wordsfromanneli

Thoughts, ideas, photos, and stories.

Category Archives: Fall


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Gratitude

With Canadian Thanksgiving coming up this weekend, I decided to read some background on the origins of this holiday and found that the information was a jumble of ideas and beliefs, historical evidence, and a lot of surmise. This holiday celebrated everything from a reunion of Martin Frobisher’s scattered windblown fleet in northern Canada in 1578 to Champlain’s feasts of thanksgiving for the harvest with the Mi’kmaqs and the French in 1606 (at which time the Mi’kmaqs introduced cranberries to the pioneers’ diet and helped prevent scurvy).

The  American influence brought the North American turkey, pumpkins, and squash to the Thanksgiving feast in the 1750s.

On January 31, 1957, the annual harvest time feast became an official holiday. In Canada it was to be held on the second Monday of October. An earlier November date was changed so it would not interfere with Remembrance Day on November 11.

 

Whatever the historical reasons for dates and for celebrating, it is commonly accepted that it is a time to give thanks for our many blessings.

These blessings may differ from one person to another, but the feeling of gratitude is the same.

Some traits to consider, one for each letter of Happy Thanksgiving:

Humble

Aiding

Providing 

Patient

Yielding 

 

Thankful

Helpful

Active

Noble

Kneeling

Satisfied

Gracious

Inviting

Volunteering

Innovative

Natural

Goodness

I hope you all have a million things to be thankful for this year. I know I do.


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Planning Ahead

This is perfect. Close to my woodshed where I can sleep out of the wind and rain. Old stack of landscape ties nearby for my root cellar and temporary stash….

Fall is in the air, and I have to fill the larder. I have hazelnut trees right here in the yard, but what I’m looking forward to is the brand new hazelnut tree across the street with sweet young hazelnuts this year. They’re smaller than the ones here, but they should be tasty.

Decisions, decisions. What to do? Well, I might just have to go for both.

First a little taste test. I stashed these young nuts here this morning, but after all that running back and forth and climbing the tree, I’ve worked up quite an appetite.

Yup! They’re good. Now to stash them under the landscape ties until I have time to bury the nuts here and there for my winter snacks.

But wait! I’d better check and make sure no one sees where I’m putting the nuts temporarily.

Okay, I think it’s safe enough. It’s only that kooky old lady with her camera. She’s harmless.

 

It’s so hard to gather nuts,

Every day is precious.

Later I can fill my guts,

With a snack delicious.

 

Sleet and cold may coat the ground,

Hard times lie ahead,

I will eat what I have found,

Hazelnuts in bed.

 

All the work will be worthwhile,

Though I’m tired today,

When it’s cold I’ll live in style,

I’ll just eat and play.

 

 


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Heat, Rain, and Rainbows

After weeks of hot, dry weather, the cooler days of autumn are so welcome. The grass that was yellow and breaking off if anyone walked on it, is breathing a huge sigh of relief. With each little rainfall, it has greened up slightly. Now, it is getting a really good soaking as the skies opened up and torrents of water dumped out.


And of course, I ran for the shovel  when this rainbow appeared. I’m still looking for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Sunny days are wonderful,

Warmth upon our skin,

All the flowers colourful,

Happy I have been.

 

But the sun shone every day,

Scorching every leaf,

Who would think we’d ever say,

Soon we’ll need relief.

 

People smiling through their sweat,

Lied and said, “How nice,”

Still they hoped that rain we’d get,

Even hail or ice.

 

Yet the sun just shone and shone,

As we watched the sky,

Secret rituals going on,

Rain dance on the sly.

 

Finally our wish came true,

Heavens opened wide,

Soaking people through and through,

As they ran to hide.

 

Rainbow glows in every shade,

Colours shining bold,

Hurry! Go and get that spade,

Dig that pot of gold.

.


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First Dampish Days

A dampish day, but that’s okay,

The sky is overcast,

The garden’s wet, so I’m all set,

The watering chore is past.

 

A squirrel hops, he looks, and stops,

He chatters to my face,

Then turns to run and have more fun,

At some much safer place.

 

I pick a pear and am aware

That rabbits like to chew,

If fruit should fall to ground at all,

It’s nibbled through and through.

 

The garden thrives and gives up chives

To make a lovely sauce,

But not the squash, it was a wash,

Complete and total loss.

I’m glad that kale does not get stale,

It’s growing, slow but strong,

This healthy plant in soup just can’t

Make anything go wrong.

 

A lonely rose, so bravely grows,

And blooms its last few days,

But come next year, you must not fear,

Again, it will amaze.


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Trees

After showing you so many burnt trees in a recent post, I thought I should show the positive side of things too.

