A trip to the mountains

Water levels still low at Lake Lanier (the green in the foreground is a bridge beam):



The mind-blowingness that is Burt's Pumpkin Farm near Dawsonville, Georgia:



Rouge Vif D'Etampes pumpkins...and me in the background:



Our haul:



The path to Amicolola Falls is paved with recycled chopped-up automobile tires. It feels dreamy under the feet:



And the falls themselves are totally incredible:



We also got apples, lots of them, but didn't remember to take any pictures of the apple houses. Oops!

Chirpy

Has anyone else here in the south noticed that there seem to be a whole lot of mockingbirds this year? Today one was sitting in one of our butterfly bushes, singing his head off at me. He was so cheerful that I had to stop and listen.

This year was extraordinary for butterflies, too. I don't know if that's a function of some natural cycle, or just the fact that we had a 100-foot row of zinnias this summer.

For the record

First frost this morning! It's probably only enough to kill the basil and not much else, but there is a definite sheen of icy crystals on the grass.

UPDATE:

I was wrong! The basil, okra, sweet potatoes, peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes are all done for the year. The s.o. has gathered the remaining green tomatoes, and I'm planning to go dig all the sweet potatoes that are still in the ground.

It's strange how different every gardening season is. Last year, you may remember, we were fighting the first frosts tooth and nail, covering tomato plants with sheets, etc. This year we (and our garden) are ready for the change. Onward and winterward.

A stunning discovery

The s.o. just found a native persimmon tree at the edge of our woods. It is starting to drop fruit.

This calls for a search party! Where there's one, there may be more...

Open letters

Dear Snake,

Please stop hanging out in the henhouse. You are making the hens uncomfortable, and a couple of times you have nearly given me a coronary. I am forever shooing you out of the coop with a shovel. One of these days, I'm going to decide you've had enough warnings.

Sincerely,
Jumpy

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Dear Tommy Irvin and Zippy Duvall,

Surely, as Ag Commissioner and Farm Bureau President (respectively), you have better things to do than to hold a formal government-sanctioned religious service at which you pray for rain. I know we're all a little desperate, but let's leave that to the ministers, shall we?

Sincerely,
Embarrassed

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Dear Visitors,

Our house is spotless. Gorgeously spotless. The reason we won't let you in has nothing to do with a housekeeping disaster of monstrous proportions. There's a perfectly good explanation, really, which is... um... let us get back to you on that.

Sincerely,
Not Hiding Anything

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Dear Noncompliant Goose,

Lately I have been having a terrible time convincing you to go indoors for the night. All the other geese line up contentedly and wait their turn to go in the door. You, however, always decide to make a run for it at the last moment. Last night you sprinted away from me and got caught in the electric fence. I actually saw sparks fly off you. I am pretty sure our neighbors think I am torturing an opera singer over here.

It is no wonder that tonight you lined up with the other geese. I hope and trust that this improved behavior will continue.

Sincerely,
The Management

A hairy tale

I've promised Kitchen Witch, who recently wrote about her run-in with some Canadian bears, that I will tell the story of "the time I punched a baboon." Everyone should have a story like that, don't you think?

It happened in 2002. I went on a trip to South Africa with my mom and stepdad. We had a lovely tour guide named Colin who said things like "jolly good" all the time. (The older generation of English-heritage South Africans have a vocabulary that is sort of hilariously Jeeves and Wooster-like, because they were essentially walled off from global pop culture during much of the 20th century, due to apartheid. This leads to phrases such as "ring the doorbell" being translated as "touch the goodie." I would love to see a thorough linguistic examination of the phenomenon. But I digress.)

We had a lot of amazing experiences, including walking through the Cape Malay district of Capetown, visiting the botanical gardens at the base of Table Mountain, touring the Stellenbosch and Paarl wine country, and checking out a lot of really pretty beaches and seaside towns.

Near the end of the week we took a day trip to Cape Point, which is part of the national parks system. It's a breathtakingly beautiful place where we were able to see some very large elands and other wildlife.

