Today was (and still is) a beautiful day- 70 degrees, breezy, blue skies, especially since the last few days it has been hotter than the surface of the sun. The orchard called me (I had left my number) and they had a bushel of peaches ready for me, so I grabbed Breyana (my traveling partner) and off we went. We first mad a pit stop at a diner in Washington, Pa, called the Doghouse Diner, which is a nice little greasy spoon kinda place. I had two eggs over easy, some corned beef hash, and some hash browns, and Breyana ate an Italian sub bigger than her head:
We then ventured forth to the orchard/farm store, and I picked up my peaches, and a bunch of stuff for neighbors (corn, cabbage, etc.). Guess what I am doing tomorrow:
And just as a reminder for those of you who live out west or in urban hellholes, here is a reminder of what it looks like to live in a rain forest and it is green and lush (and will stay this way until October):
If you embiggen the photo, you will notice that the sunflowers back by the shed are now approaching 7-8′ tall. And the willow tree has doubled in size since last year. Also, check out these cherry tomatoes from the garden- they look fake they are so beautiful!
Finally, a bonus Rosie picture:
Mike J
Yeah, nobody out west knows about rain forests.
Elizabelle
Rosie! I think that’s one of the best pics of her, ever. Carry on with your marvelous day.
geg6
ROSIE! With her actual face showing! ♥️♥️
EricNNY
The inevitable march of the willow to your newly redone porch.
James E Powell
It’s what I miss most about my beloved home state of Ohio. And the thunderstorms.
Amir Khalid
An ominous sign …
Jay Noble
When one of our art directors relocated back to his home state (OH or PA) from our wonderful NE Panhandle, he said what he was most looking forward to was trees. And green. And no wind. But mostly trees.
Inventor
@EricNNY: I’m pretty sure that sucker’s on the move.
TomatoQueen
Rosie! Hello, darlin’. Tell your Daddy to make some peach jam, cobbler, and pie. Those lilies by the fence are a lovely color.
Yutsano
@Mike J: That irked you too eh?
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: We all know the rice and chessboard story…
gsp
Don’t fall off the roof Homer.
rikyrah
Rosie???
Those peaches??
Peach cobbler?
Peach preserves??
Cherry tomatoes??
I was looking at the greasy spoon French fries ???
I would douse those with ketchup and have a great time
The backyard looks amazing, Cole??????
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
I knew someone would mention the willow???
Steeplejack
@EricNNY:
Inexorable. Le mot juste.
Death Panel Truck
Nice picture of Rosie.
We had to say goodbye to our older cocker spaniel this morning. El Duque was 13, and was diagnosed yesterday with inoperable liver cancer. He showed absolutely no signs of illness until yesterday morning (his wellness checks never found anything abnormal.) He went down in 24 hours, and my wife is shattered. She and El Duque had a special bond (I am bonded with our younger cocker, Chico Marx.) The medical center will take care of his cremation, and we are going to pick out a nice urn for him. I cannot believe he is gone.
A Ghost To Most
For the record, some of us got tired of the oppression of green, and actively sought refuge from the honeysuckle jungle. But really, it was the humidity.
JoyceH
Guys? I had my heart broken a little bit today. I was at the grocery store, resting on the bench at the back before going through checkout (hey, I’m old and fat and have bad knees), so I overheard some of the employees back in the employee area talking. One young lady was explaining why the moon landings were obviously faked. She had a lot of reasons, but for her the clincher was the press conference when the Apollo 11 astronauts returned – they were so deadpan. She figured that “if they really had landed on the moon, they would have been jumping up and down, going ‘Guys, we were ON THE MOON!’ ”
I remember the space program and how much we admired the astronauts and that unflappable sang-froid pioneered by Chuck Yeager and the test pilots who followed him. And now, in the 21st century, that very stoicism is considered proof positive of lying?! Sob!
(But this does explain something that I’ve never understood – the insistence of Trump supporters that their guy ‘tells it like it is’. If dignity and self-control are indicators of deception, then their opposite, cloddish tantruming, must be proof of honesty, right?)
Jerzy Russian
@JoyceH: The Onion has a pretty accurate report of what really happened then:
https://www.theonion.com/july-21-1969-1819587599
Mary G
I’ve only been in that green environment once, when my dad’s father repented shunning us and insisted my mom and I visit him in Kentucky. It was an unmitigated disaster in so many ways that I never went east again. The bugs and humidity and heat, ugh.
Elizabelle
Am sure Breyana enjoyed her road trip too. It’s always validating when an adult rather than your parent spends time with you, out of choice.
Setting aside the J. Epsteins of the world, of course.
Steeplejack
@Death Panel Truck:
Condolences to you and your wife.
In before raven with the quotation from Irving Townsend’s book Separate Lifetimes:
Elizabelle
@Death Panel Truck: My condolences. Sudden loss is hard; any loss of a beloved pet is hard. They’re worth it all, though.