Driving past these trees, a blur of yellow and a smattering of snow in the firs reminded me that autumn was nearly finished. It was just a matter of days before the poplar (?) leaves came down.

In the higher elevations, wind, weather, and possibly some road work crew meant the dormancy or death of some trees.

Trees [5]

Trees [1]

Some of the white-barked trees were clinging to the last leaves. Birch, poplars, aspen? I’m not sure, but these are all trees with whitish bark.

Trees [4]

Back in Montana, this stand of trees reminded me of when I’ve spilled the pack of lettuce seeds and a whole clump of them grew in a bunch, crowding each other so none can do well. It also looks like a football team in a huddle.

Trees [6]

The horses don’t mind it. The thick stand of trees probably acts as a good windbreak.

Trees [7]

In southern BC, along the Hope-Princeton Highway, a tree has taken the shape of a bear – a grizzly by the look of his dished skull and the hump on his back. I believe the park was closed when we drove by (in October), but it would be a wonderful place to hike (if you aren’t afraid of bears … which I am).

Manning Park

 


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Lookout Pass

Still dodging ice clumps that may or may not have rock-like centers, we are nevertheless, making progress in leaving the snow behind.

We pass the small town of St. Regis, near our Exit 16 refuge, where we will stay the night again.

Then another climb awaits us up into the hills to the Montana/Idaho border at Exit 0, Lookout Pass. The good thing about this pass is that it is about 2000 feet lower than that last one we went through, and less likely to be snowed in.

By the way, notice that “Lookout” is spelled as one word, as in “viewpoint.” I had started to think of it as two words (look out) like “watch out,” but its elevation is not nearly as high as MacDonald Pass so I must get this two-word definition out of my head. It’s just a pass with a gorgeous view from the top. The photo below is from 2015 (no snow). We didn’t stop to photograph the view this year.

Sure enough, the roads are fairly clear, in spite of snow hanging onto the trees right down to the level of the road.

Once we were over that hump, the rest of the crossing of the Idaho panhandle brought us ever closer to fall weather as we knew it.

We felt as if we were truly getting closer to home. Our next stay would be in Omak, Washington. I want to call it “Oboy!” instead of Omak because of the mini dramas that happened to us there. I’ll tell you all about it soon.


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Giving Up – Part 5

There comes a point when, no matter how badly you want something, you know that it’s wiser to give it up. Going ahead with our trip to eastern Montana, after negotiating three snowy weather systems in two short weeks, would have been pushing our luck.

So with high winds and snow still coming down on the way forward, and snow settling on the road behind us, we reluctantly turned homeward.

The tires had sat frozen and immobile for two bitter cold nights, so we eased ahead a few feet and held our breath. So far, so good. We could have cried, turning back, but it was a relief not to drive into more snow blowing sideways.

I could have cropped this photo so the antenna wouldn’t show, but the icy snow on the forward side of the antenna says something about the chilly air.

Here is one of the many views of the Clark Fork (one of my favourite rivers). It is visible flowing beside or under the highway off and on for many miles.

On our drive eastward, little snow covered these lower elevations. Now it made for scenic winter postcard material. In some areas, the water was warmer than the air, resulting in fog along the river.

You can tell where the river goes.

Snow had covered these hills that were bare when we had driven through a few days earlier.

Some snow was still on the roads. As the day warmed up, big transport trucks lost clumps of ice that had collected on them. In the stretch of road below, the eastbound lane is closed and the westbound lane is taking two-way traffic. You don’t want to catch an edge or a clump of ice. The one in the photo below is one of hundreds of clumps we had to avoid.

I wondered what these cattle were “grazing” on. Not much grass poking out from the snow. Winter is hard on many animals.

As we neared the upcoming MacDonald Pass, my knuckles gave the snow some competition for whiteness. I knew I had a good driver beside me, but with so much construction and lanes restricted by cones and ice (and I don’t mean ice cream cones), I was nervous all the way to the top of the pass.

 

And relieved to be going down to a lower elevation right afterwards. Only two passes left to negotiate before we got home.

 

 


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A Cool Trip – Part 4

The snow kept coming sideways and we talked about cutting our day’s drive short. We had planned to go as far as Fort Benton where a friendly RV park always awaited us, but Fort Benton was down a big hill along the banks of the Missouri, and we had seen pictures of how the town had fared in the September snowfall a week earlier. Did we want to be trapped in this valley town with snow covering the steep roads in and out of town? For that matter, could we even make it that far if we wanted to?

We had to get off the road or end up in a lonely prairie ditch. But where to go in Great Falls?

I remembered a Wal-Mart across from the town’s famous smelter and refinery, and that’s where we pulled in.

