Hello, Neighbor

Yesterday as I was plating up dinner, I happened to look out the kitchen window to see a strange man in the spruce trees right under the window. He disappeared in the direction of the barn.

Uhhhh . . .

Luckily, A. was home. I informed him of the man wandering around our house and he went outside to see what was going on. Cubby wanted to go out, too, but I made him stay inside. Always best in an uncertain situation to not have a seven-year-old on the scene, don't you think?

Before A. found the man, I heard the man talking to something and I thought, "Oh, maybe he's trying to get his dog back." And then I heard a bell.

Ah. Cows.

Sure enough, there were two cows standing by the electric fence around the sheep pen. They were staring at the sheep. The sheep stared back. And yelled, of course.

The man was our neighbor from the trailer compound--three trailers, one clan of a varying number of related people that cycle in and out--about a mile down the road. His two dairy cows had gotten through his electric fence and decided to visit their ovine neighbors. Luckily, he found them before they ate my garden.

I've been on the other side of this situation enough to feel nothing but sympathy for the poor man chasing his livestock around the neighborhood. Though I will say that the cows seemed a lot more docile and easy to maneuver than sheep.

A. helped him catch the cows so he could put a rope halter around their necks and lead them home. Cubby and I looked out the front door to see him walking back down the road, leading his cows back home and presumably planning on reinforcing his fence.

Welcome to the north country, where a strange man crashing through your shrubbery just means that cows have gone walkabout.

Welcome to Crazytown

Would you like a visual of what a room of insanity looks like?

Three beds for three boys. In one room.

There is no way to have three boys in one room and not have a completely ridiculous scene every night. Although at least they're IN beds now, as opposed to when they were just all on the floor. That was pretty much a gladiators arena on mattresses.

Actually, Cubby and Charlie have been pretty good about staying quiet at bedtime since they've gotten their bed frames back. Jack, however, still requires an adult presence sitting on his bed to provide a physical barrier to escape. And even then, he thrashes around in his bed for 45 minutes like a crazed eel before finally, and very suddenly, succumbing to sleep.

Bedtimes have been less than fun around here recently. But one thing that parenting multiple children teaches you is the wisdom of the saying, "This too shall pass."

We just hope it passes sooner rather than later.

This Eclipse Viewing Brought To You By the Public Library

It's a good thing I'm such a devoted library patron. Otherwise I wouldn't have received four pairs of eclipse-viewing glasses and a print-out of the relevant information for our location from the librarian at the tiny library in the village awhile ago.

As it was, I almost forgot I had them until today when I was like, "Oh, wait. Today's the eclipse, right? I wonder when it is."

Obviously, the hype and hysteria that I read about online totally passed me by. I could never be considered a news junkie.

Anyway.

I got out the information sheet and discovered that we're nowhere near a place that could view the total eclipse. Also that the eclipse here was going to occur just when I was driving to the large village for a doctor's appointment. (For the grandmothers who are probably wondering: Just routine, everything's cool.)

But before I left, I set everyone up with the eclipse glasses.

And all of a sudden, it looked like 1987 all over again.

A. was very concerned that Jack wouldn't keep his on and would burn his eyes irrevocably. He didn't.

I took a look through the glasses myself before I left, and you know, it was really pretty cool. 

But not as cool as those little dudes in the shades there. Totally rad.

Ahhhh, Home

Where the sheep are yelling for corn and the tomatoes are sloooooowly ripening.

The first thing Cubby did when he got out of the car at home was run to the garden to see if there were any ripe tomatoes. Because he is definitely his mother's child.

It's a far cry from the late-summer liquor cabinet of old, but it's a start.

There was also a very large Mortgage Lifter tomato that I cooked for dinner last night, along with the green beans that I also sent Cubby out to harvest.*

So handy having a child to harvest things for me. Also handy to be able to come home and browse in the garden for dinner instead of stopping at a store.

We're supposed to have a few days of warm, sunny weather that should help the tomatoes along. If I'm lucky, I may even get enough to make some of Finny's tomato sauce, which is the highest calling for summer tomatoes.

Fingers crossed.

* Plus bacon and eggs and rice, because man cannot live on tomatoes and green beans alone. 

Drizzled

We're heading home to the north today from Blackrock, and in the trailer we'll be hauling with us will be many small outfits for a little girl.*

Yes! That means baby shower!

Actually, the invitation to it said it wasn't so much a shower as a drizzle, so as to keep everyone's expectations nice and low. Because this is for the fourth child, you see. A shower--or whatever you want to call it--for a fourth child is a whole different thing from the fancy, elaborate first-child shower.

Some of you may recall the shower the MiL's sister kindly hosted for me at her house lo these many years ago (eight? what? how?) when we were anticipating the arrival of our first-born. There was nicely arranged food and a truly impressive cake and even champagne glasses. And champagne. My mom and my sister flew up here for it. There were no (ex-utero) children present, and it was lovely.

The shower another of the MiL's sisters (she has three) hosted for me this week was held at Cubby's old school. This is the school that sister runs, and she thought it would be convenient because not only does it mean no one has to clean her house, but it's all set up for kids.

None of my family were there, although two of my friends were. Between us, we have nine children so far. Combined with the young cousin who came, that meant there were 10 children under the age of 10. The school location was perfect for them.

There was no champagne, although there was some Corona Light being consumed straight out the bottle. A., who I had asked to come as playground monitor for all the children so the women could possibly actually have a conversation, appreciated the Corona greatly.

There was no elaborate cake, for which I was very grateful, since I can't eat it anyway at the moment. Instead I ate quite a lot of a really delicious curried chickpea salad and surprisingly good raw summer squash salad. We all sat around in tiny chairs at low tables in the school room for our inside picnic and took turns serving the various children present.

