High Summer Drama

We made some progress on our Summer Projects last week. Miriam and I finished the stairway and upstairs hall by putting up the trim. It looks great. Daniel arrived home on Thursday (finally) and he and Miriam put down the new floor in the upstairs bathroom. We were all set to install the new toilet too when we discovered it did not fit our plumbing setup. So we had to box it up and send it back and order a compatible model that hasn’t arrived yet. It should arrive sometime at the beginning of this week. I will be glad to get that project finished. I have plans for more projects in the week ahead. I’ve mowed out the spot where the greenhouse will be built and Daniel, Miriam, and I will start laying it out this week. We will also clean out the chicken coop – a project we all dread, but as the old saying goes, we need to make hay (or shovel manure) while the sun shines.

The finished upstairs hall.

The stairway.

The new bathroom floor (sans toilet).

Where the greenhouse will go.

I worked all week on cleaning out flower beds. I’m about a third of the way down the long bed. I’m taking out all the dead flowers and the weeds and preparing the beds for fall planting. I’m hoping to plant a lot of bulbs this fall – daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, and tulips. The cleaned out parts of the garden look tidy, but it’s sad to see so much empty space so soon in the year.

Cleaning out flower beds.

We had another wild week of battling the wild. The early apples are ripe and that has brought the deer flocking to my orchard. Not only do they eat all the apples within their reach, they eat all the leaves too. To combat them, I resorted to a remedy I’ve used before with some success – Irish Spring soap. I cut bars of it into chunks and hung them in the trees. Supposedly deer hate the smell of them. I’m not that fond of it either. I can’t tell if it’s working yet.

My Irish Spring deer repellent.

The other battle was bloodier and sadder. On Tuesday I found a dead hen inside the coop. It was the one Josiah called Belle. Her head and neck had been eaten off. I suspected a raccoon and planned to close up the coop that night, but unfortunately I forgot. On Wednesday morning I found three more dead hens also with no heads or necks. This time it was an Aracauna, a Barred Rock, and a Red Rocket hen (none of them had names). On Wednesday evening the war escalated. I had planned to set the live trap inside the coop door that night, but never got the chance. We were just returning from an evening walk (we were hunting for salamanders up in the hollow) when we walked into barnyard mayhem. 

Salamander from our walk.

A red salamander.

 There were chickens running in the road and across the yard. There was a big raccoon in the fenced chicken yard. Miriam ran and got a gun and shot at it. She hit it four times but did not kill it. It escaped across the highway. I went inside the coop and found another dead hen. Out in the yard there was another hen with head injuries. We tried to round up as many of the loose hens as we could, but it was getting dark and we couldn’t find them all. The next morning most of them came home. I was sure the coon would not be returning, so I didn’t close the coop on Thursday night. Friday morning the hen who had been injured in the previous attack was half eaten. Even with four bullets in it, that coon had come back. On Friday evening we went to the movies and on our arrival home we went down to check the coop and close it up. The coon was in the coop. This time we were prepared with flashlights and a gun. Daniel cornered it and shot it seven times before it finally died. It was like a demon coon. There was another dead hen in the coop – a Red Rocket this time . I thought it might be Josiah’s favorite hen, Sylvia, but couldn’t tell for sure. The next morning I went down to check and found Sylvia alive and well. We were so happy! I hope we are done with raccoons now.

The chicken killer.

You may recall that back in February, after a bout with high blood pressure, I was diagnosed with insulin resistance and told I was headed for diabetes if I didn’t change some things. Well, I changed some things -- my diet and exercise, basically my life. In the months that followed, I went from 260 pounds to 199 pounds. My insulin resistance disappeared and my blood pressure is great now. I feel and look different, better. My dietary changes were difficult at first. We ate a lot of starchy carbohydrates – pasta, bread, and potatoes. I loved candy and cookies and cake. My favorite food was ice cream. I’ve learned to live without all that and it doesn’t bother me at all now. But two months ago I started going hoarse. Every day by the end of the day if not sooner, my voice was very raspy. I decided to have it checked out, fearing something bad was lurking in my throat like vocal nodes or polyps or even cancer. I went to an ENT and they took a look and said everything appears good but it looks like my throat is irritated due to post nasal drip. I often develop a cough that comes from a persistent tickle in my throat. The doctor suspects an allergy. I’ve never had an allergy that I know of (except my recent sensitivity to bee stings). So now the next step is to see what I might be allergic to. And that step involves an Elimination Diet.

I met with a nutritionist last week to go over the process of an Elimination Diet. I’m capitalizing that because, to me, it is a Big Deal. The Elimination Diet requires me to go without eating certain foods for fourteen days and then after that, reintroducing those foods one by one to see if my body reacts to them. On the no sugar, low carb, high protein diet that I’ve been doing since February (and will do for ever), I eat a lot of certain foods – especially cheese and eggs. Well, starting tomorrow, when I begin this Elimination Diet, guess what the top two forbidden foods are – dairy and eggs. Also on the list are citrus fruits, chocolate, and peanuts – foods that I usually eat in some form in quantity. After meeting with the nutritionist, I was not looking forward to informing Stacey of what this Elimination Diet would entail. She’s been good about helping me stick to my insulin resistance diet, but I was afraid she would balk at this new diet even if it was just for five weeks. She did balk a little, but Miriam, Hannah, and Daniel decided they would do the diet with me and that made it three people’s food instead of one so maybe Stacey felt a little outnumbered and acquiesced to join us. This is a good time to do this since we are eating a lot from the garden right now and fruits and vegetables will be my main stay during this diet. I’m just hoping when this is over they will determine that I do not have a food sensitivity to diary or eggs. A cheese omelet is one of my great pleasures.

From the garden.

On Saturday our Stake held its Pioneer Day Picnic. It was a month late, but the Hill Cumorah Pageant prevented us from celebrating closer to the 24th of July. Stacey took advantage of the trip to Palmyra to arrange for a group outing for Daniel, Miriam, and Hannah with some friends from up north, Brynn Hyde and Ben Good. Stacey tries to encourage social interaction with our children and others, a difficult task most of the time. They all went up early and went to the Rochester Zoo. Meanwhile, Stacey and I took advantage of the trip north to go to the temple. We all met up later at the Stake Center for the picnic. After the picnic we stopped at Wegman’s (the best grocery store in the world) in Hornell and did some shopping for our Elimination Diet that begins tomorrow. It was interesting and challenging to find food that fits the diet. We ended up with a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables.

At the Pioneer Day Picnic.

Yesterday as we drove to and from Palmyra across western New York and today on our drive to and from church, I was impressed by the stunning beauty of this place in this season of the year. Summer is at its peak. The trees are at the height of their seasonal maturity, full and leafy and green. The shade they cast is dense and cool. The corn is tall. The hayfields have been cut and cut again. The gardens are lush. The world is warm and beautiful. I know that will all change soon and that makes me love these summer days even more. To me summer is the natural state of the world, the world as it should be. The other season are just the lead up and let down to this, the crowning season of the year.

High summer evening.