A Very Busy Day

         October.

         One of the prettiest months to be in Pennsylvania.

         The weather is cooler this past week, getting down to 40 degrees at night. I am hoping for more spectacular fall foliage photos to show you but it isn't going to be this week.

         The tomato plants are still sending out flowers. Well, as of nine days ago when I took this photo they were. Looking at the shape of the flower, it reminds me of horse nettle and nightshade. Of course it doesn't really look like either one, it just reminds me of them because they hang upside down with the 'fruit' in the middle of the stars.

         Are they related? I wondered.

         According to Science Daily: The family is informally known as the nightshade or potato family. The family includes the Datura or Jimson weed, eggplant, mandrake, deadly nightshade or belladonna, capsicum (paprika, chile pepper), potato, tobacco, tomato, and petunia. The most important species of this family for the global diet is the potato.

         So I was half right. The nightshade is, the horse nettle is not.

         The milkweed pods are open and sending their seeds out on the breeze with their silky parachutes.

         Mike has to mow around the milkweed patches that have sprung up in our yard, because I won't let him mow them over.

         "When can I mow them down?" he asked me.

         "After the first frost," according to my research online.

         "I wish they grew up in that field," Mike said indicating the hillside above my clothesline, in a field he only mows once in the spring "You can grow as many as you want up there."

         So I've been collecting the pods as they dry and split open and scattering the seeds in that field.

         Speaking of that field, I try to be very careful when I walk out into the center of it to scatter the milkweed seeds. I'm very conscious of the fact that that field is home to tons of garden spiders. 

When the dew is on you can see where the webs are but later in the day, not so much. These are such a big, beautiful spider and I'm sure if I break a web, they can fix it or build a new one, but I don't want to do that if I can help it. 

         Dew drops glint in the morning sun and if you look, you can see a tiny little sun in each one of them.

         A small praying mantis landed on the edge of my laundry basket as I hung blue jeans and towels out one morning. Did I have my camera with me that morning? No! Dagnabbit!

         I kept track of him until I was done hanging laundry then I took him back to the house with me and let him go on a tomato plant.

         Praying mantis are fascinating critters. There are just 18 native species in North America and you're more likely to find an introduced mantid species than you are to find a native praying mantis. The Chinese mantis was introduced near Philadelphia, PA about eighty years ago. European mantids are half the size of the Chinese ones and were introduced near Rochester, NY nearly a hundred years ago and both are common in the northeastern U.S. today.

         Mantids can turn their heads a full 180 degrees!

         And they are related to cockroaches and termites — ewww!

         The female doesn't always bite off the head's of their mate. It happens most in a laboratory setting but in the wild, scientists believe the male partners get munched on less than 30% of the time.

         Mantids use their specialized front legs to capture prey. He'll extend his arms lightning quick to grab a hapless insect and the sharp spines lining his forelegs holds it tight while he eats. Some larger mantids catch and eat lizards, frogs, and even birds! Who says bugs are at the bottom of the food chain!

         Although we think praying mantis are good for our garden, they are indiscriminate predators. They'll eat the 'good' bugs as well as the 'bad' ones.

         Can you stand one more fact?

         Good.

         Praying mantis have two large, compound eyes but only one ear! And it's on the underside of its belly. He can't really tell the direction sound comes from but he can detect ultrasound, or the sound produced by echo locating bats. Studies have shown that they are quite good at evading bats. A mantis in flight will stop, drop, and roll in midair, dive-bombing away from the hungry predator.

         How about another critter and a few facts?

         Yeah?

         Good!

         This is the harvestman or more commonly, the daddy longlegs. There's a widespread myth that these are the most venomous spiders in the whole world!

         Well, guess what?

         It's not true. For one, their mouthparts are too little and too weak to bite us and second, they have no venom! Oh, and they're not even spiders! They are in the same class as spiders, arachnid, but a different order.

        

         Chili and soup season is here. I made a pot of potato soup last week and I will forever associate potato soup with my dad and Kevin, our youngest son.  

         "Pap-pap always had potato soup waiting for me when I got home from school," Kevin said. "Nobody can make potato soup like Pap-pap did!" They really had a special relationship.

         A trip to town yielded me these pictures.

         Don't 'cha love when the school kids paint the windows of the local business?

         This is a picture I've been trying to get for a while now. Although I have to admit I haven't tried any harder than to take pictures as we drive past. Most times the tire was turned the other way and all you saw was the hubcap and the 'bones' through the spokes. This week I got a picture from the other side. I have no other information about it than that. Maybe someday I'll get brave enough to stop and ask if there's a story behind it.

         We came home to a winter-looking sky.

         "Peg, your picture is crooked," you say.

         I know. I stuck my camera out the window and shot blindly. Still, it gets the idea across.

  

        My whistle pig on the hill has grown quite a lot this summer. He's big and fat now, maybe too fat to fit into my live trap.

