October 12, 2008 Autumn olives, and stained glass

We've had a string of absolutely perfect early fall days. The air is crisp, but the sun still close enough to warm the day up nicely.
Since the foraging field trip I've been in a frenzy trying to harvest as many autumn olive berries as I can before they pass for the season. So far I've boiled down 5 cups of berries and frozen them. Originally I was going to make fruit leather, but realized after making the mash that I didn't have any honey or stivia, so to keep them I decided that freezing was the way to go until I'm ready to dehydrate them. This morning on my way to taking Emily to work I saw this amazing sized Autumn olive bush loaded with berries, so after dropping Emily off I harvested what turned out to be 12 cups more. Dan and I really like eating the berries as they are and since I haven't tried the leather I didn't want to commit to any more of that, and unsure about the recipe for jam/jelly, I decided the best thing to do for now was to freeze the berries whole. After spending an hour de-berrying loads of branches I now have 2 quart sized bags, and 5 sandwich sized bags full of berries ready to go. Dan effectively managed to avoid berry stripping and decided he'd rather play with the dollhouse in the tent. We're getting very excited about our two week trip to Disney World in February and since we'll be camping in Fort Wilderness with Mom, Mo, Fran and Gary we thought we'd air out the tents and make sure they were in good shape.
Since our Autumn olive hunt took us to Hyannis yesterday we decided to stop in at AC Moore. A dangerous place for both Emmy and I. Emmy has taken up knitting, and really likes making scarves from the fringy yarn. She bought 10 skeins of varying colors while we were there. While scouting around I found this absolutely beautiful (well at least I thought so) Homespun yarn and after asking both kids if they wanted something made from it, and both saying no, I decided I'd make something for myself. I chose this poncho for my most of the time winter coat, since it usually never gets really really cold here. The color is lemonade. I can't wait till it's finished...I've never knitted for myself before! http://%20http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/khs-prettyPoncho.html While we were at AC Moore I made my way over to the faux stained glass window section. I've been looking at this one particular pattern for a long time and just was never sure if I really wanted to start what looked like a really big project. I astarted collecting all the stuff needed to complete it and before I knew it found my arms filled with everything necessary. I decided to bite the bullet, and proceeded to check out. As we headed home I was eager to get the kids fed so I could see what the project would entail. Turns out not nearly as much as I was expecting, and by last night had one of the kitchens storm windows complete. Our kitchen windows face our neighbors kitchen sliders and although we really like our neighbors I think we'd both feel a little better with more privacy. The stained glass was the perfect solution and we all agree it looks great! I had a chance to work on the second one this afternoon after breakfast at John's capeside dinner and a walk on the canal to the Jetty with Mike and Dan, but I ran out of materials! I think a trip to Hyannis might be in order on Tuesday, since tomorrow we're finally going to the King Richard's faire! Anybody want to meet us there???

October 9, 2008 Gowns, purple hair and Dennis the manatee

It's been quite a while since I've blogged. Things have just been really busy!

I woke up Saturday morning and thought, we should go to the King Richard's Faire http://www.kingrichardsfaire.net/ before it's gone for another year, we've said we wanted to go every year for the past 9 and haven't made it. Mike thought it was a good idea and with nothing planned for the weekend, we decided that's what we'd do....until Leone called. Janni needs a new roof put on her house and Mike was calling to ask Mikey if he'd lend a hand. We live in a very tight knit community and if one friend needs help everybody pulls together to get the job done. King Richards faire would just have to wait. The kids and I spent the weekend hanging around, Em worked Saturday. I worked Friday - Sunday. Em had her last driving instruction Sunday. The weekend passed and Janni's roof was left tarped and half done.

Monday was uneventful. We took Em to work, it was her first day cashiering at Mahoney's and she was a little nervous, but did great. Dan and I stopped at the grocery store on our way home to pick up food for the week and then went home to clean. Dan and I rearranged the living room to get the couch and loveseat off of the living room windows. With a strong north wind off the pond you can feel the cold air on your back. Dan took a nap, and I did school work.

Tuesday turned out to be a very busy day. I had a VNG http://www.stopdizziness.com/services_vng.asp test at Cape Cod ENT in Hyannis at 8:30am. Since I had to have a driver we decided I'd have the test then Em would drive us to the m all and we'd spend some time in Hyannis shopping. The test went well, comfortable except for the weight of the goggles I had to wear, and judging by the assistant running the test everything seemed normal right up until the Caloric test explained in #4 in the above link. She called in an audiologist to repeat the test and when it came back the same the audiologist said she'd seen that result once before. I don't know what any of it means, but it did sound like an abnormal finding. I see Dr. Mann next Wednesday.

