It's been fun, 2022, but it's time for you to go home

 For whatever reason, I feel like I should post before the month and the year end. Just why I should think that, I can't say though there are a few weird little acts of kindness that I feel I should mark. In truth, I meant to post one of these weeks ago but, well, life intervened in its not very interesting but still time-consuming way.

 Some weeks ago I'd had A Day at work and Scott wasn't feeling particularly lively either so I ordered pizza because, by god, sometimes that's just what you have to do. It's relatively rare for me to actually order--or pay for--the pizza, but this was one of those occasions. It was, therefore, quite a surprise to find that Pagliacci's decided I deserved to get my pizza for free:

It was a damned fine pizza, too, though oddly heavy on the garlic.

Fast forward a few weeks and I walked up the hill in the snow (though not the ice--that day I stayed home like a sensible person) to mail some packages and stock up on bird seed. I had a coupon for $10 off a $50 purchase at Junction True Value and, given the current price of bird seed, it seemed an ideal time to use it. Sadly, my ability with math seems to have slipped a bit with age, and it turned out my total purchase was just under $50. The clerk, without missing a beat, quickly invented a $.02 item in my basket to get me to the $50 threshold, thus saving me $9.98. Which just struck me as darned nice of her.

And sure, these two little incidents are very slight and don't do a damned thing to redress the ills of the world, but I call them islands of niceness and I'm taking them. I truly despise and hate the expression "pay it forward," but I will keep these in mind when I'm feeling particularly cranky with my fellow Seattleites because sometimes people are nice for no damned reason and that's a good thing and worth remembering.

 Also nice:

the varied thrush that chose to hang out in our yard in the aftermath of the ice storm:

 this year's cookie box:

 Scott working on his latest so-excellent novel:

and, of course, Grace, once more posing under the tree:

Happy New Year, you old Building and Loan!

Christmas Grace

 Early for Christmas, but too dear not to share immediately.

Brief seasonal photo post

 Today we dressed appropriately for the weather (wet) and activity (tree fetching) and trudged up the hill to buy this year's tree at the Holy Rosary lot and then carried it back down the hill again as is our custom. We are probably somewhat unusual in considering weight as a factor in our selection process. And possibly that figures into why every tree we get is pretty much the same as the previous year's tree, especially once decorated. For posterity, this year's tree:

I call her Gloria

The angle of the photo hides the quite large gap on the left side that I didn't fully appreciate until I took a photo. I've also discovered that there's nothing quite like a holiday snap to make one realize how many cobwebs one has on the living room ceiling. 

After we brought the tree home but before her official installation, I trimmed off some of the lower branches and then went out to snip some rosemary and lavender. The neighbor was doing some pruning of her shrubs with reddish berries and kindly gave me a few branches. I spent some time putting all that, and a few other bits and bobs, together to create this year's wreath. The asymmetry is a feature, not a bug, mind you:

Not quite final wreath

Tomorrow is supposed to be less rainy so the plan is to get the outdoor lights up in the afternoon. I tell myself I'll also write Christmas cards. I tell myself a lot of things.

Fa-a-la-la-la, la-la la laaaaaaaaa

Goodness me, it's been a month since my last post. I really intended to reform, but somehow November was hard. Thinking back, it was the stress and anxiety leading up to election day, as well as some illness and then preparing for Thanksgiving and the like. 

But this last week there has been snow (so early!) and those gold-star events on my calendar--Figgy Pudding and West Seattle Tree Lighting-- and, by gum, such things cannot pass unnoted. As it happens, the only photo I took at Figgy Pudding was some neon signage at Pike Place, but the Seattle Times had a photographer on the job, though I'm not sure when that last photo (if you click the link) was taken; the space was pretty crowded during the actual event.

The easiest way to get from group to group was via the covered market

I went so far as to snag videos of some musical acts in West Seattle this evening, though I'm not sure how readily I can share them here. If this works, it should be a snippet of the Endolyne Children's Choir doing their bullet:

Earlier in the day, I went on a errand that took me to the Thistle Street Stairs which were truly quite charming:

I like that people decorate them for the holidays,

and that they have some more year-round art as well.

