The Ultimate Answer to Kings

I knew it was going to boil down to not very much. I wouldn’t know how much not very much was till I got there.

I sterilized five jars and hoped I wasn’t being too comically optimistic…

…and to my shock that was just right. I ended up with four and a half jars of pear butter. Gave one to the goat people from whom I scrounged the jars. Plan to give another to Landlady if she wants it: She eats vegan a lot and I’m not certain this qualifies. That leaves me with 2 and a half jars.

And as for the product…

Not bad, really! A little sweet for my taste, didn’t need quite as much brown sugar as I used and I didn’t think I was using very much at all. But a nice change. It won’t rot on the shelf.

It didn’t take as long as I feared, either. I simmered the pears in a cup of water and a little lemon juice for an hour and a half then mashed them with a potato masher and my electric mixer, added cinnamon and brown sugar and simmered it for about another hour till I got the consistency I was looking for. Had to borrow Landlady’s big pressure canner for a pot big enough to sterilize five jars at once, and that took nearly a whole bottle of drinking water though I got double duty out of it for washup.

Altogether, a successful project! I should maybe look at doing this more, and would if new jars weren’t so damned expensive. Compared to buying canned goods from the dollar store it’s not cost effective.

I left the pears to soften up for five days and that may have been a mistake:

Two different species of bugs had pretty thoroughly colonized about half of them. Quite a bit is going to the chickens.

I was able to score nine wide-mouth pint jars, and I won’t be needing them all. I lost a lot of fruit by waiting too long to pick. Still…

Before the boiling started I had between 17 and 18 cups of cut-up pears, which ain’t nothing. We’ll see what we’ve got when it boils down.

And boiling it down is something I’m approaching with great caution. online recipe instructions were all over the place on even such basics as how much water per cup of fruit. So I’m starting with a cup of water and plan to watch it like a hawk. If things really start taking too long I’ll move the operation to the crockpot I’ve got stashed at Ian’s place.

More later.

“Dammit, Tobie! I’ve had that brush for years!”

FBI Rally In D.C. Ends Without Incident

Points for brevity, at least…

As so often happens when I receive business-style spam, I’m left wondering “what was the point of this?”

I put this out here back then with great trepidation, since I hate asking for things in any case and I’m downright neurotic about expensive things. It ended kind of spectacularly. So spectacularly, in fact, that I never even unpackaged some of them before this morning.

As with all such things, if you only have a few they wear out quickly. If you have enough for a decent rotation they can last quite a while. I said at the time that gelsocks literally proved to be the difference between walking long distances comfortably and spending most of my time sitting in a chair and walking anywhere only with considerable discomfort. My current leg’s socket was built with gelsocks in mind and probably wouldn’t be very usable without them. You guys who made that possible made that happen for me. You same people might also recall that 2017 was a very busy year all around, and it wouldn’t have gotten done without those socks.

So when I looked in my nightstand drawer this morning and noted that some of the ones I’ve been using are getting kind of thin and sad, I was then quite encouraged when I went up to the pantry and found five of them brand-new and still in the packages. I didn’t remember that there were still so many in reserve.

Just saying, my longtime readers rock.

Summer will be done before I know it. My field of high waving flowers has faded…

…and I thought I was being relatively attentive about the pear tree. Unfortunately…

…turns out I wasn’t being attentive enough.

So when all was said and done, Tobie and I took a side trip on the way to afternoon chicken chores…

…to visit the goat people with almost half the tree’s load.

No point in letting them go completely to waste. The goats enjoyed them as much as the bugs seemed to. Probably also enjoyed the bugs. And I made a deal for some dusty mason jars. And tomorrow if all goes well…

We’re going to try our hand at pear butter.

Busy morning. Toward the end of his morning walkie Tobie finally managed to bring a bit of juniper branch all the way home without losing it; apparently assuming I wouldn’t let it inside the cabin he immediately flopped down on the boards and expressed a desire to spend some quality time with it. No problem; I just wrapped his leash around a 4X4 and went inside for second coffee.

Then I got him inside (he had forgotten all about the stick) and snuck off to the reloading shack for some quality time with the Circle of Brass.

