The Glorious Fourth

We celebrate in our own particular way here at Blackrock.

With labor:

A. is going to be really, really glad when this roof is done.  So will I.  TERRIFYING.

Shortly after this helpful loading of the wheelbarrow with pulled weeds for Grandma, Cubby tipped the wheelbarrow over to examine the wheel.  Not so helpful after all, then.

And with food:

A five-gallon bucket of basil makes four ice cube trays of pesto.  Just a handy little measurement for you, next time you fill a five-gallon bucket with basil.

While I was picking the leaves off the basil branches, Cubby entertained himself by planting the stripped branches to make a basil forest.

Good to put this planter to use for something besides weeds.

And then, of course, we had to go inside to dump all that basil in the food processor with walnuts and olive oil and garlic, and then eat it.  Because it wouldn't be fair to make Cubby sit through all the making of the pesto and then not get to eat it.  He does love his pasta with pesto.

Know who doesn't love pasta with pesto?  A.  He finished his roofing (well, not finished, but quit for the day anyway) around 11 a.m.*  He saw the pesto and, as he told me later, knew immediately that his secret hopes for a big Fourth of July barbecue blowout were to be dashed.

Damn straight.  I want a holiday too, sometimes.  And I really do not enjoy standing over hot coals when it's 92 degrees outside.  I was planning on copping out with hot dogs.  So A. took matters into his own hands.  Thirty minutes later, I went out to look for eggs in the shed and walked right in on A. butchering a lamb hanging from the shed roof.  Why not, right?  All that meat right out there in the pasture and all, just waiting to be put on the grill.

Except first it had to be slaughtered and butchered.  So he did that.  The lamb ended up being 20 pounds dressed weight (that is, after gutting and skinning), so it didn't take long.  And it was small enough that he just cut it in half lengthwise and put it in our chest freezer to cool down.

Then he had to build a grill big enough to hold half the lamb.  So he did that.  Random fire bricks and big grate that mysteriously appeared on our beach?  Check.

The grilling of the lamb was sort of disturbing, since it looked exactly like, uh, a skinned animal lying on a big-ass grill:

Yeah.

Tasted good, though, and A. was overjoyed that he got to glut himself on grilled meat as an appropriate celebration of This Great Nation.  I was overjoyed that I didn't have to cook except for cutting up some peppers and onions for him to put on the grill with the lamb.  It all worked out.

Then we took Cubby down to the blisteringly hot beach, where I convinced A. to give him his bath in the lake so when we went back up to the house, all I had to do was get him into bed and then I could plant myself in front of the fan in the living room with an enormous slice of watermelon because HOT HOT HOT, MUCH TOO HOT.

And that's the Fourth of July, Blackrock-style.

*  I think one of the definitions of crazy may be spending five hours on a roof on one of the hottest days of the year.  And if that's a definition, I married a crazy, crazy man.  Useful, though.

Day Off? What?

Those mythical days don't exist here at Blackrock.  On this particular "holiday," A. got up at 5 a.m.  I got up at 5:30 a.m.  Cubby got up at 6 a.m.

It is currently 6:30 a.m. and A. is balanced precariously on a ladder, beginning phase 2 of the roofing.  Cubby, shockingly, did not demand to go out and throw a fit at the base of the ladder when I refused to allow him to climb it.  Instead, while I was finding the small portable radio to motivate A. with patriotic country music (currently: "Riding with Private Malone"--a gem of a song about buying a car haunted by the ghost of a young, dead soldier), Cubby decided it would be an excellent time to view some quality television.  Apparently, at 6:30 in the morning PBS shows the new version of "The Electric Company."  The theme song is a rap song.  Not much as I remember it from my own childhood, but whatever.  Could be worse.

A. considered taking the whole family fishing this morning instead of roofing, but he has this fear that the motor will quit in the middle of the lake and I'll go into labor.  Since I never really want to go fishing, I did nothing to try to assuage his (admittedly far-fetched) fears on this subject.

So here we are.  Child care, hard labor . . . just another day at Blackrock.

Happy Fourth, duckies.  I hope you're celebrating appropriately, preferably with incendiary objects and alcohol.

