november

tom waits has a song about it.
many significant, life changing events have occurred for me, in the month of november. one year, my apartment caught on fire, and i had to move out. oh, and four years ago, in november, i had a baby! this november, i'm writing 50,000 words in thirty days. i have my doubts that the collection of letters, arranged into words, placed together haphazardly into sentences, over the next few weeks, is going to resemble anything close to what anyone would call a novel, but at least i'll have something to work with. i'll have 50k words that i didn't have before. and, i must say, i love nanowrimo. it's just the kick in the pants i needed to get this crazy story onto the page. i am writing every day, over 2000 words, and i am not editing. i am not reading what i have written. ahhh. it is so freeing.

cosmo had fun trick-or-treating, but seems to enjoy, even more, playing with the candy. he likes to sort it, arrange it, catapult it with a yard stick, move it from one container to another, build with boxes of dots and milk duds, toss laffy-taffy into a cut-out flap in a card board box, count hershey's kisses, and make letters out of skinny tootsie rolls. he never eats any without permission, and when he is allowed to have a piece or two, he just can't. decide. which. one. he wants. so, we showed him how to do "eeny meeny miney mo," "bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish," and "engine engine number nine," so that the decision making is left to chance. he loves this process, and will line up six (or nine, or thirty-seven) pieces of halloween candy, and then, through a long, arduous process of elimination, pick the one piece he will have. he alternates between the three rhymes, and says, "the one that wins, i will eat." he is always thrilled with the winner, even if a milkyway gets eliminated in the first round, and the piece left standing is one, solitary dot. i love the way he says, "MY mother says to pick the VERY best one, and YOU are not IT!"

speaking of tootsie rolls, cosmo looked better in my borrowed costume than i did, but he couldn't walk in it-- just roll. i loved the costume though, for its ease. no make up, no wig, no special clothes, just put it on, and you have an instant, and rather impressive, costume. "cheers!" to whomever crafted it, and "thanks!" to my good neighbors for letting me wear it. cosmo's ghostly cheesecloth kept drifting off his hoodie, but he didn't seem to care, one way or another. the costume was incidental to him. he still can't get over the fact that one day a year, you go out at night, knock on people's doors, they open them, and hand you candy. how can this be? he doesn't run around excitedly, but rather wanders from house to house, sort of stunned, and amazed. he says his obligatory "thank-you," but no smiles. carl called his own, last-minute costume "the haunted shepherd," he was wearing a sheep-herder's hat, from kyrgyzstan.

back at home, we were greeted by these jack-o-lanterns that cosmo and i made out of plastic water bottles. i hope to do a tutorial on those, in another post.

we checked out an awesome book from the library called "applesauce season." it's all about making applesauce, which is something carl especially loves to do. so this time, we got cosmo involved in it from start to finish, including picking out the apples at the farmer's market, and running the cooked apples through the food mill. he really got into it, in part, i suspect, because it is one of his favorite foods.

cosmo has been surprising us, on a regular basis, with his reading skills. i catch myself saying, "you can read that? so, you're a reader? you read now? okay then..." and, i have been saying this for months and months. i guess i have to face the fact that he's learning to read! very exciting. i have even seen him in his room, quietly turning the pages, and reading simple books, all the way through. gasp! he seems to get a lot of satisfaction from it, and tries to read words everywhere we go. he also made a huge leap last week, in his grasp of addition and subtraction. it started with one of the pbs kids games he plays online, but he needed help. i grabbed 5 pens, and showed him how to figure out the answer to a simple addition problem, using the pens, and counting. he was absolutely giddy when he got it. witnessing his little brain grow and expand is one of the greatest pleasures of my life.

