How does one occupy the last day of daylight savings time?? With an extra hour to do whatever??
How about sleeping in a bit; holding 2 piano lessons; cooking a pot of homemade chicken, dumpling soup; prepping 2 of the 5 pumpkins and baking savory pumpkin seeds; watching several recorded episodes of Ancient Aliens---far out, man; eating a bunch of food cause all those aliens and that extra hour take a lot of energy: cleaning up the kitchen: wondering how to usefully spend that last, extra hour; fixing my sight on Dec. 21 when the daylight starts to grow longer again---my favorite day of the year!
Finally, programming my brain to realize summer is over and holiday frenzy has officially begun! And to all, a good night!
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ME...The twilight zone week following the time change from daylight savings.
Pumpkins donated to me after the church family fun night....
prepping and baking and bagging.....
A tale of five pumpkins....each was quite heavy. One of the 5 turned moldy and stinky after a couple days. One of the 4 prepped had only about 20 seeds in it. The faithful, final three yielded a large harvest of roasted seeds. I eat a few but the Millers have a hearty appetite for them.
Now for the rest of the story. A few weeks back, Vancouver initiated an "organic" recycle program that we get to pay for. We have cute little (or big, if you want to pay more) carts to store our "organics only" recyclables for pick up every 2 weeks. We each received a small heavy plastic tub to hold scraps between pick ups. They also gave us two complementary "compostable" plastic looking gallons sized bags and an exhaustive list of what may and absolutely may not go into these containers.
I am unnerved about how to store my organics. I find at times I have a large amount; sometimes only an egg shell or onion peel; sometimes uncooked chicken skin and or fat. The instructions said to layer our organic waste between the yard debris of leaves, twigs, etc. Nice, if you have them.
I have not yet got into a rhythm of recycling. Often I will gaze at the misc. amount of whatever and ponder for excessive time on just how to store this particular heap of natural treasure. I want to be an honorable organic citizen. In the old days it was merely a choice of the garbage disposal or the garbage bag. Life was much simpler then. Now, its, do I put it in temporary plastic bags to dump loose (and runny and smelly) into the bin the night before pick up? Then
....back to the 5 heavy pumpkins. The first pumpkin went neatly into recycle bin in two large pieces. I carried half out at a time, though I had been able to carry the whole pumpkin into the house. When I carried out the first half of the second one to dump
in the cart, I observed it was almost full. (Our instructions warned us to not overflow our handy dandy bins.) I thought to dig out the 2 halved ones to cut into smaller chunks, but that was too awkward. I took the 3rd halved one back into the house and dissected it, after which I decided that was too much work. I did manage to stuff the halved, 4th half into the bin and pondered what to do with the other three. (The rotten one wasn't appearing rotten yet since I left three for another day.)
When that another day arrived I had already detected a peculiar, acidy, a little off, odor in the kitchen. Everything looked alright until I examined the remaining pumpkins and found one was soft, mushy, stinky and growing white stuff all over the bottom. I delicately carried it upside down out to the deck to be dealt with later, since it was a rainy day. Then used paper towels to soak up the smelly liquid coating the floor.
The next day I again delicately picked up the upside down pumpkin to gently place in the cart. That filled the cart.
It was finally time to finish the project. The last two pumpkins went down without an issue, but now what to do with the 4 halves?
I thought on this a very long time and finally I reasoned that even in the regular garbage, they would eventually return to the dirt from which they had come. Yes, that would work, I just won't let the organic police people know.
So comes the final chapter. It is Sunday evening and time for all good garbage to meet its destiny. I grab the organic cart in the garage to roll it out to the sidewalk and almost pull my arms out of socket. If one pumpkin is heavy to carry, how much does 4 halves and a whole rotten one weigh all at the same time???? More than my unsuspecting arm muscles anticipated. Fortunately, the cart didn't completely land flat on the ground. I was able to maneuver it out to the street's edge. I was ready for the weight of the regular garbage bin that was hiding the 4 renegade pumpkin halves. Now all I had to do was wait out the night and trust the garbage guys had no issues with white fuzzy stuff in the organic bin nor 4 pumpkin halves in the non-organic bin. I think they really didn't give a care.
Later in the day as I went for a walk, I felt vindicated when I saw
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A grateful remembrance to our veterens on November 11.
Dad Louie; daughters Debbie and Angie: daughter-in-law, Jen; sons Burt, Chuck and Al; son-in-law KeysAt Mt. Rushmore June, 2012
A Veterens Day walk for Gram G
My attention has now turned to an upcoming adventure. But you will have to return to check on that!
This has been a good 18 "organics" days in the life of Grandma G.
"And Jesus said, 'Have the people sit down.' There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, 'Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.' " (John 6:10-12)
