Philpot Cemetery

Not far up our road is Philpot Cemetery.   I love cemeteries.   Old ones, new ones, well kept ones, abandoned ones.   

They're peaceful.    And quiet.

And full of stories.  

And full of dead people.    People who once lived here, maybe on my farm.   People who were children and then grew up and had children.  People who laughed and argued and danced and went to church.   People pretty much like us only they lived without computers.  

And electricity.

And bathrooms.

Boy, am I glad I live now and not then.

Philpot is a Civil War era cemetery and a few of the men buried there served in the Civil War so their graves are marked with the units they served in.    Some good soul puts flags on those graves for Veteran's Day.  

Many of the dead here lived short lives.    It's interesting...and sad...to see how a family grew and dwindled over the years.  

Take the Miller family.  Jane and Alex Miller had two daughters that died young-ish.  Mahala Miller was born in 1850.   Genevra A.Miller was born in 1855.   Jane, the mother, died in June of 1867 and Mahala died in November of that year.  She was 17.   Genevra was only 12 years old when her mother and sister died.   She died just a few years later in 1874 - at only 19 years old.   I wonder if Jane and Alex had other children and what happened to them.    Alex served in the Civil War, but only his military marker is still there.   The headstone with the dates is gone. [Other men had two headstones, one with the family information and one with the military information.]   Did he live through the war?   Was he back home when his wife and daughter died? 

The Gaston family must have been wealthy.   They had monuments for headstones.   They are wonderful monuments with beautiful carving and often had names and dates for more than one person on a stone, one per side.

All of the markers in the cemetery except one are made of limestone.   Not surprising here in southern Indiana.  The only non-limestone marker is granite - the one on the right in the pic above.  The date on that stone is 1907.   That is the latest year recorded in the cemetery.   

Some of the headstones are just beautiful.  Can you see the rose on top of this one?   This is Eliza E. Sullivan.  She was born July 20, 1847  and died Sept 27, 1874.  She was only 27 years old.   That was the same year that Genevra A. Miller died.    Did they know each other?

The center stone in this pic belongs to Margaret  Lyons.  She lived from 1834-1853.  She was 19.   Her epitaph reads: 



Remember friend as you pass by
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so you must be
Prepare for death and follow me.

It really does say that.

Happy Halloween!

Black Caterpillars, part 3

They aren't black caterpillars anymore.

We have three green and yellow chrysalises.   Aren't they cool!

After the greens wilted and started to die back, I clipped the stems of the greens that the chrysalises were clinging to - taking care not to clip the anchor threads from the stem to the chrysalis - and attached them to sticks.

I used Elmer's glue on one with a green stem, but it was a pain because Elmer's takes a while to dry.   I propped everything up and together with folded paper.    Next time, I'd use a little glue dot. 

The other chrysalis had a longer dry stem and I just taped the stem to the stick.   It was easy. 

Now they sit and wait in their jar for another week or so before they emerge as butterflies.  

Fruit Fly Trap

Confession:  We have a lot of bugs.    Partly because we live in the country where there are a lot of bugs.    And partly because sometimes we bring a bit of the country indoors. 

During canning and harvest season we get a lot of fruit flies.  

I've never been a big fan of fruit flies.   Partly because they're annoying.   And partly because in the 9th grade we had to raise them in biology class for a genetics experiment.  It had something to do with red eyes.   I think.   Anyway, the fruit flies often escaped and for several weeks the entire 9th grade area and the cafeteria suffered a pestilence of fruit flies.   Yuck. 

When I started making my own vinegar we got a few more fruit flies.   In the summer, when the vinegar warms up, we get more fruit flies.   When we bring in the latest garden produce and it sits on the counter for a day, we get more fruit flies.    Sometimes we suffer a pestilence of fruit flies.   

Yuck. 

I read somewhere about making a fruit fly trap with vinegar and water and soap.    So I tried it.  

And it works.   It really, really works.   