This is but a fraction of the 367 stairs--but look at that blue sky!

I'm sure there should be something I could say about my reading or biking or yardwork over the last month, but aside from Bessie and me being about a dozen miles short of our goal for the year (a lacklustre 89 miles in November), puttenesca made earlier this week with some of the garden tomatoes I brought in before we planted all the tulip bulbs in the hillside block early in November, and God's Teeth and Other Phenomena being a bit on the stinko end of the scale, I got nothing.

On Sal Mal Lane: Perhaps a little too topical

Next, throughout his life, stuck in what he saw now as a bookish understanding of political movements and their ideologies, he had truly believed that the parliamentay system would prevail, the sharing of wealth and rights would become a reality, the people would own and rule the country. Yet around him now, people, those very people he had counted on to stand up for social justice, to march out peacefully someday, en masse, to demand equality for all of them, they were running wild, shattering buildings, overturning vehicles. Around him people were on fire.

  --from page 301 of On Sal Mal Lane  

 

On Sal Mal Lane, with its NYT cover blurb "I don't know that I've seen children more opulently depicted in fiction since Dickens," is the book I've just finished reading. It was originally published in 2013 and maybe if I'd read it then, I would have found it moving in an interesting "My, what a place Sri Lanka is," sort of way, though I don't think I'd be noting similarities to Dickens because I'm just not seeing that so much. A book can center around children without being Dickensian. In late 2022, however, the whole story is a bit unnerving, not to say traumatizing. Excellent book, really, with a Scut Farkus character who just makes one want to weep for the wrongness of his life--but really not ideal reading just now for one who reads for escape. I'm thinking there's an Angela Thirkell in my immediate future.

Vote, peoples, vote!

Weekend snaps as fall hits Seattle

Some variation of this art has appeared on this rock in Lincoln Park for several months now.

 
The weather has definitely taken a turn for the cool and wet, but I've promised not to complain about it until at least mid-November. We should be shifting tomatoes in to hang (but where?) to ripen and planting all those bulbs we so optimistically ordered back in August that showed up ten days ago, but that doesn't seem to be happening quite yet. Instead, we went for a ride yesterday and today I'm just a bit out of it. So, some photos:

The 100 VoteForward letters dropped into the outgoing mail slot at the post office on Saturday

We celebrated by breaking our ride at Alki for lunch from Pepperdock. We had some attentive company.

Today was HarvestFest at the West Seattle Junction, as well as the usual farmers market:

Ukelele-playing dog

Shark!!!

 

Fan-girl watching the band

The band (--it felt a lot like a return to the old days of tree-lighting)

Little girl just watching stuff

Heading into the final months of the year, I'm just over a hundred miles short of my goal for the year:

What is that noise and what is this water falling from above?

The view out the kitchen window as fall at last hits West Seattle

 Not a lot of action in either short video, but a welcome soundtrack.

Now we can swim any day in November

Water taxi approaches the West Seattle dock

Well, truth to tell, it's not November yet so I'm not absolutely sure if The Postal Service had that right, but I can say that we can still buy fresh raspberries at the Farmers Market in mid-October and while on the one hand that's a little worrying, it does mean I can work off some impending mid-terms nerves by experimenting with a new raspberry tart recipe. 

 I wasn't entirely happy with my last crust (though we managed to polish that pie off readily enough) so I wasn't eager to make my usual raspberry pie, but it just seemed wrong not get raspberries when Big Brother Farms had boxes of berries for sale this morning. I bought the berries (okay, Scott bought the berries) and figured I'd come up with something. Once we got home I googled a bit and was pretty much sold on this recipe until I realized it called for six eggs which would clean us out of eggs for the week and also, that's just a lot of egg. I nosed around a bit longer and eventually landed on this summer fresh raspberry pie recipe since it seems like it's just never not going to be summer in Seattle again. (Nor, it seems, is it ever going to rain again. I tell myself I'll look back longingly on these dry days come February, but I don't believe it. I know I won't miss the smoke and haze from the Bolt Creek Fire, assuming it does go away eventually.)