If you followed the link in the previous paragraph, you may have read this:

"At the car park there’s a reputable restaurant with great big windows which take in the awesome views and dizzying drop below. Here one can retreat from the wind and have a bite to eat with no danger of baboons snatching your scoff."

That pair of sentences is one of the best I've ever seen written about South Africa. It is awesomely prophetic, because the park is awash in hairy, fanged primates.

On the way to the park's main gate, we had to stop several times to wait for baboons to scuttle across the road. At the gate, we were handed a pamphlet that offered helpful advice such as "Keep your car doors shut when you get out to take photographs. Once a baboon gets into your vehicle, it is very difficult to get it back out again." There were entire baboon families perched atop many of the vehicles in the parking lot. And the restaurant had installed barbed-wire fencing along the edge of its roof, because apparently in the past there had been a problem with baboons waiting up there, then jumping down on hapless patrons who were leaving with takeaway lunches.

After a hike to the lighthouse, we were hungry, so we decided to have a meal at the restaurant. We sat down at a white-tableclothed, Evian-umbrella'd table on the outdoor balcony. We were perched directly on the stony cliffs that led down to the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean. An immaculately dressed waiter brought us a basket of bread rolls. Then he reached into his apron and handed me a generous double handful of smooth rocks.

"Keep the bread rolls covered," he said. "And if the baboons come for them, throw these rocks."

I stared blankly. I had a sense, at that moment, that no odder sentence would be spoken to me for years to come.

But seeing no apparent danger, I ordered a sparkling water and a springbok carpaccio, and we fell into lively conversation.

Jabbering about something or other, I distractedly opened the cloth napkin that enclosed the bread rolls and began to pull out a roll. It was at that moment that I saw, over my mother's shoulder, a dark shape bounding over the balcony wall. A 40-pound baboon arced through the air and, with a thump, landed on the table in front of me.

My first thought was of the little pile of rocks next to my plate, but the baboon's face was at most two feet from mine, so throwing something wasn't really the way to go. I panicked. Instinct took over, and I reached out and punched the baboon in the chest.

Startled, the baboon sprang, frog-like, over my shoulder and narrowly missed landing on the next table. The family at the table screamed and scattered. The baboon disappeared over the low stone wall.

"Good heavens," said Colin. My mother and I stared at each other incredulously.

Then the food arrived. It's really a very good restaurant.

When snakes panic

Last night, after dark, I put the ducks and chickens to bed and locked the doors of their coops. On my way out of the area, I turned the electric fence on. I suddenly heard two sharp POP noises. Startled, I turned the fence back off.

Caught with its tail in the electric fence and its head in the adjoining chickenwire fence was a several-foot-long black rat snake. It wasn't moving. Upon closer inspection, it appeared the snake had been shocked by the electric fence and, in its confusion, had bolted headfirst through the chickenwire. It had woven itself through two loops of wire, and was stuck like a size 40 man in a pair of size 30 jeans.

I did the sensible thing and hollered for the s.o.

He came outside and I filled him in on the situation. He poked at the snake gently with his pocket knife, and it flinched. He took the flashlight from me ("Don't move--I'll be right back!") and went to get a pair of wire cutters from his truck. When he returned, he clipped the wires that bound the snake, and we watched uneasily as it slithered into one of the chicken yards.

"We should have killed it," he said.

"They eat mice, not chickens," I said. "Although it might steal eggs if it could get in. Which it can't."

I'm right, aren't I? I hope I'm right. I like snakes.

A ruckus

I was just drawn to the back kitchen window by a loud chattering sound. When I arrived, I saw a small tuxedoed cat--a real elegant little beauty--with a limp squirrel in its mouth. The squirrel was at least a third of the cat's size.

In the pin oak, above, the squirrel's partner was cussing furiously: "CHIT! CHIT!" And our resident pair of mockingbirds flitted from one end of the hammock to the other, joining the indignant chorus.

The little black-and-white cat stood for a moment, indecisive, then took the squirrel under the house.

A weekend in pictures

The weather has turned absolutely gorgeous--a little hot, even. It's like the Mediterranean. I am basking in it, even though somewhere inside the logical part of my brain, I know it needs to rain a LOT more than it has been.

