Oma Gives Sewing Lessons

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Denise

Years ago I sewed.  A lot.  All kinds of strange things including wedding dresses (not just for my weddings although there were a few of those) and Renaissance Faire costumes.  I had nine of my own, just for fun.  But that was years ago.  When my writing career started in earnest something had to give.  It was the sewing.

So you can’t imagine my surprise when I asked Judah my granddaughter (her mother is my stepdaughter from my second marriage) what she wanted for Christmas.  “A sewing machine,” she said with as much excitement as her brother says “I want a Star Wars General Grievous Starfighter because it’s the only one I don’t have.”  (Okay, he didn’t say that this year, because this year he’s into Ninjago.)

“Really?”  I mean I didn’t even know kids these days knew what sewing machines were much less wanted one of their own.  “What do you want to make?”  Me, because I’m the oldest of six, expected her to say clothes.  When I was growing up the family clothing allowance was pretty darn slim and our sewing  machine got a workout with us older girls turning out shirts and skirts and dresses.

“Pillows,” Judah replies.  I probably blinked a little at that, but then I realized how perfect this was.  I could get her a sewing machine, then go visit Bakersfield for a few days to make a couple of pillows.  Sewing machine plus a few lessons equals One Great Christmas gift for both of us.

Janome 2206 on Judah's desk

The Janome 2206 on Judah's desk

The only problem was the sewing machine.  What to get?  Frankly, I was thinking about a nice 1960s Singer with the easy dials and no digital interface like I’ve seen at the local fabric store.  Programming the machine to run isn’t the same as sewing.  Instead, I found a Janome 2206, which prides itself on being “a great machine for the beginning or returning sewist.”  We had one beginning and one returning, so what could be better?  Well the price, for one.  It was under $150.00!

The sewing machine made it there for Christmas.  I didn’t arrive until the 28th.  And unfortunately, Judah was a little under the weather so we didn’t hit the fabric store until the next day.  For the first time in years, I sat down at the little wooden desk every fabric store has and opened up a Simplicity pattern book.  It was a blast into my past.  These days my “wish books” are seed catalogs but from the time I was twelve until my mid-thirties, it was pattern books.  I’d stare at those layouts, the models dressed in beautifully sewn garments made with fabrics that didn’t always find a home in my local fabric store.  But I could dream, walking up and down the aisle, my fingers rippling across linen, broadcloth, calico, satin and silk.

the beginnings of pillows

the beginnings for pillows

We went straight to the Home Decor section and the first pattern offered was perfect.  It included on “Tootsie Roll” pillow, one square pillow, a pillow case and, should she decide to take a stab at it, a bed spread.  We did look at the others, but that first one,  Simplicity 1960, was just what the seamstress ordered.

Then it was time to do the dreaming.  We started down the cotton aisles, which now are organized for quilters.  That makes dreaming a lot easier because you can see what coordinates with what.  But, Judah is a girl after her Oma’s own heart, because she took a left at the remnants.

“These are cheaper,” she told me.  She apparently has a friend who sews and who has already informed her of the treasures available in the remnant bin.  We pawed through it for a while, but couldn’t find anything we loved.  Then we saw the sale cotton.  There was a pretty pink fabric printed with butterflies outlined in glittering silver.  Judah combined it with bright turquoise and hot pink fringe and, after adding a seam ripper, some batting and white thread, we were good to go.

While Amberly, her mom, went off the the gym (she’s been dedicated to working out since beginning her training for the 3 day 60 mile breast cancer walk which she completed back in November), we laid out our fabric and cut out two pillows.  Judah had chosen to make the Tootsie Roll (okay, I know that’s not what it’s called but it ought to be) and the small rectangular pillow. As usual, I’d bought more fabric than we needed just in case and after the pillows were cut out I was thinking there’d be enough for a third.

Judah threading the machine

Judah threading her machine

We pinned the first seams and she sat down at the machine.  I can’t even remember the first time I sat at a sewing machine it was so long ago.  We threaded, rethreaded, filled the bobbin, installed the bobbin, took it out and did it again.  With everything in place, she pushed the fabric under the foot and pressed on the pedal.  WHIRRRRRRRRrrrrRRRRRrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrRRRRRrrrrr.   It’s no easier controlling a sewing machine pedal than it is the accelerator of a car.

