it's every square inch of the dear old things that are either holey already or trembling on the verge. 

Hell. The patches need patches. 
RIP you good and faithful servant. I shall cut off the hardware and then I do believe we should give these overalls a fine cremation on the burn pile pyre. 

Happy Friday, y'all. Mr. Moon's at the coast to spend the night with his buddy Alan so they can get an early morning start for a day of fishing on the Gulf. And so, alas, I have had to make my own martini. 
Luckily, it's not that hard.

Love...Ms. Moon

Here, Honey. Let Me Show You How To Snap Beans

 

Ms. Magnolia June is spending the night and her requested supper is her usual ask which is fish and macaroni and cheese. I have the fish thawing on the back porch and as you can see, Maurice is guarding it carefully. 
For breakfast tomorrow, she has requested pancakes, bacon, and perhaps a cheese omelet. We shall see. 
She also asked for chocolate chips in the pancakes which every grandchild always requests for their sleepover breakfasts although I have never in my life made a pancake with so much as one chocolate chip in it and never will unless someone's life depends on it. And I told Maggie that. 
"Okay," she said.
It reminded me of when the kids were little and would ask me to buy some sort of horrid (delicious) sugary cereal as if there was a chance in hell and I would always say, "Do you think I've lost my MIND?!" 
I probably did buy them some fruit loops or something at some point but it certainly was not a regular thing. Oh, I was so cruel. And I still am. Although when Maggie and I went to the store after I picked her up, I did get rainbow sherbet and grape juice for her after dinner purple cow. I mean, I am a grandmother. 

And as such, I figured I'd have her help me snap some beans today to help me get ready to can them tomorrow. I had two gallon sized bags in the refrigerator already and picked again this morning at which time I almost passed out from the heat. 
My GOD it's hot and the humidity is only 48% and yet somehow, it seemed absolutely unbearable when I was out there. I honestly wondered if I was going to pass out for the first time in my life. 
I did not. But I will say I was definitely having a fine old lady case of the vapors. 
All of that aside, Maggie did help me snap beans and we got managed to do all the ones I'd picked earlier today.

She did a good job, too! I have this fantasy that I'm going to teach my grandchildren about the joys of growing and preserving food but I'm not sure that's going to happen. Trust me when I say that none of them would have tolerated the picking of them. At least I don't think so. But sitting on the sofa in the AC, watching Shaun the Sheep and snapping them isn't that horrible of an activity. And who knows? Maybe at some point in some of their lives, the growing/gardening/preserving gene will kick in and they will have some visceral memory of watching Mer doing these things and they will feel as if these are things they want to do. 
I would be very pleased to know this had happened. Of course I'll be dead by then so I'm not sure why I care but the grandmother-passing-along-of-the-knowledge-to-her-grandchildren urge has definitely kicked in for me and I feel as if I must do these things. August and Levon's other grandmother is a master gardener and preserver, putting me firmly into the dilettante category so perhaps they at least will feel the pull to plant at some point. Their mama grows things too and actually, Lily and Lauren also have some things growing so they do have examples to look to. 

Mr. Moon has just gotten home from getting Tom settled into a rehab place. He did not have another stroke but did have a UTI which as many of us know, can cause severe delusional thinking and action and that's what had happened. The hospital was insistent that he needed to go into another facility before being allowed to go home which was absolutely the right thing to do, and Glen figured all of that out and transported him there and had to explain to him why he needed to be there and so on and so forth and now we shall see what happens next. I seriously doubt he's going to be deemed able to take care of himself but he hasn't really been able to take care of himself for a long time and yet, here we are. 

Well, Ms. Magnolia has informed me that it is after six o'clock and I am pretty sure she thinks I need to be starting supper and I guess she's right. Off I go to cook fish and macaroni and cheese and cut up some vegetables. She has agreed that she is finally ready to sleep in the guest room by herself instead of in the bed with me so this is a big step. She says she has already done that once before and she may be right. 
I don't know. I don't really know much of anything these days. 
Except that I do know how to grow, pick, snap, and can beans. 

May all be well with you and with all of us as Donald Trump melts down into complete and utter insanity and dementia while those who should be handling this situation seem to have no idea what to do. 
Scary times. Horrific times.

