Before the Rain

The oak leaves crunch underfoot, everywhere I walk these days, here on the ridge, as the summer weather is about to reverse itself, with rain and freezing temperatures coming our way as soon as tonight. I have completed the most difficult of chores that are on my list of to-do things, before the rain commences.

I had to split up a pick-up truck load of kitchen wood, tailored to fit the small firebox of our antique Superior stove. This stove will occasionally appear in the background of a photograph, as it did the other evening when SmallBoy and Dancing Girl stopped by on their way to the Hill-oween Party, up here on the Bell.

I could put on the outfit, but I could never rock it.
These folks nailed it to the wall.

The firebox is no more than eight inches wide by eight inches tall, so I split the wood into two-by-four chunks, more or less. For such a small source of heat, the stove does an excellent job of warming  the kitchen, while serving as a crock pot at the same time.

I had to move the wood from HeadSodBuster’s spot to my own, and then relocate it to the wood-storage shed, which used to serve as a generator/battery-storage facility. When the shed is stuffed, it gives me about two weeks of protection from the elements.

The second task I had to do was make the arduous trek down off the mountain, all the way to the metropolitan area of Laytonville, where I needed to replenish my supply of groceries. This particular chore is made ten times more challenging, by the arbitrary-and relentless-nature of the road construction. 

Never in 35 years has this willingness to continuously DO SOMETHING to the highway at all times, been so rampant. Yesterday, they cordoned off more than five miles of the highway, to do something as of yet undetermined, and it created twenty-minute delays. 

Why five miles? Why not a more reasonable length, so that the motorcade crawling back and forth incessantly, does not have to crawl so far? Just asking.

Hello my pretties!

And then, because my morning was going so well, I encountered the grader on Bell Springs Road. And you wonder why I do not like to leave this tranquil paradise?

When I got home and put away the supplies, I then did the laundry, which is still hanging outside now, even as I write. I will bring it back inside, after taking down Gluten-Free Mama’s laundry from the inside racks, and hang it up in here for the rest of the job.

I was just a tad too late getting it out there on the line, yesterday, to get it dry in time. I suppose if I had a dryer, I could eliminate these kind of glitches, but I would add that if it were that important to me, I would have done so at some point in time in the past.

A little excitement attached to doing the laundry is an OK thing.

Today, the biggie is getting the tomatoes off the vine and into the house. If I can get it together to do this before the rain, then we are good to go without the splitting which invariably takes place. Even if the tomatoes are still green, they will ripen over the next few weeks.

It’s just that there are so many tomatoes still out there.

Our peppers are hot!

The name of the upcoming dance is salsa, and I am raring to go. We have fresh onions, peppers, garlic and plenty of tomatoes. A lot of us like it spicy, so there will be at least one batch of the good stuff.

I doubt that this winter can be as bad as the historically wet season we encountered a year ago, but I can say with a degree of certainty, that we will have a lot of rain and probably our share of snow too. 

It’s a good thing we’ll have some heat in the pantry to keep us warm, in addition to the fire in the stove.