I have two now.   I keep one by the vinegar and one on the kitchen counter where we do food prep - that's the one in the pic.     If you blow up the pic, you'll see the little drowned fruit flies in the bottom of the jar.    My name is Robin E. and I'm a fly murderer.  


This is what you need to make your own fly execution chamber - just in time for Halloween:

• 8 oz jar  [Can be bigger or smaller.  This is America.  Use whatever jar you want.]
• 1/2 cup of water
• 2-3 Tablespoons cider vinegar 
• A few drops of dish soap

The vinegar draws the flies in.   The soap breaks the surface tension of the water, so when the flies touch the water to investigate, they fall in.   Genius.

It'll stay effective for a long time.   It doesn't smell unless you put in a lot of cider vinegar and you're sensitive to the vinegar smell.  

The Limestone Bench

Last week we needed to move a heavy limestone bench to a part of our property that hasn't seen a truck for a few years. 

As you can see, we got the truck there anyway.




It was the kind of thing my dad would have loved.   He got a kick out of pushing his vehicles and equipment past their reasonable limits. 

Legend has it that once he snowplowed most of a large parking lot in his little jeep with only two gears - 2nd and reverse.  Or maybe it was just reverse.   [This is how legends happen.   Dads do crazy things and over time their kids forget how things really happened but we keep telling the story as if we actually remember what happened in all its glorious detail.   Folklore in action.]

And then there was the time that we took the van to Willow Slough in northwestern Indiana and Dad drove through what I am sure was miles of flooded road.   In the van.   With water up to the floorboards [but not high enough to get inside the van.   I think.]   I was sure we'd float away any minute.  

My sisters have even better stories to tell, I'm sure.  

Anyway.  

Last week we channeled Dad and drove the big truck down this very narrow path through the brambles and roses and past some baby dogwoods that I've been wanting to get to be big dogwoods....

...and down this path under some very low hanging branches, which got caught in the ladders on the top of the truck....

...so that we could put this bench in a private corner of the woods next to the creek. 

The truck just barely fit, but fit it did.  

The bench looks nice here.   And Dad would have laughed at me for being worried about the truck. 

He'd have grinned at me and said, 'What were you worried about?   Doncha trust me?'


And he'd have teased me for the rest of the day. 

And then maybe we'd have sat on the bench for about two minutes before he'd have said, 'Let's go.  We have work to do.'  

But maybe he'd have gotten up early the next morning to come sit here and watch the squirrels and deer in the early morning mist. 

Things that drive down our road

We don't get much traffic [maybe two dozen vehicles a day?], but what we lack in quantity, we more than make up for in quality.  

We get a lot of pickup trucks - big ones, little ones, new ones, ones held together by duct tape and rust.  Some with canoes strapped to the top.  Some hauling horse trailers or trailers full of hay bales, or trailers full of 4 wheelers or a trailer with a deer on it. 

We get assorted minivans full of groceries and kids.

Sometimes during nice weather, we get a convertible now and then.  

When the neighbors have kids who have just learned to drive, we see big clouds of dust where a car zoomed by so fast we never saw it. 

Some years the school bus goes by here.  [Not this year, though.]

We see tractors.

We see tractors pulling bush hogs and mowers and hay rakes and balers and ten years ago we even saw tobacco wagons full of tobacco. 

We've seen dogs and foxes and coyotes on the road. 

We've seen sheep and horses.   Sometimes even nine horses at a time. 

We see motorcyles.

We see four wheelers.

We see Gators.  Not the crocodile kind - this is Indiana, not Louisiana - but the fancy four wheeler kind like these.  [I want one!]

We see people walking by. 

After bad weather, we see the REMC trucks go by.   And then dump trucks full of gravel.  

A couple of times a year we see the road grader go by, filling the potholes and re-spreading the gravel over the muddy strips in the road that show up over time.  

And once in a while we see someone drive by on a zero turn mower.  

