she's just saying...

Skunk work

 

My brother's "conservation of bustedness" theory goes something like:  when you fix something, something else has to break, to keep the level of bustedness balanced. So of course when I fixed my car headlight (for the third time in three years), the burnt out driveway light, the leaking hose faucet and the screen door where Bindi busted through, something big had to go wrong. Which is that a skunk moved in under the deck.

Actually, I think a critter has been living there for some time as my previous dog showed a lot of interest in that corner of the deck, but I always assumed it was a family of brave mice (given the cat ratio in the neighborhood). But the other evening, I saw a large skunk waddling around checking for possible compost leavings before he scooted back under the deck again. Because as you know, skunks are crepuscular. (One of those cool words you learn in a wildlife museum. Look it up.)

After an initial panic, I called a number of wildlife control companies. Oddly enough, none of them seemed very eager to help me with this problem. The first one quoted me an astronomical figure to dig all around the deck and install chicken wire. When I expressed surprise at the price, he asked me if I just moved here from Mexico. Random, and belligerent, so I moved on. The second guy made and broke an appointment, then confessed he wasn't really comfortable with skunks, in spite of being certified by Oregon Wildlife to remove them. The third said he'd trap it for $180. However, due to state laws, he'd either have to release it on the property or euthanize it, neither of which work for me.

It all seems too much to deal with, frankly.  So I'm contemplating the live and let live approach.

Pepe Le Pew hasn't bothered us yet, really. If he's been around for awhile, he's got to be a pretty comfortable with our family;  kids, dogs, cats and I all hang around on the deck and back patio. I spray the hose and entertain, Bindi barks and pees, cats sprawl and kids pound across it while yelling and shooting water guns. Or maybe he's a really sound sleeper.

The potential downside is that Bindi, who isn't the sharpest pencil in the box but has plenty of enthusiasm, will spot it and chase. I've had dogs skunked before and lived through it, but it's no fun for anyone. While I'm figuring out what to do, I've researched the best skunk smell removal formula and laid in some hydrogen peroxide, just in case.

I've started a mild harassment program to gently convince the skunk that he'd be more comfortable elsewhere. Various suggestions I've found include sticking balls of ammonia-soaked rags under the deck, applying cayenne pepper solution around the den, putting dirty socks by the entrance (I'll need Henry's assistance with that one), installing a flashing red beacon or using commercial "predator urine" repellents. In the meantime, I've trained a light on the entrance to his den and am thinking about playing a radio there all day. Rap music, probably. Or heavy metal - that would make me move.

I has a spuragrus

Look, Mark! We finally made one!

(Mark was my gardening partner to whom I owe my many many garden beds of which I can't handle the upkeep.)

Just one. Not sure what happened to all the others. I can't bring myself to harvest it. I just go visit it now and then and feel very proud.

The whole garden has had a late start this year. I wonder why: could the snow this Saturday be one of the reasons? I think we hit 45 degrees as a high that day. That's all right - I'll be complaining about the heat in a few months.  I hope.  Happy Memorial Day!

Fiddlehead!

I'm feeling very earthy and springlike today, though it appears to be snowing outside again. I just got a precious pound of fiddlehead ferns. Fiddleheads are tightly spiraled fern fronds, not yet unfurled. These alien-looking curls are only available for about two weeks in May - that's it, so if you haven't gotten any yet, you're out of luck.

They are a New England delicacy in my mind, but here they are in Oregon. I scored mine from the Agricultural Connections, a community-supported agricultural group here in Bend who have some adventurous vegetable offerings as well as the basic stuff.

People describe fiddleheads as tasting a bit like asparagus, but they really don't. They taste very green and deep and mysterious, with an addictive texture and crunch. Trim, rinse and blanch, then saute with butter, salt & pepper, a little lemon and maybe some garlic. I served them over angelhair (seemed fittingly delicate), and maybe ate too many last night.

I hear that warm weather has arrived elsewhere on earth, but here in the mountains, it's still a rumored event. The flowers and trees are doing their best and the late evening light is stirring up the animals, but it's still in the 50's most days. We're getting a little tired of it, but given the weather elsewhere I'm not complaining. I'll just eat my way to summer - I hear Paradise Farm Stand has morels again...

10 things I haven't done in Bend

Top Ten Tuesday and all that...

I moved to Bend sixteen years ago this month. And in that time I've enjoyed much of what Central Oregon has to offer. I've skiied, boarded, snowshoed, rockclimbed, canoed, rafted, backpacked, drunk beer and been to the Monster Truck Rally. But just like those New Yorkers who've never been to the Empire State Building (most of them), there are a few things you'd think I've done that I haven't. (Warning: very local post here with no explanations. Deal with it.)