The rectangular pillow was first because it was so dang simple.  She was thrilled when it was turned and stuffed.  Now it was time for inset fabric.  With each seam we got closer to the quiet steady whirrrrrr that the machine is supposed to make.  She got more comfortable with holding the fabric straight as it went under the foot.  Corners were made.  We learned how to baste and how to back up when you sew too far.  We even sewed right over the bumpy fringe with no trouble.

The only mistake made was made by yours truly.  Dang, I knew she had that turned upside down when she ran it through the hem stitch.  That’s when I got to tell her that the seam ripper is your best friend and that I’ve never made a project that didn’t have mistakes in it.  The key is to recognize the mistake, remove it or work around it and KEEP GOING.  No quitters allowed.

She was having a great time.  Two pillows were finished and now she’s eying the leftover fabric.  “Do you want to make one more?” I ask.  “I think we have enough to make a pillow case for your sleeping pillow if you want.”

The scissors and pins came back out.  This pillow case had to be pieced, and learning how to make a sheet of fabric from bits and pieces is a priceless lesson to anyone who wants to be creative.  Before long we had our pieces joined and the pillow case half made.  Then the creeping crud overtook her.  One minute she was sewing; the next she was promising she could keep her eyes open to watch while I finished.  It really wasn’t much more than a seam and the hem.  I told her to go to bed and she dozed while I put in the last stitches.

Judah and pillows

Here she is with her three pillows

But for all intents and purposes, she had made all three projects with just my supervision.

That’s my girl!

 

 

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Cowboy Girl Hat

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Denise

I’ve finally come close to kicking the Crud, whatever it was.  I can tell because two nights ago I cleaned the kitchen.  When I’m sick I couldn’t care less if things dissolve into a heaving pile of slime mold or that there’s no place on the counter top to make a cup of tea.  That’s how I know I’m sick; the kitchen gets dirty.

I’m posting this morning sort of as a promise to myself that I am, indeed, recovering.  So, here it is.  While I was sick, lo these last ten days, my niece Melissa came to visit.  I kept apologizing that I was ill and she kept telling me it was fine.  She’s a college girl (what happened to that darling baby Ed carried around on his back across the breadth and width of the Netherlands?) and has been working as hard as any college girl with an above 3.0 grade point average works.  She totally enjoyed the opportunity to sleep in, lounge around in her PJs, chat as much as my constant coughing allowed, and read books.  As far as I’m concerned that’s a great time.

Cowboy Girl hat

Cowboy Girl Hat

After she left yesterday I was kind of awash in niece nostalgia.  Then this morning I found this photo.  This, as the caption suggests, is a Cowboy girl hat.  That’s what my niece Hannah named it when we bought it for her at the Phoenix Zoo back when she was three and I was her babysitter every Wednesday.  (She’s almost eleven now…no, she’s almost ten, which is what I originally posted then my MOTHER corrected me, telling me she’s almost eleven only Mom was wrong; I’ve heard from her mother…she’s almost ten. )

I started watching my sister’s daughters one day a week when Maddison was 18 months old and my mom, who’d been watching her five days a week for my sister, said she couldn’t handle a full week of childcare.  I took the middle day to break up the stretch for her.   That gave her a day off and me the motivation not to work seven days a week.

It didn’t take Maddison too long to go from “Mommy, why are you leaving me with that strange lady” to calling me just “Denise”.   That’s significant.  To a child calling you by a single name puts you in the same category as “Mama” or “Daddy”.  To this day Maddison and Hannah both call me “Denise” without “Aunt”.   Maddy was four when Hannah was born, so Hannah never knew anything but Denise’s house on Wednesdays.  After Maddy went to school full time, it was just Hannah for a few years until she, too, left me.  Now that we live in Cornville I working get them to come stay with us for a couple weeks.

So there we were, Hannah and I, visiting the zoo on a very warm late May Phoenix morning when I realized we’d forgotten her hat.  She’s a red head so going out without a hat isn’t really a great option for her.  I detoured into the zoo gift shop and started toward the clothing section, thinking I’d get her a ball cap.  Instead, she gasped in happy delight, pointed to a display and called out, “Look!  It’s a cowboy girl hat just like Jessie wears!”  (For the kid-challenged, Jessie is the cowgirl doll mate to the cowboy Woody in the Toy Story movies.)

