Cool!

Last light on a fall evening.

It seems to me that it takes a much longer time for the earth to warm up than it does to cool down. The approach from winter, through spring, into summer seems endless with the cold holding on relentlessly. Summer, on the other hand, seems to surrender its heat very quickly in the fall, allowing winter to settle in far too soon. I wondered if this was really true or if it was just my biased perception based on my dislike of winter. I did some research, but found no answers in all the sites I found that explain the complex science of energy transference. So I’ll just stick with my belief that the earth cools down much faster in the fall than it warms up in the spring. If you can prove me wrong, please enlighten me.

Last week was a cool week. Cool as in lacking in warmth, not as in hip or excellent. Writing that made me wonder when the word “cool” started to mean something other than “not warm.” I did a bit of reading and found that most etymologist believe it began in the 1930s from American black culture to differentiate between the high energy of hot jazz and the new laid-back style that was emerging – cool jazz. From there it became a term of approval, and I guess that’s pretty cool. Anyway, it was cool last week. We barely broke 50° during the day and at night we dipped into 30s and even the 20s. That’s normal October weather here, but I was hoping for a few days of abnormally warm weather because I had a lot of tasks to do outdoors. I found myself waiting for it to warm up before going out, watching the thermometer, only to realize it was already late in the morning and it wasn’t going to get any warmer. So I bundled up and went out.

While waiting to go outdoors to work, I did indoor work. Mostly canning. On Monday I began processing pumpkins. Our favorite eating pumpkin is a very pretty variety called Winter Luxury. The Winter Luxury Pumpkin was first introduced by the Johnson & Stokes Seed Company in 1893. It’s a small orange pumpkin with a soft netting on its rind like a cantaloupe. The flesh inside is dense, smooth, and creamy. It’s considered by many to be the best of all pie pumpkins and I concur. I grow other pumpkins, big orange Howdens and smaller white Caspers, for decoration and for jack-o-lanterns, but I only grow Winter Luxury for eating. I process them by steaming them in the Instant Pot. They are small enough that I can fit a whole pumpkin in it. After they’ve been steamed, I cut them open, take out the seedy middle, scoop out the flesh, puree it, and freeze it. This year we are freeze-drying some as well.

Some of my Winter Luxury Pumpkins.

Pumpkin puree.

Later on Monday morning, Miriam and I drove out to the Amish farm up near Yorks Corners and bought another bushel of apples. We bought Jonagolds this time. The Jonagold apple was created in 1943 at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, New York. It is a cross between the Jonathan and Golden Delicious apple. I have a Jonagold tree in my orchard and, when it does bear fruit, they are very nice apples. I made another batch of applesauce on Tuesday. We also dehydrated and freeze-dried apple slices. And some we just ate. They are really good apples.

A basket of Jonagold apples.

Despite the chill and a brisk wind blowing, Miriam and I did some work outdoors in the afternoon on Monday. We got the lily pond ready for winter, moving the water lilies into the deepest part of the pond to keep them from freezing. We brought in the tender floating plants, water lettuce and water hyacinths. They will spend the winter in bowls on the shelves in the music room with my houseplants. After that, we planted garlic. Kurt had already prepared a row out in the big garden last week. I dibbled the holes and Miriam dropped the cloves in and covered them up. We planted about two hundred cloves. That will be a nice harvest next summer. After that, we came back indoors. I kept processing pumpkins and Miriam began processing bell peppers. It was nice to get so much work done.

Pond plants in for the winter.

The newly planted garlic row.

I’ve brought all my potted plants indoors for the winter now. I have the amaryllises, lavender, pelargonium, aloe vera, Boston fern, and olive tree in the upstairs bay window. Down in the music room I have two pots of rosemary, my air plants, and Miriam’s pond plants on the shelves under grow lights with my orchids. The big osmanthus and night-blooming jasmine bushes are still on the back porch until I can figure out where to put them. I like having all these plants in the house, but they don’t like being there. I will have to fuss over them to get them through the winter without dying. It’s the only gardening I get to do during the dark, cold months.

During the week, we worked at processing jalapeño peppers. We had so many of them and I didn’t want them to go to waste. The best thing I could think to do with them was dehydrate them and grind them into jalapeño powder to be used as a seasoning. I quickly discovered how dangerous it can be to work with hot peppers. They are powerful. First, when slicing them to set on the dehydrator trays, I had to be careful not to touch my face until after I had thoroughly washed my hands. I knew enough to do that. After they were dehydrated and crisp, I put them in the food processor to grind them to powder. That’s where I made my big mistake. When I ground them, the fine pepper powder got into the air. I have never had such a sneezing fit before in my life! It went on for ten solid minutes. I had tears running down my face and snot dripping from my nose. I felt like my throat was closing up. It was terrible. I had to flee the kitchen. But I got the job done and now we have some delicious jalapeño powder to put in chili or cornbread. There were still more to process, so Miriam strung them up whole to dry – much safer and no sneezing.

A string of jalapeños.