I have never:

1. Cut down my own Christmas tree
2. Biked on Phil's Trail
3. Floated the river in an inner tube
4. Done Art Walk
5. Been on a Pole Peddle Paddle team
6. Rafted Big Eddy
7. Been in the Christmas Parade (we have done the Pet Parade - evidence below)
8. Eaten at Dandy's Drive-In
9. Skiied the cone
10. Served on jury duty

Mum's the word on that last one. Though I'm a faithful voter, somehow I've escaped the jury rolls so far. (Now I've jinxed myself, of course, and will likely be serving shortly.)

 So I've confessed mine: what are yours?

  Note the patriotic choice of binky

Friday Frylet - literally

From Utterlyboring.com, an entertaining local website:

It's A Lot Warmer Today Than I Thought It Was Going To Be...

...but nothing like the 133° that KTVZ currently is reporting:

"KTVZ pulls the data from the National Weather Service beacon at the Bend airport, and obviously knows there's an issue. But it makes for some interesting graphs on the NWS feed from there:

Apparently the high in the last 24-hours was 176°. Looking at that graph, it looks like a nuke went off east of Bend."

RDM: Welcome to 1980!

Warning: random rant ahead. The 35 million renovation of the Redmond-Bend airport is very snazzy - it has a second floor and an electronic arrival/departure board and everything. But what idiot forgot to include electical outlets? Here we are, huddled on the floor by the two outlets available in the vast waiting area, which don't even have seating near them. Honestly! It's infuriatingly stupid. Other airports have got it - the Seattle airport (ahem, home of Microsoft) has outlets built into each seating area, one for each seat. Plus data ports, not that anyone uses them anymore.

I have complained about the Redmond airport before, but this really points out the small-town mentality of the place. It makes me crazy to think about it anymore so I'll end this post here. Plus it's really  uncomfortable typing at floor level.

Even the logo is kinda last century.

Farm Stand Ratatouille

This is the time of year we get the best vegetables in Central Oregon. Stop at Paradise after work, grab all the ingredients and you've got a one-stop, one-pan meal.*

The traditional recipe for ratatouille calls for sauteing each vegetable separately, combining them and baking. But that's not going to happen around my house. So this more a description of how I cook vs. a recipe, and you should modify as you wish. 

1 eggplant  

1 big yellow onion

2-3 zucchini

3-4 tomatoes

a few cloves garlic

Herbs and such: parsley, pepper, lemon juice, capers, thyme, rosemary as you like 

Note: some people add bell peppers, but never in this blog...

Slice eggplant into 1 inch slices, salt both sides and drain in a colander for at least a 1/2 hour. (If you don't have time you can skip this step, but the eggplant will be mushier.)

Meanwhile, slice the onion and cut the slices in half and saute in olive oil in a large deep skillet for 15 minutes or so.  Add the garlic now so it doesn't burn.

Slice the zucchini in 3/4 inch rounds, cut them in half, add to onion.

By now the eggplant should be drained. Wipe the salt off and blot hard with paper towels, then chop into 1 inch cubes. Add to pan. Let the zucchini and eggplant cook for awhile before adding the tomatoes.

Slice the tomatoes in half, squeeze out the seeds, chop and add to the pan.

Let everything bubble along for a bit til it's the consistency you like. Add flavorings from above list as you like and serve!

The great thing about this dish is that it gets better in the next few days, it's great at room temperature, and goes with everything. I like it with couscous, or just good crusty bread, a little red wine and some fresh basil sprinkled on top.

*Olive oil, bread and wine not available at Paradise. Darn.

Top Ten Tuesday: summer sounds edition

Favorite Sounds of Summer

1. Hummingbirds cheeping around my head while I sit on the patio
2. The sprinklers going on at night
3. Henry and his gang charging around on their bikes, yelling through the neighborhood
4. My waterfall trickling down the rock (i.e. working)
5. Deschutes Cascade Ale being poured into a glass
6. The ballgame, especially if my team is winning
7. A distant lawnmower on a Sunday afternoon (not too close to annoy)
8. Kids splashing and yelling at the pool while a lifeguard whistles
9. Brined, butterflied, barbequed chicken sizzling on the grill (recipe upon request)
10. The ice cream truck, playing "It's a Small World" -- well, maybe not so much.

OK, your turn to play: add some more!

Top Ten Tues: summer rerun edition

OK, so now it's August. I've blogged about my feelings about August previously, but this year it feels a little different. Summer came so late to Central Oregon that August is feeling like July. The town is praying that summer will stick around later than usual, which means no snow til November, please.

I was reading old posts and realized something profound: the reason this blog has gotten boring (in my opinion) is that life is pretty boring right now. No agonizing break-ups, no major surgery, no work drama, nothin' but good times. No complaints, but no inspiration. So I'm taking a blogger's perogative and rerunning some previous stuff.

So, what we eat in the summer. Recipes upon request. This list does not include the standard chicken/fish/shrimp on the grill that we have regularly. This is when I'm cool enough to cook and have the urge.

