All posts tagged: Buffalo NY

Curse Not the Green Tomatoes, Make Chutney.

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The Fedco seeds Cosmonaut tomato variety yielded fine, heavy fruits in my garden this summer. They failed to ripen. I may have had words about that in past times. I take them all back. The knife wielding WideEyedSpouse and I picked, washed, chopped pounds of green tomatoes to make six pints of chutney, six pints of green tomato gold. Five are left. Yesterday, on hearing that I had chutney stored in the basement, WidedEyedFriend W made unsubtle overtures toward getting some of it. I pretended not to understand. There are only five pints left to last an entire year. I am already planning a 2014 green tomato garden. I combined two recipes (1, 2) I found on other sites to make my own concoction based on what they said and what I had around: 12 cups seeded, cored, and diced green tomatoes, 5-7 pounds 1 cup raisins (paid no attention to light, dark, whatever) 1 cup Craisins 2 cups mixed chopped onions, shallots, 2 garlic cloves (in exponentially decreasing volume order) 3 cups brown sugar …

Green tomatoes all over the place.

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Hoist with my own petard. That’s my tomato situation. Although to be fair and correct I wasn’t intending to harm anyone with my tomatoes. Ok, I might maybe have considered throwing the nibbled ones at squirrels and urban skunks so maybe I can use the petard thing. You know, I’m just going to. The healthy tomato garden. Last summer I planted five heirloom tomato plants: the garden peach and some kind of giant lumpy variety. They grew fast, blossomed well, and produced just a few incredibly aromatic, pleasantly textured tomatoes. The WideEyedSpouse and I made an event of each one because they were so few. This summer I decided on a tomato blitz. I tortured myself with descriptions of heirloom and organic varieties in the Fedco catalog. I agonized over which seeds to buy. I settled on a cherry variety, a dense purpley Cosmonaut, and the succulent yellow Garden Peach. I nurtured those seedlings under a grow light in my dressing room for months. It was inconvenient, sure, but we all dreamed of a tomato …

18 years together | 4,100 miles apart

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“It’s disgustingly hot and humid,” the WideEyedSpouse tells me. I can hear the barest hint of dogs panting in the background of the call. “Huh,” I tuck my cold feet under me and look out the wide window into a chill, gloomy, rainy fall afternoon. “I’m putting the a/c unit back in the window,” he says and I shiver. Yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary and we were almost as far away from each other as we can be while remaining in the U.S. We weren’t the farthest apart we’ve ever been on an anniversary. That was in 1998 when I was living in a Eureka BombShelter tent on the north shore of Attu Island and he was in Madison, Wisconsin. The WideEyedSpouse celebrated our anniversary by walking the dogs in the park. As their gift to him, Hamish and Miss Tibbit produced a record setting 11 dookies in one day between the two of them. “Congratulations Boss!” they might have been thinking, “Many happy years to come!” I celebrated by huddling at my makeshift …

Miss Tibbit Takes Herself to Brunch.

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“I’m feeling peckish,” Miss Tibbit, the Useless-Little-Black-Dog, thought to herself this sunny Saturday morning. She was curled tight on the Big Bed next to the Person. She laid there for a few moments more, thinking through her options. The Person had coffee and a book, nothing worth asking for there. Wiggins the Ancient Cat now lives in a sequestered room and his food bowl was not accessible. Miss Tibbit had cruised the kitchen counters during breakfast two hours ago. Empty. Also empty was the Sesame Melba Toast carton abandoned by Hamish the Corgi on the living room floor. Miss Tibbit sighed and resigned herself to hungry napping. One ear perked. Miss Tibbit had an idea. An elusive memory tracked across her tiny mind. She felt that something wonderful sat on the kitchen floor, unguarded, far away from the Person, and certain to satisfy even the biggest snacky appetite. The Person mistrusts Miss Tibbit’s intentions as a matter of habit, so this had to be a cunning operation. Miss Tibbit made a plan. “Yaaawwnnn,” she said, …

Yoha, Friends!

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“YOHA “ I read the bold word on the flag. It flapped cheerfully from the porch of one of the grand old homes on the morning dog walk route. “Yoha?” I said to the dogs. I wondered what it meant. The WideEyedHousehold is in a pretty multicultural neighborhood – even a little global what with the proximity of all the colleges and the medical corridor. It could be in any language; it could be English but mean something I am not familiar with. “Yoha.” I tried it out again. I said it all cheery and imagined walking past the house flying the YOHA flag and saying it to the people who lived there. “Yoha, neighbors!” They’d probably wave back at me, happy that someone was greeting them in their language. The dogs and I turned the corner and I took one last look back at the YOHA flag. The yellow and white sailing boat on the flag above the lettering undulated in the breeze. “Must have something to do with the ocean or water,” I …

Miss Tibbit, the Useless-Little-Black-Dog, had a bad week.