I realized that I probably didn't really have enough berries to fill a normal pie pan and, since this pie isn't cooked I didn't think I could supplement the fruit with nectarine without Scott noticing. Instead, I broke out his cute little tart pans, which don't get much use, sadly, and filled them with the pate brisée sucré from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Let me just me just say that is a dough that is a joy to work. It's one of the few items I've made from Ms Child's classic, but those books are worth having in the house, if only for that recipe. 

The several pages of how to make the dough are in a much earlier section

My blind baking technique needs a lot of work and it wouldn't have hurt if I'd reread the entire recipe a little more closely (oh; I'm supposed to prick the crust before the first nine minutes of baking as well as after I remove the beans that are supposed to stop them from puffing), but I insist they have a certain rustic charm. I also tell myself that the glaze thickened enough and that it will set up properly given some time to chill. Which is what is happening now:

Don't wake me; I plan on sleeping in.

Ruby at West Seattle Farmers Market

(And, I think, Ruby's webpage which seems to be a pile of other links: https://linktr.ee/westseattlebusker?fbclid=IwAR0UiAoNona5uhIX0BJm2VtT-3ERh5cZv247ULeEDAhTtqdhbZeK8Z3dFEo)

Photo Update for Posterity

The Greenman with his new fall hairdo

 

 

Bessie's mileage as of late September (288 miles to go to hit my goal)

 

These are some of my favorite things (in no particular order as I clear off my phone and camera):

Grace in the living room in the late summer morning light

Scott (and Bessie) overlooking Puget Sound in the late summer setting sun

Scone-making in progress (late summer fruit)

What I call "Grace being Grace"

Slice o' Smoky Saturday update

 Seattle has been pretty lucky all summer in not getting hit by the wildfire smoke that has plagued BC, Oregon, and Idaho, but all streaks must come to an end and today was the day for Seattle, though it's still just borderline unhealthy for everyone.

Airnow.gov Seattle graphic as of 12:54 p.m.

Realizing the air and the heat were likely to become issues later in the day, Scott and I uncharacteristically got up early and set out for Fresh Flours at about 9:30 this morning (because, yes, anything before ten on a Saturday morning is early in our world). The graphic then showed the needle at the high end of the green segment, so pretty decent. I was fairly gasping on the first hill, but I'm always gasping there; sadly, it has nothing to do with the air quality. 

We have serious doubts about the accuracy of the elevation gain number, but it looks impressive, doesn't it?

 I don't know if they're new, but we hadn't noticed them before: several of the road signs along the route (in the Riverview/Highland Park neighborhoods, to get ultra-local) had large colorful art on their backs. Naturally, I stopped to photograph a few:

We think the subsequent ones are subsections of this one, which was a lot larger than the others.

West Seattle's Fresh Flours, when we reached it, was hopping, but there was no shortage of pastry and plenty of seating on the patio. I don't know why it is but every time we sit on the Fresh Flours' patio, it feels like we're on vacation. It's magical, I tell you. There were a lot of house sparrows, looking to fill up on empty calories.

As it happens, I had seen that Paper Boat Booksellers was celebrating its three-year anniversary this weekend with 10 percent off pretty much everything, as well as a bit of a sidewalk sale so, since that can be on our route home (if you figure a mile or two out of the way is, in its own way, "on the way"), we stopped by there and did some shopping before finishing our ride in the deepening haze. (Does haze "deepen"? I'm not sure. I do know that I'm feeling a bit lightheaded.)

The day's haul / Local economy boosted / Essential supplies laid in

Another brief post for posterity

Labor Day Weekend Harvest*

 

This (late) morning's activity: a quick harvest.