(that's 813 words, FYI)

last gasp

a honey bee gathers the last of the nectar from the asters

i guess i titled one of my gardening blog posts "last gasp" last year. sorry, but that's what it feels like around here. last burst of gardening energy, before winter sets in, and a mish-mash of a blog post, to cover a lot of ground before i dive into national novel writing month, tonight at midnight.


the last cosmo of the season and the view from our window, one week ago.

let's start with the garden:
the rye cover crop is now a lovely green blanket over what was once the sprawling cherry tomato bed. we are still plucking perfect tomatillos off the vine, and i have made two batches of salsa verde (for canning) and countless batches of quick fresh green salsa. and still, there's more.



i've been enjoying the herbs we still have flourishing in the garden, and was astonished at the bounty i brought in last week, as i was preparing dinner for some friends. not all of our fall carrots have matured, but some have, and they are lovely. we are cherishing the last of the beets. the candy-striped ones are called chioggia.



we harvested another armload of leeks and made the memorable leek and goat cheese galette. since another blogger has already documented this process beautifully, i won't repeat it here. this time, i chose to make 4 individual galettes, instead of one big one. it looks so lovely on the plate, surrounded by a wreath of fresh water-cress. since it was just for carl and i (cosmo rarely eats what we eat for dinner), we got two full meals out of it. i think this might be my favorite dish right now. at least my favorite of dishes that come out of our kitchen. and i swear it tastes better with leeks, thyme and parsley from our own garden.



in other garden news, my friend stephanie, garden-educator-extraordinaire, taught me how to create our newest garden bed. first i spread out some cardboard, then a layer of our compost, a thicker layer of leaf-mold from last year's autumn leaves, then a layer of straw. it took me a couple of hours to complete, and it's huge! cosmo had a lot of fun "helping" me. in the spring, we'll dig some holes for transplants, add a little compost or soil to each hole, and that's it. the following year, it should all be broken down, and soil-like, and can just be dug and worked like our other garden beds. i am so thrilled.



we still have lettuce, arugula, and a tiny bit of spinach, which i hope will over-winter with some straw on top. apparently the carrots can stay in the ground too, with a layer of mulch, and they'll come back in the spring.



on to gleaning, and other topics:
we ended up making pear fruit leather, and a pear/cranberry chutney for canning, with the rest of our gleaned pears. one of our neighbors has a particularly nice crab apple tree, with large fruit, that tastes good right off the tree. she told us to help ourselves, and we did.



nothing like starting the morning trimming little tiny apples. but aren't they beautiful?



then carl made this glowing jelly while i was busy shopping at the free swap out at bloomingfoods (they used the truckload-sale-tent to house a glorious exchange of useful stuff, all free of charge! crazy, huh?). there was a littlecrab apple juice left over--tart, and nectar-like. we sipped it from tiny crystal goblets.



take a gander at that incredible tromboncino squash! it was a gift from our neighbor jack, whose son is a farmer. they say you can use it just like butternut, but i found it to be more stringy and watery than a butternut, and lacking in that brilliant orange color. the soup-in-progress (shown below) features a true butternut, and a garden herb bundle.



i managed to get the basement into a somewhat presentable and inhabitable space--in time for our housewarming party, and in time for the crafting frenzy, which has already begun. since some potential recipients of my creations may read this blog, i cannot reveal all the particulars of the crafted goodies that are being churned out of this space, but after the holidays, i'll try to do a re-cap.




we took a short drive to the hoosier national forest last weekend, to climb the fire tower for the ultimate autumnal view. i failed to bring the camera to the top of the tower, but my wimpy little lens wouldn't have even come close to capturing that spectacular vista-- so, it's probably better left to the imagination. cosmo enjoyed the short nature walk, and the lady bug explosion that happens here every fall.





cosmo was down for a few days with some virus, other than the flu. it was quite mild, and luckily, he's over it in time for halloween. hope yours is fun.

water falls

cosmo's obsession with flowing water goes way back. it has been a consistent theme since he was one year old, or so (along with spheres, tracks, mazes, maps). he loves puddles, down-spouts, gutters, waterfalls, creeks, fountains, washes, bathtubs drains, hoses, storm drains, pipes, sinks, toilets etc. perhaps it is a natural fascination for all small children.