Traffic out here is an event.   When we're outside, we always stop and look up and wave - even if we have no idea who it is.   We've made good neighbors out here simply by waving every time a car [truck/tractor/mower] goes by.   We all mind our own business, but when we take the time to acknowledge our neighbors as they go by, we quietly forge relationships that will pay off in times of fire, bad weather, etc.   Once in a while we need each other out here and it's nice to know that a friendly face will meet you at the door - even if it's the first time you've ever been to that door.

Coldframes

Right around the time the first frost hits, I start setting up my coldframes.   Last year I had such great success that I decided to do two this year. 

Yay!  Two!

The first coldframe, I put in the same place I did last year.    Right around where the arugula self seeded.   We like arugula and we eat a lot of it.    It loves being in the cold frame.  I planted more arugula, radishes and parsley in this one.  

I laid the straw bales down on their broadest sides for this frame.   Two in the back, one on each end.   If I get my act in gear, I'll put a couple more [or parts of one] in the front to insulate that side well.  I have an old glass door that goes on top.  I'll tuck clear plastic all around when it gets and stays cold.   Last year I didn't do the extra straw in front but we still had greens all winter long. 

This is the new coldframe.    I will be growing kale in this one and kale gets taller than arugula and radishes, so I put the bales on their sides so they'd be a little taller.   I've got taller kale in the back, shorter kale in the middle and in the front left, I scattered some salad mix.   In the front right I scattered a stir fry mix I got from Baker Creek. I can't wait to find out what's in it.  

Everything's coming up nicely except the parsley which is slow.    So far, the only trouble I had is with the cat, who wants to use the coldframes as a litter box.   I covered both frames with deer net - like I do for the strawberries [you can see the strawberries behind coldframe #1].    The net seems to be keeping him out just fine. 

So, tell me.   What would you grow in a coldframe?

Black Caterpillars, part 2

Our black caterpillars have turned into chrysalises!  

They ate up the fennel and we worried about what to feed them next.  Turns out they like stuff in the carrot/parsley family and we have loads of queen anne's lace.   It took a few hours of adjustment, but the caterpillars transitioned just fine and ate themselves huge.

Then, one morning, we saw one, then another find a quiet place in the jar and start spinning an anchor line from its head to the jar [or stem] upon which it was clinging.  

Black Swallowtail butterflies metamorphose upside right.   Monarchs hang upside down and metamorphose.  It was cool to see the difference.  

Here is #1, who found a place to anchor on the side of the jar. 

















And #2.  















A couple days later, this is what we have:


#1.... Notice the split skin hanging just below him.  And if you look really closely, you can see all the fine threads anchoring him to the jar.











And here's #2.



They'll sit for about 2 weeks, then emerge.   

Since two of them are clinging to fresh greens, we're going to clip their part of the stem off and glue it to a stick. 





Note:   These guys are green because they're clinging to green stuff.   If they had chosen a stick, they'd have turned brown.  Camouflage is cool.  

Nine Horses

The first thing I tell anyone who is considering getting animals is to first consider fences.

What kind of fences?     The Best Darn Fences Money Can Buy.

Trust me.   It'll be worth it.

One of our neighbors once said to me, "If you've got animals, they'll get out."    Truer words have never been spoken.

For example, the other day while K1 and I were putting deer fence over the cold frames to keep the cat from using them as a litter box [*!&^# cat!!], a neighbor stopped by to ask us if we knew anyone around us who had horses, because nine of them were in her yard.

Yep, that's what it's like in the country.   You never know when you're going to take the trash out and find nine horses staring at you as they clip your grass down to nothing.

Luckily, we have a lot of grass and we won't miss it.

Four hours later, just after dark, another neighbor called me and said, "Quick, pull your car across the road so we can stop these horses".

Of course, I ran right outside and did it.

We're cooperative out here that way.

A few minutes later, we could hear nine horses clip clopping down our gravel road.  

And then they stopped at my car.

And looked at me, like I was supposed to do something.    Other than stand there in the dark saying, "It's OK, just stay put."