Let us seek peace and comfort where and how we may. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Birthday, Birth Day

Well, let's get that out of the way. My leaf platter was out of the kiln and that is how it turned out. I kind of like it. Some parts more than others. Pottery was good today. I took a bag of green beans in to share and that was fun. I mean, it was fun to share. And I worked on my hibiscus and got to chat with Lizzie and the other folks and I just really, really enjoy that part of my week. I am so damn slow, doing this glaze painting but I really enjoy every minute of it. 

You can't tell but there are three gradients of color there, going from center out. I really wish the colors were more true to what they'll look like when they come out of the kiln but they just aren't and I'm not experienced enough to be able to get a very accurate idea so I am just playing and hoping and seeing what happens. 

I ended up giving the leaf platter to Hank for his birthday because why not? And he seemed to like it fine, probably mostly because his mama made it. 

Oh, it was a fine birthday luncheon! When I walked into the restaurant, I was so thrilled to see that Billy had come. I have not seen Billy in over a year and by god, my heart just leapt at the sight of him. For those of you who have heard about Billy many, many times but don't really know who he is, here's a picture.

Do I look happy? 
Yes. Yes I do. And behind me you can see Owen who is carrying the cake in the new cake box for Hank and Rachel to take home and my leftovers which I would have totally forgotten if he hadn't picked them up for me. 
I have so many sweet fellas in my life. 

And here I am with my sweet birthday boy, the baby who made me a mother, the first true love of my life. 

All day I've been thinking of how it was indeed fifty years ago that I birthed this child and how every bit of what I went through to do it was suddenly made not insignificant in the least, but absolutely appropriate to what I felt holding him when he finally got here. Since he was my first baby, I was stunned beyond words at what my labor felt like. I had no idea that it would hurt the way it did. I know that some women do not experience labor as being so painful but I think the general consensus is that it is indeed a powerfully mind and body altering experience and I have to tell you that anyone who labors without asking for pain relief of one kind or another in a situation where such relief is available is a stronger woman than I am. If I had had the option for something to help ease what I was feeling, I would have gotten on my knees and begged for it. 
And quite honestly, I felt that way during every labor. 
With Hank, I labored at home in our little apartment for 24 hours with my three friends who had aspirations of being midwives, one who had had two babies at home already, delivered by her husband, and one whom the local paper had written an article about because she had used the LaMaze method (in the hospital) to have her baby without pain relief which was such an unbelievable thing in that day and time that it was indeed newsworthy. 
And we had all read "Spiritual Midwifery" by Ina May Gaskin from cover to cover at least fifty times and there we were. None of us quite sure what we were doing and one of us quite sure that she would never, ever, no matter what, go through this again. 
Now I have to point out that the hospital was only about ten blocks away so I could easily have asked to be taken there and yes, I did have an OB whom I had gone to for all of my prenatal care although I had not even hinted at the fact that I was planning on having a home birth. He would have kicked me out of his practice in a red hot second if I had. 
But I hung in there for all those hours, through a day, through a night, and into the next day before I finally said, "I cannot do this any more," and my then-husband drove us to the hospital by which time I was so actively pushing that the nurse in L&D, laughing, told me that if I didn't get up on that bed I was going to have the baby on the floor because yes, I was squatting on the floor and I told her that I did not care if the baby was born on the floor. And I did not. 
And very, very soon, he was there, although not born on the floor. 

I have spent a lot of time in my life pondering about why labor has to be so painful. I mean- it seems insane that we have evolved so that it happens like this and yes, yes, I know. Human babies have big heads and human mothers' pelvises have a hard time accommodating them but come on! 
And what I have come up with is that the pain has its own purpose. Anything that takes so much effort and which can be so agonizing has to be of great value. At least that's what it seems like to me. And also, when I was in labor the idea that a real baby was involved in this whole experience completely left my mind. Oh sure, intellectually I knew that was the hoped for result but honestly? 
I was far too deep into beast mode to consciously understand what that meant. 
And then- the very, very second my baby was born and held up for me to see, the pain was gone. Completely. And for me, the sight and the reality of the presence of the child was so deeply associated with the cessation of pain that it was almost as if the baby had saved my life. Had restored me to living. In his birth, I was reborn. 