1. ratatouille with couscous
2. fish tacos
3. french potato salad
4. linguine alla vongole (clams to you)
5. greek salad - hold the bell peppers
6. gazpacho with shrimp: ditto
7. killer shrimp (stolen from the LA diner of the same name)
8. salad nicoise
9. the humble fresh tomato parsley parmesan omelet
10. grilled eggplant with soy sauce

I just realized that I've been making these same dishes for years. We don't eat beef, pork or lamb so it can be a challenge to come up with new menus. What do you cook when it's hot?

 

 

slap-happy summer

Note: I'm leaving this post up until I get some responses! Summer memories, people!

Up in our neck of the woods, spring came slowly and haltingly this year. It's always slower than everywhere else in the country, it seems, but this year was the coldest, wettest I remember. Summer finally showed up about July 5, and it's been truly lovely. Not too hot, until last weekend. And then the mosquitoes hatched.

The entire town is complaining - it's the number one comment on Facebook this week.

From our local news station:

Four Rivers Vector Control officials say the mosquitoes are overwhelming this year.

"This year we found that everything we looked at was hatching out all at once," said Four Rivers District Manager Chad Stubblefield. "In some places we even found 500 mosquitoes to a dip cup full of water."

You know it's bad when the westside Safeway (the big one) is SOLD OUT of mosquito spray. Really. The shelf was empty yesterday. I had to get some weird left-over brand. Hope it works.

On another summer note, it's been hot and even muggy with thunder and lightning. So it feels like a perfect time to play cards. Didn't you play cards in the summer growing up? War, Hearts, Rummy, Crazy Eights, I Doubt It, Uno?

Henry and I have different tastes in card games. I like a strategic game like gin rummy and thought he'd enjoy a simplified version of rummy for kids. He likes something called "SWAP!" which involves a lot of switching colors, swapping hands with the other player and slapping the discard pile.

So, we sit around these evenings, slapping mosquitoes and slapping cards, enjoying our Oregon summer and making memories. What are yours?

the old and the new

the evil weed continued

Those of you bored by gardening posts or looking for some anti-marijuana polemic can stop reading now. See you tomorrow.

I continue the good fight against the invader on the homefront. The problem is that, when small and not blooming, the evil one looks like a many other benign plants that are growing happily and innocently in the garden. Bee balm looks almost exactly the same, but there's a quality to the evil one that makes it stand out for me, from even a number of feet away. I can't explain how it's different, but I can sense it. Most of the time.

See?

Bad plant (orange hawkweed): 

Good plant (bee balm):

 

And if I pull up a bunch of balm, oh well. It's kind of invasive as well, but more nicely. OK, back at it. Just me and the mosquitoes.

a bald eagle kind of evening

For further proof that I'm not always a sloth, Henry and Dana and I loaded up the canoe yesterday at 5 pm and headed to Sparks Lake for an evening picnic. It was a perfect little excursion.

Henry showed off his mad canoeing skillz and Dana and I went along for the ride.

And to top it all off, we watched a bald eagle watching over the lake all evening. 

The drive (26 miles one way) was so lovely that we did it twice, as somebody forgot his water shoes at the boat ramp and we had to go back and get them. We did the math in the car and yes, that was 104 miles. Very peaceful wilderness miles, but still...

porky frylet

TGIF

It's been a rough week.

Loose morels

Morels are a type of wild mushroom that grow in the Northwest in the spring. Their flavor is deep and mysterious and substantial, and they look really cool too, like little alien coneheads.

There's an underground culture of mushroom pickers here in Central Oregon who jealously guard their picking spots, so really it's easier to pick them down at our local farmstand. Adam gets them from a picker on his way back into town every day, and sells them dirt cheap. 

For some odd reason most morel recipes online involve saltine crackers, bread crumbs, or even corn flakes. All you need to do is saute them in butter or olive oil. You can add some shallots, parsley, garlic and lemon juice, a splash of white wine, serve them on toast or whatever. Or eat them with a fork right out of the pan.

The morels of the story

(Puns: the last refuge of lame writers.)

The year without spring

What's that white stuff drifting down through the sunshine out there? Volcanic ash? Really big juniper pollen? Why no, it's snow!

Yes, snowing on May 20th. Welcome to Central Oregon, on the High Desert. We're actually so used to it that it didn't cause much interest. And it is sunny, so it's not that bad.

Next it will turn in the space of a week to a hot dry summer. Our seasons change rather abruptly here. When I first arrived (15 years ago this month), I was so dismayed at the short planting season that I stopped gardening for a year or so. 

This is a post about the weather because the two other fascinating topics I thought up in the car have already fled my mind. Have I talked about how I have no memory? I can't recall. Anyway, I don't. Have any memory. I've tried to hide it for years, but now I just tell people straight out and I'm off the hook. Sort of a charming eccentricity, is how I like to see it.