But they did stay there.   Until their owner came to get them and they all lived happily ever after, amen.

Not.

Those horses sized me up pretty quick and what they saw was a short nervous woman backed up by two short nervous kids, none of whom were a serious deterrent.  

So nine horses went around me.   Into my flower garden.   Up the rock paths.   Up onto the back patio where Tibby was tied up so as not to scare the horses into charging and really hurting someone.   Whereupon Tibby promptly sounded the general alarm.

They didn't like Tibby much, so they veered away and up through the veg gardens into the wilderness of brambles beyond.

Yet another neighbor came up behind them and since there was no way under the big night sky we were going to get those horses home, and since there was a lot of electric fence between the horses and yet another neighbor's place, we decided to leave them be.   It was dark.

So he went home and we went in the house to call the neighbor behind us and the phone was dead.

Dead, dead, dead. 

Somehow, those nine horses killed the phone.

Without going any where near the phones or the phone line.

Cursed horses!

So I went outside to check the jack and wiggled something and then the phone worked again.  About that time, Eric got home and we told him all about the nine horses.

And then Tibby let us know that the nine horses had come forth from the wilderness of brambles and were back in the yard.

Yay.

So Eric and I guided those horses right back to the road.   And those horses did just what we wanted them to do.   And then the owner came and they all lived happily ever after, amen.

Not.

Those horses moseyed their way right back up the road where they came from.   And Eric, being the great guy that he is, (and also remembering the number of times our wonderful neighbors chased our blasted sheep back home to us) followed those nine horses back up to the second neighbor's road, and then down their long drive, where he met the neighbor and they watched the horses go past the barn and down into the pasture where they'd spent a good part of the day and where they'd probably be just fine until their owner came.

And all that time, I tried to call those neighbors to tell them Eric and nine horses were on their way.   But the phone was dead again.  

Those nine horses killed my phone again.   Without going any where near the phones or the phone line.

And then Eric and the neighbor chatted about dumb sheep and dumb horses and then the neighbor drove Eric home.   And then the owner really did stop by and say thanks.

I have great neighbors.   I love them.

I'm not so big on nine horses, though.

Natural Dye - Black Walnut

It's walnut time.

There's always one day in October when the wind starts blowing hard and walnuts start falling from the trees.    Those are dangerous days.    Don't go under the trees unless you have to - and if you get caught, hug the trunk.   You're less likely to get hit if you're hugging the tree.

You'll look silly, but it's true. 

Walnuts are great dye plants.   Gather them now and keep them in a bucket until you're ready to use them.   Keep the bucket covered and outside.   They'll start to wither, then turn black, then ooze and the smell is a lot less than pleasant.    Collecting natural dyestuff can really test your intestinal fortitude.    Yep.

You can use these to dye any time.    You can dye with them now or wait until they're black and oozing or wait until they've freeze dried all winter.   No matter.    They'll dye beautifully.

These are the colors we got on [L-R] cotton, alpaca, silk, wool, superwash wool.    Beautiful browns.

What you do is soak the walnuts overnight in a pot of water.   The next day, boil the whole thing for an hour and then let it sit overnight again.  On the third day, strain out the walnuts and dye your fiber.

If you're using really fresh walnuts - oozy and black - then you can just boil it all the first day and let it sit over night.   Skip the first soak.

You can also fill a bucket with walnuts and drop your fiber in there and just leave it in the sun for a few days.   It'll be splotchy, but beautiful.

Persimmon Pudding

photo:  hiltonpond.org

It's persimmon season!

Persimmons are a mysterious  little fruit.    They are beautiful little golden orbs that look a bit like tiny peaches, but they have a flavor all their own.

The ones we get around here are smaller than golf balls and full of seeds.   So why do we bother?   Because they are delicious!

It's tempting to pick them when they just begin to turn soft - like peaches.   Be warned!  If you taste one then, it'll be nasty.   Like eating a super green banana.  It leaves a weird astringent after-taste.   Unpleasant.