And if that's not a damn good way to begin a lifetime of maternal love and devotion, I don't know what is. 
So. That's what I have come up with. It's a one of my theories and honestly, I think it's a good one. 

I'm sure I've written about all of this many times. But that's okay. It's important stuff and after fifty years I am still processing it all. The pain, the work, the knowledge I gained about the strength of my body which I had no awareness of at all, and then the absolute unexpected melting into a new sort of love, a new sort of relationship- I am as in wonder at it now as I was then. 

And by the way, there was no "rooming-in" in those days. Babies went to the nursery and mothers only got to see and hold them for feeding and I was NOT HAVING THAT and we signed out against medical advice and went home that afternoon and being home with my baby, in my own bed, able to hold and nurse and gaze at my child as long and as closely as I wanted without regard for sterile procedures (they were big on that then) and hospital schedules was the most heavenly thing I could ever have imagined and I swear to you that when friends came over, that very night, to meet our baby, the two little girls of the family tickled baby Hank and cooed at him and smiled at him and he laughed. 
He laughed the night he was born. 
I am not making this up. 

So. There you go. Fifty years ago and obviously, so much of that day is still so very present in my mind and in my heart and I have no doubt it will always be so until the day I die. 

Of course I haven't even begun to discuss what sort of a child Hank was, or how he has grown to be the the amazing man he is although I have talked about those things many, many times. I think that Rachel said it best though, on her Facebook post this morning. 

The world had no idea how lucky it was the day you were born. You are the light of my life, and you light the path for all those around you. You radiate Queer Joy in the most beautiful way possible. You are a loyal, kind, caring, generous partner, son, brother, uncle, friend, community member, person. You are one of the best of us. I love you with all my heart and all my me! Happy happy birthday, my love!

Thank you, Rachel.

Here's a few more pictures from today.

Brothers since forever. 

The cake! 

The family. Or, at least a lot of us. That's Lindsey on the right, there. She's another one of our tribe. Mr. Moon wasn't in the picture because he'd already left to go back to the hospital to do more attending to Tom's situation. And of course, we so miss the Weatherfords but they will be back to celebrate all of the birthdays in September of which there are many. 

Happy Birthday, Hank My Love, my amazing darling boy. Thank you for being born to me. I think we were a match made in heaven. 

Mama

Busy-Ness

 

Today was a get-shit-done-day for me. The main project I wanted to tackle was making bread and butter pickles. Remember how our first few cucumbers were so bitter? Well, they aren't any more and I had a refrigerator that, if not filled with cukes, sure had a lot of them stashed in different drawers and crispers and on shelves. So out came the water bath canner and the very, very cool colander you see in that picture above. I got that thing at the Bad Girls Get Saved By Jesus Thrift Store before they broke my heart and closed. I'm still not over it and probably never will be.

When I saw that colander, I wasn't even sure what it was but quickly realized that it was indeed a colander and built so that it could easily be adjusted to fit into different sized spaces. The handles are on sliding tracks which pull out or push in, making it adjustable for all of your draining needs. It works wonderfully well for rinsing vegetables just out of the garden in the sink that Mr. Moon built for me and/or in the kitchen. When I saw it, I realized that it was what had been missing in my life and I snatched it right up. I knew I'd use it to wash and drain beans before canning and I've used it for other things too. It worked perfectly today for my cucumbers and onions which had been salted, covered with ice, and left to sit in a bowl. It is so easy to just dump that big bowl of the salted vegetables into the strainer and rinse them and let them drain. Before I sliced each one though, I tasted it to make sure it wasn't bitter. I only found two of those in the whole mess, the rest tasting as cucumbers should. 
Bread and butter pickles are sweet pickles and so their syrup has vinegar and sugar in it, along with various spices like cloves and mustard seed and celery seed and red pepper and black peppercorns and all that good stuff. You boil that mixture, then add the drained cucumbers and onions, bring it all back to a boil and pack your jars, put on their lids, and in they go to the canner. 

