Tidbits 6/13/2010

We've had three and one-half inches of rain since yesterday morning. The evening and overnight weather vigil has begun, and I hear thunder. We have a severe thunderstorm warning, and 90% chance of heavy rain overnight. Does this sound like good wheat harvest weather? Didn't think so.

Already all the fields have major mud holes . . . . We now interrupt this "broadcast" to shut down the computers and unplug the phone lines, since the weather is sounding more and more violent out there.

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No hail, but the wind blew fiercely for a bit, and we got dumped on. I told Grant I thought the rain was bypassing the droplet stage and just coming in sheets to save time. Although I still hear thunder almost constantly, the window-rattling claps and blinding flashes have moved off to the east.

The weather map is very colorful, mostly in different shades of green, which indicate all sorts of flooding reminders--watches, warnings, flash-floods and ordinary floods. Heavy rain northwest of us is bringing water downstream through our county and creating flooding along streams.

I haven't checked the rain gauge.

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Earlier this week, we had storm damage from part of a tree and the meter pole ending up on the garage roof. I read later that there were microbursts in the area, and I suspect that may be what happened here.

The very next night we had another round of thunderstorms, and Hiromi got up during the night to unplug the phone line that connects the computers to the DSL line for internet access. He should have unplugged the phones altogether as we all realized after we discovered three of the four phones in our house got zapped overnight, and had to be replaced.

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During these storms I worry about the sheep. The dogs occupy their former quarters, so they have a chance to stay dry, but that leaves the sheep without shelter. I know the rain doesn't hurt them, but I think it would be close to criminal to leave them outside if we had hail the size of some I've seen on this farm. I think it could kill an animal.

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Yesterday at market, Grant's boss, Terry, brought some of his daylily blossoms to show me. He's embarked on a daylily breeding venture, hoping to combine some of the beauty of southern daylilies with the hardiness of northern daylilies.

I've learned from him what breeders are working on. They love a colorful "throat" to contrast with the main color of the flower. They also love ruffled edges, and it's even better if that ruffle has a color that contrasts with the main flower color. Sometimes breeders can manage to fix two lines of color on that ruffled edge. Another feature is the "pinch," which is found in the middle of the outer edge of each petal. It looks as though someone literally pinched the petal there, and the soft fold stayed.

Yesterday morning Terry had done some pollination work on his daylilies. He does this the old fashioned way, by transferring pollen from one flower to the ovary of another flower. Then he waits till a seed head forms and ripens. He gathers and plants the seeds and grows the plants for however many years it takes for them to reach flowering size. If the flower is what he's looking for, he propagates it vegetatively until he has enough stock to sell to a nursery. This process takes about seven years from start to finish.

I love daylilies and Terry loves to talk about them, so we have a good time together.

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Yesterday my high school home ec teacher came to Farmer's Market. She told me she lives on the farm where she grew up near Pretty Prairie. I learned this because I spoke up and asked her if she is Mrs. Kemp. I told her who I was, and that gave us an opener to a nice brief conversation. I always marveled that such a chic, smartly dressed lady had such an Amish name: Edna Ruth Kemp. (I didn't tell her that though.)

Later, someone came by who looked like Mr. Kirby, the high school math teacher who followed the memorable Mr. Oliver, who was my math teacher. I didn't speak up and ask him if he was Mr. Kirby, though.

I don't know if it's cowardly or courteous to spare these people being accosted by the likes of me, probing for confirmation of an identity they established with me so many years ago. I confess I avoided identifying myself to Miss Deiner once when I saw her in a fabric store, but she died not long after, and I was sorry I didn't act more friendly. She taught me in third and fourth grade.

I think I feel ambivalent about renewing some of these old acquaintances because I am not proud of all that these people know about me. But I think I probably need to get over being preoccupied with such things. I know that every student I've ever taught has a warm spot in my heart, and I love when they talk to me. The ones I knew when they were junior high age thirty or more years ago and have rarely seen since, I might not recognize instantly. I might have to do as Mrs. Kemp did: "Refresh my memory," she said, and then when I told her my name she remembered me.

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I would love to find what kind of lettuce we could grow right through the summer. So far it seems that the French crisp or summer crisp types show the most promise. These have less tip burn tendency than the butterheads, and seem to stay bitter-free longer than most. The heads are about half the size of grocery-store iceberg types, and not as firmly packed. All the leaves are greener, and thus more nutritious than iceberg varieties.

People often tell us how wonderful tasting was "the lettuce we got from you last week." We're crossing our fingers, and hoping for at least one more week of good lettuce growing weather.

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My sister Linda began moving yesterday to a house two doors down from her present home. The process has been delayed somewhat by the work needed to refinish the hardwood floors hiding beneath a well-used wall to wall carpet.

Willard, who is Marvin's go-to man for home improvements, is up to the refinishing task, and the floors are looking better every time I see them.

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Yesterday we picked about four gallons of pie cherries off the little tree by our parking area. They are from a Balloton tree that we planted after we moved here. This year's crop is by far the largest this tree has ever produced.

I'm making a mental note to check out the kinds of sour cherry trees that have red flesh instead of yellow flesh as this one has. I'm disappointed with the browning that occurs when the fruit is exposed to air, even at the point where the stem separates from the fruit. North Star is a variety I remember as having red flesh, with the very common Montmorency having yellow flesh like the Balloton.