So why do all the critters in area love them so much?    Because the critters eat them off the ground, after it frosts and they fall off the tree.

When persimmons are ripe enough to be sweet [and they are very very sweet!],  they get mushy and fall off the tree.    Really mushy.  Yuck.

It's really hard to get them in good enough shape that you can wash them a bit before you sieve the seeds out and still have them sweet enough to eat.    Really hard.

Not to worry.    Gather them when you can - even if they're not fully ripe.  Wash them gently and sieve them to get the pulp.   Then put the pulp in freezer containers and freeze them for a while.   It's the freezing that sweetens them up.

We do a couple of pounds of pulp a year and freeze it.   Then we make a persimmon pudding with last year's pulp.   It's a good system.

Persimmon pudding

Persimmon pudding is not an American style pudding - creamy custardy stuff.   Persimmon pudding is a classic Old World pudding - like Christmas pudding.   Dense, moist, delicious.

Seriously delicious.  You definitely want to try this.

Persimmon Pudding

• 2 C persimmon pulp
• 2 C buttermilk [or milk soured with a T of lemon juice or vinegar]
• 2 C sugar
• 2 C flour
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 T butter [soft or melted]
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Mix all ingredients.   Pour into greased 9 x13 pan.  Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour.   Serve cool or warm with whipped cream, ice cream or some sort of clotted/Devonshire cream.   

You can cut the recipe in half and use an 8x8 inch pan if you want a smaller batch.

Note:   This will come out of the oven puffy and brown.   As it sits, it will deflate and turn a deep purple-y brown.   That's normal.   Desirable, even.   It's a great color.  It tastes better when it's that glorious cordovan brown.

Black Mystery Caterpillars

Black Swallowtail caterpillar: 3rd instar

 When I brought the last of the fennel in, I cut the greens and put them in vases.   They're pretty, feathery things and look great with other cut flowers.

The other flowers got old and died and we noticed three little visitors happily munching on the fennel.  

These black caterpillars had hatched after we brought the greens into the house.  

Black Swallowtail caterpillar: 2nd instar

We decided to raise them until they turn into butterflies.   We've done it many times with monarch caterpillars, but it's been a few years.  

Of course, we wanted to know what they were, so we turned to our favorite ID site:  http://www.discoverlife.org/20/q?guide=Caterpillars

We searched and searched and couldn't find a match.  

So K2 insisted that we do a google search for caterpillars that eat fennel.

It was a smart tactic.   There is only ONE type of caterpillar that eats fennel.  Black swallowtails.   Unfortunately,   none of the pics we found of black swallowtails matched our little guys.    So we looked up the Wiki and discovered that this little guy really changes color as he grows.   

As caterpillars grow, they get too big for their skin and the shed it.   Each of these stages is called an 'instar'.    Black swallowtails look like our guys until the 5th instar, then they look a lot whiter and greener and stripier.  

At the end of the last instar, they curl up, anchor themselves and metamorphose into a chrysalis.  After a few weeks, they'll split that skin and out comes the butterfly.    Miraculous!

Moth caterpillars do not turn into chrysalises.    They spin a cocoon around themselves and metamorphose in that. 

Mystery Caterpillar

K1 found this the other day.    We took the pics so we could identify it later.

There are a couple of good ways to ID a mystery caterpillar like this. 






 First, you need to make a list of what you know for sure:

• It's yellow
• It has black spikey lashes
• black face
• very hairy [probably a moth]

Then we went to http://www.discoverlife.org/20/q?guide=Caterpillars first.   They have a great ID site!   They use process of elimination and you can combine features to narrow things down.   Great pictures!   However, our caterpillar wasn't there.

We found some close matches, but there were significant differences.   So then we turned to Google and did a search for 'Hairy yellow caterpillar...' and lo and behold it popped up the rest of the phrase: 'hairy yellow caterpillar black spikes'.    

Perfect!   

