"actually, it's going really well"

The first night Josh was here I went to the other bedroom and hung out feeling super sick (with a bucket, just in case, since my bathroom isn't nice enough to hang out on the floor by the toilet) and I was honestly a little concerned. My random nausea hadn't been that bad previously. Then at 6am or something I realized that I'd been at a friend's house the day before, and she had pot plants outside. I'd given them a ten-foot berth minimum, and figured I was outside and I'd be ok, so I didn't think of it as an exposure event but I guess it was. Good to know.

Despite that, and a little bit of residual tired from that, it's been really nice having Josh here. He brought up a ton of produce and I've been making a lot of hot mix pickles (cauliflower, green beans, carrots, hot peppers, a touch of celery, a light brine with 1/3 cup salt and 1/2 cup sugar per pot, which is my preference) to complement my charcuterie meats. I'm always looking for a replacement for my store-bought pepperoncinis, they need to be appropriately spicy and gently salty and have the right texture. Maybe these will be that! Either way, more pickles to have with charcuterie are always welcome; there's nothing as nice as variety in a no-effort (or no effort at the time) meal like a charcuterie plate.

Work is less stressful because last week was the silviculture conference, not the office, and this week is vacation. I'm also making an effort to interpret the rules in non-autistic ways, so when they say "that's not allowed, but you can do it, just don't let anyone know or do it too much, but it's ok to do, but it's not allowed, and don't tell the wrong people you do it" I'll just... do it and not tell anyone, rather than trying to avoid it. In an ideal workplace there wouldn't be rules like that; in a non-ideal workplace that could accommodate me I could ask for what it means, does "not too often" mean once a week? Every two weeks? In a non-patterned way? etc. Being autistic usually means taking people at their literal word and being considered inhuman because of it. There's a real art to managing the space where everyone does something but kinda just says they don't, and I'm not great at it, but we'll try. Either way it helps relieve the stress of ridiculous rules that no one will change because no one follows them anyway so they aren't an actual problem.

I painted some signs last night for many of my perennials: the roses and the gooseberries, mostly. I'm putting little signs on stakes in next to them since all my other labelling methods have failed. A wooden board screwed to a stake is too big for crows or ravens to carry off, and hopefully the paint won't fade (the new formulation of sharpies, I've learned, isn't colourfast in the sun anymore so I lost my labelling this year. Frustrating, because the labels from last year are still colourfast). I wish I painted in a nicer font, but it's still a kind of charming effect to have things labelled.

Josh found a bunch of cascade ruby gold corn ears that were both not frosted and pretty ripe, so that's excellent. I should do a separate farm post for that and the new piglets.

For some reason it's only now, after more than five years living here, that I've realized my basement bathroom fan... doesn't have an outlet on my outer walls. It *may* feed into the sewage siphon tube thing that lets gas up, that comes out my roof, but that's a narrow tube three stories up from the basement. So I guess I need two additional throughhulls in the house: one for a vent hood over the stove and one in the bathroom downstairs. Both of them only need a five or six foot run to get outside, so that's not so bad. It also explains a lot about moisture in that bathroom. Those things are, unfortunately, on the list after the deck (currently collapsing). On the plus side, if I wait a little maybe I'll also replace the awful shower down there.

Every day something new

I made garden signs for all my roses and gooseberries. Soon will do cherries and haskaps and apples, at least the ones I know the names of. These are signpost-style, with a stake and painted sign screwed to it. My plastic tags were not holding their marks, I guess sharpies have been reformulated, and so I lost some names that way. I lost some other names because crows and geese like the tags. So, wooden signs seem both practical in an enduring way and kind of charming. Now if only I had pretty painting handwriting, but I was not turning this into a stenciling project.

I found two more squash out there that looked pretty ripe, hiding among the weeds where they were sheltered from frost.

Josh helped me find a dairy crate full of relatively ripe cascade ruby gold cobs, so I'm calling that more of a success than I earlier anticipated. We'll be looking through the painted mountain today. The plants were definitely frost-nipped but I don't think the cobs themselves were harmed.

It's neat to be out in the corn and hear that dry, rustling noise of the leaves. Humans have been listening to that sound for many thousands of years as they bring in the harvest.

I've done a bunch of mixed pickles as documented on my preserving site, urbandryad on dreamwidth (I just keep recipes there). Basically I've done a couple gallons with my zesty brine at half strength for salt and sugar, a couple gallons with a lightly sweet brine, and I'll do a couple gallons with a salt-only brine. all have bay leaves and pepper, I forgot the garlic in the lightly sweet ones. Oops. The veg mix was largely brought up from the big farm on Josh's way from the city, it's more-or-less 1 part cauliflower, 1 part carrot, 1 part green beans, 1 part hot peppers, 1/4 part celery. The goal is a moderately hot pickle mix to eat with charcuterie, everything bite-sized.

Meanwhile Black Chunk (who has still not got a better name) had 8 piglets, and she's doing well with them. Lotta piglets this fall it seems. Ugh I guess I need to castrate, better do that while Josh is here. I will probably miss Tucker's calming presence for it.

A chicken in the bottom chicken run got huge adobe balls on her claws, they must have accumulated through iterations of mud (the ducks splash by the water a lot), dust (everywhere else in the run, it's been a dry summer), and straw/wood shavings from inside the coop. It took Josh and I roughly 3 hours to soak them (did nothing), chip away at the very edges with pliers delicately so as not to hurt wherever her toes were in the balls, and then finally pry the last bits off. I do not know why she got it and no others did. Her toes inside the balls were fine, though she did lose a fingernail by getting loose enough to shake her foot when we were part done and... you know, just don't think about it too hard, let's just say it was another weird and uncomfortable farming moment. She's good now, I gave her a penicillin shot for the one raw bit of the toe where the mud was rubbing and the toenail, I figured her body could use the help, and put her back in with everyone. She's lifting her feet ridiculously high as if trying to compensate for the weight that is no longer there, but is walking and perching just fine. Poor girl. Also I'm much less suspicious of cobb houses now, my goodness that stuff was durable. Clay soil, wow does it behave in unexpected ways sometimes.

Meanwhile I am going to keep one of the americauna roosters from my friend in town, and give another to a friend who has a couple hens and wants to let them hatch out more chickens in spring. That means 7 going into the soup pot this week, which is manageable. I've had the propane ring on the deck and that makes canning a lot more comfortable given the humidity situation in here, not sure if I'll can the roosters immediately or freeze them a bit but I'm more likely to can them now.

Asparagus planted. Daffodills, chiondoxia & relateds, and muscari ordered. These are all supposed to be vole-resistant, we'll see how it goes.