What's in Your Dictionary?

The spellcheck for word documents on my computer is reliably uninformed on how to spell any number of proper names. I expect those little red squiggles, and the super creative "replace with" options it comes up with when presented with a new proper noun outside its programmed variations. I add the name to the dictionary and the problem is solved.

Today though it offered me something new. A lesson I wanted to share.

The word Unforgiveness is not in the computer's dictionary. Instead, as I ran spell check it offered me "replace with: Forgiveness."

Replace unforgiveness with forgiveness. How right that is.
I did not add unforgiveness to my dictionary.

And Then There Are Blackberries

The berry buckets still fill daily

blackberries ripening to take the place of raspberries.

Simon Says: Baa?

I am not, Simon says, a sheep dog.  And, Simon adds, We don't have room for a flock of dairy sheep.

I thought we might be able to squeeze in two little Shetland sheep to provide wool, and milk, and maybe even meat.  Aren't they cute? They come in different markings even polkadot! As I did my research into the dairy side of things with thoughts of sheep butter and sheep cheese and the more easily digestible nutrient rich sheep's milk. I also found Clun Forest Sheep and from what I'm reading it sounds like they'd be even better for cheesemaking.

Perfect, Simon says, now you want both and we haven't even room for one.

What's In a Name?

All Blue Potatoes Bloom

The All Blue Potatoes, blue inside, with blue skins, actually bloom blue too. They really are all blue. Perhaps the bean seeds I saved from last year will give me a clue to their name, on the brown bag in which they were saved I wrote only "pole bean." They were nondescript light brown with some speckling on some of them, and they sprouted before other beans planted at the same time. I thought they might be pintos, but I am told pintos are not a pole bean. Now, taller than me and still climbing, they have white blossoms, romano style flat pods, standard green bean flavor when picked tender ....... That could describe any of a dozen different beans.

Pole Bean Blossoms

I suppose, to borrow a phrase, a bean by any other name is still a bean.

Happy Fourth of July

Red

White

and Blue 

Simon Says: Skunk!

Black and white photo = good.
Black and white critter in the yard? Not good.

Attack the invader, Simon says, as he runs, snarling, straight for the skunk on our back porch. You see where this is going.

We were fortunate that Simon is so quick and this skunk was not quite so quick. Simon was snapping at the opposite side when the skunk sprayed and only caught a little of the mist at the edges. But enough that he knew he was sprayed. Enough to make him run away foaming at the mouth and allow the skunk to ramble safely away. And enough that he had to have a bath.

But I hate baths, Simon says.
Then you shouldn't have attacked a skunk I tell him. Now hold still.

Theories I read about long ago have now been tested and proven. Skunk smell is, I was informed, best dissipated by altering the ph of the affected fiber (dog fur). For some reason the internet has always felt this is best done by the purchasing of certain vinegar based feminine products. I thought it might be easier to just use vinegar. Maybe vinegar with baking soda, I thought.

Five o'clock this morning, liberally powdered with baking soda and meekly foaming at the mouth, Simon did not fight being put in the bathtub. He knew he smelled bad, poor baby. I then doused him with apple cider vinegar, trusting that the chemical reaction between the baking soda and the vinegar would be the quickest and most effective way to alter the ph and remove the smell.

If you picture your elementary school volcano science project shaking like a wet dog you'll have a pretty accurate image of what happened next. But it worked. It worked on him, and it worked on me. Because, oh yes, I was near enough to catch a little spray too, so I can only begin to tell you how absolutely thrilled I am that baking soda and vinegar worked. Thrilled.

Now, Simon says, if you could just do something about the whole back of the house and the yard still smelling like that.

Where the Green Things Are

Baby Green Gage Plums

The Green Gage Plum put on fruit for the first time this year.  These plums are supposed to be the best ever of the British/European plums but are rarely grown in the US, because of their unreliability.  Some years they fruit, sometimes they don't. Some trees never fruit. The internet is filled with dire predictions which, of course, I read right after I had ordered the trees.

I planted them in a sunny spot downhill from the compost pile, stacking the deck in their favor, I hoped. But a spot where they could be shade trees, privacy trees, if they never produced fruit.  And then I pruned out the central leader, opened them up (which is supposed to put energy into fruiting). Still, if they never fruited that was okay, I told them.  And I waited.  Five years. Then, this spring they were covered in blossoms. Sweet, white, clusters of flowers with long showy stamens. They were beautiful. And promising.  But every orchardist knows that blossoms do not always mean fruit. And I waited again.

The frost dates passed safely. The blossoms dropped as they should, and tiny little fruits began to form. And tiny little fruits began to drop off, coating the ground beneath the trees with undeveloped plums.  This happens.  It is supposed to happen.  The tree cannot bear the weight of too many fruit, it can't feed and ripen every blossom that was pollinated.  The weak ones are sacrificed, thinned, so that the tree can be healthy.

It's still okay, I told them, if you never produce ripe fruit. I would like to taste one, though. If you could make at least one for me. So I am waiting.