We did the search and found this site: http://plantsnrocks.blogspot.com/2007/08/yellow-hairy-caterpillar-with-few-black.html   which had a pic of the same thing and had identified it as an American Dagger Moth.

We went back to the discoverlife site and plugged in the name:  American dagger moth.   They had the list, but no pics at all.   Maybe they'll want ours.  I'm going to try to find a way to submit photos to them.

More mystery caterpillars tomorrow!

October Dogwoods

Dogwoods are beautiful in October.

Really.    You can't beat that color.



  





 Our dogwoods turn red.   It's a glorious color against the sky.


Dogwoods have an active autumn life.   They're very busy getting ready for next year - moreso than you see on a lot of other trees.







Dogwoods set fruit.   It's beautiful scarlet fruit, in clusters where there were flowers this year.   The fruit is full of lipids and is very nutritious.  Birds love it and strip the trees pretty quickly so a lot of people never realize that dogwoods bear fruit. 

The real surprise is that dogwoods set flower buds in the fall.   Look for them!





They're little balls at the tips of the smallest branches.   You can tell how many flowers your dogwood will have next year, right now.

The Mower

I have a love/hate relationship with the mower.

I love it because it means that I don't have to cut the grass with scissors.

I hate it because what I really need is a bush hog.   I treat the mower more like a battering ram than a golf course manicurist, which is what it was designed to be.

The tires are full of that green slime product because I run over rose bushes and locust branches, both of which are full of ginormous thorns.   Locust thorns are up to 3 inches long.   I am not exaggerating.  The slime is keeping the tires from being perpetually flat.    Poor beat up tires.

The rest of the mower is pretty beat up, too.

Sigh.    

Poor mower.

Maybe the mower fairy will send me a new one for Christmas.   Or Easter.  Or my birthday. 

Or maybe I ought to just stop beating this one up.

Hope springeth eternal.

Vineyard

If I can't have a vineyard in my garden, then I'll have one in my dye pot.   This is one of my favorite colors to do in the fall.   Or anytime.  It makes me happy from the moment I start mixing the dye.

Vineyard on Bamboo Silk.   225 yds.  $35.   I love this yarn.

And this is Vineyard on a new yarn.   Flag [rayon].  150 yds.  $12.



I need to make something with this yarn.  What should I make?

Another Ridiculous Number of Fall Photos

It is a truly ridiculous number of fall pics. 

As I said in the previous post, I got carried away.   

Too carried away for just a single post.   

Here are more, yes more!   

More color, more leaves. 

Just get a load of this awesome tree.   With those cool kinky branches in front of that great color.   ALL those great colors.  

Really.    How could I not post this pic?   It's gorgeous. 

If Tiffany had seen this tree, he'd have designed a window to immortalize it.     So you see, I had no choice.  I had to post it.








And I had to post these, too.  These are our woods.   This particular little glen catches the late afternoon light.   I love it. 

 And I took a bunch more pics of leaves.

Colors and leaves.   I didn't want to leave the leaves out.  So, here are more gratuitous pictures of pretty leaves.  

I'd tell you that these are the last of the fall pics, but it'd probably be a lie.     I'm a color junky and it's hard to resist taking more and more and more.... 

Autumn Color

WARNING:   This post contains graphic photos of fall.    Beautiful foliage, interesting tree structures, bean fields ready to harvest, the whole autumnal nine yards.     So to speak.  

It's easy to get carried away posting pics of gorgeous fall colors.   And I did.   Get carried away that is. 

That's my excuse for getting carried away posting yet more pics of gorgeous fall colors.  That it's easy.  [In case you forgot what I was talking about]

 Plus, my sister in Philly said, 'Rob, post more pics of gorgeous fall colors!'  As I am ever eager to please her, I complied with her wish.  

 Fall is pretty in morning...

And in the evening....

Farm structures that look pretty grey and boring usually, look fabulous in the fall.

 Even gates are glamorous.

 Train tracks through the woods look great this time of year.

And our lane looks like the entrance to a palace.    Surely this road leads somewhere magical.