Wal-Mart Customer Service told us we were welcome to stay for three days. They had all the groceries we might need, a water supply, and a relatively safe place for us to stay. Three other rigs were already parked there and would remain there until after we left.

Wal-Mart even had Wi-Fi but it didn’t reach out to the parking lot.

Generally I prefer to be in an RV park or a place like Exit 16’s park, since public parking lots can be a bit risky if you’re camping overnight alone, but we had no choice by this time and were thankful for the relatively safe haven as the snow began to cover us up.

It would have been foolish to continue traveling, as the many accidents that day proved.

However, we were quite frozen in this place with -17degrees Celcius, feels like -23 (1 degree Fahrenheit, feels like -9F). In the morning, the windows had about a quarter of an inch of frost on them (on the INSIDE!), and the holding tank was frozen at the outlet, as we found out when we tried the next sani-dump we came to. We also tried to add water to our potable water tank – to no avail. The pipes leading to the tank were frozen.

We had a furnace, but running it all night might run our battery down and as luck would have it, the trailer battery was very low in the morning. The Captain ran the Honda generator and brought it back up. Everything was a struggle, and we were getting worn down.

The second night, some drug-crazed kids did a kick boxing display near our rig on the parking lot (yes, in that very cold temperature)! The driver even kicked the lid of his own car’s trunk. (The Captain said, IF it’s even their own car.) Then they tore out of the parking lot at 90 miles an hour.

After two nights there, if we continued north and then east as we had planned, we would be driving into more blizzard and heavy fog in extremely cold temperatures. We were only one long day’s drive from our destination, but there didn’t seem to be any point in going on, even if we could have done that safely. But could we safely go back?

 


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A Cool Trip – Part 3

From Exit 16, it’s not far to Missoula, one of our usual stops, but we pushed on this time and took a lunch break at Drummond, a bit farther east. Drummond is a tiny, tiny, tiny town, but it has a lovely community park, just past the sheep in this field.

While I made our lunch, the Captain let the dogs stretch their legs. They’d been very good about riding in their straw-filled crates in the back of the truck, but they were ready for a romp. Emma’s flying ears tell the story.

Then on we went, on our way. We took the shortcut to Helena by crossing on Highway 12 at Garrison. This meant going over MacDonald Pass at 6312 ft. It is on the Continental Divide, and that makes it seem special to me.

Going through Helena was uneventful, now that we have discovered the easiest route through it, turning onto Highway 15 North.

We tootled on happily until I said, “Oh, look at that fog up ahead.”

“Sure is thick, and we’re driving right into it.”

And then there were those dreaded orange and white barrels, forcing traffic into one lane for construction work that wasn’t even happening.

“That’s not just fog.” The Captain stated the obvious. We were heading into a blizzard.

See all the white stuff?

At one point, the orange and white barrels seemed to indicate that we should go into the right lane, and moments later we realized that we had exited I-15 and were on a little by-road with no place to turn back to re-enter the highway.

Being a little lower down, the visibility was better, but the winding road was narrow, and traffic was two-way. Not so much fun for a truck pulling a trailer. (You can see the highway above us to the left. So close and yet so far away.)

We came to a sign that said we had 8 miles to go to Wolf Creek, where we could rejoin the highway.

Oh joy! We were back on the main drag at last. With every mile, the air got whiter, and so did the fields, and the trees, and the road.

At this point we were feeling a bit of anxiety creeping in.


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Multi-tasking

I knew I had to spend a couple of hours in the kitchen today so I thought I might as well do two jobs at once. I put some bread dough ingredients in the bread machine, and when the mixing and rising was done, I put the dough into two loaf tins to rise again in a slightly warmed oven.

Then I got busy with these chanterelles the Captain and I had picked the day before.

One of them had grown like a bouquet of flowers.

Another was simply a giant single, so big a piece broke off when we handled it.

I washed the mushrooms in a tub of water, using the spray hose at the sink. Most of the needles and bits of dirt came off easily with the sprayer and I put the chanterelles into a bowl.

As I cut them up, I gave them another check to remove any last bits of forest that had come home with them.

Then I dumped the cut up mushrooms into the frying pan and sauteed them (basically cooking them for a few minutes to get most of the excess moisture out). I did many, many bowlfuls of mushrooms, cutting and cleaning while the previous batch simmered.

I put the cooked mushrooms into a stainless steel bowl and left them to cool before putting them into ziplocs to freeze in small batches.  They’re a great addition to curries, gravy, stir fries, and any number of other dishes.

When the bread dough had risen in the pans, I turned on the oven, and by the time all the mushroom work was done, I was rewarded with two freshly baked loaves of bread.