On Wednesday Miriam and I drove out to the Keim farm in North Bingham to see if they had any grapes for sale. We were afraid we’d missed the season, but they still had two boxes left in their ice house. [I talked with the grandfather Keim about their ice house. They cut twelve inch thick slabs of ice off their pond in January and put it in their ice house. There is still a stack of it three feet high left in the corner of the ice house, keeping things cold. They even exported ice in early March to his son’s house in Ohio where they didn’t get enough cold to cut ice last winter. The Keims called all their neighbors to help and together they cut enough ice to fill two fifty foot tractor trailers. The son runs a store in Ohio and uses a lot of ice.] We bought both boxes of grapes and brought them home and spent the afternoon canning grape juice. The smell of cooking grapes is amazing, rich and sweet. It is a very nostalgic smell, the pure aroma of autumn ripeness. We canned five and a half gallons.

Two boxes of grapes.

On Monday evening we lit the wood stove for the first time this season. The house was getting cooler and cooler every night and there wasn’t much sunshine during the days to warm it up. We could only use the wood stove in the evenings, though, because the Amish men were working on the roof during the day and we didn’t want to smoke them out. After lighting the wood stove for a few nights, on Thursday night we gave in and Stacey lit the gas furnace and the heater in the upstairs hall. That makes the cold feel official – especially when I hear the whoosh of the furnace turning on in the middle of the night. We try to use the wood stove as much as possible, but we haven’t laid in our winter’s supply of firewood yet. We hope to take care of that this week.

The Amish men worked on the roof during the week. I watched their progress as they worked on each section. Our roof is a bit complicated. There are nine gables, four of them dormers on the addition on west end of the house. [I say “addition” as if it is some new part of the house, but it was added on sometime around 1910. The oldest part of the house was built in 1869.] The pitch of the roof is pretty steep. They had to use two different lifts to access all of it. They were up there even on windy and drizzly days. It made me nervous to watch them. It gave me sympathetic height anxiety. It looks like they are almost done. I think they just have some trim to do. I need to get the yard cleaned up and I can’t do that until all their equipment and debris are gone.

Working on the roof.

When I got up on Thursday morning, it was 28°. A hard frost had finally come. I was in school that day and didn’t have a chance to inspect the garden until I got home that afternoon. I could see immediately that the garden of 2023 was officially done – at least the growing and blooming part. Now the cleaning up part has begun. Friday morning it was 28° again and frosty and foggy. My morning walk was short. I need to get my warmer clothes out of storage. While I waited for it to warm up a little outdoors, I made a batch of grape jelly out of the dregs of the juice I canned on Wednesday. By mid-morning the sun had broken through, but even so, it doesn’t have the strength that it had before. It makes things bright but doesn’t warm them much. I went out and spent half an hour pulling up frost killed plants. I will continue to do that all week this week. The compost pile always doubles in size during frost clean up. I like the completeness of the this cycle – this year’s garden rotting to feed next year’s garden.

Cool and foggy morning walk.

On my morning walk.

Frostbitten zinnias.

Dahlias after frost.

Kurt underwent heart surgery Monday morning. We were relieved when we heard from Julie later in the day that all went well. She kept us posted all week on Kurt’s recovery. Finally on Friday he got to come home. He is taking it easy, recuperating, and is happy to be home again.

Saturday was a disappointingly rainy day. Nothing got done outdoors except the chores. No work was done on the roof. Miriam and Hannah are down at the Thayn’s again this weekend so it was just the two of us here. Stacey and I worked in the house. We did laundry. I processed the last pumpkin. I’m glad that part of the harvest is over. Stacey made me a pumpkin pie with the last bit that I didn’t freeze. Stacey processed the last of the tomatoes. We are done with them at last! While we worked together in the kitchen, we watched our favorite Shakespeare movie, Much Ado About Nothing (1993). It was perfect standing there in the warm kitchen accompanied by Shakespeare and sunny Italy with the chilly rain falling outside. In the afternoon we tidied the house for the Sabbath. It was a calm, rather drab day. Just what we need now and then.

Stacey processing tomatoes.

As I watched work on the roof progress through the week, I reflected on the state of this old house, and on this piece of land, and on my family, and on myself. At times it seems it’s all we can do just to keep things from falling apart. We fix things just before or sometimes after they begin to break or crumble or rot. But when viewed from a different perspective, looking at the difference over the long time, not the short, we are holding on, improving when we can, maintaining the status quo when we can’t. We are always striving to stave off the continually impending chaos that lies at the edge of things. The failing roof gets replaced. A compromised fence gets mended and strengthened. We dig a new garden and let another go fallow and become a wildflower meadow. An old tree dies and we replace it with a new tree. A heart that isn’t working properly gets fixed. We’re all growing older, but we are still growing. We learn new things. We get a little wiser. We plant and we harvest. We work and we rest for a season. It’s a good way to go, to keep on going.

Today is another dreary day, cool, gray, and rainy. Attendance at church was light again. We had visitors from the stake. They gave good talks. Now we are home waiting to eat lunch, waiting for Miriam and Hannah to return from down state, waiting to take a Sabbath nap. After a week of work, a feeling of peace and rest has settled on the house. I love the Sabbath for that. With the world in its escalating state of turmoil and violence, I long for it to have a Sabbath rest, a time when men “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:4)

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. (Psalms 122:6)