Pop Quiz: Solstice Edition

Okay kids: What are the two things that Rita enjoys about the Holiday Season? If you said, "Xmas tree!" and "Cookies!" than you have a splendid memory. Above is the partially decorated pine tree that Bob harvested from our vast acreage. It's actually a bit taller than some recent models and boy is there plenty of open space to hang ornaments! Looks great!

                                     

And here's the beginnings of several bouts of cookie creation. We didn't have the ingredients I needed for a few of the other cookies I intended to make, so I resorted to that pseudo-healthy standby of oatmeal raisin cookies. They're half gone already.

Here's our tree illuminated at night. I think this was from our Solstice Celebration. We like to hold celebrations; what else can you do in times of COVID 19 and continued Trumpism?! Let's break out the booze and have a ball... (*1)

It is strange to be decorating and thinking that we'd ordinarily have family (Hi Cathy! Hi Beatrice! Hi John!) over for pork roast, which Bob is just now starting to cook in the CrockPot. (Or, The CrackPot as it IS at our house!). We're cooking the pork roast a day early, thinking we'll enjoy it for Xmas eve as well as Xmas day because Holy Hell! The weather people are predicting heavy rain! High winds! Flooding! Armafuckinggeddon!! Power outages! Darkness! Despair! Our energy company (don't get me started on Eversource (*2)) left a weird robo-message excusing themselves in advance of any responsibility for power outages. They advised to remove or tie down any outdoor decorations... yeah, right. (*3)

So we're having a small feast: mashed potatoes, roast pork, gravy, Brussels sprouts and our own carrots. And we have a warm spinach artichoke dip as an appetizer and a punkin pie to finish up. Slosh it all down with a nice red Bordeaux and boy are we livin' the good life!

In the meantime, I'm doing everything with one hand tied behind my back as I had a freak accident (*4) and my left hand looks like I decked someone in a bar fight. I'm swollen and can't bend two fingers. Thank goodness I'm a Rightie! 

So... Happy Holidays from us and ours to you and yours!

(*1) To quote Miss Peggy Lee.

(*2) And there were a couple of degenerates (one, whaling away at a rose vine with a machete!!) sent by Eversource to prune the trees that line the driveway so as to prevent outages. But walking out to the mailbox and surveying every bloody inch of the driveway, I was unable to discern that they had done anything!!

(*3)  But I will bring Burned Santa inside for the night. Remember him? Rescued from the wilds of Shamokin Pennsylvania where he had been badly burned in some heathen Xmas sacrifice. He gets tied to the fence every year as our one concession to outdoor holiday decorations.

(*4) Don't ask how I managed to hook my sleeve on a gate, pull on it and cause my poor, innocent left hand to come careening across and POW! impact on the side of the horse food bucket. I am swollen and can't bend two fingers.

Ice Nine*

Let's face it- does anyone like ice? I may complain about snow and cold (and yes, winter in general) but ice sucks. It took me and Bob a good 1/2 hour to chip 1/2 inch of ice from the car. Hell, I couldn't even get inside to turn the engine on and defrost it. It was that frozen.
And boy is it dangerous! Ice doesn't like artists, or anyone else for that matter (Remember the abstract artist Cleve Grey? He fell down on ice in Hartford, hit his head and died.) Going across our backyard is alternately very noisy (crunch! crunch! crunch! I was afraid I was waking the neighborhood when I took Robin out the other night) and slippery as all get out. Imagine me skating across the tundra field to feed and water Maggie. I've got 5 gallon buckets afixed to either arm as I take baby steps and make pathetic whooping sounds as I threaten to topple over. I warn Bob to come look for me if I don't return as I've probably fallen and spilled water- quickly solidified into Ice Nine- somewhere between here and the barn. Awful.
So here's a happier, warmer picture: our 2019 Xmas tree! Yay!!! (To remind my followers, the two things I retain an affinity for at Xmas time are 1.) the tree and 2.) cookies!) Our tree is a tad wispy this year but it came from our woods and I like it's slender aspect. Granted, I couldn't hang many ornaments or the chunky lights on it as it was getting weighted down and looked kinda unhappy.)

But it's lovely! And festive! And there'll be less to take down and re-box after the holiday season passes. And fewer needles to clean up as it has fewer branches and less foliage all around. I'm happy.
Hey! While we're at it... Happy Winter Solstice! Days are getting longer from here on in!