Loaded almost 100 rounds of .44 Special…

Final inspection comes when I’m wiping off the bullet lube. And surprise!

One too many campaigns for this old soldier. I inspect the cases for cracks when I clean the primer pockets and again briefly after they go through the flaring die so I’m pretty sure this one didn’t split until I seated the bullet. Normally doesn’t bother me, brass wears out, but right now bullets are the weak point in my reloading supplies. Wouldn’t you know.

Got back to the Lair just in time to load Tobie in the Jeep and go do horse and dog chores at D&L’s, who are off at another joint doctor appointment.

Feed the horses, take a quick turn around the corrals with the shit fork, then let the dogs out of their kennel for a pee, bring them into the house for lunch, a quick lovin’ and then back out to the kennel. They’re old now and used to the routine: When they were young they gave me a hard time about the kennel but now they just go along with every step of the program.

I bake every five days or so, usually well before I’m out of bread in summer because it molds before I finish eating it. Less often in winter, because it doesn’t.

I’ve been doing this for most of the fifteen years I’ve lived in the Gulch, and regularly for all the (ten years in November!) I’ve been in the Lair. The recipe kind of evolves over time, but I’m still no expert. I’m not a great baker or anything – I don’t really have ten years’ experience, just one year’s experience repeated ten times.

First, wear out your dog.

He’s good for a two-hour nap minimum.

Start the bread by proving two teaspoons of yeast in 2 1/2 cups warm water* with two teaspoons salt and 3 tablespoons sugar, then add an egg and a little oil… Continue reading →

Tobie and I went on an unusually long walkie this morning. Beautiful day in a recent series of beautiful days, a little warm for comfort in the afternoon but pleasant in the morning and it seems we’re looking at Monsoon’s back so may as well enjoy. Soon it’ll be woodcutting season, and then – sigh – winter before I know it.

With all that water from the sky, the weeds are chest-high everywhere you leave the road. Kind of annoying, really – I’m not used to pushing through underbrush to get where I’m going, even if I’m not going anywhere in particular.

On our way through the wash I paid more attention to a recently almost-but-not-quite washed-out juniper… Continue reading →

(This turned into another wall’o’words post. Apologies.)

PREAMBLE: Longtime readers will have noticed that I seldom do political posts anymore. Honestly they were never anything but filler to help me fulfill the Post Every Day rule, which is hard to do with slice of life posts because I live very quietly and blogworthy things simply don’t happen every day. When I stopped with the political stuff my readership crashed – not a lot of people out there really care what-all Tobie did today or whether Ian’s water softener is behaving itself, and I don’t blame them.

It didn’t matter. A major reason I maintain the blog is for my own mental health. My idea of good mental hygiene involves minimal engagement with political bullshit that happens outside the Gulch: It never seems to make anybody happier, and I found it excruciating but as a lifelong political junkie it was difficult to unplug even though it has virtually nothing to do with most of my day-to-day life. So I view my waning interest in who’s insulting whom at a white house press session as a good thing in terms of my personal road to satori, y’know? If it costs the blog some readers, so be it.

My point being, when political bullshit does manage to intrude itself into my very quiet life, it’s actually painful. I was going to write this post yesterday but kept putting it off. And now I’m finding it difficult to compose, so bear with me. End of preamble. Continue reading →

A quickie little project for D&L turned out quite a bit more difficult than expected. I think it might have been easier if I’d gotten in there before the mud dried, though it certainly would have been messier…

A corner of their property happens to border the wash downstream of where two big branches come together. So what seems a very impressive flood upstream at my place can be positively cataclysmic at the low end of theirs. In this case the wash overran its banks by damn near 50 yards, not only flooding their low meadow but apparently doing so at considerable velocity.

The damage done to their 4-strand fence was surprisingly minor, but the first step toward setting it right was to dig all the interwoven driftwood and mud out of the wire. That turned out to be fairly hard work, and after all his health problems of the past few years D wouldn’t be up to it. So, looking for something for Tobie and me to do with ourselves this afternoon anyway, we snuck in and got it done. D and I will be able to straighten up the fenceposts together easily enough now.