As you can see from the picture, it isn’t a cowboy hat at all, but as far as Hannah was concerned it was the best hat she’d ever seen.  Our purchase made, we headed out finish visiting the zoo with Hannah talking about being a cowboy girl while watching the spider monkeys, while eying the elephant, while looking for the tiger and while sipping frozen lemonade in the hot car on our way home.  She wore that hat to the zoo every time we visited even after it had gotten too small for her.

I like nieces!

 

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Another Kindle book hits the ether

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Denise

First, a note: Ten days into the new year and I’m still sick.  If this is an omen, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the year.  I did, however, make a connection.  Last night I was at my neighbors’ house for a brief time.  They heat their house with firewood.  Smoky environment = no voice for me in the morning.  Well ugh for real.  How am I supposed to live here and not breath smoke?

cover for lady in white

I was trying for a sort of ghostly image...

That aside, Lady in White is now a kindle book.  I forgot how much I liked that book.  Talk about characters trapped by society’s conventions!  We, living in these modern times, tend to forget that in the past there was very little free choice about what you did or became in life if you didn’t have the power or capital to change things–and those with the power and capital were hell-bent on making sure no one else got any.   The quiet, shy people, or those given to following conventions, just bowed their heads and endured.

And the ending of this book always makes me cry.  Weird that my own writing can do that, but I guess I really loved Nick.

Well, that’s the best I can do while I’m still coughing my guts out. It’s back to bed for me, where I can watch my fruit trees start to bud out in this unusually warm weather–then it’ll freeze and I’ll lose all the fruit again this year.  (I really need to go back to bed I think.)

 

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Merry Christmas Eve

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Denise
Holiday header

Merry Christmas

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas to everyone! Like all of my Medieval characters, I love the Christmas holy-days (all twelve of the holy days) for the magic, gratitude and generosity they represent. This year I won’t be giving one of my tunics to my most prominent servant as Rannulf would have done at Graistan keep. (Cloth and clothing was so expensive it was considered a great honor to wear your higher-up’s cast offs, especially if said higher-up was the king or your liege lord.) Nor do I have to provide presents for everyone in my family. Now that we’re at 23 members we all decided it’s too expensive. (Although some people insist on shipping chocolate–BAD people, bad, bad people!) So only the younger children, those not living outside their parents’ homes, get presents while those of us in Arizona participate in a gift exchange: 1 wrapped gift with a value of $50 and one ridiculously useless gift, the value of which might well be priceless. Take the leather rhino that I found in the basement here, complete with spider webs and absolutely beyond value as a gag gift. Almost as good as a box of empty pens or one used shoe with a holiday ribbon instead of a lace.

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So Ed went out to get wood from the catio…

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Denise

and screamed at me, “There’s something killing the chickens!”

I, and my mighty piddling Aussie, went dashing out in the frigid night. I ran down to the chicken coop, threw open the window in their luxury apartment, and they cooed at me as if to say, “What are you doing here?” Meanwhile, I’m hearing what’s listed in this video as the Vixen’s Scream.  It was pretty awesome and not a little unnerving.  I will mention that it wasn’t my husband who went dashing out into the night to face what might have been the Chupacabra…  No, it was us intrepid girls.

Oh, that’s right!  Sedona stopped at the top of the driveway down to the barn, then turned around and retreated to the house.  I was just me down there with those chickens!

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A new garden and what to do with thinnings

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Denise

I’d been stuck inside for too long.  The sun came out two days ago and the temperature promised to soar above the 60 degree mark at some time that day.  It was time to do something with dirt!

me in my sockmonkey hat

My new sockmonkey hat

It was still cold when I stepped outside what is presently the front door of our house.  (Ergo the sock monkey hat.)  That’s the door that faces Page Springs Road.  The one to which I’ve taped a sign that says “We can’t hear you knocking.  Please come around back”.  This door disappears in the remodel.  Our new front door will be around back.

the afterthought garden

Sedona, thankfully not helping me

But for now, our present front door gives me easy access to the Lasagna garden (plundered by the raccoons but my herbs are doing great), and to the afterthought garden: my new salad bed.  Why an afterthought?  Because after I planted out the bucket garden I still had a couple of six packs of broccoli and a bunch of seeds.  I stood at the front of the house, staring at this dead and long-empty planter bed with the sun warming my back and had an AH-ha moment.  This stretch of ground was going to get the sun all day long, all winter long.  Come summer, anything here will burn to a crisp, but not during the winter.

