The weather is cooler and I am back to muffin making! We bought 15 overripe bananas for $1.49 yesterday. That many bananas will translate into five batches of muffins. Two batches have been made since yesterday, and out of those 24 muffins, 14 are left. We like our muffins!
We also purchased a half bushel of Ontario peaches. They are ripening in their containers on the kitchen floor as I type. By tomorrow I should be enjoying fresh peach smoothies for my lunches, and Giant Oven Pancake with fresh peaches for my suppers.
It seems that every visit to the bush includes a guest appearance from a star. Last Sunday this individual appeared. He/she is clinging to the bottom ridge of plastic on my plastic-five-gallon-pail-chamber-pot, which, having been emptied and cleaned, was left upside down on the crushed stone to dry. Apparently this beauty found the object a perfectly acceptable place to enjoy the sun. There are a lot of dragonflies at our Rideau Camp, and every one of them has a different wing pattern and/or body type. It has been a real fashion parade.
Our visiting dragonfly, about three inches long. This beauty remained on the blue bucket for over ten minutes, despite being blown this way and that by the wind.
I have a project lined up to perform at the Rideau Camp. The crushed stone drive, and main area, are being overtaken by weeds. This is undesirable because plants provide launch areas for mosquitoes and ticks. The recipe to be used is not as effective as chemicals such as roundup, but it is partially successful.
Weed Killer
4 cups vinegar
½ cup epsom salts
1 tbsp dawn dish detergent
Mix to dissolve, spray weeds, wait.
The yard will smell like a chip stand for a day or so, salt and vinegar.
If you spend time in the “wild” in Ontario, you might notice the ubiquitous empty beer bottle. Sometimes they are whole, and other times they have been ceremoniously smashed and lie in sharp shards waiting for the unwary. We find them along trails, and just about anywhere we walk in the bush. They seem to represent a rural rite of passage into the wilds of adolescence. Our property came with the traditional empty beer bottle, luckily it is intact.
Here it is, our very own Canadiana. Can you spot the empty beer bottle? It has been left intact, as a testatment to, and reminder of, the nature the rural rituals of humans.
Worldly Distractions
Weather
19°C
Date:2:00 PM EDT Thursday 24 August 2017
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.6 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 19.4°C
Dew point: 11.7°C
Humidity: 61%
Wind: NW 16 km/h
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses.”
Margaret Millar
I find this more true of men than I do of women, men talking to women that is, or is it talking at women, because that is what a lot of men do when they talk to me. I can think of only two women who indulged in monologue when interaction was available. One I met when a family visited our farm, the daughter talked in a steady stream, barely pausing for breath, for hours… I was amazed. The other was an adult woman who I spent one day with, I uttered two sentences that day, she filled the airwaves the rest of the time. I know more about her than I wanted to. I find most women converse in a very interactive way, with me. Of course, they do not feel any pressure to impress, that might be a factor for males when interacting with females.