Edited to add:  Did I say there might be something worse than the new "The Electric Company"?  I think that was mistaken.  About two minutes after I published this, Cubby came in to request that I sit and watch with him.  So I did.  For about thirty seconds, at which point I said, "Wow, this is really bad.  You think we should turn this off?"  And he did, while repeating, "This is really bad."  Maybe it was that bad when I was young too and I just don't remember, but it certainly is terrible now.  It was so bad that I preferred standing around outside supervising Cubby "sweeping" the steps and pushing the lawn mower to sitting in a chair and watching that dreck.  If it's so bad I don't want to sit in a chair, you know it's really bad.

Tidbits

In lieu of anything remotely resembling a story with a narrative and a point and all that other hard stuff, how about a random collection of things from today.  Yes?  Great.  You're my kind of people.

1)  This morning as I trudged wearily towards the kitchen at 5:15 in search of coffee, I happened to glance out the dining room window towards the paddock and saw . . . what the hell is that?  Is that a sheep?  With a water bucket on its head?  Yes indeed.  I briefly considered going out there and getting the bucket off myself before deciding the hell with that and waking A. up to go chase his own sheep around and save them from their own stupidity.  It was the ram with the bucket on his head, incidentally.  Which makes me consider that possibly our future lambs are not getting the best genetics when it comes to intelligence.  And that's saying something in regards to sheep.

2)  Thanks to that early rousting from bed that resulted in an early start in his office this morning, A. finished up with his work mid-afternoon today.  So of course I put him right back to work digging up the garlic.  I could have done it myself, but once again decided the hell with that and enlisted A.  I'm getting to be a real pain in the ass lately.  The garlic looks pretty good actually, despite an invasion by some very pushy volunteer potato plants and the overshadowing of the asparagus trees that always get way bigger than I remember them being.  So if nothing else, we'll have lots of garlic this winter.  That's something, anyway.

3)  We had our chimney cleaned and inspected today.  All the official recommendations for this stress that it be done EVERY YEAR or certain conflagration will ensue.  I think we last had it done at least two years ago, possibly three.  But the official recommendations don't really apply to us as our woodstove was actually listed as "unclassified" by the inspector--which translates to "HOW old is this thing again?"--and burns way hotter than modern stoves.  Which means virtually no creosote build-up.  Good to know.

4)  I would be quite happy to never hear the word "no" from the beautiful mouth of my son ever again.  Particularly in a long, loud, strung-together manner that transcribes thusly: "NONONONONONONONONONONONOOOOOOOOO."  This is the response I got today for questions involving the potty, eating lunch, going outside, drinking water, checking for eggs in the shed, the advisability of touching Daddy's chainsaw, and too many other things to mention.  I was also informed loudly and at length that he did not want Mommy to eat anything this morning.  He has yet to learn that I don't take orders from a two year old.  Maybe earplugs would be a good idea.

5)  We were also treated to a ten-minute monologue by this same child regarding his stuffed lambie.  He was actually talking to the lambie, asking what was the matter, pretending to give it milk from a bottle and put it to bed.  This gives me hope that someday I might actually end up with a compassionate, fully rational individual as my offspring instead of a demanding narcissist.  Unfortunately, that day was not today, nor will it be tomorrow.  But someday.

Summer Fun

A. and I went into the Small City yesterday for a few hours to run some very boring errands.  We left Cubby at home with Grandma.  When we got home, I found this:

At least we know he was well-fed.

Nice to know someone is enjoying the mulberries, anyway.

He has also been very busy fixing Daddy's truck:

Too bad the problem is actually with the transmission, not the tire.

Meanwhile, Daddy has been enjoying the view from the roof:

Okay, maybe not so much "enjoying the view" as "sweating his life force out in the sun and trying not to fall off the roof."  Same thing.

And what have I been doing?  Watching my feet and ankles swell.  Yes, I have become a hobbling cliche of a massively pregnant woman in the summer.  I did not take pictures of that, however.  You are welcome.

The only way to avoid the swelling is to put my feet up.  Guess how often that happens in the course of a day.  Right.  Pretty much not.  Ever.

No matter, though.  Today is July 1.  We'll have a baby this month, one way or another.  And then my feet can get back to normal while the rest of me falls apart.

And In Related News

I gave in and bought frozen vegetables at the grocery store yesterday.  I have had to face the fact that I will not be producing anywhere near enough vegetative matter from the garden this year to keep our family fed in a well-balanced manner (no matter what A. says, two pounds of steak per person does not constitute a full meal).  I will not be freezing enough chard, green beans, and maquechoux to take us through the winter.  I'm not even going to have enough fresh stuff for the summer.