It’s not entirely out of the goodness of my heart: I’m going to need to borrow his tractor to fix my driveway once I’m (somewhat) sure the wash isn’t going to flood anymore for the year. So this isn’t paying karma so much as swapping favors.

Coming home from the Monday morning water run has become a bit of a stressful thing since Tobie decided he could chew and scatter whatever he wanted if Uncle Joel wasn’t home. I cleared out the lower cabinets and bathroom of targets of opportunity, sealed up the kitchen trash, closed the bedroom door – and he still found things worthy of destruction. I don’t think it’s anxiety, this is just the way he passes empty time and I expect he’ll outgrow it. Even when I go to Ian’s to shower, he carries firewood away from the woodstove and chews it up in the main room while he’s waiting for me to finish – and then he knows exactly where I am so it’s not separation anxiety. Just a bored puppy.

My arrivals have added to his stress, since I don’t take coming inside to find the cabin trashed…well. But it may be we’ve come to an agreement on that? Maybe? This time, and the last time I left him alone for a few hours, he contented himself with his own massive pile of chew toys – and of course got praised lavishly when I found he hadn’t laid waste to my stuff.

Leave it the hell alone.

It has bugged me that, after waiting on the order of 10 years for this tree to fruit, most of the fruit will be wasted. Right? I mean they’re not going to be as good as commercial pears no matter what I get right so I won’t be able to give many away. I can only eat so many before they spoil.

But what if I canned them? How hard could that be? A tiny bit of research suggests not hard at all even with tools at hand, I just need to get some jars and they’re available again.

But Tobie does the best he can.

He’ll go nuts with one of his toys for a while, keeping himself occupied…

But sooner or later he’ll see if he can get me involved in the game.

This is nothing I ever taught him; I’ve never found Fetch especially stimulating and I’m too old to even pretend keeping up with a rambunctious puppy. But it does seem to be hardwired into some of them. Maybe when he gets off the leash I’ll introduce him to the wonders of tennis balls.

Yesterday was a very pleasant day, in that there was never even a credible threat of rain. Unlike the day before. And, allegedly, this afternoon. So certain things that should have happened on Wednesday were moved to Thursday, like Battery Day.

For the benefit of anyone happening by, Battery Day is supposed to occur on the first of each month and consists of me going to the three (theoretically) occupied areas and topping off battery electrolyte levels with distilled water while checking for maintenance issues like corroded connections. Yesterday was not the first of the month, but close enough: I could easily get between Landlady’s, Ian’s and my places without fear of melting like sugar. Hey, I’m a cedar rat: I’m not used to getting rained on.

While in the process of prosecuting my Battery Day duties I noticed to my embarrassment that the worst set of batteries in terms of corrosion buildup was my very own. Well, that’s no good.

So I gathered some materials normally stored at Landlady’s place and gave my batteries a good going over.

And now they’re all squeaky clean. Mix up a strong solution of baking soda in water, sacrifice a toothbrush giving the positive connections a good wet scrub, rinse (distilled water) and repeat until the bubbling stops. Flush the battery tops with distilled water and wipe everything clean. Anoint the positive connections liberally with anticorrosion grease…

A TUAK reader recommended this quite some time ago: I’ve used it for years with substantial success but it’s not forever. Diligence is still called for.

Afternoon, I took my bike to town for the first time in weeks, since the dirt roads are finally getting back into decent shape…

Even then there are some deep sandy patches that do not lend themselves to two-wheeled conveyances at all, and I thought I was going to land on my head a few times. But all’s well.

So far this morning all I’ve accomplished is a nice long morning walkie with Tobie, to see the sights and smell the smells.

That’s Tobie’s current favorite coyote dump, which for reasons known only to him he finds fascinating. Apparently it provides a depth of nuance and complexity a human nose simply can’t begin to appreciate. He seems to savor it in the same way I’ll sit in the evening sniffing a tiny glass of good rye without even drinking it as such. To each his own, I’m not judging.

Rained off and on all night, a fact I know because I was awake for much of it filling tissues. So yeah, I’m really looking forward to a nice long walk first thing in the drippy morning. Tobie’s only real utility, at least at this stage of his life, is to get me out of bed and keep me honest about not turning into a blob of superannuated sludge.