         But I tried.

         I bought a cantaloupe and tried to lure him into the trap but he was too smart for that. He just ignored my trap and ate the tidbits I left as a trail on the outside of the trap.

         I was happy to see that after caching the possum twice, he left my trap alone. Until a couple of days ago that is.

         "Hey buddy, you want out of there?" I asked him. He did what possums do best. He played dead. I opened the door. "There you go, come on out now," I coaxed. He didn't move. I picked up a stick and hit the end of the trap. "C'mon buddy. Come out of there!" Not so much as a muscle twitched. I picked up the end of the cage and shook it thinking he'd go downhill but he didn't. I rolled the cage over and he just hung there, looking at me with one eye. But he didn't move. If his nostrils hadn't of been flaring with each breath, I would have believed he was dead.

         "Aww, he's got a bloody foot," you say.

         I know, right! That's what I said too! I'm guessing he tried to dig a little and tore one of his nails — claws.

         I had Ginger with me and Smudge followed. When I saw I had the possum, I dropped Ginger's leash in the grass. I thought I'd better check on her and this is what I found when I turned around. Ginger, sitting patiently, waiting for me, and Smudge using her as a pillow. Neither one had any interest in the possum.

         I finally decided to put a stick in the door to hold it open and let him leave whenever he was ready.

         And this is the last look I had of him as I picked up Ginger's leash and walked away. 

          Late in the afternoon I went up and collected my now empty trap.

         "What are you gonna do?" Mike asked.

         "Wait until winter when he's a little hungrier. Maybe I can catch him then."

        

         Speaking of hungry and critters...

         The deer practically live under the neighbor's apple tree. I can count on seeing at least one there every day but usually it's three or four.

         Apples and apple trees...

         "I was going out to the back shed when a patch of white catches my eye," Lamar told us yesterday as he and Rosie visited on their ritual morning walk. "The beaver is fixing his dam up and he's cutting down an old apple tree."

         "I just saw a program on beavers!" I exclaimed. "Did you know that when they cut a tree down, none of it goes to waste? They use it all?"

         "I didn't know that," Lamar said. "But it's nice to know."

         "I'll have to come down and check it out."

         Later in the morning I realized I'd left my phone someplace or another. When I finally tracked it down to where I'd left it, I saw I'd missed a call from my handsome cousin Justin and I had a message.

         "I picked up some Empire apples and I wondered if you'd like to have a few?" Justin said.

         Well it didn't take me long to call him back. "I'd love to have a few!" I told him.

         "I'll be by sometime before four," he said.

         "Great! I'll be home all day."

         Justin is such a kind and gentle soul and even though I had a few apples on my kitchen counter, I wasn't about to pass up a chance to see him again.

         I know! I'll make an apple crisp or apple pie and send some home with him, I thought.

         And with that thought, my Saturday ended up being a very busy day! Not only did I want to make something to thank Justin for thinking of me, I'd also promised Mike a real dinner. Because I'm trying to lose weight, our dinners look like this most of the time. But Mike doesn't complain about it, he's happy to lose a few pounds too. And yeah, I'd already taken a bite out of my pickle before I'd taken the picture.

         But I was feeling guilty about our mostly veggie dinners and I had a chicken in the freezer. "I'll bake a chicken on Saturday," I'd told Mike, "and boil a few potatoes." That was before Justin had called.

         Saturday, after I put the chicken in my NuWave oven to bake I got busy peeling, coring, and slicing apples for a crisp. I'd bought an apple variety called Macoun.

         "Is it a crisp apple?" I asked the gal at the produce booth.

         "Yes. It has pretty white flesh and is a cross between a McIntosh and a Jersey Black," she answered.

         Mike won't eat an apple if it's not crisp. Most of the time I can count on a Red Delicious to be crisp, but I like to try different kinds. "How does it compare to a Red Delicious?" I asked.

         "I think it has more flavor than a Red Delicious."

         Good enough for me! When I got them home and cut one up, they weren't crisp at all. Now I was stuck eating a whole bag of apples that Mike wouldn't help me eat, so I thought turning it into an apple crisp was the best way to get rid of them.

         I put the apple crisp together and stuck it in the oven. There were still about six apples left, just enough for a pie, I thought. But right now I had to peel potatoes and get them on to boil because the chicken would be done soon. While they were boiling, I had just enough time to make a piecrust. Normally, if I had been planning to bake a pie, I'd have bought a Pillsbury readymade crust. They are so close to homemade there isn't any reason to make one anymore. But it was a spur of the moment thing so I made one using my mother's recipe. Then I put the brown sugar crumb topping together and set it aside.

         The apple crisp got done and I pulled it from the oven and set it on top of the stove to cool.

         Then it was time to eat. I love chicken done in my NuWave. It comes out crisp on the outside — if you like to eat the skin, and moist and juicy on the inside. I'd mashed the potatoes and made green beans. For dessert we had apple crisp. I've never been so disappointed in my life. The apples reduced themselves to mush.

