Sunny again this morning, what a gorgeous day! When I finally stumble outside - no, I didn't take my camera with me. Yes, sigh, I FORGOT - the boat has been taken care of by Richard, the windfall apples have been picked up, and there is no Cute Little Island Black Bear in sight. Cappuccino time.
Yesterday I was accosted by spiders outdoors several times. Mostly I just brushed them off, without thought, being busy doing "things" at the time. Last night before bed I was reading info on tomatoes in a gardening book I borrowed from the library. I turned the page and something tiny scurried across it towards me. I blinked, focusing on it. It was a nearly microscopic spider. What the heck? Then Kelly's words came back to me: "I can see one of the dead spider kids coming after you, ala the Mandy Patinkin character in Princess Bride, saying: my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die!" Aaahhg! I brushed it away and closed the book.
This morning as I am walking from the living room to the kitchen, my spidar jangles. Looking above the room door, I see it. Another spider, this one the size of a loony, is staring back at me, snarling. I reach for the broom, never taking my eyes off it. Its beady little eyes follow my movements. Slowly I raise the broom towards it. 5 little white Bichons follow the path of the broom, tails wagging slowly. I am sure I heard one of them bark "get it mom".
Suddenly I jab at it, hard and the spider falls to the floor, where it shakes itself and prepares to launch a counter attack at me. But I am faster. Whap, whack, smash. The dogs go wild, barking and snarling at the broom. I, of course, emerge victorious. Just in case, I give it a stomp with my foot, then have to hobble to the deck to scrape it off my shoe. "Oh great," I think "more spider funerals."
Time to work in my kitchen, or as I like to refer to it, the lab. I mentioned trying to make tiny pies in a couple of previous blog posts. Today is the day. Time to experiment. I thawed out the frozen pie dough for ten minutes, rolled it out on the floured counter, measured my jar - inside, outside and diameter - so I knew the size of the dough rounds to cut out. Soon I had four not bad looking tiny mincemeat pies made and in the oven.
Instructions online called for an oven temp of 400F. I thought that sounded a bit high, but followed instructions, and set timer for 20 minutes. 15 minutes later I open the oven to see...
...smoke rolling out. My eyes go slitty and I make a double scrunchy face! Nothing appears burned. 400F was way too high, as I suspected. Leaving the door open until all the smoke dissipated, I lowered the oven temp to 350F, set the timer for 10 minutes. In 10 minutes they are baking nicely - no more smoke. And 10 minutes after that, they are done.
Richard comes home from putting a tarp on Ron's roof - don't ask - and his nose is grabbed by the delectable odor of fresh baked mince pie, one of his favorites. We try them after lunch. Ohhhhh, they are tender, flaky, and the filling to pie crust ratio is perfect. Ambrosial. Next time will be with my own pie dough and my own homemade filling. I can't wait to tell Kate about them.
Replete from our dessert, I take the kids into the garden yard while Richard mows grass in the dog yard. It is +25 on the deck in the shade, my favorite day time temperature. We lazily wander about, looking at the flowers and plants, and yes, I DID remember my camera.
Meandering past the King apple tree, camera in one hand, cane in the other, something swipes across my face. GAK, spider web! Running from the garden boat to the fence. Now they are using motion detection to find me!
My eyes go slitty again, and I make a triple scrunchy face...
...and I says a swear.
It's early, and while I am not up, you just know that Richard is. Bless his heart he rolled up the beach mats and shower curtain on my garden boat. By the time I wander out at 9:30am, it is already +25 in the shade and going up. It's hot and airless in the garden yard. Even the dogs are listless in the heat, laying in the sun getting their daily dose of Vitamin D.
We bathed and deflea-ed the dogs yesterday, oh happy day, and it has improved their disposition immensely. Mine too.
It's been really hot for the last few days, and I am draggy. I do ok in heat up to about +28. After that, I fade. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about the heat - Lord knows we suffered so much with the cold and rain this past winter that I swore I wouldn't complain if it got hot. This is me not complaining!
My plants are suffering and as our water well is getting quite low, Richard is hauling a tank full tonight after work for me to pour on them. I wander back into the house where I have 4 fans on full blast, two in the kitchen, one in the living room and one in the back room to help keep it cool. We have a window air conditioner but it doesn't make sense to use it for four days and then have to haul it out of the window and back upstairs again, so upstairs it stays. I turn on the living room computer.
The phone rings and it is Kate. My sister has never been a gardener, always insisting she has a black thumb, not the green thumb that I have inherited from our parents and grandparents. Recently she and Jon moved to a cute little cottage in the country outside of Sidney and she has decided to try gardening on a small basis. They have purchased several gorgeous hanging baskets and filled window boxes with geraniums, petunias, alyssum, lobelia as well as herbs. We talked about my latest blog post, Fruit Fly Olympics, and she laughed and said "I'll do you one better".
I should tell you that Kate and I are quite brave women. No, really. Not too much frightens us. Ok, well bears frighten me, but that's a different story. We come from tough, pioneer stock, and both think humor is a great defense, using it all the time. We have both backed down large, aggressive, annoying people with just a few soft words. And controlled our children with quelling looks.
Remember I said not too much frightens us? Well, um, there is one thing...one thing that can make us both run screaming into the night startling wildlife, and our husbands, into near palpitations. Not a big thing, by most standards, but to us...to us it is HUGE. And hairy. And leggy. Very, very leggy. It is the one thing that causes an extreme atavistic response in both of us - that completely uncontrollable, shaking, shivering, yes, even drooling, God-help-me-it's-gonna-get-me, screaming meemee's, Richard-bring-the-shotgun-and-load-it-with-double-ought-buckshot, response. Um hm, that one. It is one of the biggest phobia's known to mankind. I am speaking, of course, of arachnophobia.
Yup, fear of spiders.
I know that the spiders on the Island are not BIG by tropical standards, like the dinner plate size ones of the Panama Canal Zone. However...the ones we have here, especially close to the water like down-Island were Kate lives, are as big as your fist.
Yes, REALLY.
And Kate had the misfortune to have a run-in with one, only that morning. Remember I said she had taken up gardening? You know, watering, weeding, fertilizing, dead-heading (remember, I had written in my blog that the Fruit Flies were doing a forward dive pike from a standing start). Kate was dead-heading her Begonias, totally involved - in the zone as they say - when a huge, hairy, teeth-gnashing, 8 legged, foot stomping, spider, grabbed her by the arm, shook her, and told her to bugger off and stop disturbing it's sleep!
No, honest!
Ok, well, maybe it grabbed, er, landed on her hand and scared the bejeezus out of her. She said she did a triple back flip and spiked her landing, worthy of a Gold Medal in Gymnastics at the Olympics for sure. I believe her. I've been there. That gut clenching, adrenaline fueled, eye crossing, get-out-of-my-way, door busting, fear.
But I am in awe of her triple back flip. That's impressive. I've never done that one. My personal best spider response was the 100 meter dash in just under 10 seconds. That and the 1000 decibal scream but that's nothing much, Kate has that mastered too.
Really!
Is that a skeptical look I see on your face?
Obviously you haven't seen our Island spiders up close and personal as they dash out from under your computer desk, grab you by the ankle, and threaten you with grievous bodily harm if you don't get out of their way.
That's when Kate and I mastered the splatting foot stomp.
That and her triple back flip.
I told you we were quite brave women.
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