*Ice Nine for those of you who don't recall, is a substance that played a major role the Kurt Vonnegut novel Cat's Cradle. A character named Bokonon who starts a religion possesses Ice Nine; capable of destroying the world. If you haven't read it, it is highly recommended. I myself am going to re-read it I remember enjoying it immensely!

Yule Logging

For no other reason than I needed out door-sy exercise, I started sawing up the downed trees in Maggie's field. Bob strained his knee and I encouraged him to forgo any serious physical exertion- like chopping and chainsawing. I took a small bow saw and started at one end.

See? I made progress. It got the blood flowing; I actually warmed up- something that's not been easy as we've had so many damp, gloomy days. I have a penchant for this sort of almost hopeless enterprise. I could wait and let Bob rip through this enormous tree with his chainsaw in a couple of minutes (and yes, he will have to do the big trunk parts!) but I like beginning at one end and plodding along a bit at a time. I think about what people did before power tools. They sawed by hand.

That's weird vortex picture! Not sure how I did that!
I also remember as a kid, getting in a small plastic boat and pushing myself around on our half frozen skating pond and playing "ice breaker". It was pretty useless, me and my miniature wooden oar smashing chunks of ice up but it was fun and I was persistent.

Maggie is shy about having her picture taken but enjoyed my spending time with her. After all, the tree is down in her field and makes it necessary to navigate around it. Maggie seems to have an unusual fascination with tools. When I feed her early in the morning, my flashlight is as interesting to her as the food. And she was very curious about the saw. It's yellow so maybe she thought it was a carrot.

An Xmas Post

Xmas was celebrated today (December 28th) with my family. Things got off to a rocky start as the reports of ultra cold weather to come threatened to derail our festivities. After the inevitable testy phone calls, emails and smoke billowing from both of my ears, rapprochement was achieved and- cold weather be damned!- Christmas happened.
I think this year was more heavily laden with emotional and familial baggage because it is the first one since Mommy's death. Holidays are always fraught events; this is nothing if not the perennial cliche. My family certainly comes up with it's own exotic expressions of stress, sisterly hierarchies, issues of control etc etc. You get the picture.
I guess I'm lucky in that differences of opinion and questions of rationality versus emotionalism appear insurmountable and yet (mostly) seem to be overcome once we're in each others company. Then we have a good time. I suppose food and wine solve many squabbles...
We cleaned, we cooked, my family arrived. Indeed, they were brave and doughty souls to bundle up in parkas and boots and scarves and gloves and confront the arctic chill. I applaud their heartiness as it is Siberian out there, what with single digit temperatures and bracing wind chill. But our house was warm and the tree was lit up, well... like a Christmas tree.
The food was stellar. We ate so much that Bob and I skipped dinner altogether and I woke up after midnight full of energy and rarin' to go. (Go where you might ask, as it is 1:30 and something like 3 degrees outside? I know this last bit in reality as Lil' Robin the Good just decided that she needed to relieve herself. It really is cold!) Highlights of food included guacamole, spinach artichoke dip, roast pork, sweet potato casserole, cranberry relish (I could eat the whole bowl myself!),squash, brownies, peach pie, several bottles of wine.... and slightly musty tasting green beans.
The green beans sparked a new tradition. They were passed around, tossed, balanced, fondled and generally employed as entertainment. Worthy of the Schmenge Christmas! (Google that on YouTube if the reference escapes you.)
All in all, it was a nice day. We don't exchange Xmas presents anymore- thank god!- so at least that source of stress is eliminated. (Although Bob and I did give my brother in law John his birthday gifts, distinguished this year with a black and red motif.) Lots of food, bright sunlight (despite cold), a tree harvested from the side of our driveway, politics with everyone on the same side of the aisle; it was a good time.

A Dead Squirrel for the Holidays

Happy Holidays! And no, that's not a dead squirrel; that's Burned Santa. Remember him? As a real innovation, Bob added lights to Burned Santa's interior... you could even say he glows.

Here's the other side. Bob was trying to keep up with the honored tradition of putting lights our for Xmas. I like the effect: sort of Xmas in Hell.
Anyway, I went to get wood for my studio wood stove the other day and as I  picked up a couple of logs, I saw this fluffy grey thing. At first I thought Bob had left a glove on the wood pile. But it was a squirrel and it was most emphatically dead.

