GRAPES

I remember (this is the 1940s) when I was a wee tot and mom would give me a snack of grapes.

They were often sweet, sometimes sour, always had seeds and a skin that was yucky, but I loved them.

They were handy to have in your pocket or somehow concealed on your trike for a later knosh.

And, you were popular with other kids, if you had some grapes.

Grapes didn't grow all that well in the Midwest. It was just too danged cold in the winter. An exception was western Iowa, where I worked most of my adult years, had a grape industry at one time. Betty Anne Wine, I believe it was called. It was a rival to pop for being sweet.

The vines were mostly wiped out when corn farmers started spraying herbicides and pesticides during the 1950s.

But, I have to revise that myth. We've just returned from a week in the Iowa-Nebraska "coastline" —ok. It's along the muddy Missouri River, but at least it's wooded and green on the shore—and learned from our resident friends there that farmers are turning away from corn and getting into the gentrified crops...like grapes! Nebraksa now boasts about a dozen small wineries that somehow manage to keep their plantings alive over the harsh winters. I wish them well. Heck, if they can grow great wine grapes in outback Australia, they ought to have a leg up in temperate Nebraska.

Force space skip 60 years. . . (It's a literary term. Look it up)

I now find myself and Cherry, the dog (see picture below), walking through Oregon's bounty — maybe I should say "forgotten" bounty.

At the top of the hill is an old property awaiting development, we hear. But the house and outbuildings still cling to the kneehigh weeds. The previous owner hauled all the trash out of the garage/storage building and has left it there to rot until the next owner does something.

Since I collect trash as I walk the dog, the old place is our regular stop. Cherry, of course, finds millions of interesting scents to follow. No one's around to object if she takes a whiz on the weeds either.

Grapes...back to the story.

On one of our sojourns, I spied a pile of leaves near the old house's back door. I had walked by this pile all summer without really noticing it . . . just like the other weeds and plants gone wild.

It had rained overnight, so plants were wet and sparkling in the morning sun. Something INSIDE the pile of leaves was also sparkling.

I lifted a leaf or two and was met with a solid mass of light green grapes. Each cluster was as big as my hand or bigger. I sampled one. ZING! It was delicious. . . but it reminded me of the grapes my mom had given me as a tot—tough skin, seed in place, slightly tart.

I gave my daughter-in-law a small sample and she cooked them down to juice and proclaimed them marvelous! I filled up a fair sized cooler with them and passed them on to her as well. She's now calling for more!

(Since the original post, the contractor and his men arrived with dumpsters, chainsaws and a bulldozer. The buildings are gone. The grapes are gone. Only a few ornamental trees and shrubs [these pruned to military precision] remain. But, a week or so before, I couldn't stand the idea of all those delicious grapes going to waste. One of our walking friends (people we only see on our twice daily walks) is a welfare mom of two who works on cars, cleans houses for cancer victims and cans anything that comes to her door to stretch out food stamps. I spent an hour or so picking all the grapes I could reach and then presented them to her. A week later she gave me a sealed Mason jar of pink grape juice, which, using her grandma's recipe, will take one year to settle and ferment into --not wine--but grape juice. It's on the shelf. Get back to you next October).

I must say, the grapes are not the only "forgotton" fruit I find on my walk. Pear trees go neglected in people's front yards...the large, ripe fruit falling to the ground to be the food of the voracious bees and hornets.

At the far end of my dog walk route, is another old farm that was deeded to the city as a "park". The city put in a bench and a two picnic tables and occasionally mows, but it's pretty "organic."

And that's a good thing because the old farm's apple and pear trees still continue to produce tons of fruit...all of which falls to the ground.

I'm not above salvaging a windfall fruit or two and having it as my "lunch" as Cherry and I sit on the bench and contemplate the sound of one tail wagging.

Wood

I love it.

That's not me there, by the way, but it's how I feel.

When we moved from the Midwest to Oregon in 1999, the little house we found for our retirement had "Cadet" electric heaters in each room and a wood stove. Quaint we thought. So we ran the Cadets when it was cold...that is, until we got our first electric bill.

Turns out that the Cadets are like having a toaster running with a little fan to waft away the heat. They work really well, but are pretty expensive.

The good thing is, you can heat just one room— say your bathroom—without having to heat unused or little used areas—hallways, closets, the spare bedroom, etc.

So we turned to the little wood stove. It turns out that a small fire first thing in the morning will heat our 1,200 square foot house most of the day. A second fire about supper time and we're sitting around in our shirtsleeves.

Closing off the simple air regulator at bedtime, usually assures that there will be a few live coals to start the morning fire.

