Like a bird on a wire

The leaves are almost down on the big maple tree across the street.  This time of year the noisy starlings flock there and cover the power lines in a row.

The jet stream is taking aim at the Northwest and the next few days will be windy and rainy. That should bring down all the pretty foliage around the neighborhood.  The furnace is running at night, it's snowing in the mountains and our Seattle winter is just around the corner.

I'm back to my old tried and true method of leaf mulching the flower beds.  I'm done with compost blower trucks forever.  Did I mention this on the blog?  Our load last year was filled with small pieces of plastic (and even some glass chips!) that gradually surfaced over the winter as it rained. 

I picked up bits of trash all summer as I weeded.  Understandably, this put me in a bad mood. The plants didn't care, but I did.  We pay the City to haul away our nasty kitchen garbage and then they sell it back as expensive garden product. Obviously they still have some quality control problems composting on such a huge urban scale.

Leaf mulch is much nicer anyway. It's free, organic (except for the odd candy wrapper) and the birds like pecking through it all winter for insects.  In the early spring when I pull it up, there's that wonderful sight of healthy, happy worms.

I managed to get quite a few cartloads of leaves over from across the street.  When people see me raking the curb over there, they say nice things because they assume I've "adopted a storm drain" as the City of Seattle tells us to do.  But I have my own selfish plans for those leaves. 

Veteran's Day

Grandpa Herman Klingler

Circa 1917

This is a photograph of our mother's father in his German Army uniform.  Oh dear, he looks about 12 years old. He was born in 1900, so he was probably 16 when he was drafted.  I found this picture at my parent's house and brought it home to scan and share with the family.

Herman was a teenage soldier during WWI.  He was one of the lucky ones who survived the war, but apparently his lungs were damaged for life by just a "whiff" of mustard gas.  

Germany was wrecked after the war and became a hopeless, desperate place. The economy was destroyed.  I remember my grandparents talking about "a wheelbarrow full of paper money" just to buy a loaf of bread.   Herman and many other young Germans emigrated to America in the early 1920's.  My Grandmother Anna followed him, and they were married in Pennsylvania in about 1925.  Herman died in 1959, so I feel lucky I can still remember him pretty well.

Today is Veteran's Day, originally called Armistice Day. On this date in 1918 the Allies and Germany signed an agreement to end hostilities on the Western Front and WWI ended.

Old dogs, new tricks

I started ukulele lessons again with my first instructor, Matt.  It's convenient because the music school is right here in the Urban Village, so I don't have to fight my way across Seattle in our horrible afternoon traffic.

Besides, I really like Matt.  Even though he's a serious young rock musician, he doesn't seem to mind his day job teaching guitar to kids and ukulele to senior citizens.  And if you want to take up the banjo or mandolin, he can help there, too.  He's very talented.

Matt can instantly sight read any song I put in front of him and play it perfectly on the ukulele, even if he's never heard "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" or "Catch the Wind" in his life.  I find that impressive, although John says it's pretty much a given if you consider yourself an instructor. 

Anyway, it was fun showing him what I've been practicing these past couple of years. When I first started the lessons, I'd just bought my ukulele and couldn't play a thing.  He helped me most by transcribing some finger-picking practice material (he's a whiz at that) for old songs like "Amazing Grace" and "Scarborough Fair." Yesterday I played all of those back.  Not that I blew his socks off with my ukulele virtuosity! But at least he could follow the tune, and he was probably just impressed that I hadn't given up.

Unless I can make it to big SUPA meeting once a month, I play alone. This gets somewhat lonely. You see, music is a social experience, and I think the only way to learn rhythm and timing is by playing with people who are better than you.

They say at any age our brains are still changing, and the things we choose to do have influence on how our brains change. Who knows? Maybe playing "Camptown Ladies" with Matt will help save those remaining brain cells.

What it does to his brain, might be a different story!

"The Black Swedes" rock group

Matt, second from the left

Forecast

What the Shell Says

John Eastman

And the shell says, it's going to rain, rain, rain in Seattle.
And snow, snow, snow in the mountains.