Of course, there were also lots of little girl clothes in festive wrappings. Because these women who seem to have no luck when it comes to the next generation producing female offspring really just wanted to buy some adorable little girl rompers. How could I deny them that pleasure?

We can all go ahead and acknowledge here that little girl clothes are way more fun than little boy clothes. I received many very cute items of clothing. In fact, I'm pretty sure this baby is going to be more fashionable than I am.

I don't have any photos. It was just that relaxed. But it was perfect. The perfect small party to celebrate the imminent arrival of this small person who will be welcomed into a family and circle of friends featuring generous hearts, delicious food, and lots of kids to play with.

Lucky girl. And lucky me.

* Also, a forty-year-old woodstove A. is bringing to set up in the barn for the winter so he can hang out in there with any boys who want to be manly and carve stuff or whatever. Because I'm afraid one girl baby is not going to tip the testosterone-heavy balance in our family.

Liquor, Doughnuts, and Other Forbidden Pleasures

I had my big outing in the Small City today, the main purpose of which was to check thrift stores for maternity clothing for me and any clothing at all for my clothes-destroying sons. A. asked me to pick up some whiskey for him at the liquor store while I was in the city, too.

There happens to be a liquor store just down the street from the thrift store, so after I did my shopping, I decided to walk to the liquor store. It was only about 300 yards. Definitely not worth getting in the car again.

This did mean, however, that I had to walk back to my car parked at the thrift store on the busiest road in the city, obviously pregnant and carrying a similarly obvious brown paper liquor store package.

Super.

In addition, my little walk took me directly past the bakery that sells the best doughnuts in the entire world. Thanks to that little issue with gestational diabetes--which is entirely controllable for me if I'm careful of what I eat--I am no longer eating doughnuts.

Harsh. Way harsh.

I marched resolutely past the bakery, holding a bottle of liquor that I am also not permitted to ingest.

The only thing I could take comfort in was the coffee mug that I found at the thrift store. See, I dropped my coffee mug last week and broke it. This was my special mug. The mug in which I drank my coffee every single morning for the past eight years or so.

It was one of those camp-style mugs, the kind that are extra wide and straight-sided. I like that style because they are particularly stable around rampaging children, and also hold a little more than a standard mug. This is important because of the amount of milk I put in my very strong coffee with chicory.

I thought I could just use one of the many other mugs we have. But none of them were the same shape, and I was sad every morning when I drank my coffee out of an inferior mug.

Because of this, I was actually planning on going back to the local Huge Outdoor store from which I originally purchased my mug to get another. Even though it had a picture of a gaping fish on it that I really did not care to see first thing in the morning.

But while I was at the thrift store, I decided to check their selection of mugs and ta da! There was just the right kind of camp mug for 99 cents, with the benign logo of the YMCA on it. So it's even an improvement on the ugly fish mug.

I may not be able to have liquor or doughnuts, but at least I can once again enjoy my coffee from a proper (and gratifyingly cheap) mug. It'll have to do.

Just Call Me The Crazy Garden Lady

This morning I actually said to A., "I hate to leave my garden for a whole week. But I guess I've done everything I can to prepare it for my absence."

Apparently, the garden is my fifth child.

Then again, all my children are coming with me tomorrow when we leave for Blackrock for a week, but the garden will be left to fend for itself.

My preparation mostly consisted of stripping the pea and bean plants of every last small pea and bean, so that I don't come home to overly matured legumes that have caused the plants to stop producing.

Can we just talk for a moment about how incredible it is that I'm still harvesting peas in mid-August?

Peas are a cool-weather crop. They stop producing when it gets hot and dry. At Blackrock, I would rarely get more than one good harvest from the pea plants before they would wither away. But here, this year, it's been so cool and wet that it took forever for the peas to start producing anything at all, but once they did they don't seem to be giving up.

I did pull the shelling peas out this morning, though. They were starting to die, and were harboring an alarming colony of slugs (another result of our cool, wet summer), so I decided to rip them out. I left the snap peas in, though, after harvesting a full two quarts of snap peas from three plants.

The carrots have also been outstanding this year. A. planted a full two packets of seed in April, and they all came up. We started eating the thinnings from the carrots about two months ago, and we've had a steady supply since. The kids more or less free-range in the carrot rows, eating however many they want whenever they want, and we still have incredible quantities of quite large carrots out there.

Unfortunately, the weather that has been so beneficial for the peas and carrots has been very, very sad for the summer crops. Particularly the cucumbers and tomatoes.

There are dozens upon dozens of tomatoes on my sixteen plants and not a single one was ripe. Not one. What a screw. And here we are facing down a killing frost in about a month.

However!

As I was working my way around the tomato forest to get to another patch of green beans to harvest, I spied . . . is that red?

Yes! It's the much-anticipated First Tomato!

I found it in the very center of a remarkably bushy Juliet plant. I haven't been checking the interiors of the plants much, figuring the tomatoes on the outside that are more exposed to the sun would ripen first. I guess I was wrong, because I found the one Juliet that was entirely ripe, and then a few more that were almost ripe, and all were way inside the tomato jungle.

Cubby was in the garden with me when I found it, and he was so excited that he raced into the house yelling to the household at large that there was a ripe tomato.

That's my boy.

Everyone came out to admire the tomatoes I had found. And then I ate the ripe one. Myself. Oh yes, I did. It's a tradition.

I now have some hope that when we get back in a week there will be a lot more red to greet us in the tomato patch. That would be a sweet homecoming indeed.

And in the meantime, we have lots of snap peas and carrots for our long drive tomorrow.

Nothing like homegrown carrot sticks.

Farewell, beloved garden. Ripen lots of tomatoes while I'm gone, okay?