         "I can't give this to Justin," I cried, but Mike didn't pay me any attention. Maybe if I leave the slices thicker, it'll be okay in a pie, I thought and got busy with the last six apples. Two of the apples were bruised beyond use and now I didn't have enough apples.

         Luckily it was two o'clock and time to make my daily I LOVE YOU call to my mother. "Momma, the apples in my apple crisp turned to mush!" I cried.

         "Just the way I like them," she said.

         "I like my apples to have a little more body. What am I going to do with the rest of the apples?"

         "Make applesauce," she said. My mother is so smart and beautiful!

         "Okay. How do I do that?"

         "Put them in a pan with a little water and steam them. Mash'em, add a little sugar and cinnamon... oh! And a little salt too. It'll make the sugar taste sweeter and bring out the flavor."

         Justin drove in as I was talking to Momma so I said goodbye to her, hung up, and went out to meet him.

         "Hi Justin!" I exclaimed as he got out of his car with a bag of apples. I ignored the apples and gave him a hug.

         We visited for a few minutes but Justin had to go. "I'm going to go home and make an apple pie," he said.

         "Me too!"

         "PEG!" you scold. "You said you were trying to lose weight!"

         I know, right! But I'd already had a crust and topping ready! And now, thanks to Justin, I had some beautiful apples to put in it.

         "I could call the Kipps and see if they'd like to have apple pie for dinner," I suggested. Pie has fewer calories in it when you share, don't you know.

         I called the Kipps. "Hey Lamar! Are you busy?"

         "No," he answers.

         "How about if I come down and we could check out the beaver dam?" I asked.

         "Sure."

         "Are you guys planning on having supper?" I know. Strange question. 

         "At some point we will," Lamar takes me in stride. "Why?"

         "How about I bring apple pie and we have apple pie for supper?"

         "Rosie made a raspberry pie," Lamar said.

         "Rosie and I have to do better coordinating our baking schedule!"

         "We could trade pieces," Lamar suggested.

         "Great idea! It's still in the oven. We'll be down in a little while." Once the pie had cooled for a few minutes we loaded up on the golf cart and headed down to see the Kipps.

         Lamar met us at the door. "Oh. You brought the whole pie."

         "Yes! And it's too hot to eat." I set it on the counter. "Let's go look at the beaver dam."

         Lamar grabbed his jacket and out we went. "See what I mean?" Lamar said as we headed across the yard.

         "Yes I do!" and he was right. The light colored flesh of the apple tree stands out like a sore thumb.

         "Are you sad about it?" I asked.

         "A little bit. For the deer. This tree had a lot of apples on it and now the deer won't come into the yard for the apples anymore."

         We walked up to the tree. "He's been gnawing at it since the last time I was out here." Lamar reached down and grabbed a handful of wood chips. "Look at the size of these chips!" he exclaimed. "They're much bigger than I thought they'd be. I expected something much more in line with what a chainsaw leaves behind."

         I picked up a handful and smelled them. I don't know why I expected them to smell like apple, but they don't. "Let's go look at the dam," I said.

         Lamar led the way and as we crossed the grass he pointed out the trails the beaver was making on his forays to the apple tree. At the edge of the creek Lamar pushed some weeds aside so I could get a shot of the dam. I looked the beaver dam over and thought I'd like to get closer but, "I can't get down there," I said.

         "I can," Lamar said and before I knew it he was standing on the bank near the dam.

         "Where's he live?" I wondered aloud. I didn't see the domed roof of a beaver lodge anywhere.

         "He probably has a den somewhere along the bank," Lamar answered.

         I snapped a picture down at my feet and the bank where the beaver has been going up and down. You can see where he clawed his way up. I bet going down is easier.

         "They move once they've exhausted the resources in an area," Lamar told me. "Last year he went upstream and built another dam and I thought he'd keep going upstream. I was surprised he was back down here." He was quiet for a moment. "It makes Rosie sad because with the dam here the ducks don't come down by the house anymore."

         After that, Lamar and I explored the yard. He showed me a huge Quince bush that he'd started from a twig. He'd pointed out two sad little twigs that should've been towering maples, but they weren't doing very well. The bright colors of this flower stood out. "Look at that!" I exclaimed. I'm always delighted and surprised when I see wonderful designs in the world around me. "Little flowers inside of big flowers! Who thought up this stuff!"

         Lamar laughed, but he knew the answer as well as I did. "God did."

         We made our way inside and sat at the table and had a piece of pie and good conversation with two of the best neighbors in the whole wide world.

         That would really be a good place to end this story but unfortunately it isn't quite the end of it.

         Once I got home, I had to face the mountain of dishes I'd created from my busy afternoon of cooking and baking.

         And that's the end of the story.

         Let's call this one done and remember, you're all in my heart.