Friday was L2's birthday, so while I was in the kitchen knocking out pies and cookies for the farmers' market, I made her this:



It's a plain spongecake roll (from the recipe in Fanny Farmer) filled with a mixture of whipped cream and Meyer lemon curd. I gather from the phone calls we got later that it tasted good!

Saturday morning was all about fun and friends and springiness. While I was at the opening day of the Oconee Farmers' Market, the s.o. went fishing with his friend B and B's son. The white bass are spawning, and apparently male fish are like all of us: when they are occupied by matters of the heart and loins, they lose their mental edge. There are now 18 fish in our fridge!



So we are going to B's house this evening to grill some fish. Excellent.

We then attended the Saturday night auction. Most of the recent auctions haven't proven very interesting, but last night was back on form. I got an honest-to-gosh Bedazzler (careful clicking that link; annoying celebrity testimonials will ensue) for $4 and a Bundt-shaped unglazed earthenware oven dish for $3 (any ideas what I should do with it, fellow foodies? my first thought is an Italian cheese bread ring). The s.o. got a couple of items, too. And unrelated to the actual auctioning that was going on, I bought this:



Stew, J, and my mom will recognize this as one of the many pieces of inexplicable folk art that decorates the walls of the auction hall. We've loved this one for months; it certainly poses an interesting question, but it is a question that I cannot for the life of me imagine anyone around here posing. So while I was talking to the cashier last night, I finally asked how much it was. The answer, my friends, was $5.75. How could I say no to that?

Sacre bleu

Every night one of us takes a flashlight outdoors in order to lock up the poultry and collect the eggs. Tonight, as I was doing this, I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye.

It was a green reflection: a pair of eyes. A deer. I held up the flashlight and saw more pairs--three, maybe four. And then I started panning around the perimeter of our open acreage.

There was a 180-degree panorama of deer eyes.* They were everywhere!

I approached each cluster of animals, waving the flashlight and shouting. One group included two fawns. All were unafraid, and I had to get within 10 or 20 yards to chase them away. Once a group that I had chased away returned and had to be chased a second time. In all, I counted at least 14 deer. The number may have been as high as 20.

Welcome to the next generation of marauders...

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* One pair of eyes appeared 20 feet in the air, on a tree branch. On further inspection, it turned out to be a raccoon--which is a good thing, because if deer start climbing trees, we are all screwed.

My favorite kind of November weather

Last year I remember being stunned by the fact that in Georgia, the month of November--synonymous my entire life with sleet and gales and greyness--can sometimes be downright idyllic. So it is today: 75 and sunny, with bright fall leaves and woodsy decay scenting the air.

I cleared the last of the tomato and pepper plants out of the main garden. I mucked out the duck and chicken houses, hoed some weeds, and piled everything on the compost heap.

I actually saw a Barred Rock hen lay a large dark-brown egg. Clunk. Here's the part where I ask you all for advice. I suspect our friendly Barred gals are doing a lot of the "heavy lifting" when it comes to egg laying. But they are not my favorite chickens looks-wise, and our current Barred Rock rooster is slated for elimination because he is neither attractive nor pleasant to be around. Should we nevertheless add more BR hens as part of next spring's chick order? Surely there are aesthetic considerations here, since much of what I love about raising chickens is simply being around them. But then again, we need good producers.

Here's another thought: Our friend V., a chicken farmer, says Barred Rocks mix well with other breeds, producing spectacular multicolored/test-patterned offspring. Maybe we should just breed our current four BR gals with other types?

The s.o. spent most of the day at our friend Diane's, learning how to bottle a few different kinds of fermented beverages. I am especially looking forward to the tej (Ethiopian honey wine).

I am nearly two-thirds done knitting one of my Christmas projects. I did a lot of it on the porch.

A lizard got into the kitchen and I managed to move it outside before the dogs found it. It ran halfway up my arm, but I managed to remain calm. Lizards are awesome, but their little feet are sticky/prickly.

Everything seems really glowy and happy right now. Maybe it's the election.