After assessing that it wasn't "playing opossum", I took this picture, wondered idly how it died- old age? log fell on it? scared to death by Robin chasing it? who knows. But it didn't have any obvious evidence of foul play, like blood or bite marks on it. I told Bob and he disposed of it as I was rushing off to work or something and forgot to get rid of it.
But it gets weirder as the next day, I was walking by Maggie's barn and I saw this:

Another dead squirrel! Now we had a mystery on our hands! At first I suspected it was the same squirrel and an animal had found the first squirrel carcass and carried to to the barn but on closer examination, it was clearly another corpse, as it's tail was bushier and it's position was different. It was kind of creepy because how often do you find dead animals just sort of laying around? Was there a rash of squirrels suddenly falling out of trees, an outbreak of squirrel plague or do we have a group of elderly squirrels ready to depart this mortal coil all at once? I guess we'll never know what killed them but it was definitely strange to see two dead ones within two days.
Let me know if anyone spots further squirrel die off and I'll post something more Christmas-y like our tree later this week.

Cheatin' on Maggie

It's true! I have been cheating on Maggie with a horse named Missy, pictured above. Missy belongs to my friend Gloria who spends the winter in Florida. She was kind enough to ask me if I'd like to ride her horse for her while she whiles away her days on the beach, getting warm and sandy. (We're freezing here!)
I think Missy- seen below in her entirety- misses Gloria, but she's been a good ride for me so far. She seems to be pretty level headed and not spooky or flighty. And she really looks the part of what she is- a Quarter Horse. Very different from my poor Mexican Pony Maggie who is still out of commission because of reoccurring abscesses in her hind foot. Maggie is altogether smaller, both width wise and height wise.

 A comparison:

Maggie is a good hand (four inches) shorter and probably two hundred (or more!) pounds lighter. Even their heads are different: Missy has the wide forehead and big jaw of a Quarter Horse. Maggie has a much longer, narrower head, but your guess is as good as mine as to what Maggie is... maybe part Mustang? Maggie is/was a pretty comfortable horse and it's too bad she's been lame.
I have been fortunate to be riding with Sabina, the woman who actually owns the farm. She has been riding a horse named Hannah, that she bred and raised. Hannah's great; about two years ago, I did some lessons at this farm and Hannah was the horse I was partnered with. She's got a great attitude but a really big, roiling canter- much bouncier at the trot!- than Missy or Maggie. (We didn't ride this past week, though as it snowed and was something like 12 degrees).
And here's what Missy thinks of me; she leaves a big pile every time we ride.

I think I posted this particular subject to avoid what is really on my mind. The winter (which doesn't even begin until this Thursday!!!!!) is already taking it's toll on me. It's dark and cold and the days are short and contrary to whatever it's doing in Florida, it's snowy here. We had such a protracted fall that winter hit suddenly and I sure wans't ready for it! I'm also in avoidance about the holidays. I did make Xmas cookies (one of my two requirements for "celebrating" the season) and we are considering a tree. Maybe that'll get me going, and the fact that it's supposed to be in the forties on Wednesday when we ride... thank goodness for that!

These Are A Few of My Favorite Things

OOps! That's not the tree, but a thoroughly goofy present from a good friend from several years back... but they do get us in the mood for Xmas and all things Xmas-ian...
Like the fabled tree. We do all remember that for the past several years I have been drumming into people's minds (with the infernal Little Drummer Boy beating accompaniment) that the two things necessary for celebrating Christmas are 1.) the Tree and #2.) Cookies.
Here's the first:

All ready to go! Purchased at Home Depot just two nights ago with an accommodating Home Depot employee tearing a tag off a lower priced tree and slapping it on a higher priced tree for us after Bob accused the guy of not wanting to help us out. Way to go, Bob! Always saying that the squeaky wheel gets the grease... Looks great all trimmed and lit. (I always remember the year that a certain relative never decorated their tree and the nude tree just sat in one corner of the room for a couple of weeks. You know who you are!) Kind of like this before photo:

Nothing wrong with this, but it does look naked! Here's the table before the clutter was cleared and the decorations were carefully hung:

That's a fun sort of mess. But we had to clear a path for Bob and I to address Christmas cards. We made a ton of them the other night and now have to say clever things and lick envelopes. You'd think that Jules the Dog would be good at that, but he seems indifferent, despite wearing a respectable amount of glitter on his head. I like these activities. They serve to offset the dark and cold of this time of year. Next, I hit the kitchen to make cookies, and eat too much dough.