Nature notes

 Yesterday I was called on by the 6 year old next door and her Poppop to minister to an injured butterfly. Big pieces missing from its wings as a result of an unfortunate attempt to usher him out of the car. Cabbage white. The butterfly. The car's a black Honda.

I suggested she lay him on  the grass quietly, to rest. I suspected the rest would be permanent, but they just wanted to do something, you know how it is. 

Indoors more promising signs. When I finally got around to separating the aloe plant after months of postponement largely because it was so misshapen, I had partial success.

This part has done very well in the kitchen

And this I pretty much gave up on after trying to replant it. I watered but left it to figure out its own future. Which to my surprise,  it has.

See the sturdy new shoots, growing well despite their origins. I can cut and discard the original gnarly bits. Very good outcome. I often think plants do very well despite us rather than because of our ministrations.

And did you know frozen blueberries (also seedless grapes if you like grapes) work just like candy with your breakfast pancakes? Just sayin.

Remember Cesar Chavez and his long fight for the vineyard workers against the abuses of big ag in the form of the growers? I joined in the boycott. 

It took so long before he and the farmworkers got recognition and improvements in working conditions that by the time the boycott ended, and I'd become educated about the lives of the pickers, I'd lost my taste for grapes.  

Handsome Partner loved them and they were one of the foods he could navigate after he lost a lot of use of his hands, so I would buy them for him. Afternoon snack for him with medication was grapes and cheese. 

See you never know what tangent I might fly off at in here. Me neither.

Doll stuff

I did more work on Madame Poupee,

and here she is. 

Hair finished, little trim, skirt created from some crazy patchwork I'd done using fabrics I'd printed and image transferred onto among other things, largely silk, on a linen base.

This doll is reminding me of the Robe, work ongoing, that I stitched and appliqued old work onto. 

Anyway I wired the hem and back seam of the skirt to stiffen it. She also declined the offer of pearls, preferring diamonds, so there you are.

I rigged up a stand using a drinking glass. Her legs are inside the glass, skirt outside. This is heavy enough not to fall over.

And she's changed personality yet again with the skirt and the crystal, I mean diamond, necklace. Bit of attitude showing here.

Unless a sudden need for a hat happens, she may be done.

The attempts to get her vertical have led me into another new niche worid: doll stands. I didn't even know they were a thing, not being a collector, until just now.

Next discovery is that they're largely made for commercial doll brands in standard sizes. Even the adjustable ones won't quite work. So I will be investigating making my own. 

With my trusty assortment of wire in various gauges, and PVC pipe. Of course. Only a matter of time before PVC pipe put in an appearance.  I have various pliers once I lay hands on them, and I'll pursue this.

Another fine mess you've got us into, self!

Saturday night at the movies and other entertainment

Today saw another load of laundry arriving from next door to dry, and I was strictly instructed not to carry it downstairs, they would collect later. Which came to pass, and to my great pleasure, the six year old granddaughter came along to help with collecting.

She ran in to show me her first tooth gone, very proud of the gap. We had a chat about whistling, her golden retriever who only pretends to sit on command, being a scientist which she wants to, and an artist,  which she also wants, and we were saying you can do both, dolls, and she examined the art doll with interest, posed for pix for Poppop with my knitted dogs and she picked up a Dolliver for a pic. Her grandfather took the pictures. I wouldn't post them anyway, to protect her. I avoid putting pix of kids on-line. But Gary was eager to get them.

Lovely visit, so happy to see her. I've  literally known her since before she was born, from her ultrasound pictures. She really lifted my day. 

This evening was a movie classic, The Importance of Being Ernest. Just a few random screenshots. The sets were wonderful, costumes, acting, just stylized enough. Well, one look at the all star cast will tell you. Captions, too.

I've always loved Joan Greenwood, subtle comedy. And fabulous looks, even into old age. Well, they were all good. 

Doll's progress, and, how unusual, food

So yesterday my smoke irritated eyes improved to where I was able to do a bit on Doll's hair.  It's filling in now. 

And, once filled in, with a trim and some styling I'll move on to the next  stage which may involve a skirt enabling her to stand. Pearls are in the offing, too. I think the hair is probably the most time consuming part.

Meanwhile, a batch of biscuits, bolted flour, I love its flavor, golden raisins and walnuts chopped on my (yellow) walnut chopping board.

Made a very small batch of jam from the apricots. The flavor makes excellent jam even when not quite up to eating fresh. And there was chunk ginger.

So breakfast this sunny high summer morning was tea with jam biscuits.

Doesn't get much better than this.

Then there's lunches, plural, Roasted vegetables, always interesting.

This is a different mix. Leeks, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, I'll probably add yellow potatoes, and maybe mushrooms. Spiced with capers, red pepper flakes, Old Bay, baharat, seasalt, doused with olive oil. Now all sitting to let flavors develop before I roast them. 

Cool enough to walk

So off I went. I've been pathetically low in energy lately so I seized the moment and went on my normal walk rather than the ten minutes, if that, I've been getting.

I saw a little flock of warblers around the evergreens, interesting songs, tiny birds. We get them in migration season, which usually peaks in May and early October, but I wonder if storms have blown them off course. We're bang in the middle of the Eastern Flyway, ringside seat.

It seems that fungi are in season

This might be a good one for dyeing, but since there's only one just now, I left it. If a colony develops we'll see.

Toe in picture for scale

And we still have the yellow sorrel I like to see underfoot.

Here I'm asking for an id. The blue plant behind the coreopsis. 

It's in my neighbor's garden, she thinks from wildflower seed she put in, and doesn't know what it is. Does any of our crowd of knowledgeable botanists know? As you see, pretty tall, maybe 18". Thank you. I'll pass on the info to her.

