SEPTEMBER!! The mad dash in sweltering heat of summer is over, finally. I know lots of peeps love summer, and I do love the lush overgrown-ness of all the green and the buzzing insects and dark woods, but I wilt in the heat. Give me crispy leaves and frost, please.
The horde is taking this week’s back to school rather in stride, although with perhaps not the same enthusiasm as their bonus mom who gets her quiet office back for part of the day. One senior, two sophomores, and one eight grader who starts his day at the high school because he’s in double accelerated math. It’s time for a flurry of marching band performances, cross country meets, concerts, art shows, possible theater, homework woes, college applications, and behind the wheel practice (x 2).
Hackberry leaves started falling on the deck around the time we came home from the cabin in mid-August. Now they blow in here and there under the split screen door. A pile of sage gifted to me is drying on the table, some with my rosemary from the pot on the deck and some loose, because homegrown dried sage is excellent for roasted turkey and chicken.
I’m keeping an eye on Rufus, the charming little Marbled Orb Weaver who took over my hammock in August. I misgendered him as a her for a while, but further wiki-searches revealed he is indeed a he, and so far a confirmed bachelor as far as I can tell. He’s eating all the flies he can catch.
He’s built a mansion between the rope and the frame, including his own little house, and I couldn’t bring myself to ruin it. But I would like my hammock back now that it’s not hotter than the surface of the sun outside, and the mosquitoes are starting to die off, and for all my research I can’t find if the dude will go into hibernation or die in winter. So I suppose I’ll need to relocate him to some bushes behind the dog fence?
In a not wholly unrelated topic to Shelob-discussions, I’ve discovered an autumn-in-Minnesota surprise. It turns out THIS is the time I can find fresh figs. I promise I’m neither drunk nor having a stroke: those two sentences do go together if you bear with me for a moment.
Over Thanksgiving in this house we have a LOTR marathon tradition, including the hobbit meals along with the extended editions of the movies. Last year we upped the ante by using this book for as many recipes as possible:
One of the recipes I REALLY wanted for either Second Breakfast or Elevensies was Rivendell Fig Treats.
Sadly, it turns out in the upper Midwest fresh figs do not exist in late November, so we tried making them on the dried variety, which tasted somewhat like cream cheese dollops on excessively Fig Newtons, in a not quite pleasant way. I won’t subject you to a pic of that.
But TODAY I got these beauties, and I’m trying again! Perhaps future Labor Day weekends will need to be a Hobbit marathon to accommodate fresh fig treats…there’s a Hobbit meals cookbook sitting in my Amazon wishlist, after all.
I have no apologies for the randomness of this post, because honestly I’m only 1/4 of the way through my list of unrelated blog topics and reviews. This is only the beginning for September blogs, I fear. You’re welcome and I’m sorry? Mwahahahaha.
I’m off to make attempts at cooking. Thank goodness it’s finally fall.
No Pithy Phrase 