I had pickled herring with mustard and rice cakes for breakfast again, along with a large cup of very strong Lapsang Souchong tea. Lorena drinks the tea but refuses the herring. She choses instead to have her own homemade spinach hummus on toast for breakfast, along with a second small slice (of bread I’ve baked in our woodfired oven) generously slathered with blueberry jam. Jam that is of course authentically homemade from this very homestead.
We didn’t finish building and planting the greenhouse until mid-July
but still managed to get an impressive crop of tomatoes. Lorena is
ripening these for sauces and paste.
10 September 2011
SEATTLE IS CURRENTLY ON A STREAK OF 5 CONSECUTIVE
MONTHS OF BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES ( THROUGH AUGUST ).
JULY AND AUGUST ENDED UP PRETTY CLOSE TO NORMAL…JUST A HALF A DEGREE BELOW NORMAL FOR THE TWO MONTH PERIOD. THE HOT SPELLS OVER THE SUMMER HAVE MASKED JUST HOW COOL IT HAS BEEN FOR SEATTLE.
TAKING A LOOK AT THE NUMBER OF DAYS WITH HIGHS 70 DEGREES PLUS SO FAR THIS YEAR THE NUMBER IS ONLY 54. THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF DAYS WITH HIGHS 70 OR ABOVE DURING THE YEAR FOR SEATTLE IS 84. ON AVERAGE SEATTLE WILL GET ANOTHER 11 DAYS BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR WITH HIGHS 70 PLUS. THE RECORD FOR THE LEAST NUMBER OF DAYS 70 PLUS IN SEATTLE AT SEA-TAC IS 46 DAYS IN 1955. THE TOP 5 IS ROUNDED OUT BY 53 DAYS IN 1954…65 DAYS IN 1980 AND 1964 AND 66 DAYS IN 1956. 1954…1955…1956 AND
1964 WERE ALL LA NINA YEARS.
IT IS CERTAINLY POSSIBLE THAT THIS YEAR WILL END UP IN THE TOP 5 FOR
THE LEAST NUMBER OF DAYS WITH HIGHS 70 PLUS.
My Father in 10 Songs
First published at Winterpalace: a blog by Felisa Rogers – Open Salon. June 8, 2010
The venerable garage band Dead Moon has a song called “Don’t Speak Ill of the Dead”. The last verse opens strong: “Some of my friends are gone forever/Paled into the light/Things I wish I could have said/As they passed into the night”. But that’s not the part that gets me. What gets me is the next line, almost an aside. The singer’s voice dips lower into speaking tone, and, in a three word phrase, distills the pain of loss: ‘Oh, I miss you’. The quaver in that voice says it all.
Here’s a list of Whatcom County berry farms in 2011.
Make sure you call ahead to see if berries are ready before venturing out to pick. Continue reading
Canning is having a moment.
So is pickling, preserving, jam making and all around “putting up,” as they used to say — and now do once more — of the season’s harvest. And if that puts you in mind of a remote farmhouse kitchen, gingham aprons and a cellar lined with rows of apple butter, then you haven’t been paying attention. Continue reading