With that I started digging.  I went down more than 12 inches, layered in 3 inches of horse manure, topped that with dirty chicken straw, topped that with some of the previous awful dirt and topped that with the last bag of compost.  And planted.

I stuffed that sucker.  There are peas at the back about every inch, Rouge d’Hiver lettuce down the middle, broccoli and spinach along the front.  In between I spread Mesclun mix seeds from Botanical Interests and arugula and parsley and cilantro seeds.  (The pot at the end of the picture has sorrel in it.  I’m still learning how to use that, so for now it’s just a a pretty plant.)  And everything grew.  More on that in a moment.

So, two days ago there I was with my sock monkey hat and a rake, meaning only to rake leaves when I realized I was missing a huge opportunity.  It wasn’t only that little afterthought garden that was getting the day’s sun, but the whole length of wall that descends the dirt driveway that leads down to the pump house.  It was time for a new garden.

the new south facing garden

My new garden. You can see the front of the greenhouse in the background

Out came the shovels. Six hours later I almost had a garden. I just layered my dirt on top of the piles of branches and debris I’d left there after cleaning out the space for the Lasagna garden. Some of it is already topped in chicken straw. The rest is going to get Starbuck’s best…as soon as I can reach Cottonwood and plunder their trash can. The dirt I used actually came from the driveway/cart port that wall protects. (Cart port because Sam had an electric golf cart that he used to keep parked down there behind that wall.) Because that driveway is so much lower than everything else around it, it has collected leaves, runoff, organic debris and whatever else (no doubt plenty of Cadmium from the road but oh well, there’s no avoiding that), and it’s all composted over the years. Whatever else, it gave me something physical to do.

Now all it needs is something to keep it from collapsing all over the driveway…ROCKS!  This is the last warm day for a while.  It’ll be me, the wheelbarrow and the pile of rocks.

It was as I was trying to avoid thinking about rocks yesterday that I looked down into the afterthought garden and realized how really overcrowded it was.  The sun was warm, the kittens were playing along the garage doors and Sedona needed me to throw something so she could work off a little energy (thus sparing Webster and Burtie from being chased relentlessly; Billy refuses to let her chase him, running off to hide instead ).  I sat on the edge of the planter and started thinning lettuce in between tossing Sedona’s stick.

salad thinnings

Tasty!

When I was done I had half a colander full of very infant lettuces and arugula.  I considered giving the thinnings to the chickens then changed my mind.  They were really good.

 

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Cabin Fever

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Denise
fog concealing the hills around us

Look, Ma! No hills!

Another foggy cold morning here in lower-northern Arizona.  Cold and damp or not, I’m going to spend the day outside.

 

 

Sedona in a quiet moment

See, Sedona! You can lay down for at least an instant!

After three days of rain five-month-old Sedona (the puppy) has a really bad case of cabin-fever, which includes chasing all the cats and demanding we throw her frisbee down the stairs so she can fetch it.

my sockmonkey hat

Ed says it suits me, and it does :-D

 

 

It won’t hurt me to get a little exercise either…I suppose, sigh. At least I have my new sock monkey hat to wear.

 

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Where this Chicken Angel won’t tread

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Denise

So Friday night before we left for Tom’s memorial we dropped Sedona off with her Dog(as compared to God)parents next door.  Al and Elana have been God(as compared to dog)sends from the day we moved in, mostly because they used to be Sam’s caretakers for the house and know most of the really quirky things about this place.  They also love Sedona.  About ten years ago they’d had a Red Merle Aussie named Coco and adored her.

Anyway, as we’re sitting and talking…wait, I can’t let you think that we were just “sitting and talking” like Ed and I had nothing else to do, because we did.  We needed to get home and pack, then get to bed so we could be up by 4 a.m. to do chores then on the road by 5:45 a.m.  (By the way, I got to watch the lunar eclipse in my passenger side window all the way from Cornville to Phoenix; it was stunning, especially as the sun was rising and the moon, fully in the Earth’s shadow, was setting.)