I had to buy vegetables.  It was a sad day.  Although I must admit that the convenience of opening a bag and dumping pre-picked, pre-cleaned, and ready to cook vegetables is kind of nice.  They don't taste like the real thing, though.

Oh well.  Next year.  It's my new mantra.

That Which Shall Not Be Discussed

You may have noticed that there has been no talk of the garden this year.

Or you may be busy with your own lives and not give one good goddamn about my tomato yammering.  That is also possible.

But since I prefer the self-centered interpretation of things whenever possible, I'm just assuming that you've been wondering what ever could be going on in Kristin's garden this year.

You probably shouldn't ask.

Every time I go out there, I must fight the urge to trickle tears all over the weedy earth.  No sense giving those bastards any more moisture than necessary.

In addition to the HOLY HELL WEEDS EVERYWHERE that I cannot pull up even though I still do every time I go out there because I can't help myself and then really regret it later when I can't walk, there is the rabbit damage.  Which has been extensive.

They ate the spinach.  They ate much of the bean plants that Cubby and I so laboriously planted, although some of them are recovering.  They ate the tops off of all the glorious beets that were growing so nicely and then stopped growing because they, uh, didn't have any tops.  They ate most of the tops off most of the carrots that were also performing splendidly, though I have hopes that they'll recover.

And they did all this despite the garden cloth I had over these plants.  I guess they just limboed under it in the spaces between the bricks weighing it down. And I didn't notice in time to prevent much of the damage because I just haven't been getting out there all that much.

We don't usually have such a problem with rabbits in the garden because of the dogs.  But this year, due to new garden fencing arrangements and the fact that Otty has had to be tied up much of the time because of behavior issues, the dogs just haven't been in the garden.  And the rabbits have.  A. trapped one and the dogs got a couple, but it appears there is a never ending supply in the gully by the garden.

I'm not too happy with the potato field either.  They all got covered with mulch once.  Some of them got a second mulching, but not all.  There are so many weeds in there I can't even see the potatoes.  And the weeds are taller than I am.  I will definitely not be using this method again when I'm able to do the hilling, because I can't do the mulching by myself and no one else has the time to do it, so it's all just kind of neglected.  Hilling sucks, but I can do it whenever I need to and it kills the weeds in addition to covering the potatoes.The potatoes are there, they are growing and flowering, but I don't know what the harvest will be like.

The tomatoes are growing nicely, but they aren't tied up so they're pretty wild.  All I did this year was have A. put up fence posts and fencing running along the rows to at least keep the plants from doing a complete flop into the dirt.  It will also make it damn near impossible to harvest them, I suspect, but we'll worry about that when it's time to harvest.

The first planting of chard got totally overtaken by weeds.  The second planting of chard got totally eaten by the chickens (I think).  The tilling seems to have sliced up the few missed potatoes from last year into innumerable little pieces that then all sprouted, leading to small volunteer potato plants everydamnwhere that are now bushing out alarmingly and taking over neighboring plants and yet not actually producing any potatoes of usable size.

This is what I see when I go out to the garden.  And this is why I don't go out there much anymore.  It's very sad.

But, as I have mentioned before, the nice thing about gardening is there's always next year.  And the year after.  It's got to improve from this.  Right?

Yup, Must Be Summer

A. is scaling the roof.  Again.

Starting with the first summer of Cubby's life, when A. learned how to roof from an acquaintance, and continuing with doing two porch roofs last summer by himself, roofing has become an unfortunate summertime ritual for A.  This year is especially unfortunate, because take a look at the roof he's working on there in the picture.  See how steep it is?  See how high it is?  See how there is nothing on the side of the house to break a fall from 30 feet up?

TERRIFYING.

A. got a safety harness, as you can see, and some foot boards to nail up as he moves up the steeply pitched roof, but still.  He isn't the greatest with heights in the best of situations, and that is not the best of situations.

He might be afraid of heights, but he was also afraid of water pouring into our bedroom this winter through the disintegrating roof, so he's conquering his fears, facing his demons . . . and roofing.  Again.

I'll just be on the ground with Cubby, keeping him from scaling the ladder and crossing all digits that there are no mishaps up there on that roof.  And really wishing I could have a drink to calm my nerves.