since the warm weather hit, his favorite activity is "playing with the hose." i feel like a real schmuck for allowing him to "waste" so much water, but on the other hand, he learns so much from his extended, solitary, exploration with moving water, that i really hate to cut him off. he will occupy himself for hours, if allowed, moving the hose all over the yard, finding different materials to flow over, and holes to fill up. he digs out little streams in the gravel and the dirt, builds dams, waterfalls, and tiny ponds. he becomes so engaged, and so focused in this free water play, it seems unfair of me to worry about things like global water shortages, or, of lesser importance, our water bill. it is also difficult to feel the scarcity when we are experiencing such excesses in terms of rain fall. a few days ago, we got almost 4 inches of rain in 24 hours. and then, another inch or so a day later (carl reminds me that where he grew up, in denver, they get about 6 inches a YEAR. if they're lucky).



in the midst of the day-of-downpour, cosmo and i were out traipsing around the neighborhood, in our goulashes, rain jackets and umbrellas, checking out all the gutters, large puddles, and storm drains. there was a lot to observe. and this time, it was guilt-free for me. we got to divert water that was missing the storm drain, back into the drain, clear debris, and float little "helicopter" maple seeds down rivers of rushing water. we do this often during spring and summer showers, but this year, it seems a bit more serious for cosmo. the rain let up for a while, and we went back indoors. after our outing, an hour or so later, when another storm rolled over, he was back out, on his own this time, investigating all there was to see in our yard. he moved from down spout to down spout with our dryer-vent-turned-all-purpose-toy, trying to hook it up to the spout, watching it flow out the end of the tube. entranced. he noted that our neighbors needed to clean out their gutters, since the water was over-flowing at the top, rather than heading down the water spout (cosmo is very vigilant about the care and upkeep of our own gutters, but that's a story for another blog post). he was out there for a good hour or so, i joined him for some of it, then carl went out, and they went for another walk in the pouring rain.

there was very loud thunder, there was lightening, and last year, this stuff scared him. this year, water obsession trumps thunder fear. he just can't be bothered. he did ask me, once, if lightening ever touched the ground. our dear friend hannah planted that seed when she visited a couple of months ago. i had to admit that it sometimes does, but that he really didn't need to worry about being outside in the rain. that seemed good enough for him.when carl and cosmo came in from their walk, i had towels waiting at the door, and homemade hot chocolate on the stove. he and carl had a little tea party while they got warmed up.




yesterday, we went out to the sculpture trails for the annual aluminum pour. i went last year with lara, and thought cosmo and carl would really enjoy seeing molten metal being poured into carved-out tiles of pressed sand. cosmo, not so much. see, it had just rained, and there were gravel roads and dirt trails with rivlets of water running down them, and a big rushing creek, with a bridge. anything that did not involve water flowing was simply uninteresting to cosmo. i got him to help me carve out my dragonfly tile, for a few minutes, and we did hike a good portion of the sculpture trails, searching for "hidden" sculptures, but when it was time to leave, the sculptures and the foundry were not the areas that we could barely tear cosmo away from. it was the creek. luckily, there were little trickles of water running here and there, on the road leading back to the car. but when we finally got him buckled into the car, he was in tears, crying, "i wanna go back to the creek! i wanna go back to the creeeeeeek! i don't want to leeeeeave...."




he was so devastated, he fell asleep on the way home, something that almost never happens these days. especially after a good night's sleep (12 hours).


oh, and we saw some geese and goslings on the road, this tree,


and i made this tile for the garden (photo of finished, cast tile, coming soon).

one of our neighbors, whom we don't really know, but refer to as "halloween," (due to her awesome october house decor the first year we lived here), has recently installed a pond in her back yard. a pond with a small waterfall, and a trickling stream. it has become the new destination for walks or bike rides, when it is NOT pouring down rain. one time, halloween herself was out there, and showed cosmo the pump that lives under a lightweight, fake, stone next to the pond. cosmo was talking about that pump for days. i have always thought those sorts of landscaping features were kind of hokey. but i tell ya, if we were homeowners, i'd be looking into low-cost ways of setting one of those up at our place. but cosmo and i have already decided, our pump wouldn't be hidden. why would anyone want to hide something so spectacular?