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Friday: There was a horrendous, apocalyptic thunderstorm and she was forced to go out into the yard for bedtime peeing while the storm still rumbled in the distance. It was scary. Saturday. It was still raining, and Miss Tibbit had to go for morning walkies in the rain. Her coat got all wet and her paws splashed through endless puddles. Plus, all the worms were floating and mushy instead of barbequing on the sidewalk the way she likes them. Who wants worm soup? Sunday. Even though the sun was shining everyone was too busy scrubbing the traffic soot off of the front porch and making a screen for the front window. No one offered a nice, long park walkie. No one lounged around in the back yard for hours. It was boring. Monday. The vet’s office was smelly with other dogs, none of whom were available for playing. Miss Tibbit had lots of treats, but she was stuck by three needles dumping stuff in her, one needle taking stuff out, a nasty nose drip medicine …

I am a heat-born invalid.

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The dogs and I visit the sere back lawn a few times a day. When we can’t stand it anymore, we slump back inside through the furnace that is the kitchen, trudge up the stairs and head back into our master bedroom sequester.  The air conditioner is in there. For a week I’ve been running my professional life from my bed surrounded by notes, books, and computers – I am a heat-born invalid. Across the hall my office reaches 86, , 88, 90 degrees as the afternoons progress and the high humidity threatens to reanimate the long dead, road-kill flattened, dried frog hanging on my office wall. A zombie frog. That might be interesting. I would be too hot to run away. Old houses were designed to draw breezes, to vent, to cool themselves in summer. So I’ve been told, so I’ve read. It isn’t true. I think the old timey folks created this mythical cannon to convince themselves that they weren’t miserably sweaty and uncomfortable in their endless layers of wool, cotton, silk. It …

Bees in my garden.

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I knelt along the grassy edge of my garden at about noon on Sunday. The newly blooming lilies scented the air in front of me. Coreopsis Moon Glow danced in a little breeze off to my left. Bees, large and small, hairy bodied and crunchy looking, twirled with the blooms. The lavender, heated in the sun, wafted calm scents toward me from the right. Bees were in the lavender, too. The mystery lilies, planted sight unseen last fall as unassuming bulbs, are waiting to burst open. Daisy, who lives next door except for when she is sleeping on the sunny rocks in my garden, stopped by to learn why I was kneeling in the yard. When winter comes, and I find endlessly creative language to complain about slush, ice, and the grim, damp cold of Buffalo, remind me of the bees in the summer garden.

Hamish the Corgi Achieves Master Craftsdog Status

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Press Release: With the intuitive senses of a nascent master of his craft, Hamish eyed the 107th Annual Strawberry festival at the Church of the Good Shepherd at the corner of Jewett and Summit Avenues. A cluster of younger people with their kids and older folks sat in the shade trees sharing strawberry desserts, music, and good fellowship. I could see that he thought it looked promising and he was considering a performance for the Festival attendees. He didn’t commit to it and we walked on. How fortuitous that we did so. Although perhaps it wasn’t luck but a deeper sensitivity in Hamish’s newly proved mastery. Diagonally across the intersection, the Darwin Martin house was having a red-carpet affair: valet parking, bejeweled and well-dressed middle agers climbing from luxury autos, and hors d’oeuvres and cocktails inside what is itself an architectural master piece. Hamish walked to the groomed corner lawn of the Martin House Complex and stopped. He cast his glance uphill to the Strawberry Festival, clearly within sight and scent. His ears swiveled backward, …

The snow shovel taunts me.

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The solstice was just a few days ago and I spent most of it among a pinkening crowd on the beach in Ocean City, New Jersey. Yesterday, back in humid and hot Buffalo, the sun gleamed high and bright and long as I mulched the front garden and putzed in the back. I slumped over my grilled cheese and salad dinner last night all sun roasted and dehydrated. My chair position gives me a command view of the back yard and vegetable garden and I like to gaze out there in the evening light, especially after a day of garden toil. Everything looks so promising at this time of year. I glanced at the garage doors and my eyes snagged on something shining yellow and glowing through the window. It was the snow shovel. It is dangling from a hook in the back of the garage and should be invisible for the summer. It isn’t your turn, I thought at it. I can wait, it told me.