It’s drizzling here in Paradise on this Sunday morning. The temperature is 37 degrees, and all is well with yours truly, since we had no plans for outdoor activity. Yesterday we attended a local home and garden show at our event center. There was very little about gardening, but a lot of vendors hawking solar panels. Perhaps it was a mistake, but we signed up for a visit by one of the companies to see what going that route might mean for us.
There was an enthusiastic and very elderly gentleman in full Boy Scout regalia manning a booth on scouting. I found myself hoping that no one would give him a bad time because of this past week’s tawdry headlines of child sexual abuse in the BSA. He didn’t look like a perp to me.
There was a lady representing a company that made patio furniture out of the same plastic material that you build synthetic decks from. The stuff looked like it would last two lifetimes, but each chair weighed sixty pounds, and the table would require a gantry to put it into position on one’s deck.
And for this hernia-producing set of four chairs and a table you would need to shell out $2000 (and rethink the deductible on your health insurance).
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The pic above was borrowed (yes, borrowed, as I have every intention of returning it at some future and unspecified date) from a webpage containing an open letter to President Cluck.
The author of the letter? Why, it’s Neil Young, one of my favorite people on the planet. Just in case his name is unknown to you, he also writes music and plays guitar. In fact, to thank him for writing this letter and adding his voice to the chorus of clear-headed folks who can’t wait to see the door to the White House hit Cluck in the ass on his way out I am filling the JukeBox with an all-Neil program of music to kick off the day.
Maybe you’re not ready to hear rock n’roll before breakfast. But, friend, did you ever think that maybe you should be?
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I am waaaay to eager for Spring. At least too eager for this point in the month of February. I am certainly old enough to know better, and I have lived my entire life in places where Winter exists. I have no excuses for indulging in this unhealthy line of thinking.
But, come on, I can’t wait this year. Maybe it’s that now-blooming crocus that Robin received as a gift a couple of weeks ago; maybe it was tripping over the bikes in our garage last week and thinking I should put some air in those tires; maybe it was that taking of a nippy walk along the Uncompahgre River and thinking … this would look really nice … in green.
Either way I’m afraid that I’m lost this year. Can’t get my stoic attitude back now, too late to regain control. So for me it will be alternating moments of joy and despair until that unmistakable sign of Spring arrives. The scent of thawing dog poop. An eagerly anticipated and completely welcome bit of effluvium.
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In the book club at which I’ve been a guest recently, we were discussing the short stories of Flannery O’Connor, one at a time.
There was one story where an older gentleman would take himself down to the river, set up his chair, and cast out his line … without putting any bait on his hook.
I understood him completely. Of all the elements that are present in fishing from the bank of a river on a summer day, actually catching a fish may be the least important. It may even be disruptive to one’s carefully cultivated and mellow frame of mind.
Because now you have to find someplace to put that fish so that the heat doesn’t spoil it.
You have to clean it.
Cook it.
Eat it, watching carefully for bones that could spell the end of you.
It’s exhausting, really, and so easily avoided. Just don’t bait your hook.
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Maybe some of you cook with ghee, as Robin and I do. It’s basically clarified butter heated for a little longer. It’s nice stuff to cook with because it doesn’t brown or burn, but still adds some of that buttery flavor. It’s also stable at room temperatures for months on the countertop, and for years in the fridge.
When I have made ghee on the stove, I found that I had to stay right there with it until it was done, which does consume a chunk of time. I recently ran across this video where the lady cooks the butter in a low temperature oven for 1 1/2 hours, and it so easy and so much less demanding that it has become my method of choice.
I am now in a position to make gallons of the stuff, should the need arise. For instance: picture yourself, on a hot summer day, greasing down a Slip N’ Slide with a gallon of ghee.
Just imagine how fast and how far you could go … like a rocket, I would think.
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Little Home In The Valley 