No, the “sitting and talking” we’re doing at this point is, I’ve discovered, actually a sort of currency unique to small town living.  Despite my love for the outdoors and the earth, I’m a big city girl born and raised.  Until I came to live up here full time I didn’t realize there was any other way to pay for goods and services than with some form of monetary trade, such as credit cards or cash, or goods of equal value.   “Talk” never figured in my consciousness as something of value.

I only recently figured this out when we took Ed’s pickup to Jim of Jim’s Auto Repair.  He spent a whole day studying the problem, told us he couldn’t fix it, then refused to charge us for his time spent in the engine.  Instead, we listened for forty-five minutes as he told us about the favorite muscle cars he’d owned.  Different sort of currency, but currency just the same.  All of a sudden I understood why all the contractors I’d dealt with insisted on chatting for so long after they were finished with whatever task they’d come to do.  I was paying their bill.

I have to say this isn’t a currency I ever thought I’d use.  Never ever.  I’m a writer, and most writers write because we don’t want to talk.  If we’d wanted to talk we’d be actors.

Now that you get the sort of talking we’re doing, you’ll understand how important this particular trade ends up being.  We’d been sitting around their tiny table in their kitchen, discussing the new water pan for the chickens (much easier than that tower thing) when I asked if they’d heard about Dudley taking off with one of the ladies; they know Dudley because he comes by to play with their two dogs, Honey and Cappuccino.  Turns out Ed hadn’t shared the tale with them, which he then proceeded to do.

When he finished Al leaned back in his chair.  Al’s a handsome man even in his Seventies, with tanned skin and that white-white hair that only graces the heads of people who’d once had black-black hair.  He’s Latino, born in America of Mexican immigrant parents.  “My mom saved one of  my dad’s chickens once,” he says.

Currency is about to be traded here.  I’ll add that I know Al’s mom.  She’s now ninty-three and can’t weigh more than eighty pounds.

“My dad had expensive chickens, like $200 each back then,” he says.  “You know, the fighting kind. That day the rooster was doing what he shouldn’t, you know.”  He looks at us; I’m pretty sure what he means but I don’t want to interrupt the story to clarify.  “Mom was really good with rocks, so she throws one at him and hits him right in the head and he drops dead.  Well, Mom’s frantic.  If my dad comes home and sees that…woo!”

Here Elana offers, “Yeah, all you kids were afraid of your dad.”

Al nods.  “Yeah, especially when it came to his chickens.”  He leans forward and puts his elbows on the table in front of him.  “So you know how to bring a chicken back to life?  They do it at the fights after their chicken is all bloody and half-dead, when they want a little more life out of the bird.”

Innocents that we are, both Ed and I shake our heads.  Al grins.  “You blow air into the chicken’s back end.  Wakes them right up and they get back into the ring and fight some more.”

We both groan and laugh.  The Chicken Angel looks at me.  “No way.  Not ever am I saving one of your chickens by blowing into its butt,” he says.

“Yep, that chicken is headed for the stew pot,” I agree.  Not a chance that’s happening in my life.

Now that Al’s suckered us into that, he leans back and finishes his story.  “So Mom grabs up the rooster and puts her mouth to its rear.  She blows and blows.  All us kids are watching.  Sure enough, its head pops back up and its alive again.  By the time my dad got home you couldn’t tell anything had ever been wrong with it.  And none of us ever told him what she’d done.  But man, she had a good arm.  If we were doing anything wrong, she’d throw whatever she had at us–shoes, pans, rocks–and hit us too.”

Payment made and gratefully so.

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Green Tomato Chutney, sigh

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Denise
sort of frozen green tomatoes

Sort of frozen green tomatoes

Here they are.  Fifteen pounds of the prettiest tomatoes I’ve ever grown.  It hit about 20 degrees last night and even with a double layer of frost cloth the poor plants couldn’t take it.