Today's batch only made six pints but six pints is fine with me, especially since I didn't think I was going to be able to make any cucumber pickles this year. We only have two grow bags with the plants in them but they're pretty prolific. 

So while I was working on that project I started making a cake which we shall not discuss in depth here because it may be involved in a birthday. While the cucumbers were sitting in their salt and ice bath, I got the cake made and in the oven and was able to somehow coordinate my actions which is something I'm not very good at these days. I guess I was having a good mental health day or something. Whatever, everything went rather smoothly. 
Of course every different project creates a mess which I absolutely must clean up before I can go on to the next stage because I cannot cook in a messy, untidy kitchen. 
I just can't. So that's a constant too. 

But by three-thirty I had those pints cooling on the kitchen island and the cake baked, iced, and in the refrigerator, and the countertops de-stickified and all of the dishes and pots and pans and knives and spoons I'd used washed and in the drainer or in the dishwasher. And then...out to the garden!

My beans had slowed down a bit and I was beginning to worry but between the rain we got last week and a good watering with the sprinklers, they have made a splendid comeback. I picked for an hour. Or close to it. 

Picking beans is like a treasure hunt for me. Every bean I find and pluck gives me a tiny hit of serotonin even after all these years. Growing rattlesnake beans is an important part of my mental stability. I swear. And then seeing my pantry shelves fill up with the jars of them I've processed also brings me a sense of satisfaction that is hard to explain. And same with the pickles like the ones I made today. 
Tomorrow is pottery and I'm going to take a large bag of green beans to give away to anyone who wants them. I'll take smaller bags to parcel them out. I hope people want them. 

And now I've made a spaghetti sauce with venison from the woods and eggplant and a green pepper from the garden. They're the little Asian eggplants and so I just sliced them up and threw them in with the browning meat, the onions, and the chopped up pepper. And garlic. You know. I wish I had enough tomatoes to have thrown those in too but I don't. We should have planted a lot more tomatoes than we did.

Mr. Moon was going to leave for the cabin today but he got a phone call from another friend of our friend Tom's who somehow had been informed that Tom was in the hospital. We're not sure what happened but possibly another stroke. Glen is his health care surrogate so he needs to stay in town. It sounds like they're mainly looking for a rehab place for Tom to move to for now and I have a feeling that this means he'll never be going back to his Tiny House in the woods again. He really shouldn't be living alone there anyway and he REALLY shouldn't still be driving but he has been doing both of those things for far longer than I would ever have thought possible with his many and varied disabilities. The man is stubborn as ten Mr. Moons and a Tennessee mule and that may be the world record for stubbornness. Let me just say that although Tom has a very hard time speaking now, one of the things he can definitely still manage to say and make clear is "FUCK NO!" 
So. 
It's honestly really good that Glen isn't leaving this week because after months dealing with a place on his back what would not, will not heal and which has itched to the point of his madness, he has finally gotten a diagnosis and it is not skin cancer or any cancer but some sort of dermal hyper-reaction to possibly an insect bite and he is supposed to apply a steroid cream around it twice a day and he can't do that on his own. He simply cannot reach it. They've also prescribed antihistamines to help with the itching and thank god for that. Why I haven't been pumping him with Benadryl at night is a mystery to me. I know that Benadryl is losing favor with the medical profession but if you need to stop itching in any way in order to sleep, I can't think of a better remedy. 

And that's all the news that's fit to, uh, well, not print, but send into the cybersphere. Is that word appropriate? Who knows? Not me. I'm just proud I figured out how to use an adjustable colander. 

Magnolias from my sweetheart. 

Love...Ms. Moon

A Magical Mystery. At Least For Me

When I was a little girl, I loved going through my mother's jewelry box. There were, almost by very definition, treasures in it. It was made of wood and the craftsmen ship seemed very fine and of course the little drawers were velvet lined. I swear to you I can still hear the sound those drawers made when they were pulled out. 

There were two pieces of jewelry in the box which I especially loved. 

