Happy Halloween

 

Brave-ish Heart

 

Rusty Blackbird, one of the nice birds we found

I dug deep into my heart to find the blood of my Scottish ancestors,  hoping to gather the strength to be bold. Then we  consulted maps and bravely headed off to Scotia on Sunday. To those who might think this is a terrifying accomplishment, Scotia is about 26 miles from here, a little over half an hour's drive.

However, Scotia is dum, da, dum, dum....a CITY! The place we wanted to go in hot pursuit of the recently visiting Ross's Goose is in a CITY!!! park.

We set out as soon as we dropped Becky off for work, which I quickly discovered, via actually reading the time stamps on the eBird lists featuring the bird, was a mistake.

See, the goose had been being seen in the afternoon and it was morning. Oh, well, I didn't notice until we were well on the way so we went anyhow. Turned out it was an easy drive, we found the place quickly, it was calm and pleasantly quiet, and well....really pretty nice. Didn't feel like a city at all.

The terrifying cityscape at Quinlan Park where the goose was visiting

Before I had been out of the car for even five minutes, I heard a strange sounding goose flying overhead. I knew it was something different than the normal Canada Geese. Merlin said Cackling Goose and so did its appearance, small, short neck, almost invisible bill. 

Cool, a rare bird. Before we left I had seen 23 species, including some other fairly unusual birds.

Alas, no Ross's Goose.

However, later in the day a prominent birder, who is also a really nice guy, posted that the goose was at the park. The boss said, "Let's go!" and so we did.

End result, another life bird, number 266, which doesn't make me big year material, but makes me pretty happy anyhow. Also two rare bird alert birds in one day. Downright cool.

Sometimes it's good to strike out boldly where no man.... dozens of other birders, have gone before. 

The best of my abysmal Ross's Goose photos.

Rustlers

 Most of the leaves are down here now. At early dog walking time the few that cling, bitter in the branches, make their presence known.

They rattle and hiss and sing their songs of late and lost and make the chill wind colder.

Orion is modest this cool fall dawn. A kilt of clouds is snug around his middle and a shawl draped mistily across his shield and shoulder. I appreciate his concern for my delicate sensibilities, but no matter what he wears, winter is still coming. I blame him for that...

But maybe he's just cold.

Some day I want to get some Winterberry Holly
for the yard. Meanwhile the swamps are ablaze with it

It has been one of the most beautiful Autumns in recent memory, taking me back to elementary school over in Fonda, (county offices now), where we played under the shedding maples, building forts and outlining "houses" with piles of leaves. Even then I was nobody's girly-girl, preferring that my golden enclosures be imaginary horse stables and corrals. 

No bright maples up here on the hill and I miss them. When we lived in town, I used to coax the village workers into bringing me the bags of leaves folks set out for pickup. I would dump them all inside my little fenced in garden down there and in spring rake them off the beds into the paths. In the few years we lived there the soil went from ashes and clinkers brought in as fill, hard as concrete and about as fertile, to rich, black earth that grew fine flowers and vegetables....alas, it is but a lawn now. Up here the soil is absurdly fertile, as evidenced by cannas that grow feet above my head every summer with minimal care.

Anyhow, we are still digging cannas...ugh, what a job!!! and dragging them indoors for winter. I have forced myself to leave a few summer hanging plants outside to freeze. It about kills me to let them go, but I KNOW they will not winter. Instead they will set up little aphid nurseries and infest all the other plants, so into the frostfire it is for them. I still feel guilty.

Ruddy Duck

Meanwhile birding has been sporadic at best and downright boring at worst. I blame the great weather. Why fly south when you can feast up here, fattening up for a slightly delayed escape later? Best recent bird has been a recurring Ruddy Duck up in the Lyker's area. I do love me a Ruddy Duck.

 These days, I am trying to rustle up the nerve to go chase the Ross's Goose in Collins Lake. It's only in Scotia for Pete's sake! Why am I so timid about going down there? Why am I so timid in general?

Dagnabbit.

However

 

Common Mergansers when it wasn't foggy

Despite the unrelenting daily fog, which makes chasing migrating ducks and geese problematic at best, there are compensations.

Jingling White-throated Sparrows make a tambourine of song from the thickets near the house. There are a lot of them this year. I have counted upwards of thirty around the yard, but there are more.

The sun turns the fog pink and gold and makes it pretty with the trees all ink and outline on the lawn.

So, I guess we will wait til the fog burns off and instead of chasing ducks I will see what's in the yard this morning.