November is our wettest month and I think the darkest month, too, when we abruptly go off daylight savings time.  Soon Christmas lights will cheer up the quiet dripping neighborhoods. In about 30 days, we turn the corner again at the Winter Solstice, and the light slowly starts creeping back.  

The seasons, they go round and round..

Oh, nuts

I made a batch of candied walnuts this weekend, from an unusual and slightly tricky recipe from an old book. They're worth the trouble  and keep in the freezer indefinitely.  (Just remember to hide them in the back, or you'll snitch a few each time you open the door.)  Since walnuts are one of the very healthiest nuts, you can easily justify the bit of sugar and honey sugar.  They are great plain, in salad with feta cheese and also stir-fry.

Candied Walnuts

1/2 pound walnut halves and pieces
2 tbs. honey
2 tbs. sugar
pinch salt

Heat oven to 350. Place the walnuts in a 2 quart saucepan.  Cover with hot water and bring to the boil.  Boil 5 minutes then drain in a colander.  Add the water, sugar, honey and salt to the pan, bring to a boil and then add the drained walnuts.  Stir the nuts in the mixture until they become dry, about 4 minutes.

Spread them on a baking sheet lined with foil sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Bake the nuts until they become a light mahogany color, turning them every few minutes. This takes 5-10 minutes.  Be careful.  They burn in the twinkling of an eye.

After they cool, break apart any pieces. They should be nice and crispy.  If you resist eating them all up right away, store airtight in the freezer.

Joni Mitchell

 

Today is Joni Mitchell's birthday.  She was born in 1943.  Unfortunately, her golden years haven't been so golden, so I'd rather remember her from the 1970's, when she really was our golden girl of music. I'm not embarrassed to admit that her albums Ladies of the Canyon and Blue are on my ipod.  

She was born in Alberta, Canada, the daughter of a grocer and a schoolteacher.  There are lots of good stories about Joni Mitchell, but this is my favorite: She started out on a $36 baritone ukulele because she couldn't afford a guitar.  Growing up, she listened at night to AM radio broadcasts from the United States.  Along with Bandstand, that was your only access to rock music in those days, unless you could afford records.

As a teenager, I remember listening to AM radio in Colorado. We would tune in after supper while we did our homework, and in cars on dates. The weather and clouds determined how well the signal came in, but we didn't care. When the sun went down, our radios came on. I don't understand radio waves very well, but something about bouncing off the ionosphere at night.

There were very few stations across the Great Plains that played rock music, but 1520 KOMA from Oklahoma City ran a new concept program called "Top 40." It became wildly popular with teenagers.

Exciting stuff-- Chuck Berry, the Supremes, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Beatles and so on.  That distinctive, distant sound of the AM music and the corny KOMA promos were imprinted on our young brains forever.

Here's a cool YouTube that brings it all back.

A few of my favorite things

"Spanky"

"Belle"

Where's the apples?  

I've really missed my horse friends these past two months, both the four-legged and two-legged ones.  At times it felt almost like a conspiracy keeping me away from the barn in North Bend.  There were those big trips, and I spent a lot of time scheduling work and then waiting for contractors who as often as not didn't show up when they said they would.  The last perfect fall weather trail-riding days in October were lost hanging around the house.  

That might not seem like such a big deal, but those days are getting more precious.  We all need things to look forward to. Hopefully there will be other autumns I'll see from the back of a horse, but I try not to take that (or anything else) for granted anymore.

Anyway, I'm headed to the barn today, and maybe it's dry enough to take Belle and Spanky on the trails for a bit. After such a long break, I'll sure feel it tonight in my legs. But that will be a very welcome feeling! 

This nice poem was on The Writer's Almanac this morning.

  

My life was the size of my life.
Its rooms were room-sized,
its soul was the size of a soul.
In its background, mitochondria hummed,
above it sun, clouds, snow,
the transit of stars and planets.
It rode elevators, bullet trains,
various airplanes, a donkey.
It wore socks, shirts, its own ears and nose.
It ate, it slept, it opened
and closed its hands, its windows.
Others, I know, had lives larger.
Others, I know, had lives shorter.
The depth of lives, too, is different....

From The Writer's Almanac
My Life Was the Size of My Life
by Jane Hirshfield