The kids and I went to the mall afterwards. Our first stop was Macy's. They always have beautiful dresses this time of year, and I love trying them on. Em and I both tried a couple. I took pictures with my cell phone. I'm pleased with my progress. Size 10!

Em's been asking if she can color her hair for some time. After thinking about it for a while, I've decided that if that's the extent of her adolecent rebellion I'm a lucky mom. I gave my blessing. She chose purple hair dye from Hot Topic. We browsed the mall for a while, had lunch at the food court then made our way to Trader Joes and Christmas tree shop for a new carpet for the living room. We remove the old one every summer, it's easier to vacuum sand and dog hair without it, but always get a new one in the fall when the weather starts getting cool again. The kids and I headed home and since I was unhappy with the hair cut I got a couple of weeks ago asked Em if she wanted the hair cut she'd been nagging me about. We agreed and took our turns. The girl who cut my hair had blond under her dark hair and I started asking her about dying. 3 hours later we left. Em had some of her hair bleached then dyed purple, all three of us had our hair cut, Dan decided midway he wanted his hair spikey so into the chair he went. We got home at 6pm with just enough time to make dinner before Mikey got home. It was a hectic but good day!

Wednesday was Dan's first day back to Sandwich Library's preschool storytime. He did well, had a good time and made an Elmer the Elephant craft. Afterwards he and I had a picnic at the Marina playground then went over to Buzzards Bay to meet Dr. Lorraine Hurley and Blanche Derby http://www.tagyerit.com/freefood.htm for a foraging field trip on the canal. I had no idea how many weeds are edible. Our favorites are sheep sorrel which is everywhere and tastes like lemon, wood sorrel which looks like clover except it has heart shaped leaves and yellow flowers, it also tastes like lemon and the berries of the Autumn Olive which is an invasive bush with silvery leaves and bright red berries. The berries are incredible, we must have eaten a pint each! Here is a link to a blog with an Autumn Olive jam/jelly recipe. I've found a good source of them on a back road in Hyannis. I'm hoping to get a chance to forage closer to home sometime in the near future! Supposedly they're the sweetest right after the first frost.
http://wearemadeofdreamsandbones.blogspot.com/2006/09/autumn-olive-jam-saga.html

TodayMike was working in Newport and since Emmy wasn't working we considered going to RI with him, however Mom is camping and with a whole day to kill in Middletown and no car we decided we'd stay home and "enjoy" the wet day. Danny mentioned he'd seen the manatee on the news this morning with Daddy, and I had an idea. Nothing to do, and overcast...we could take a ride and see if we could see it. We arrived shortly after 9am, talked with the harbor master, and some of the natural resource guys for a while and although they were very nice they really told us very little. The kids and I poked around the docks for a while, and after seeing nothing started for the parking lot. There was a man parked up there and gave us the tip that yesterday the manatee had been feeding in the far corner. The kids and I decided we'd take a look and thanked our informant. Sure enough, we were not even down the ramp when someone said they'd just seen it. We walked down the dock and a worker invited Dan and I onto a boat. Within a minute this beautiful animal surfaced. It was probably 10 feet away but we were thrilled have seen it. Had we known just how close to it we would get this brief look would have seemed unremarkable. We watched Dennis or Denise surface and dive 4 or 5 times and got pretty used to the pattern. It would submerge for about 10 minutes. When it surfaced you'ld see it's nose, and sometimes it's back. It would come up and go down for 2 or 3 minutes before with a great sweep of it's tail it would dive for another 10 minutes.

Eventually it made it's way between two rows of dock and seemed to be coming directly towards us which is exactly what it did. In about 4 feet of water it surfaced along side the dock and proceeded to feast on the algae growing on the ropes. If Dan had reached out his hand he would have touched it, however the harbor master was looking on, trying to control the growing crowd. We decided we'd leave to let somebody else have a chance to see it. I have a feeling eventually they were going to block the docks entirely so the animal could do what it wished. Quite a liability having all those people and kids on the rickety old docks. There is a short video of the manatee in the upper left hand corner of this blog, if you'ld like to see more!

On the way home we stopped at Sally's to pick up some more dye. Emily loved the purple so much she wanted more, and was willing to entrust me to do it. We came home, Dan went down for a nap and I took to bleaching. 2 hours later, one very sad girl sits on the couch. Apparently when I bleached then dyed blue one particular section of hair I'd forgetten to take into account her part, and she now has a bluish/greenish stripe running right down the side of her head. Whoops.....

Here is the latest cape cod times article on Dennis: We would be the three people walking up and down the docks in the rain.
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081010/NEWS/810100308