Does anyone know how well or poorly the mechanical cherry pitters work? I'm wary, but since I don't have a crew of offspring to put to work pitting cherries, I can see that my preservation of pie-ready cherries is going to be limited by the time it takes to prepare them.

I made a pie last night, and need to pit many more cherries tomorrow. I also want to make the cherry cobbler Judy's grandma used to make.

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We checked on things tonight again at the Trail West place. I discovered a raspberry bush almost hidden under the branches of a volunteer mulberry and nestled next to a bush cherry. I offered to share the one ripe raspberry with Hiromi. Thankfully he refused the offer and I got to eat it myself.

We were dismayed to find bindweed in a sizable patch of what used to be our garden. I doubt that the people who lived there recognized it for the thug it is. Gardeners and farmers know that it needs to be attacked early and often--not allowed to grow unchecked, or eradication could be very difficult.

Out back in the orchard area a lot of water was standing. Fruit trees don't like standing water. I didn't like the puncture vine and thistles I saw growing there. That place needs sheep again, and geese, to keep the "stickers" at bay.

Bermuda grass has spread a great deal since we left the Trail West place . In the right place, this is a good thing. It can be very invasive though, and I don't want it anywhere near the garden or flower beds. Around the back door and in the sheep pen it's OK.

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Two weeks ago we, along with many other Partridge area families, were invited to our closest neighbor's place for a "pre-ception" as a celebration of their daughter's upcoming marriage in Minnesota. It was also a celebration of her parents' marriage and her aunt and uncle's marriage at least 25 years ago. We didn't take our dancing shoes as was suggested, and we never did make it to the backyard where the music was being played.

But we had a memorable and wonderful time, camped out at a table by the little stream at the base of the bank of flowers in front of the house. Jamie and Chris have made a lovely homesite out of an abandoned farm we used to walk to sometimes on Sunday afternoons. The water feature they've installed is part of the charm of the place. The food was abundant and delicious, and old friends, one by one, stopped by to chat as we ate and stayed to soak up the ambiance.

We grew up near Chris' family, and it's really neat to live close together still and exchange flowers and news of our family's doings.

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At Jamie and Chris' house, we visited for some time with Kaisha, who is married to Chris' nephew. She and Hiromi have at least one thing in common. They are first generation immigrants.

Kaisha is from Poland. When she was seven years old, she and her mother and younger sister boarded a ship on which her father worked as an electrician. This was not unusual, since families seldom saw the husband and father of the family otherwise. The occasional accompaniment on voyages helped compensate for long absences.

On this voyage, the ship docked in New Orleans. While in port, Kaisha's family simply walked off the ship and went to the American embassy to seek political asylum. They knew no English, so an interpreter was located for them. They also had no contacts in the United States, and no money to buy what they needed. Someone put them in touch with a charitable agency that found them a place to stay, and helped them get established in other ways.

Poland at that time was beginning to change through the rise of Solidarity, and in some ways, life was not too bad for Kaisha's family. But as Kaisha explained, her parents could not feel peace about who they had to become to survive in Poland. They wished to be law-abiding citizens, but found themselves smuggling baby formula from Sweden and baby clothes from Germany in order to provide for their young family.

When they left on that trip to the United States, no one told Kaisha anything. It would have jeopardized the plans if children had blabbed at the wrong time, so she never had a chance to tell her grandparents goodbye, and she mourned the loss of the new kitten she had gotten just before they left Poland. It was five years before it was safe to go back to Poland for a visit, and they saved enough money. In that last year before they returned, both of her grandfathers died.

Kaisha marvels at her parents' chutzpah in having decided to come to America. In New Orleans there was no enclave of Polish immigrants as there is in Chicago and possibly elsewhere, so they had to interact with people who they could not converse with or they would not have interacted at all.

Hiromi arrived in America on a boat also, docking at Los Angelos. However, he left his home in Japan openly, and had a sister waiting in Kansas who opened her home to him for the first several years he lived in the United States. He was not escaping a repressive political situation. He was attracted to America because there was adventure and room and opportunity here. Although he has always struggled with English, he had studied it in school, and could read and write it to some extent, so he was far ahead of Kaisha's family in this regard.

But both Kaisha and Hiromi have found the immigrant experience challenging. Neither one would want to leave the US, but both have left part of themselves behind in their country of origin. In a sense that makes them strangers here because so few share knowledge of their background. However, on a quiet early summer evening in the country near Partridge, Kansas, talk of one's home country and experience in arriving here is a pleasure neither could have known if Hiromi and Kaisha's parents had not ventured boldly into unknown territory to make a new home. And that is only one of the pleasures they all have found in this welcoming land.

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My youngest brother Marcus has shingles.

Last week Hiromi saw a doctor for a physical exam, and he asked him if he wants a shot to prevent shingles. He didn't think he needed it since "Isn't it only old people who get shingles?"

I told him I knew of someone who had that virus settle in the spinal cord, with total disability as the result. That scared him.

I also explained that shingles is not just a skin problem; it's a nerve problem essentially, with the skin eruptions occurring where the nerve endings are. This was news to him. He's reconsidering the shingles shot.