Harvest Home

Is there anything in the world more gratifying than getting rid of crap you should have gotten rid of years ago? John secured a Dumpster for me last week, and I spent seven glorious days throwing away the moldy; the mouse-eaten; the things that didn’t work out the first time so I have been saving them for twenty years in order someday to fix whatever the problem was; the bits and bobs of stuff that would have been perfectly usable if only they were attached to some other bit or bob that does not exist here or perhaps anywhere on the planet at this point, since these B&B were so very, very old. And how about the things that were broken or damaged because of some stupidity on my part—how long must one store those? Forever? In case one of the B&B happens to be just the thing you would need to fix that broken or damaged object if one ever somehow had the time and energy to do that? So you could then have a mended old piece of crap that you have been living without all these years while it was awaiting fixing?

Reader, I trashed them. I trashed them all. The ones that didn’t get trashed went to the burn pile so we can have a superior bonfire later this fall, a bonfire that will be visible from surrounding hilltops, a bonfire that will declare my independence from old junk, my own and other people’s.

The cellar is empty except for stuff we actually use. The canning shelves have been braced up with actual 4 x 4s cut to length instead of with an assemblage of wood that was rotten to begin with and then wedged in as needed, so whatever I get to can these next few weeks, why, it will stay up on the shelves and not end in a slick of glass and despair on the floor.

The Dumpster went away yesterday via a talented fellow in a big truck with an impressive hook-thingie that scoops up the loop on the container and hauls the whole menacingly rocking item onto the truck back. This is fascinating to watch; it obviously requires some skill. And now the Dumpster is all gone, and we can use our driveway again, and most of the dumb things I have ever done have been taken to the landfill to return most charitably to the Earth.

And the burn pile? If I were any good with Photoshop, I would make you a LOLcat smirking in front of the pile with a can of gasoline.

The past? I burnz it.

Ditch Weed

I was just noting the other day—rather complainingly—that my very most favorite aster of all this aster-filled time of year was the dark purple kind that grows rampantly on the banks of every ditch in the county, and yet it could not be induced to grow in the yard where a person could observe it more closely instead of just noting its happy existence as you flash past at 55 m.p.h.

And then, lo! This dark purple aster showed up down in the North Orchard! I have been visiting it relentlessly ever since, and I applaud its good taste in coming up right under the new crapabble tree with the dark red leaves, because when there are more leaves in the future, the children of this aster will look very handsome among the goldenrod below.

Loaf of My Heart

Today I baked the best loaf of bread of my life.