Moving on...

On the plane, coming home from a visit to my sister in Oregon, I happened to look up and kitty-corner to me was a man typing up a welcome back to school Powerpoint presentation. It hit me then that I don't have to do those anymore and I smiled.

Today is the first day of school for my teacher friends here. I think it is finally sinking in:  I have retired! I no longer have that stress hanging over me and I can finally relax into the next chapter of my life. Up until now it has still felt like "summer vacation" so it wasn't as definite. But now, the vacation time is over and I don't have to go back to school. I am smiling.

So I went out into my garden to see what I could find and aside from the dying flowers and old veggies from the summer there was a bit of life...

A couple of our new lavender plants are in full bloom and smell great! The others are still with buds but no open flowers, a little slower to get started. I want to fill the garden with scent now that I have time to work in it! Time to research good fall plantings and what I can do now for great spring flowers.

This year I will remember to plant the sweet peas in the late Fall so we actually have them in the Spring...

It's already on my calendar!

Goodbye Maggie

RIP Sweet Maggie... 1999-2014

You came to us a LBD (little brown dog) and stole our hearts with your smart sweet personality. Thank you for 15 years of life together.  You will be so missed.

 

Hanging out...

For my birthday last weekend Andy took me to the Big Springs Gardens for a lovely hike and delicious lunch.

I find it very difficult to believe I am 62. The sixties always seemed SO OLD to me... Now that I am there, they don't feel anything like I imagined. Not that I can really put into words what I thought I would feel like.

And I think when I was working I FELT older than I do now. Nothing like retiring to bring on some energy!

Making fruit leathers on a hot day...

I really hadn't planned this blog to be a cooking one, but I have been having so much fun with my new dehydrator that I wanted to catalog the results here. Today after the extreme heat (100s these days) has made all my apricots ripen and start to fall of the tree, I picked a bunch more and decided to try out apricot fruit leather for roll-ups. Yesterday we took the dehydrator outside so it wouldn't keep heating up the kitchen. I was working on a makeshift outdoor area for these today.

So I took a bunch of ripe apricots...

soaked them in a citric acid/water solution for 5 minutes then blended them up the best I could in my old funky blender...

spread it out on the mats  (which look just like my silicon baking and crafts mats) that are for fruit leathers...

and put them in to dry.

They should take around 4 hours so I will know later this evening if it worked. Seemed it was not as smooth as it should have been AND it was very hard to spread out evenly so that might affect how it dries. We shall see.

First batch results...

Here are the delicious results from the first batch of dehydrating.

Tasty beef jerky (not spicy enough for Andy but I like it just fine!):

And here is the first batch of fruits:  apriots (from our tree), apple, and pineapple:

Today we moved the dehydrator outside because it really does heat up the kitchen/house and it is already hot enough (today is day 1 of 5 days promised to be over 100 degrees!). So it is outside the kitchen door and now I am drying more apricots, another apple and trying an orange.

The trick to not having the fruit brown up is to soak them for 10 minutes or so in a solution made with water and citric acid. Andy got a package of citric acid from the Coop for me a few months ago when I told him I wanted to look out for it. I am eager to get more peaches and nectarines now at the Farmer's Market so I can dry those too! And then in the fall, pears! I think dried pears are my all-time favorites!

IKEA and the dehydrator...

Yay! My dehydrator came yesterday so today we went out to IKEA to get another one of these to put it on:

 

The dehydrator fits perfectly on top and this little table fit perfectly into a small space by our back door where there was also an outlet. And the amazing part is that we tested out if we could have the dehydrator and the microwave on at the same time and we could! Doesn't work with the toaster and microwave-- old circuits don't like that combo!

THIS  is the dehydrator I got from Amazon:  (Excalibur)

I wanted to be able to make my own beef jerkey from good (grass-fed) beef and without preservatives and soy sauce. That way I could limit the amount of sugars and salts in it as well and just be able to make smaller batches as needed. So I am experimenting today. 

I got a lovely 2 pound London Broil from Winterport Farms at the Farmer's Market last weekend. I am only using half of it to start with as my first experiment. So I sliced it very thin, then made my marinade, got the meat all juicy with marinade... (easy peasy: coconut aminos, maple syrup, salt, pepper, a little garlic and onion powders based on THIS recipe.)

then into a ziploc bag and into the fridge overnight. I will start the dehydrating part in the morning.