Tobie was brooking no insolence over the matter this morning: He wanted his walkie, he wanted a good long one, and he wanted it right now. Probably a good thing, too, because the forecast is for t-storms all day and maybe flash floods. So let’s get it out of the way and then stay out of the wash.

One benefit of living in the desert nonstop for a really long time – it’ll be fifteen years in November – is that you get to learn how quickly it can change. That sandbank used to be where you leave the wash for the path to Landlady’s place, and then overnight it wasn’t. This isn’t even the first time it has happened: Last time, cattle decreed that there shall be a path there and it gradually became, er, gradual enough for even the one-legged old man to navigate. But now at least for the next few years I’ll be leaving the wash a little further upstream. That dropoff is somewhere between five and six feet tall: If I stand on that little bank where Tobie is I can just see over the edge.

Ominous sight: Yes, we do get a few mushrooms but it has to be really unusually wet by our standards before they appear. And it’s been really wet by our standards, though honestly not so much in the past week or so.

The cliffroses have pretty much given up, after a hell of a year…

…but these things are still doing great. Practically every juniper has one growing at its base, which I never noticed before this summer and which seems a little weird since normally nothing grows at the base of a juniper. I thought it was something they were doing to the soil quality but maybe they just scarf up all the moisture.

Speaking of moisture…

Sigh.

And now I am informed by His Nibs…

…that I may go back to bed for a while if that is my pleasure. But really I think I’ll grab a little more breakfast and then head over to Ian’s for battery day before it starts raining again.

…and then this morning Ian proved that it really does (very) occasionally show up on his videos.

Only the first few seconds are really relevant to this post, but I’m still in love with the WWSD ARs so what the hell.

In hindsight this was all predictable and somewhat avoidable based on prior experience. Little Bear was not always a lovable puppy. But that was twelve years ago and I’d put all the chewing and property destruction out of my memory.

Also I didn’t do a lot of due diligence before deciding to take Tobie home with me. In hindsight it should have been perfectly obvious that he was going to get quite a lot bigger, and that he was nowhere near as old as the shelter said he was. I really had in mind bringing home a smaller dog, on the order of Laddie or even smaller. But I’ve always been a sucker for violating the first law of buying a used car: Don’t Fall In Love. Also, a shelter dog is bound to have traits that are not so adorable, at least at first.

All in all, Tobie is a very good boy – for a big mischievous puppy. He usually means well, and even when he clearly doesn’t mean well he’s never malicious about it.

Tobie is a good puppy. I’m down to only wanting to break his neck about three times a day, on average.

Big puppies need to chew, and they can be maddeningly perverse about what they feel compelled to chew. Tobie has a veritable stack of chew toys and bones, and he uses them: But he became absolutely obsessed with destroying my summer sandals.

And of course finally succeeded.

So anyway: I belatedly removed nearly everything from the bottom kitchen cabinets, became diligent about covering the kitchen garbage can – and then he moved his depredations into the bathroom which alas has no door. Fortunately the bedroom does have a door, because he has lately expressed an interest in my dirty gelsocks and they’re expensive unobtainium.

Also, at least at first he seemed to regard “housebroken” as more of a guideline than an iron law. This was no doubt exacerbated by his early bowel problems. We haven’t had a recurrence in quite a few weeks now and so this morning I finally feel safe in taking what’s left of my main cabin rug out to the porch…

…and giving it a good shampoo and scrub now that Monsoon has become less extreme and unpredictable. That rug is never going to be the same, but I won’t consider replacing it until Tobie is at least mostly past his Obnoxious Puppy stage.

Don’t get me wrong: Tobie is a fine young man. But who hasn’t wanted to throttle a teenage son from time to time? I think that when he grows up – maybe two long years from now – he’s going to be a real keeper. He’s very smart, albeit often very willful. Picks up on new things very quickly – though again he doesn’t always agree or approve. He can make me dream of the peace and quiet of my post-Laddie days – but yet again post-Laddie I was finding myself looking for reasons to get out of bed in the morning, getting noticeably more old and cranky by the day. And when he decides he’s had enough of my staring at the box with my back to the room and presses against my leg demanding a good ear scratch, well…he knows how to worm his way into my affection.