My birthday (sigh) again and pies

Today is my fiftieth (mumble-mumble-mumble) birthday (I think last year's was my mumble-mumble birthday: http://diabetes-cats.blogspot.com/2008/08/my-birthday-sigh.html). My horoscopes are all in conflict today -- what are they thinking?!

My sweet Mom called me this morning and sang Happy Birthday to me. Her soprano is nowhere near what it was now that she's 77, but it was also early in the morning so she wasn't warmed up. She was going to the church to make pies today. She's in charge of trimming crusts, and she's not that keen on it. (She also sent me a cheque with my birthday card -- my bank holds any cheques from non-Ontario sources for six days, though, so it won't burn a hole in my pocket.)


I often watched her whip up a basic pie pastry in a couple of minutes. Her piecrusts were always light and flaky, and didn't, like mine, end up mounded high over the soggy fruit. She also didn't like the way I peeled apples for her, using a sharp potato peeler instead of a paring knife. I figured you'd get more fruit using the parer carefully, but it was too slow for her and she'd take over. As a result (yeah, right, blame your mother again!) I can't make a nice short flaky pastry.


It's been a summer. I've been out of work for almost three months, and instead of using this time to relax and enjoy the summer, work on my garden, clean and organize the house, keep in touch with friends, get in shape, etc., I've mostly been lazing around and feeling sorry for myself. I tell myself it's due to my severe sleep deficit: I haven't slept for eight hours in a row for years. It's not something you get used to. It's almost like being a shift worker.


I have a couple of pounds of frozen already-mashed overripe bananas (to make banana-walnut-cranberry-blueberry muffins, using no sugar and all-purpose whole wheat flour), and a couple of pounds of frozen gooseberries -- one cup or so from last year's garden's meagre harvest and several pints of big red ones from the grocery -- to make jam (no pectin required with my old-fashioned recipe). So it's not like I don't have anything to do; it's just like I don't feel like doing any of it.

However, I did just de-clump and deodorize (with baking soda) the litter boxes, so I hope that my neighbour is happy.


And Mr. Jones ran right up to the front door to greet me today, chirping and yowling -- he REALLY wants to come in the house. Handsome Stranger, on the other hand, has draped himself across my shoulders and is snoozing...

The Garden "During" File

This is the mess in the back. The weeds were over a foot high before my Big Bro took his gas-powered weed trimmer to it. The electric lawnmower was sort of incorporated in the weeds...but it's worked before after spending the winter outside.



Some of the raspberry canes are up to eight feet tall. They bear fruit the size of the tip of my thumb well into the fall. They aren't doing as well this year due to the rain and cooler weather; last year, even after the 'coons got at them (I could tell by the visible seeds in the poops they dropped on my lawn), I still got enough fruit to make 25 jars of jam.

I plan on building a raised bed for strawberries (I'd like to find a bale of straw somewhere), and moving the asparagus to a sunny location, where I'll also be reminded to fertilize and mulch. I also have rhubarb that I moved and separated this spring.

And the gooseberries are now in a sunny spot, but they didn't like being moved this year and didn't blossom, though they have survived pretty well. I'll have to figure out how far back to prune them.