Autumn has come....

The colors (and smells) of fall are very welcome here after such a scorching summer. After months of daily watering, after a period during which our empty rain barrels forced Michael into making seemingly endless trips back and forth to Lick Run Creek with many (many, many) buckets, it's so nice to see the cooler temperatures, feel the rain, and smell the new crisper edge to the outdoor air. Indoors, it smells different, too, since we're dehydrating habaneros. They have a distinct, pleasantly warm scent that has permeated the entire house. Outside, the wild turkeys and the deer are milling through the field below the beehives.
Winter preparation continues. Yesterday, I spent several hours on the back door and door jamb, which I haven't touched since 2007. The white paint had begun to peel and crack. This morning, however, it has a glossy new coat of butter yellow paint. Some pictures appear just below:

The back porch door before its new paint job....

...and the door after the new paint job.
The Hex Sign (which had actually been on the door before) is there
because hey, I'm a Pennsylvania Dutch girl. The image is a
"Double Distlefink," symbol of good luck and happiness, doubled.

Each day, the orange blaze travels further across the trees on the hillsides.

This morning, despite the intermittently heavy rains, the wild turkeys are
out foraging on the hill below the bee hives.

While I write this, Jasper is snuggling by my side. What a nice feeling it
is to have a dog snoring beside you.

Beets, Swank Bathrooms, Schnauzer Beefcake...

Because of the hot weather this July, we're only now getting harvest enough to can. Usually, we've got the fans going and the kettles boiling starting in mid-July. But this year, a good bit of the harvest happened just before our vacation (which had us scurrying to get everything put up so nothing spoiled the week we were away). Now, things are somewhat more leisurely. I say somewhat because now we're putting garden and bee hives to bed. Soon the first frosts will hit, and we need to be prepared.

Michael puts the beets in the boiling water canner.

Michael, filling jars with Oxblood red beets. And when we say
Oxblood, we mean, like red stuff everywhere.

See the red stuff? And not just in the bowl...it looked
like a crime scene around the sink, where we dumped the
water we boiled these babies in.

And for those that just didn't fit into the jars, they got a good whirring
in the food processor. Can you say, chocolate cake, boys and girls?
Yes, these will very likely end up in chocolate cake with peanut
butter frosting.

Okay, yesterday, I promised pictures of a Greenbrier bathroom, and I use the indefinite article "a" because I only thought to photograph one of them. There were more. Oh, there were many more. Some that had apparent flecks of gold in their granite countertops, bathrooms lit entirely by chandeliers, bathrooms with built in garbage cans and tissue boxes and little hand towels that didn't feel disposable (but were, thank goodness. I mean, ew?) Anyway, I promised and now I deliver:

Just one of the bathrooms at the Greenbrier in
White Sulphur Springs, WV....each doorway along
this hall leads to a small room with a vanity table
and toity. Each one has a door that closes. At the end of
this hallway is a conversation area (see the next pic!)

The conversation area at the end of the hallway above. I suppose this
is where all ladies go to powder their noses, although each bathroom "stall"
(cough) suite itself had a vanity table to powder ones appendages at.



Fred says that all this discussion of luxury is very
tiring. "A little grass, a little masonry work, or
the dust ruffle on Grandma's bed, and  you know, I
can work with that. Who wants to tinkle on marble?"



Mustard Pickles, Mustard Beans...



The whole process starts by peeling and chopping
11 (yes, indeed, eleven) cups of cucumbers.

Our cucumber plants have proven to be some prolific little buggers. And even though the vines are now swooning like B-movie scream queens in this heat, they're still producing chubby little gherkins. Last week we made "crock" pickles. This weekend, thanks to an amazing new canning book we got last season, we're making mustard pickles. And since Michael picked so many green beans this morning, we also made mustard beans. Just below are pictures of the progress....so you have the full effect, wanna know what was on the CD player while we worked? This recording from The Skillet Lickers. 

Chopped cucumbers, onions, red peppers.



Us at the sink! :-D

Clearjel, sugar, ginger, tumeric, vinegar, and water

Michael fills the quart jars before they go into the

boiling water bath.

A close-up of the filling process...just cause the
contents are so purty.

Mustard pickles right out of the canner.
Aren't they beee-you-tiful?

We start to cut green beans, and Fred is Johnny
on the spot. "Why, excuse me, would you care to make
a donation to the Jimmy Fund?"

Bun, cleaning beans and imitating Fred's usual
dour expression.

Not just green breans, clean beans.

Beans and onions, destined for the mustard sauce!

The dish fairy was here. Again.

Jasper and his rubber chicken, the current love of his
life. We pulled his pillow to the kitchen entrance, so
he would stay out from under foot. It worked some
of the time. Right now, he's trying to nap. Trying.

And while all this was going on, our little bread machine
made a loaf of white bread for tomato sandwiches.
Mmmmmm.........