I saw him
He didn't see me

Crickets

 

5AM dog walk.

Stars are crisp and bright. Nothing mars the dark and silent night. Crickets stopped their drilling four nights ago now and it is freezing every morning, though the days are soft and warm.

I walk my steps and watch the sun dip a hesitant toe in morning.

Tentative.

Cautious.

Is the ether warm or cold?

And with each single lumen come the fog drops from the sky.

Which flat wrecks the birding I can tell you! You cannot see a distant duck in a close-knit fog mull unless you have X-ray vision and I don't.

Oh, well, maybe some morning we will miss the fog....only the crickets know.

Recipe for Matthew

 

These pies were made with turkey Ralph bought me last Thanksgiving
It was still okay after being frozen for a year, but not as juicy and tasty as it might have been.
Made great pies though!

As requested:

Poultry Pies

Sauté 4 stalks of celery and two large cloves of garlic in oil of your choice. I use butter because…butter! It’s better!

When celery is somewhere near done add 4 or 5 chicken thighs, or maybe four cups or so of cut up leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

Season to taste. I use generous amounts of lemon pepper blend, Italian seasoning, Mrs. Dash seasoning, a tiny dusting of onion powder, and same of sage. Also half a teaspoon of our homemade paprika. You can use whatever you like. Since we don’t add salt, we are not afraid to toss in a bunch of flavorings.

I cook the thighs until they are mostly done, then use scissors to cut them into comfortably bite-sized pieces and finish cooking them through.

Taste a bit. Add more seasonings if needed.

While this is going on I prepare the vegetables. This is another place where personal taste comes in. Generally I prepare two packages of steam in the bag California blend and add them when most of the other ingredients are cooked. However, sometimes we add cooked  peas, frozen or canned, fresh carrots if we have them, fresh broccoli if there happens to be some in the fridge. Pretty much anything will blend nicely. I’d like to try some turnips or rutabagas. Leftovers are good...

Add the veggies and a couple/three cans of cream of mushroom soup. We buy no-salt-added if we can find it, but regular works too. Heat it all up together and taste again. Add seasonings if needed. By this point it should taste really good.

Divide the stuff into two pie crusts, 10 inch I think, cover it with another crust, crimp and pierce as needed and bake until the crust is good and brown in a 350 degree oven.

One pie feeds three of us two hearty meals and you could stretch it to feed two meals to four people if you needed to, but I have to warn you. It is really tasty and you might not want to share.

I usually cover the extra pie with tight foil and freeze for the next time we want it. 

You could easily adapt this recipe to beef, pork or venison. I love having  a nice pie waiting for a cold night when we are all hungry and nobody wants to cook. We really like them a lot.

Final Harvest

 

The forecast is for 29 degrees tomorrow night, the end of our growing season here. Thus the last tender things must be brought inside or their loss accepted. The fuchsia will be left out. I have never succeeded in wintering one so... Ditto the toothache plant, a first for me this year. I saved some seed and may harvest a bit more, but it's gonna be a goner. An ugly thing, but a fun novelty this year.

Lion's Ear...Many thanks to the nice lady who sent me seeds

The cannas are let to freeze, trimmed back to the ground, dug, and stored in totes and buckets in the pantry until spring. The potted ones I just haul in pots and all. I do try to winter the minis as house plants. They are kind of a pain to care for but I don't want to lose them. I saved seed from some of my favorites last year and they made it to bloom pretty early this summer, so I have been saving lots of seeds this year.

One miserable job is finding all the green tomatoes and stashing them somewhere indoors. For some reason tomato ripening was terribly sporadic this year and there are lots of green ones. There are also a number of bright red Alma peppers that need to come in to be dried for paprika. More on that in a later post that I have so far been too lazy to write.

Then begins the long cold. I recently read Alaska Challenge by Ruth and Bill Albee and Lyman Anson. It was written in 1930 about their insane adventure traveling across British Columbia following an uncharted path through the wildest of wilderness. It made me feel like a puppy, whining about modern NY winters, but still... BTW, it was quite a book. Becky got it for me as an audio book and at first i was so aggravated by the foolish things the Albees did that I almost DNFed it. However, as they got smarter, it got better, until I simply hated to see it end. If anyone knows of any websites detailing their later lives, I hope you will share. I am really curious to know what became of them and their Artic born children.

Anyhow, summer's over, the fun part of fall, ditto. And all I can say is BRRRR....