Mom taught me, and a few other lucky women, to can. I’ve done research and read books, but having mom’s advice and lore from decades of experience was simply great. She’s a bit of a renegade [...]]]> Last weekend, as planned, my parents came up to our place and helped us out on a number of fronts.

Mom taught me, and a few other lucky women, to can. I’ve done research and read books, but having mom’s advice and lore from decades of experience was simply great. She’s a bit of a renegade canner, and when she mentioned sealing jams with wax and skipping the water bath entirely, I expected USDA commandos to break through the kitchen door. But we learned the importance of following the recipe, keeping the implements clean, and how to use a pressure cooker.

By the end of the weekend, we had canned two batches of blackberry jam (thanks for bringing the fruit, mom!), one batch of blueberry lime jam, one batch of Makers Mark peach butter, and a whole bunch of carrots and garlic, which we plan to use in soups.

While I was learning to can, Brooks, my dad, and a great group of volunteers were helping raise our new fence. Raise. I guess I say that because it was like an old-fashioned barn raising. A fence raising. We got most of the way there; I wimped out on the sealing with linseed oil Sunday evening, and there is a colorful and eclectic array of finials that are awaiting install. Plus the gate. But all in all, it’s really looking good:

The fence is based on one a few miles away that Brooks saw and liked. He has, however, made a number of improvements, and the finished project will be fantastic.

Now that we have (most of) a fence, the next step is obvious. We will get a dog. Tomorrow, we’ll meet Bella and fall in love with her (you just know some things in advance) and bring her home as soon as we are screened and approved. Happy day!

But even before the great canning fest of 2009, I had more immediate [...]]]> Our tomatoes have finally been ripening. This has occasioned all kinds of anticipation, as well as plans to have my mom come for a visit in a couple weekends and teach me to can (while Dad helps Brooks with the new, meth-head-deterring fence).

But even before the great canning fest of 2009, I had more immediate plans to use two huge heirloom tomatoes that were finally ready for eating. Oh yes. They were to be combined with our own lemon cucumbers, basil, red onions, and oregano into a delicious Greek salad tomorrow night, when my brother passes through Portland on his way to his new Coast Guard assignment in Alaska.

You will note the past tense. Were. For, when I turned the corner on the way home from work today, a meth head was picking one of them. And by the time I got to the driveway, he was eating it. While I applaud his interest in nutrition, this was Our Tomato. Really, the first of the heirlooms. And therefore special.

This occasioned some rolling down of window and yelling on my part, followed by some fleeing on meth head’s part.

Ok, I wish he had fled. But the bastard insolently ambled, and even turned around to shout at me when he overheard me tell my brother on the phone that he had said. “I took your tomato; I’m a moron.”

But wait, there’s more! Meth head later returned, clearly casing the joint out. I tremble for our carrots. But Brooks was in the carport and spied him, and bless him, he gave the meth head a Great Fright. OH god. I wish I had been there to see it. However, others were. I take comfort in that.

I also hope that our taillights aren’t broken out tomorrow.

On to more delightful topics. No one has stolen the flowers from the front yard. Yet.

I have terrible respiratory allergies, and one of the things that has become more and more troubling for me over time is tobacco smoke. It used to be that it occasionally would provoke a [...]]]> I’m still pretty gleeful as I write this. Last night, we had a really, really great experience with a local business owner.

I have terrible respiratory allergies, and one of the things that has become more and more troubling for me over time is tobacco smoke. It used to be that it occasionally would provoke a coughing fit, but now it’s an invariable and awful consequence of being exposed to smoke. This means that we have to scout out the road ahead of us when we are walking and cross streets to avoid smokers, leave outdoor seating at restaurants when a smoker lights up, and that my day can at any instant be reduced to a fit of coughing and choking when some freewheeling tobacco lover exercises their stupid right to smoke what seems like everywhere but inside businesses.

Since Oregon’s anti-smoking laws came into effect, I thought it would be easier. In fact, it’s worse, if anything. Smokers now hang out outside of dive bars and smoke on the sidewalk, which is….hello….a place shared with people who may NOT be smokers, and every outdoor dining area I have been in is still crawling with them.

So, we were at Sam’s martini bar in the Pearl, Olive or Twist. The name is awesome, I know. We were sitting outside, and someone a table away lit up. I was immediately apprehensive, but the wind was blowing his direction, so it was ok for a couple minutes. Then it shifted, and I immediately started coughing. GRRRRR. We collected our drinks and headed inside, but Sam spotted us, noted my obvious gasping for breath, and asked if the smoke was bothering us. We said yes, and he told us not to go inside, that he would take care of it.

And bless his heart forever, Sam went over to the smoker and asked him to leave. Never, ever, ever has a business owner done anything to protect their customers from smokers while I was around, and I am incredibly appreciative. It was nice for once to have the smoker have to leave, not me.

I’m highly aware that I have family members and friends whom I love who smoke, but I just don’t believe it’s right that smokers be able to endanger my health and foul up public spaces.

At this point, he had been “packing” [...]]]> So, it was Thursday morning. Thursday as in the day that’s after the day the neighbor had said he would be out of the meth house across the street. And he was, of course, still there. The criminal factor in the neighborhood was becoming disproportionate, even for St Johns.

At this point, he had been “packing” for some 30-odd hours, aided no doubt by some kind of uppers. And a great help they had been–the truck, while lamentably still across the street, was piled high with what I can only describe as a a precarious and random pile of rubbish. No beds were yet in sight, which made us think that another night of being neighbors with him + criminal consorts was in store.

7:25 am. I leave for work, my mind filled with fantasies of not coming home to more of this view:

But at this rate, expectations were low.

5:30 pm. I turn onto our street on my way home from work, and broken down on the corner, hood up, a mere block from where it was in the morning, is the now ex-neighbor’s truck. Fail! After all that, the ex neighbor is still within line of site and ear shot of our living room.

6:30 pm. More puzzled efforts and discussion among (ex) neighbor’s peer group. With the boon of enforced residence a block away, they apparently decide it may be worth it, after all, to take the mattresses. Two young ruffians escape from the pack and carry the beds out of his old house, down the street to his new sidewalk.

As the evening concludes, (ex) neighbor and all of his earthly goods that meth could possibly help him load onto the truck are a block away. To say we had an abundance of schadenfreude would be an understatement.