 This afternoon's activity: figuring out what to do with plums this year when we don't want more plum jam, don't eat that many fresh plums, and can't get to the food bank to make a donation any time soon. I sense some plum torte--maybe enlivened with fresh fennel seeds?--in the near future. 

*Not pictured because not picked: the basil that is likely to figure in tonight's dinner.

 And, a few hours later:

NYT plum torte (with experimental fennel)**

**And with apologies to Julia Child and Paul Hollywood for being too lazy to add their mandatory apricot glaze. Maybe later.

Drive-by post, that has suddenly grown to include more photos than planned

It's been a weird summer, with a long, cold June followed by some intensely hot days in July and August but, somehow, it's never felt properly like summer. The garden seems to share my ambivalence with the harvest, as of August 27, being pretty light. These aren't the first beans, cucumbers, or tomatoes I've picked, but it's not exactly like we've been overwhelmed by abundance either.

Plum positioned in such a way as to hide the bite either Squirrelicus or Ratticus has taken out of it

Though, on reflection, it has been a phenomenally good year for bees, who have been very happy with the California poppies that have been allowed to range all over the beds intended for vegetables, 

  and there has been clear evidence of leafcutters gathering their cocoon supplies from the neighboring roses. So I guess I just need to shift my perspective a bit. I'll look to that.

Leafcutter house with new residents moving in daily

Note the half circles clipped from the rose leaves
by leafcutters. (And also the flower from the gardenia
we've had for years that is blooming
for the first time ever.)

 

 

We've also been working on this sweet little corner of the backyard this summer:

Apricot Jam, 2022 edition

 

About step 4, I think: second half of apricots added to pots.
(Pay no attention to that finger in the corner of the shot.)

  I confess that I'm writing this post mostly because it was so very helpful to find my plainly titled 2015 post about making apricot preserves a few hours ago; that post mentioned--and pictured--the old envelope on which the apricot preserves recipe lives which I'd forgotten about entirely so when the lab book in which we record some notes about jamming from various years contained some details on quantities but nothing else, I was at a loss as to the actual recipe. But a few minutes on blah de blah and I was reminded of the envelope and all was well.

 Of course, in 2015 we got started at about 8:00 a.m. and it was pushing noon by the time we had our fruit, jars, and cook pots gathered together today. Scott noted that it was 73 degrees F in the shade by then too. It would have been death to attempt to make preserves last weekend when we actually bought the fruit, but after the earlier heatwave, standing over pots of boiling, spitting apricot in an 80-degree kitchen wasn't bad at all. (This year's production run was particularly lively; I don't think I've had it spit onto my feet before. Ow.)

I can't believe that for years we did this without a funnel.

 I've been doing my best to keep the fruit in decent condition by storing it in a cooler in the basement, but even the most assiduous changing out of cold packs could only do so much; some of the fruit had turned pretty spotty and some of it had downright molded. (There's a reason there are no photos of the unprocessed fruit.) Overall, though, it worked out okay and we had a bit more than ten pounds of pitted fruit, with a dozen or so still viable-for-snacking apricots left over. 

I wish I'd snapped a photo after Scott divided the juice into beakers but, sadly, I did not.

 The real issue was the fruit itself. Perfection apricots are just not perfect for making preserves; the flavor is definitely on the meh end of the scale. But it's what we could get at the market and it's what we had today so, bravely, we persevered. And we went to our usual solution: lemon! The recipe always includes lemon juice but this year we added lemon zest as well and the results, I declare, are pretty damned fine. Oh, it's not our most flavorful batch ever, but it's darned pretty in the jars and I'm sure we'll be pleased to have it come the dark days of winter.

 For posterity, total time was about 3.5 hours which includes everything from cleaning, spot-peeling, and stoning the fruit before weighing to removing the jars from their post-canning water bath and getting them ready for their close-up. We also did a cold-plate test this year, since the fruit had mostly cooked down. (Say, I should get that third plate out of the freezer.)

This year's production run yielded 16 full-size jars so we'll have extra!