Monday, August 24, 2009
Let the weaving begin again!
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Just like migrating birds
It was also beautiful to watch HJ pick out a pattern and yarn for her first sweater. She has been after me for years to knit her a sweater. Now that I am knitting her one she has been inspired and is also excited to knit for herself. A fellow knitter shared her college knitting history; she knit on the same sweater all through graduate school. HJ is inspired by this thought - it is a romantic notion to her (me too!). She will likely work this sweater at much the same pace as Riki shared and hopes to go to grad school with one sweater under her belt already!
There is one more member of our little flock that has yet to make his migratory flight south but for now he is still putting in his time on the Flats trying to fill his net with silver blue slabs of cohos. I wonder how much longer he can resist his instinct to fly home...
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Road trippin' the AlCan
I spent the next 3 1/2 weeks wrapping things up at work and home and geared up for an road trip with a few of the Fisher Wives. The 4 of us congregated in Missoula, MT, packed up the Sportsmobile and headed North to Alaska via the Canadian Rockies. The agenda was hot springs and fellowship and more than 3000 miles for the next 9 days. Our first day we spent the morning visiting the campus of Univ. MT at Missoula. What a great town and and looks like a great school... I began to visualize my girl walking to class and hiking the nearby mountain and studying in the library. Sure is alot closer than North Carolina... hmm I wonder... Kathryn, Ben and Lola were such great hosts and guides. They had good input on our first days drive and we heeded their advice.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Cooking School (part 1?)
I don’t often use a recipe when cooking, although always when baking!, but here’s generally what we did:
Equal portions of ground lamb to leanest available ground beef
1 or 2 eggs
2 cloves garlic crushed and minced
Good handful of chopped fresh mint
Good handful of chopped flat leaf parsley
½ to 1 t of chopped fresh rosemary
Probably a ¼ to a 1/3 cup plain bread crumbs
Mix well with your clean hands and form into meatballs. We cooked our batch at 350 for 40 mins. In the past I have gone 375 for 30 mins. They just need to cook. You’ll know when they are done.
Couscous – so easy!
Equal parts boiling water to couscous, cover and let stand a couple of mins. or follow directions
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tomato diced
Small handful of fresh mint and parsley chopped
Drizzle with good olive oil to taste and sight
Tzatziki
16 oz plain yogurt – you can drain in a sieve overnight if you can plan ahead, I can’t.
1 cucumber peeled and seeded then dice
Good handful of chopped mint with some parsley thrown in
A splash of rice wine vinegar
1 clove of garlic crushed and minced or as much as you like to your tastes
Dinner in under an hour - Yum!
Friday, May 22, 2009
Victory garden sure sounds better than Recession garden.
Our migratory summer schedule has generally precluded us from any substantial gardening over the years but I decided that it certainly couldn't hurt to give it a shot again. He hasn't ever really done much veggie gardening so even though he wouldn't be here for the summer harvest I decided to buy starts early this spring and do a small planting just for his visual delight.
You may notice very few white strawberry blossoms in the strawberry bed. It pained me so to snip them off to encourage good root growth this first year so much so that I made my mom snip them off for me. I will be happy about it next summer when I can go out to the garden after work on a warm summer afternoon and pick nice big warm from the sun strawberries to snack on!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Work Work Work
HJ goes to a “work” college which means that every single student works in some capacity on campus a minimum of 15 hours per week. First semester she was assigned to the campus safety crew. They worked out of an office and were available by phone or handheld radio for potential campus emergencies or basic situation. As a brand new freshman and a new student to the area I was surprised to find out that she often drove fellow students off campus into the surrounding area to various appointments and such in a school van. She even once drove a student into a neighboring county for an appointment.
Overall I expected that this would have been a great job for her, not that any particular aspect of the job suited her but because most often there wasn’t anything pressing in their office and so there was a lot of time available to the student workers for school work and study. Boy did I turn out to be wrong!
Second semester she had some sort of hubbub with her crew boss and she was able to get onto a different work crew. She got onto the landscaping crew. At her groovy eco conscious school this is a very popular crew and hard to get onto. Being part of that crew has impacted her college experience like I could not believe a job could. She is outdoors every day working a physical job in the open air. She loves her job! She now loves her school and her community and she feels truly a part of it. It has turned out to be a life saver for her. She had really been struggling with not feeling part of the community even in to second semester and was really contemplating a transfer. I am so happy for her that this work crew has welcomed her in such a specific way and that she has learned from being a part of it.
When she got home this weekend she said that she really wasn’t quite ready to come home and that some of her work crew actually stay on a work contract over the summer. I teased her that she could be on the landscape crew here at home no problem and no contract required! (I am in dire need!! Weeds weeds everywhere!!)
She said that she understands now that helping maintain something and working on building something with others invests you in it. It builds community something that we are all looking for. She says she will gladly be on the landscape crew here at home! We’ll see how it fleshes out – and I only have her for a few days before she heads north to go fishing. I’ll work her while I can though!
Friday, May 15, 2009
Lord be good to us, for the sea is so wide and our ship is so small.
I think it is about time for me to join Him again. It is such a thrill to see the fish hit the net and haul in the net full of glorious blue and silver salmon. They are such beautiful fish. I never got very good at picking the net but I'm not to old to learn. Watching Him do this job He is so good at makes me so happy. He is such confident man on His boat and on the water. It is His element. He said he cleaned the boat out good enough for a girl this season so hopefully when I get up there in July it'll just need a freshening up in order to welcome me aboard! I am sure that our girl will not tolerate much of a mess overall so there is hope. I am so excited for her to fish this season. My hope is that now as a pre adult she will look at this season with fresh percpective and see the possibilities in it. She is such a wild at heart girl... and a turd bird... she sure makes me smile!
My respite is almost over. She will be home from her first year of college tomorrow. I am so proud of her growth, her accomplishments, her bravery and her spirit. She inspires me. She also drives me nuts and I am going to enjoy my clean and quite home tonight like you can't believe!