One was a pin, or a brooch, I guess, which Mother wore when she was going out fancy. Which didn't happen very often. But when she did she would always wear this and I was certain she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

I was also certain that those gorgeous roses trapped in Lucite were magical. How could they not be?
I'm pretty sure those pins were quite popular in the mid to late fifties. I remember other women wearing similar ones and they're hardly worth the effort to order one online. The market is probably flooded. 
But anyway, I kept that particular piece of jewelry because it was a little bit of magic from my childhood and I remembered it so clearly. 

The other piece of jewelry in the box was a bracelet. The catch on it was broken and I never once saw Mother wear it. When I'd ask her about it she sort of brushed me off. I don't think she valued it much or perhaps she had a bad association with it. Who knows? 
But I thought it was about the coolest, most enchanting thing on earth. I can remember looking and looking at that bracelet, trying to figure it out. Who did the faces on it belong to and why was it so different from any other jewelry that I saw other women wearing? This is what it looked like, only without a clasp.

The faces are quite large.

As you can see. 
That's my wonky wrist, by the way. The one I broke when I was seventeen. It has an odd bump on it and its mobility is somewhat limited. Not much. It's my bracelet-wearing wrist.

Anyway when my mother died, I knew I wanted that bracelet and I wanted it bad. My three other siblings are brothers so they didn't want it. I don't think any of them had spent much time going through our mother's jewelry box.
So, I took possession of it and took it to a jeweler to get a clasp put on it which they did and I asked them if it was silver. They said something like, "Silver coated". I knew it had silver in it or on it because it tarnishes and comes back bright and shiny if I give it a good cleaning with a silver-polishing cloth and I accepted what the jeweler I'd spoken to said and did not love the bracelet one bit less.

I've google-lensed it before but never learned anything definite about it, not even the identity of whatever god or, well, guy those links were representing. I always thought they were Bacchus, that bad boy who was god of wine and inebriation and agriculture but I didn't spend a lot of time worrying about it. To me, one more mystery about this mysterious bracelet was to be expected. 
For some reason though, this evening I really looked for any kind of marking on the backs of the links. I couldn't find a darn thing on any of the three Baachus images, if indeed that's who it is, but there are two smaller faces or masks between the larger ones which are all identical. Here's what the little guys look like.

I have no idea who these cuties are. None at all. 
BUT on the backs of both of them I found this.

Obviously, I can clearly make out the 800 marking but have zero clue about the other one which looks as if it had been polished away. 

Here's the back of the other small link.

Any suggestions? 

I am clueless which is not unusual but in this instance, I'd really be interested in getting some information. 

Since I could see the "800" marking quite well, I looked it up and that indicates the piece is indeed silver, but a silver used more frequently in the late 19th century to the early 20th century. The 800 indicates that it is 80% silver whereas we mostly see 925 silver markings, which means that piece is what we call sterling silver and it is (surprise, surprise!) 92.5% silver. 
The 800 marking does not mean the piece is less valuable unless what you're looking to do with it is to melt it down and sell it for the value of the silver. It makes a more sturdy piece and is used in silver flatware and also jewelry. And it does indicate a vintage piece. 

Google lens has advised me that the guy on the big links could be the Green Man, Baachus, or your run-of-the-mill party guy satyr. I am more inclined to believe it's Green Man or Bacchus. 
Whoever it is appears to be a good time god. 
And also, whoever it is, I am as intrigued and curious about the bracelet his visage adorns as I was as a child. And I would really love to know how it came to be in my mother's jewelry box.

And that's about it for me today. I went to town to do the weekly shopping. I have a story involving THE HEARING AIDS which ended (so far) with my husband telling me he still loves me, and we just got enough rain to wet the ground and make it smell really, really good here. Also, I am watching Hawk who has flown in and perched on the fence for reasons unknown to me. The crows are NOT happy about this and are cawing out warning calls. 

Tomorrow makes fifty years ago that I began in labor with Hank. 
And his birthday is Wednesday. 
Do the math. 
But. I can still hardly talk about his birth and how I felt my heart expand to a size I did not know possible when I first held him in my arms without crying. 
I learned what love was then. As I have always said, my kids have been and are my best teachers and I was so fortunate as to have Hank be my first one. 

Happy night before you were born, my love, my beautiful red-headed baby! 

Always...Mama