Kattails
Dear Cole, I should be chained to my desk for the next umpteen hours to get artwork out to companies that might be interested in licensing it. Instead I am going to quit now and make me something, maybe use that crabapple juice that’s been frozen for 2 years, because looking at your feeds is driving me nuts. NUTS I tell you.
@Death Panel Truck: How absolutely devastating. So sorry for you and your wife. I’m sure most of us would rather spend some time taking care of fading pets than have to face something so sudden. Hugs to you both.
zhena gogolia
I’m really enjoying this interview — Trevor Noah interviewing Eddie Izzard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqC0UmRTu60
Death Panel Truck
@Steeplejack: Thank you for the quote. It’s comforting. We got El Duque as a seven-week-old puppy, and it seems like only yesterday.
@Elizabelle: @Kattails: Thank you for your kind words. I will pass them along to my wife.
Barbara
Breyana is just so cute. It’s lucky to have friends from a younger generation.
Barbara
@Death Panel Truck: It is really hard to know which is worse, a sudden exit or a slow decline (have experienced both) but the former is just so shocking. Condolences to you both.
Raven
Home of PONY (Protect Our Nations Youth) Baseball
James E Powell
@Death Panel Truck:
My sympathies to you and your wife. I had to say goodbye to my best buddy ever earlier this year. A bit like yours, out of nowhere came cancer. I still miss him greeting me when I come home.
Raven
@Death Panel Truck: Oh I’m so sorry. Both Bohdi (15) and Lil Bit (unknown but probably the same) are declining visibly but still hanging for now. It doesn’t matter when, it’s awful to lose them.
raven
@Death Panel Truck:
We who choose to surround ourselves
with lives even more temporary than our
own, live within a fragile circle;
easily and often breached.
Unable to accept its awful gaps,
we would still live no other way.
We cherish memory as the only
certain immortality, never fully
understanding the necessary plan.
— Irving Townsend
Dog Mom
@Death Panel Truck: So Sorry for your loss of El Duque and the shock of it. The liver has such a great ability to regenerate that diseases and cancer are often discovered too late. I hope that you and your wife can find a bit of comfort in knowing his suffering was very short. I hope that good memories can ease the heartache and soon bring a smile quicker than tears. My heart hurts for you both, and myself as my Skye (16yr, 8 mo Weimaraner) went last week and my Lulu (12yr, 4mo Beagle) went in May. I still have my other Beagle sister, Dottie.
Jharp
And the willow tree has doubled in size since last year.
Not the least bit surprised.
It will be in less than 10 years that you will be needing foundation repairs.
raven
@Steeplejack: I never knew where that came from. Thanks
Whoa, $84 on Amazon!
scav
The hell-hole west waves back.
Nice tomatoes.
zhena gogolia
@Death Panel Truck:
I’m very sorry. It’s always so hard.
laura
@Death Panel Truck: I am so very sorry for you and especially your wife. Others have said it better, and that poem really says it all. Condolences on the El Duque shaped hole in your hearts.
Yutsano
@Death Panel Truck: Oh man. That’s rough. I’ll raise a glass to El Duque tonight. He was a goodest boy.
FlyingToaster
I live near an urban hellhole, and we have gardens. We’re pretty green.
mrmoshpotato
@FlyingToaster: Don’t disturb the turkeys in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.
John Cole
@Death Panel Truck: That is terrible, I am so sorry.
Miss Bianca
Hey, JC, someday I’m going to have to send you a photo of *my* backyard…before you talk about urban hellholes out West!
But seriously, it’s GREEEEEN up in the mountains, this year has been the wettest for 20 years in these parts, after last year being the driest in recorded history out here.
ETA: Oh, and how crazy has this year been? Last night I drove past a *tornado touchdown*. In central Colorado! At 8500 feet above sea level! Amid biblical rain and lightning! Strange days/years indeed!
J R in WV
@Death Panel Truck:
So sorry for your loss!! It is hard for us two-legged people for our fur-babies to go suddenly and quickly like that, but in pondering the loss of Happy Dawg last January, which happened at least as quickly, I think it is best for the critter. They don’t have a long drawn out infirm period, Thursday they’re OK and late Friday night they’re done with it.
That’s how Happy went, a little tired Thursday evening, more inactive Friday morning, trip to the vet, the end. That’s how I would prefer to go really, no Hospice, just…… gone.
I’m glad you guys still have the younger dog. We try to always have a senior dog to coach and a junior dog, to learn from the senior dog.
Best wishes!
Miss Bianca
@JoyceH:
OMG…if that’s a true insight into the psyche of the Trumpen proletariat…no wonder they (and we) are so screwed up.