It occurs to me, while I'm asking, if you can identify the fungi, pretty common around here. I'll look them up, too. 

My Little Golden Guide, I love those books, enough information for my purposes. And the Non Flowering plants one

which took me ages to find, being named for what it isn't, has some hilarious notes, such as: this was listed as poisonous but has been found to be edible. Wonder who took a chance for the sake of science? And the shaggy manes, edible but you must pick before they darken. Or else what? And the careful comment that some of this group is edible, some poisonous. I guess you're on your own after that.

And on the less welcome side, back home, I found a resurgence of the cursed catbriar among the ground cover in an awkward spot, and got out what I could.  No pictures of that little pest.

The air seems cleaner now, smoke haze gone and my eyes not so gritty. That put a dent in my doll progress, so I'm going to get back to her. 

Nature note entries for the day done, as usual emerging with questions. Always more to learn.

Plum crumble

All the recent Misfits plums went into this crumble. Two kinds, black and red. Could be any fruit, I just thought plums would be good.

I take an extra step when I do fruit crumble, macerating. It's a process that drains the juices and flavorings from the fruit. 

You can see the juices collected in the bowl after about 45 minutes of resting tossed with molasses, white sugar, ginger, lemon zest, salt and a bit of cornstarch.

You drain off the juices and see how much you've got, put the fruit in the baking dish to wait.  

Then you reduce the liquid to about half its quantity, just swirling the pan, not stirring. 

There's some technical reason, which Rose could explain, for swirling not stirring. It involves sugar crystallizing on the pan. But I feel so authentic doing the  swirling that I'm happy feeling like a real cook without remembering the details of why.

When it's reduced and a bit caramelized, pour it over the fruit, then add the crumble part and bake covered about 30 mins at 375° f.

Then uncover it and bake another 30 minutes. At this point the house is smelling amazing.

And you try to wait patiently till it's cool enough to try.

Some will probably find its way next door.

Martha Stewart is the source for the crumble part, Rose Levy Beranbaum for the macerating process. She literally wrote an encyclopedia of baking, so anything she says is probably going to work.

She also endorses using glass pans for this because it looks nice. If you don't have any, another container would be fine. This one can come to the table, though, and people start enjoying it even before they're served. Around here, anyway.

And I think the difference between prepping the fruit like this and not doing it is so great that you may as well do it.  It goes from nice to blast-of-trumpets good. So do it! 

And the glass pan is your ta-dahhhh! Put it on the table first, then throw your arms up like Simone Biles. Except gymnasts call it the present, not the ta-dahhhh.

Down from the heights of Evee Erb

Chop wood, carry water, roast vegetables, admire diamonds, neighborhood exchange program.

Early this morning, the diamonds were on show. I think these may be the things Shammickite was describing the other day, not spiderwebs. Still pretty though.

Then roasting vegetables for lunch, well, three lunches. Broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, yellow potatoes, thyme, Thai basil, olive oil, Old Bay, baharat, seasalt. 45 minutes at 400°f. 

Good, too. I might add a few capers on the second day.

Mail arrived with my tea supplies, yay.

Also with official notice that my supplementary medicare policy has gone up. I have great coverage, and pay quite a bit. Medicare monthly payment, gap policy, the one that's gone up, rx coverage. They all go up every year. Oh well.  I've got the insurance.

Then neighbor shows up with a large bag of laundry. His dryer broke down, they have the part, waiting for the official service people, gas dryer, utility company has to do it.

So he loaded the laundry into my dryer here, and I took it downstairs for pickup once dry. And asked his advice about the downstairs toilet with the dodgy mechanism, that wasn't flushing right. Then it wouldn't stop running. He said on no account get a plumber, I'll do this.

Here he is removing the works to take to the store and replace. The bathroom is now full of wrenches and pliers. He'll shop, he loves shopping of this kind, then fix it. 

My neighborhood at work. 

Textiles Tuesday, Evee Erb

This was a great program, with a powerfully gifted artist, young but already established, in media ranging from oil painting to sculpture to weaving. Evee Erb.

She firmly believes in breaking down the western gatekeeper attitudes between art and craft, and her own work shows it. She moves back and forward, working them together and separately. 

She has political views, about needing to care for the earth, avoid waste especially in clothing. At one point she had her own designed and handmade clothing line, but regretfully had to prioritize other parts of her art, realizing she couldn't do everything.

She lives in north Carolina, where there are large sources of discontinued fabrics. So she recycles materials into her art practice.

You'll see a reference to Ghislaine Maxwell here, too. Evee's political commentary covers the ongoing issues, and domestic violence, as well as ecology. It's all about justice.

This is a reference to an artist she reveres, whose name despite several tries, I could not pick up. If you know her, please tell us.

And this is Eva Hesse, who died very young, probably as a result of using resins and other plastic and petroleum related materials whose safety had not been established, and were thought to be harmless. Another artist whose fearless use of media is important to Evee Erb.

Back to Evee, here are pictures of her own clothing.

She's fearless, and when she was dissatisfied with the art education she was getting, she set out to learn independently, successfully.

She weaves overshot, very accomplished weaver. Not afraid to paint on her weaving,  or incorporate her pottery into her weaving.  And she's a great natural dyer. All in all, a lot for my heart to identify with! 

Especially when she says her preferred approach to her art is to just plunge in. Not without learning a great deal first, she's skilled, but without following rules for their own sake.

Do look at her website to see her oil painting. It's wonderful. Well, so's she! Great props to Handweavers Guild of America for this series.