In Oregon, we go from weather feast to weather famine rather quickly. For example, we've had the endless summer going on this year—mid 80s to 90 in the daytime, 50s and 60s at night to cool things off nicely for sleeping and about 3 raindrops.

That bit of Eden changes when the air over the Pacific Ocean (100 miles to the west of us) starts to dip down with fall. This brings the "freezing level", as the weather persons call it, to something below 10,000 feet and we in the lowlands of the Willamette Valley start to feel it via rain and even snow and ice during the depths of winter in January/February/March. Today, Sept. 14, the "freezing level" is about 4,000 feet. Mt. Hood, to the east, should get up to 4 inches of snow. We're getting a mix of hail, rain, lightning and thunder (Cherry, the dog hates it).

Once the earth shifts enough, it's not unusual for rain/snow/etc. to continually bombard us, day and night, for several months at a time. In 1840s84os, Lewis and Clark and their troupe had a miserable winter near Astoria, right where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. It was so wet for so long that their rawhclothinghing was rotting on their backs!

We'll, we're better equipped now. Northface, Columbia and other outdoor gear makers have wonderfully light and impervious rain gear which keeps you dry while allowing you to actually enjoy the wet outdoors.

But all this gets away from WOOD.

My father always said: "Don't have a fireplace if you're 10 miles from the forest." It's good advice since you have to cut and haul it.

On Sept. 3, I helped a relative clear out a fallen oak tree on his mother-in-law's property. The trunk was 40 inchesdiametermter; the smaller limbs were 2 feet thick. It took six of us all day, usinchainsawshawstemptressruck and a tractor to dissect the fallen giant.

In the end, it "fed" all six of us with enough wood for most of the winter. A blessing.

This made me think of the Native Americans who thanked the spirit within each living thing as they consumed that spirit—bison, deer, fish, water, plants; all were part ofthee the same spirit.

I think this makes absolute sense.

To divorce ourselves from the spirit of the land and the animals we use is to lessen our selves in the eyes of the Creator of all this.

So. I give thanks to the old oak which will heat my house and my loved ones this winter. May its smoke rise to the winds of the world and bring peace and understanding.

The fire is lit, come lift your voice;
Let song and skit beguile the hours;
The fire is lit, so let's rejoice,
Our hearts are full, the night is ours.
Cold nights weighs down the forest bough,
Strange shapes go flitting through the gloom;
But see... a spark, a flame and now
The Wilderness is home.

Leap high, O golden flame, the day is dead,
Bring warmth and cheer, O flame, the sun has fled;
Stoutly your gmaintainntian, youths not abed,
Ring out the heart's refrain, goodwill to all.

Who hath smelt wood smoke at twilight?
Who hath heard the birch log burning?
Who is quick to read the noises of the night?
Let him follow with the others,
For the young men's feet are turning
To the camps of proved desire and known delight.

(Rudyard Kipling)

LIBRARY FUN/RUN/WALK/PANT

This weekend, I and that pretty dog in the picture will be "doin'" a 5K fun/run/walk/stumble on behalf of the Oregon City Library. It's a fundraiser because the city doesn't have the cash to equip and person a full time library.

Oddly enough, Oregon City has had a fully funded library since the late 1800s...it's only recently that it's fallen on hard times.

I volunteer for the Friends of the Oregon City Library...a bunch of older folk who remember what a library was and want to keep it that way. It's okay to be conservative about saving things that really matter.

Anyhooo...I've been increasing the lengths of my twice daily dog walks so that I don't look foolish...you know...lying on my back like a beached whale someplace along the route.


Meanwhile, here's a new picture of Cherry by the heather near our rock wall. The bees got to her butt shortly after this was snapped and she never faced my way again...gotta protect that butt from bees!

This is a brand new world...writing to a world audience.

Chilling!

My daughter-in-law got me going on blogs. Her's is a beaut.

Not that I'm a fuddy duddy when it comes to technology. It's just the old journalist in me: I'm used to figuring out who my audience is and then tailoring words, pictures etc. to fit that audience.

In a blog (Is is Cap B?), I feel like I'm on the pychiatrist's couch and the shrink has gone out for a beer.


Meanwhile, I'll see if I can post a picture of my dog, Cherry, an Austrialian Shepherd. She's smart. She let's us think we're in charge. But, at 82 pounds, and fast as anything, she's master of her domain.

She recenlty had her first chance to actually "herd" some sheep at a demonstration at a local grocery story parking lot. She was handled by an experienced herding dog trainer.

She got those sheep moving! Mach snell! The trainer was surprised to learn that she had never even seen a sheep before, much less herded any. She's a natural. She got a certificate and all! The girls at the animal shelter where we got her in 2000 were almost in tears when they found out one of their own was now a college graduate...well, sorta.