Seven Pints of Blue Lake Beans...

"No, officer, absolutely not. I had one drink. That's all."
*hiccup*
"Excuse me."



Me with a bean. I can't believe I finally got my head
centered in the shot for a change. Yay!



Bun loads pint jars into the canner.

We're raw packing our little beauties, so we've stuffed
the beans in tightly to allow for the inevitable
cooking-down to occur.

Michael pours boiling water over the beans in each jar.

Oooo...tonight, we had red beet brownies. Yes, beet. No,
I'm not nuts. It's really good. Roast and puree your beets,
and you can incorporate them into special brownie batter.
How special? Well, see the receipe here.

The canner is climbing to 10lbs. right now, this minute.

A Quick Run-down of the Last Few Days...

While we visited this weekend, Dad finally got a chance to play with the RC boat that Michael got him for Christmas. Now, Dad was thinking about chasing the Canadian geese around the pond with the boat, but in the meantime, we let the dogs chase it around the pool. They had a blast, but we did have to stop because Jasper began limping. We later found that the poor bugger was down three wheels: he tore his paw pads on three feet. He's been laid up with antibiotic ointment and gauze on his feet since Friday night, when we discovered why he was favoring three of his paws.

Check out the rest of the pictures here to see what we've been up to these last few days....


Ava attacks the RC boat.



Mom made crepes with banana and nutella on
Saturday morning. Yum.




At the York Agricultural and Industrial Museum on Saturday, Savannah learns that milking a cow is harder than it looks.
Me: "Nothing's coming out."
Michael: "Pull and squeeze."
Me: "Nope. Nothin'"




Bun sits in a delivery truck at the
York Ag & Industry Museum.




Woo woo! Michael runs an engine.



Michael and me at the York Ag & Industry Museum (on front of a flat-bottom boat
you can't see here.)

How may I direct your call? An operator station from the 1930s.

The sign under which my Dad said he walked for 7 years, when he
worked at the paper mill. It's now on view at the Ag & Industrial Society.
That buggy in front? That was a mail buggy run by a relative, named
Samuel Schroll, for 20 years in the later 1800s.

Dad and Bun in front of the reproduction apothecary at the Historical Society Museum.

Cake, with a capital 'C'

So, let's talk about cakes, shall we? Now, I have had some absolute cake-rific disasters. Really. You can read all the details here. Cakes have fallen on me like spent plough horses. Cakes have sometimes never baked fully in the center. Cakes have occasionally tasted wonderful, but looked like someone rotund had sat down on them. Years ago, I made a 40th birthday cake for a friend. The person liked German Chocolate, but I soon found that, while butter cream may cover a multitude of sins, German chocolate sauce (you know, the stuff with the coconut) makes a problem cake look suspiciously similar to a giant mound of barf. Yeah....so I didn't actually intend to make a statement on the friend's age, but it pretty much seemed that way when I set the cake in front of them. Yeah, well...anyway! I've grown appreciably better, with much practice, of course.


Well, hello there, lovely. What's your name?



Remember this post from yesterday? About the espresso frosting? I promised you somethin' purty, and darned if I didn't deliver. I'm just bursting with pride. The big cake is for my Mum, whose birthday is coming up. The little cake is for Michael. I mean, a girl just can't have cake in the house and tell her Sweet Hubby, <wagging a finger> no, you can't have any. That's just plain mean. So, he gets one all his own.

What's that? Oh, you noticed there were two small cakes in the picture above? blushing Well, that one....uh, um...cough... it fell on the floor. Yeah, that's it! It fell on the floor. No, I'm totally blowing your horn. I ate it. I mean, come on. Who can wait?







Nuc progress and other fascinating tales....




Fred: 'What the <BLEEEEP> do you want?'
Me: Could you, um, maybe file my invoices and bills, please? You know, that pile there?
Fred: Not a chance, biped. My job description involves alarm barks and
napping in cute positions. That's it, capiche?
Me: Well, if you could--
Fred: Do I need to talk to HR again? 'Cause I'll go straight to HR.

 


Sunflowers are coming up. Squash, too.
Our top bar is cranking along very well. The nuc that we
put in almost two weeks ago has created new comb
on empty bars.




On the left are two foundation frames with the original nuc comb.
The two on the right are newly constructed comb, built on empty
hive bars.




Inside the top bar. Looks like the floor of the NYSE. So, uh, how's honey trading?



Holy crap. They're line dancing.
But girls, come on. To 'Achy Breaky Heart'? Really?

 

Our Lady of Perpetual Watering.

 


The nuc we used to replace the weak colony last week might very well be ready
for a super by early next week. They are doing stellarly. But oooo lawd, is everyone
there touchy! The summer brood are way more aggressive than the wintered over crop.
I had one lose a stinger in my suit sleeve. And I had only just been
marveling at the butt-folding dance I thought she'd been doing.