Meanwhile I started in on the apricots from our tree. I soaked them in a citric acid-water bath (so they hopefully won't get too brown) before putting them into the dehydrator...

 

On the dehydrator rack. Just making one rack to start with so I can see how they do overnight... lots more apricots to follow!

Tomorrow I will be adding the some pineapple and maybe an apple to the fruit trays, then when they are done, up the temp to 165 for the beef jerky. The nice thing about this dehydrator is that there are two controls: one for temperature and one a timer. AND it is square with top air flow from the back so all rows dry evenly. My funky old one was on-off and air from the bottom so you constantly had to change the rows around and there wasn't as much surface area since it had a big hole in the center. This one has already won me over!

Now that I am retired I have plans to do a lot more homemade foods and really focus on healthy eating. I usually eat pretty well anyway but now I have no excuses! And it's fun anyway... sort of Little House on the Prairie meets City Life. Without the dresses!

Home and the farmer's market...

Got home from my month-long Nova Scotia journey late Monday (well really for me it was 4 am on Tuesday) so spent most of Tuesday jetlagged. Amazingly the rest of the week FLEW by and here it is Sunday already!

And Sundays are always good for the Farmer's Market:

Today we found a stall with carnivorous plants! Beautiful ones too -- Pitcher Plants, Venus Flytraps, and more! Pricey but pretty!

And there was the usual wonderful flowers, fruit and veggies... we didn't need much today but it is always fun walking though the market and taking in all the scents (basil was strong in the air today). And there were amazing sunflowers!

Yesterday I bought myself an early birthday present of a very nice dehydrator and am looking forward to making my own beef jerkey as well as a lot of dried fruits and vegetables. It is supposed to arrive on Thursday so I imagine next weekend might be a busy one for drying things! 

More Cape Breton...

With more to follow. I sort of gave up trying to post on the blog this time. My thoughts on all this in a later post when I get home next week.

Visit to a coal mine, more beaches, nice drives...

Had a wonderful time visiting with Leah... more on that too when I can figure out how to link her page on mobile-blogger (I miss my normal computer!) *** EDITED: Here is Leah's wonderful BLOG!

A few Cape Breton images...

Here is what I have learned about myself when I travel: I can post photos to Facebook or I can blog. Apparently I am not good about doing both.

So here are a few more Nova Scotia photos while I figure out what I want to do about the way too many social media options available now.

I will be home in 9 days. More on this wonderful trip then!

Hiking the Skyline Trail...

I have learned a couple of things from today's hike... I like to hike alone, I am still in horrid shape for hiking uphill and in the sun, and that I am starting to get over my fear of heights but it still stops me in the end. Just things I pondered today in this beautiful place.

More greetings from Canada...but no WiFi...

Having lovely (rainy) days on the coast of Cape Breton the last few days... and no WiFi around. Managed to get a few moments on a public computer in the Info center to post a note... I am hoping soon I will be somewhere where the WiFi is working and I can post photos...

If not, then later...

It is beautiful here, lovely winding roads through forests and along beaches... just my recipe for a relaxing start of my retirement!

Photos soon!

Greetings from Nova Scotia, Canada!

A silly selfie from Peggy's Cove lighthouse. Got to Halifax and have been exploring. Went to this lighthouse and to Lunenburg yesterday...

Querencia and other thoughts about writing...

I have been thinking about writing lately...

From Writing Towards Home by Georgia Heard:
 Querencia: a place where one feels safe; a place from which one’s strength of character is drawn; a place where one feels at home. From the Spanish querer to want, to desire.

          {Where is my querencia?}

This makes me ask other questions:

Where do I feel most at home?
Where do I feel most happy and relaxed?
What is my ideal writing environment?
Where can I write with all my full powers?

I like quiet places.

Places without a lot of distractions.

That is why often writing in public places like coffee houses is difficult for me, unless I can find an out of the way table or a booth.

The quietest place for me is really a time – very early morning before the world seems awake. This has  worked well in the past then I got distracted with work and stopped writing for long time. Now I am retired so I can reclaim my mornings.