@Death Panel Truck: So sorry to hear it, my condolences.
trollhattan
@Death Panel Truck:
So very sorry you’ve lost your friend. Immediately takes me back to our beloved and badly missed pooches. My best to you and your wife.
CaseyL
@Death Panel Truck: Oh no; I’m so sorry for your loss – and some extra sympathy to your wife, who was El Duque’s Special Human.
Advance warning is certainly better – for us – since we have time to, if not ever “get used to” the idea of their dying, at least gird our loins for it.
I think quick and unexpected is better for the critter, though. Less suffering, less fear, less decline.
trollhattan
@Mike J:
TBF there’s the mostly green out west and then the rest, which will be pretty damn brown until December. Once lived in Western Washington but now live in the brown part.
J R in WV
John Cole:
Here’s my Grandma’s Peach Kuchen recipe, the best, the only worthwhile baked dish with peaches in it:
Crust
2 cups sifted flour (I always use white whole wheat and double sift)
1/2 cup butter
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tblspns sugar
Sift together sifted flour and other ingredients, work butter into flour mixture, press even layer over bottom and up sides of 8″ or 9″ square pan.
Filling:
12 peach halves, peeled
1 cup sugar minus 2 tablespoons used in crust
1 tsp (up to a tablespoon) of cinnamon
2 or 3 egg yolks
1 cup of sour cream (or a little more)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Place peach halves into crust, sprinkle fruit with remaining sugar mixed with cinnamon.
Bake 15 minutes at 400 degrees.
Mix well-beaten egg yolks with sour cream (I add a little cinnamon and sometimes some mace or nutmeg, Grandma did not) while fruit is baking. Remove baking dish and pour sour cream mixture over fruit. Reduce oven to 350 degrees. Bake about 30 or 35 minutes longer.
Let cool before cutting. Vanilla Ice Cream is good on the side, but not necessary. This is the best dessert of the summer!!!
I believe this came from Grandma’s sisters-in-law up in Pennsy-Deutsch country, where my grand-dad grew up a blacksmith in farm country in about 1905-1910.
If anyone tries this, let me know what you think.
ETA fix misspeeled werds.
joel hanes
@James E Powell:
what I miss most about my beloved home state of Ohio. And the thunderstorms.
Lightning bugs!
White Christmas!
joel hanes
@J R in WV:
My grandmother who grew up in rural Indiana made this often (we spelled it “kuchen”); often, because her son-in-law had a farm with dairy cows, and so always had literally gallons of fresh heavy cream on hand, and she used that instead of sour cream. You should try it with heavy cream. It’s perhaps my favorite dessert. Also good using strawberries, rhubarb, tart cherries, or plums, or blackberries or raspberries, or or pineapple with a little lemon, but peach is the best.
debbie
@James E Powell:
Not so many thunderstorms anymore. Just monsoons.
debbie
@Death Panel Truck:
What a shock for you and your wife. I’m so sorry.
misterpuff
@Miss Bianca: Riders on the Storm.
rikyrah
@Death Panel Truck:
So sorry for your loss ???
J R in WV
Last Sunday night we had a very wide storm front cross over our area of SW WV. We’re in a cove, a small narrow hollow etched into the side of a larger hollow, with ridges East, North and West of the house. There was lightning instantly followed by thunder for nearly an hour around dinner time.
Our neighbors to the west are up on the ridge — not the highest ridge which is to the north, but way higher than we are. I was afraid for them in the hundreds of lightning strikes the storm landed on the ridges around us in our lower cove.
But then the storm front moved on the NE, and our internet connection — which is based upon the neighbor’s servers to connect to our house — popped right back up, so I knew they were all OK up there above us. We have a big solarium looking south into the hollow, and have a good view of storms running past south of our little cove.
No long after we moved into our current home, the leaves weren’t out much, so the view of the sky was superb, and when a storm became obvious, I loaded Wagner’s orchestral incidental music onto the stereo, and it seemed that the crashing of the weather and the music was synched up for the better part of an hour. Amazing, Mother Nature!
FlyingToaster
@mrmoshpotato: The turkeys are also across the road in Fillipello Park, where we can’t avoid disturbing them. And one of the Mt. Auburn hawks flies a regular pattern above WarriorGirl’s school, looking for rabbits.
On my end of town, we have coyotes (den is near Walker Pond next to Bell Watertown Apartments). They ate my old neighbor-across-the-street’s two cats, which prompted her to move away.
catclub
@Jharp: I was reminded of Old man Willow in the Lord of the Rings.
kimp
Life is good. Enjoy your good fortune.
seefleur
@Death Panel Truck: So very sorry for your family losing one of its own. I have no words, but can only send a virtual hug in your direction.
cliosfanboy
Thank you for the rosie pic…
Jeffery
In Philadelphia we are only 8” from the usual total years worth of rain. Everything is very lush. The ox heart tomatoes I planted this year are the size of softballs.