Take a walk on the Wild side

Do dee do dee do do do...
Say hey babe, take a walk on the wild side!

Between the huge flush of Chicken of the Woods and the Wild Apples, it has been a booming wild week. 
I took some C.O.W. to Olive along with some wild apple jelly and got an apple pie from a wild apple tree in return.

There are two places that have wild grapes that are easy to get to. One is on the side of the gravel road and one is a huge grape vine that has been growing up the metal section of an old hay rack that leans up against our busted up garage. [See? the junk pile serves a purpose!]

The shots below are from the grape vine alongside the road. It is intertwined with a sugar maple and so the colors right now are very bright. See those little grapes?

I thought I'd taste some this year and they are sweet! So.
Since I'd made apple jelly from wild apples, I thought I'd see how hard it was to make grape jelly from tiny grapes!

Apparently Concord Grapes are very expensive these days [I used to have access to concords when a relative grew some on their farm]. They are the best grapes to use for jelly.

These are free! It takes a bit more time to pick enough, but I thought I'd give it a go.

 

I washed the grape bunches and then started picking them over and inspecting them. The process is tedious but with the help from music and ...

a bit of help from my friends...

[you know I can't help but bring my Lego Minifigures into the kitchen for help!]

This is what the process looks like.

From my first picking, I got nearly 2 1/2 cups of juice without putting the skins and seeds through a food mill. I had to go out and get some more but with 5 cups of juice, I can make a batch of Wild Grape Jelly.

While I was cooking up the grapes, I was also working on some not wild food. I'd purchased about 4 lbs of carrots at the Farmers Market. They were super sweet and delicious. I needed to get some frozen and vacuum sealed for winter veggies.

Farmer Bob came to the rescue and helped haul some of the larger carrots. It seems that they were too large for his little trailer! Fortunately, Bob seems to never get upset over difficult situations.

I need to be more like Bob.

I got a huge pot of them cut up and blanched.

I ended up with 7 servings of carrots frozen and ready to eat this winter and two half pints of dehydrated carrots mixed with onions, green beans, and tomatoes. Those half pints are what I dump into a broth I'll make out of the mushrooms or a beef broth for making soup this fall and winter.

I figure if I spend the day prepping food for future use, it will give me more time to explore and love the outdoors.

I can take more time to Walk on the Wild Side.

I love Winter

 

Someone told me I was lying to myself when I said I loved winter the most. Chuckle Chuckle.

I love every season of course. Winter always provides me with so much to see. 

Granted. In the spring and fall, I can walk the woods and not be so bothered by insects. Summer brings its own delights which include much longer days and some un-delights of heat and humidity.

I love flowers which only bloom in my garden from Spring to Fall. But Winter provides me with time on my hands to explore the shapes of trees. Time to watch ice falls develop on a rock and moss sandstone wall.

I am afforded the ability to admire the frost that develops on the rocks in a large spring.

I can hike through the valley and bask in warm sunshine in one spot and be in chilled in the shadows and cold breezes in another.

I can be amazed over and over by an old oak tree's shape against the snow or how it casts shadows over the stream.

I can see how the natural order of things progress. I can find deer beds, coyote dens, 'possum trails, and raccoon tracks. I see how nature cleans up after a death. Who strips those bones clean like that? Not coyotes. But the Titmouse, the Bluejay, and Woodpeckers! 

Death in the valley provides a little something for everyone except the unfortunate whitetail perhaps.

The mice will find important minerals in this buck's antlers that will help them. They find calcium, phosphorous, and minerals that may be lacking in their diet in the antlers of some deer and their bones.

This huge spring provides warm water for scuds and caddisfly larvae to survive cold spells.

The spring comes out of the hillside.

It joins the creek as it flows down hill.

View looking towards the south.

No matter how cold it gets, I've never seen this spring freeze over. The water is about 45 F all year. During a very deep freeze, all the moss covered rocks get covered in a beautiful frost.

The first signs of spring arrive here on near this spring. Skunk Cabbage!

Winter provides me with more challenges to find interesting photographs. There is the snow to deal with which throws off the camera meter. There is the cold to deal with. The cold will drain batteries swiftly. Moving cameras from cold to warm can damage them if precautions aren't taken. 
Dressing appropriately can also be an issue. After years of trial and error, I am coming to a happy medium.

This hike last week involved a small backpack with a thermos of hot chocolate, hand warmer packets, fresh mittens in case mine got wet, my pistol, and camera batteries in my inner pockets. 

The thermometer hanging off my camera strap read -9 F at the spring.

My feet got cold while I explored the Big Spring. But I knew that a hard and fast walk with my snowshoes on would warm my feet up.

Eventually I made it to our ridge trail and headed up out of the valley.

That is my shadow and if you look closely, you might even see the shadow of a Teddy Bear face in my backpack.

Silly, I know, but Bear doesn't mind the cold.

By the time I got home, I was damp with sweat. 

And that

is 

some of the

reasons

I like  love winter.

March Madness

I have no idea of where to start things.

I thought March Madness was meant for the college basketball playoffs or NBA or something like that.

It isn't. It is what is going on here.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty tame. Not much going on. I took Charlie hiking and spent time with Sven and teaching him to come and work on a line.

We went from Frozen to Rain/Frozen overnight on Tuesday evening. Little short video of my sled that I used to take some trash up to the dumpster that my neighbors and I share. Taken with the cell phone but it was pretty funny.

By late afternoon the township truck did come through and sanded the hill.
Rich called his mom and wished her a happy 88th birthday and she was quite chatty and said she'd just had a shower and had to clean up the mess. [This was a big deal as MIL keeps insisting that she only had a shower last week when it has been much much longer than that. I found out later that Helping Hands assisted after months of trying and finally got her showered. MIL tends to come in and out of reality quite a bit.]

The Field Agent from the VA called, I advised her not to drive down our hill and walked up to meet her. Her name was Jane and she was a very pleasant person.
Everything was straightened out and I had worried needlessly.
Jane explained how in some situations the wives of veterans had mistreated their husband's pensions. I was a bit shocked by that. She talked of a situation where the wife took the pension money and bought things for a boyfriend.

The phone rang again and it was MIL. Her sister had passed away and she wanted to go right now to the funeral. Rich had to take her now. Rich tried to explain to his mom that he didn't drive anymore and that he couldn't make the 3 hour drive anyway. Sometimes MIL loses a sense of time and space. So when she says now, she may mean not now. She has no conception of how sick her son really is either.

Meanwhile the rains started in again and the temperatures climbed. Snow and ice began to crash off the roof.

I got another phone call from my step daughter who said she got a text from her Aunt in Utah that MIL's freezer wasn't working properly.
I was confused as to why a message like that had to go half way around the country to come back to me. But I knew how to handle it rather quickly.

I emailed MIL's Guardian to let her know about the issue.

Helping Hands reported back to me that the fridge had not been working for at least a week. They had to toss all of the items in the fridge.

We are working on getting MIL to her sister's funeral that hasn't been planned yet. The rivers are flooding, roads are covered in areas...and the stress hasn't been positive for Rich.

Steph and Steve and the kids are coming this weekend to visit.

I took two time outs yesterday and went to watch the snow melt dash down the rocks and creek. I took my neighbor and the dogs on one of the trips. The dogs played in knee deep snow and slush while we watched the waters tumble down the hillsides and roar into the normally very quiet stream.

I need to get back to catching up on all of the fun animal things from the past few days.
How Charlie and I got stuck in deep snow! How much fun it has been playing with Sven the Goat!

Toodles...