Another thought, taken from an art workshop years ago, maybe Julianna Coles? She asked, "Where does your art hide for you?"  So I am taking a side step for today...

          {Where does writing hide for me?}

Where in nature? Where in art? Music? Colors? Tastes? Textures? What memories hold hidden writings? People? Places? Things? I know there are many tidbits of life that are keeping secret writings – it is my job {task?} now to find them and draw them out. Another question might be, WHY does writing hide for/from me?

Another theme: Find my own truth. Seems to be a recurring theme. What is my own truth? Who am I now? What is the path with the heart (Castenada)? What is my bliss? The same question in different forms.

These are some of the things I might be thinking about as I travel this coming month...


“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hanging out...

It might just be easier to post from my phone...

Trial run...

Oh heavens no... not me actually running!

This is a trial run using the equipment I plan on bringing on my trip next week:  my little Lumix camera, tablet and connector so I can plug it and my SD card into the tablet.

Notes To Self:
So ok, for this to work on the Tablet I need to upload to Piassa then to Blogger. For some reason I cannot load directly from Flickr or Instagram on the tablet.

I am probably making this way too difficult!

Getting up early on purpose...

Setting the alarm in fact. Early. 6 AM. Or maybe 5:30.

          One word says it all:  HEAT!

The last two days have been over 100 degrees here by early afternoon and I have missed out on the cooler early mornings by letting myself sleep in. My normal annoying kitty alarm has not been going off at 6 like it did for school so I have slept until 8 or 8:30. Normally I wouldn't mind but when it is this hot, I want to be up early so I can have a couple of cooler hours to get things done before I start to melt. I think even Persephone has wanted to sleep in lately.

And I need to water the garden. Poor little plants just don't like the heat and Andy wakes up too late to give them any watery comfort in the mornings so that job has fallen to me.

 I don't mind of course... it gives me some time to be out there and take garden photos (and play with Instagram) and muse over what else I want to plant when I get back from my vacation.

And to issue a great big sigh when I realize I will be gone for the next month when these lovely apricots will no doubt ripen and be delicious!  Maybe some of them will hold off until mid-July when I get back... just enough to let me savor their golden goodness and give me dreams of apricot cobbler.

Sunday morning thoughts...

My mother died on Thursday. I am not saying that to elicit any comments of how sorry people might be for my loss. Please don't. She and I had a very adversarial relationship especially these past 20 or so years.

I am just thinking about it today and how some losses affect me differently than others.

Those of you who know me know I was not close to my real mother and that she was often vicious and verbally mean/rude to me and most people in any adult encounters, but still it is a strange emptiness. I am eternally thankful I did not grow up with her past my 10th year so that I at least turned out pretty "normal" and have had a pretty happy life. She was always bitter and unhappy.  It took me a long time to figure out all her unhappiness was her problem and to learn how to not get dragged down into her well of acrimonious despair.

The more I ponder it, I am coming to the realization that I had always hoped things would improve and that we might have a decent relationship in her old age. I think I am mourning the loss of that possibility rather than the actual person.


On another note I am enjoying my new retirement, although it still feels like summer vacation to me. I am sure the reality of it will hit when I don't have to go back to school in late August. In a way that is another loss, albeit not a bad one, just a transition that I will need to go through.  For a change I will have the time to do all those other things that interest me: making art, traveling, writing, doing more yoga, getting outside more and certainly lunching with my other retired teacher (and librarian) friends!

The roses have a drip system in place but the lawn is suffering. I need to get out there and water on our select days (Tuesdays and Saturdays) for our address.

Hiking on Monday...

One of my intentions for my retirement is to get into better physical shape and what better way to start than a visit with another retired teacher friend Marilyne and a nice hike in the Auburn area.

Location: Hidden Falls
Google Map

She had a couple of choices for me and I chose the waterfall one, which it turned out was a LOT of uphill in the sun so I will know better next time! But it was beautiful and I want to go there again maybe on a slightly cooler day (and start earlier in the morning) and once my legs have a little more strength for all that uphill!

At least it was a wake-up call for me to let me know what sort of physical shape I was (not) in. It wasn't a long hike (3 or so miles) and it wasn't until the end with all the uphill in the sun that my weaknesses showed up. Hello jello legs! Hello no stamina! At least I brought a hat and sun screen!