Update

Okay, starting now…?

Funny how hard it is to just pick this blog-thang back up. Writing is a habit, I guess, and like any (good) habit not practiced, the ease with which it’s practiced can be totally lost. Engulfed. Desolately twinkling on the ocean floor.

I’ve fallen out of many good habits recently, and I’m sorry to say I can’t say the same about any of my bad habits. Why can’t those two be self-balancing? I’d like to complain to the management about that one. Someone should really write a letter. Of course, I could write the letter myself, except I’m out of practice, you see.

I think the dust has settled, finally, from the seemingly-endless turmoil I’ve been bashing my way through. This spring, we had five hens and four cats. Due to this death and that disappearance, we were down to one hen and two kitties. Hardest of all was the death of Cirrus, my big fat blue-eyed Siamese wonderboy of love. He was poisoned. Why??????? But now we have two new hens, and the missing kitty (Pablano) returned home after a week gone. He was in good health, but reeked of axle grease and garage. He didn’t stop meowing for days, and still wanders around crying at times. There’s lots more, of course, but stuff I can’t share (to protect the innocent, the not-so-innocent, and the just plain kooky elderly folks in my life).

Cherries.

We have tons and tons of cherries. I’ve frozen up five gallon bags full of cherries. My mother-in-law has picked cherries, my neighbor ahs picked cherries. The birds are eating the cherries. Still, you can’t even tell that a single cherry is missing from the ever-loving ever-fruitful tree. I don’t know what kind of cherries they are. They’re bright red—cherry red if I might say so—and sweet enough to eat off the tree, tart enough to cook with. Turns out it’s really easy to freeze cherries. Just pit the suckers, throw ‘em on a cookie sheet, and then roll the little fruit marbles into a bad after a night in the freezer.

I made a cherry clafouti with some of the crop. Clafoutis are so pretty, and spoken so well of—and of course they’re French—so how could it not be wonderful? It wasn’t. Bleh. I will NOT be posting that recipe!

I think I’m going to make wine with however many more I pick. Sweet cherry wine? Like the song? That should be good, right? There’s a joke in there about judging a book by a cover song, but it’s probably a really bad joke, so I’ll not look for it any further.

Josh Ritter. Oh, Josh Ritter.

Met him at his recent book reading, music playing, and book signing. Mr. Boom snapped a photo of Josh Ritter and me hugging. Dorkeist photo ever. I don’t care. Josh spoke a bit about the process of writing. He likened the first draft of a book to building a block of marble. Editing is the process of sculpting the statue out of the marble. I laughed when he said you edit and edit, sculpt and sculpt, and hope that at the end, when you whip off the sheet, you’ve got enough arms. I’m not putting quotes around that because I didn’t get it quite right. But you get the idea.

Okay, I’m saving the rest for another post. I can’t wait to tell you about the gardens, how well the trellises are working (I haven’t forgotten that I need to post the plans for them, Tanya!!), and a bee update.

All right. Off to work on reestablishing the good habits, and scaring some of the bad back into their corners,

Kat