And don't tell me to do crosswords. I've lost many precious hours of my life that I'll never get back puzzling over Sudoku squares. What worries me is that I still have 40 more years to go, if my parents are any indication. So please wear a nametag when you come to visit me in the old folks home. And when you run into me in the supermarket, it would help if you gently remind me who you are.

I'll post again when I remember those other two topics. I do recall they were really good.

Sure sign of spring: farm stand!

For those of you reading from below the 44th parallel, you must be wondering why we're still looking for signs of spring. Maybe it's the snow we had on Monday or the frost this morning, but we don't seem to quite be there yet. I'll take any sign that spring is returning to Central Oregon, and have spotted the best so far: the farm stand on my street has opened again.

You may remember my embarrassingly gushing post about my farm stand (I like to call it "my" farm stand, though I'll happily share it). But over the winter I watched concernedly while changes were happening to the closed stand. It was painted in bright yellows and orange, a new name was posted, the shack got a little construction work. It looked like new owners had bought it, and my heart sunk. 

Well, it's been open for a few weeks now and I've avoided it, afraid to see what out-of-town ag conglomerate had taken it over. (Okay, so I'm a little paranoid. It's my farm stand!) Yesterday on the way home from work I was hankering for a head of lettuce so pulled in and prepared to face reality. And there was my pal Adam!! I honestly can't tell you how relieved I was. It made my day.

It's now called Paradise Produce. Adam and a friend have leased some organic farm land and are getting serious about bringing in fresh-picked organic produce. As Adam said today, "We cut 20 head of lettuce this morning and it's all gone already!" 

There's a list of about 60 different products they're carrying.  The stand is mostly organic, and they've started a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture for those of you who avoid vegetables, and I'm looking at you, YrBigSis.)

I'm planning to volunteer my mad marketing skillz in exchange for peaches and tomatoes, so expect to hear a lot more about it.

Twelve kinds of tomatoes: I'm obsessed.

Another blessed (if prickly) event

No, that's not a hand puppet, that's a baby porky! Spring is here and the porcupines are popping. Thistle and Honeysuckle had their second baby recently, and it's a cutey. There's more info here and the porcupette will be making appearances in June. (Yes, I'm marketing the Museum. It's what I do.)

 

Does it count as sunny if you have no shadow?

Bend boosters like to quote the statistic that we get 300 days of sunshine here -- it counteracts the Oregon = rain perception people hold. Everyone quotes the same number: 300. Realtors, the Chamber of Commerce, the medical clinic, golf resorts and the local HVAC company all repeat this frequently. (With the notable exception of a surly curmudgeon whose entire blog exists to dispute this number.) I'm not sure how the "300 days" stat was compiled, but I'm just saying we'd better see sunshine non-stop through New Year's if we're going to hit that this year.

Due to the frequent brilliant sunshine there's a interesting phenomenon that occurs in Central Oregon around February and March. By now we're seriously bored with winter and start to believe that sun = spring. People shed the down and fleece and run around in shorts and t-shirts. Myself, I stop wearing jackets to work and start leaving the doors open, until I realize I'm freezing. 35 degrees is 35 degrees whether it's December or May.

(There's a subset of guys who wear shorts year-round here. They tend to be of three kinds: snowboarders, 30-something dads who pretend they're snowboarders, and the UPS guy. The shorts are the long cargo-type, so at least we're spared large flashes of goosebumpy flesh.)

The kids immediately wear tank tops (gals) or take their shirts off (dudes) and hang around the park downtown. By the way, I seem to have turned into the kind of mom who says: "Those children must be freezing!" How did that happen?

Then it turns gray and cold and rainy again and we remember it's only February.

I'm happy to report that I'm in a far better place than I was this time last year, when I wrote this depressing post.  Wow. Good thing I didn't have my biathlon rifle back then.

Where the cool kids hang out. And the geese. On a much nicer day than today.

I can't say it any better

From Forbes.com:

What's ironic is that I am an advertiser on NBC. Granted, I don't buy national airtime for a car brand - it's a museum in the Central Oregon market. But hey, I'm paying them money. And even as an advertiser, this total lack of respect for the viewers really pisses me off. I'm close to pulling my media buy but for the fact that I care about my local franchise and my reps. I've let them know how I feel, but I doubt it's going to get back to 30 Rock.

And yes, we're still watching the Olympic prime-time coverage at home - what choice do we have?

Oh wait: I take that back. I could be watching the Olympics right now (Sat. afternoon): NBC is providing live coverage. Up now:

Men's Hockey

Late round-robin action features the Slovakian men versus Latvia.

How you know you live in a ski town

Emergency! Emergency!  Should we call the police? The sheriff? 

No, wait! Let's check the conditions!