Well almost.  There were still some thriving leaves on the massive Cherokee Purple growing out from under the equally massive lavender plant in the corner of my upper garden.  That tomato is so well rooted that I couldn’t yank it out of the ground like I did the others.  Instead I buried it in a layer of properly poopy chicken straw.  Who knows?  It might actually survive the winter.  Tomorrow I make Green Tomato Chutney.

Why tomorrow?  Because Ed’s in Phoenix all day.  He cannot stand the smell of this stuff cooking.  He claims it stinks like old sweaty tennis shoes.

Chutney in the pot

It's cooking away...stinking up the house as it bubbles.

Funny how something that smells that bad can taste great and so completely differently than it smells.  This chutney is great on mild cheeses, good on pork roast  and makes a really great pan-cleaning sauce on sauteed chicken.  The original recipe came from the Moosewood Cookbook, one of my mainstays while I was vegetarian.

 

 

Green Tomato Chutney (makes about a quart or 4 8oz glass jars worth)

  • 2 lbs green tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 tsp mustard seed
  • 1 tsp ground cumin (the source of the tennis shoe smell)
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 cup honey
  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 1/2 cayenne pepper (or other spicy pepper), minced and seeded if desired

Combine all the ingredients in a pot and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer one hour stirring occasionally.   Open the windows while it cooks or your eyes will water.  This is chutney.  The high acid content means that it will keep in a glass jar in your refrigerator for a very long time.  To store it outside of the refridge, process it in a water bath, keeping it at boiling for about twenty minutes.

too much chutney

Too much chutney

This is an after the fact note–twelve pounds of tomatoes makes more Green Tomato Chutney than any family (except, perhaps, an East Indian family who eats chutney with their rice every night) will use in a year or two or three.  Maybe we need to eat more rice?

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Chicken Angel

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Denise

Sedona has a friend.  Dudley the Beagle belongs to our neighbors to the south, the people who own Oak Creek Winery.  (I know, perfect neighbors for us.)  Their property had also once been owned by Sam Frey and, like ours, is one of the original ranches on the spring.  When they bought the house they had in mind to grown medical Marijuana but the opportunity to do that fell by the wayside here in Arizona.  Since then their exterior remodeling has the look of a potential B&B to it.

Anyway, Dudley free ranges and in his travels he stops by to make Sedona crazy.  How, you might ask?  Simply by running.  That dog is amazingly fast.  He quite literally runs circles around my Australian Shepherd pup.  She ends up howling at him to “Please slow down so I can catch you!”  (This is important for the forthcoming story.)

So the other day I took Sedona to her first vet visit.  It was time to get legal.  The Rabies vaccine.  A license.  Things cat owners don’t usually worry about.   Our new vet is close, just down at the end of the road.  And nice, or so Sedona believes.  Then again, she was convinced that all four people in the office (two owners, one tech/receptionist and the vet)  had all come to this new place to see HER!  How amazing is that?  She wiggled and smiled and tried to jump and wiggled some more.  (One thing I really like about her is that she doesn’t pee when she gets excited, thank heavens.)  She even smiled as she got her shot, then wiggled some more at an old and sick Shih Tzu while I arranged for her spay as well as the neutering of Billy and Burtie last Friday.

Meanwhile back at the ranch Dudley had appeared, looking for Sedona.  Instead, he found chickens.  I’d left the orchard gate open for the girls to do their own free ranging, which that day included the first three ladies getting into my artichokes again.  Some of other flock had followed them out to scratch away near the barn.  That’s where Dudley found them and being a Beagle he did what Beagles were bred to do–he chased down and took his prey.

(A note:  this is Ed’s tale, not mine.  I’m so sorry I missed this.)

At that moment Ed was installing plastic on the greenhouse which is above the field.  (This is so appropriate.)  Upon hearing Dudley barking and much excited squawking, he starts down the narrow stair to the lower field in time to see Dudley heading home with one of the Australorpes in his mouth.   “Hey, dog! Let her go!  Stop!  Come!” he says he shouted (although I’m guessing there might have been a few bluer words in those commands), as he reaches the equally narrow bridge that crosses the Ditch and leads to the field.

Dudley, burdened by a limp chicken in his mouth, is moving slower than usual, a fact for which Ed is grateful.  My husband sprints across the field, leaping over the makeshift irrigation ditches we dug into the sod this summer and avoiding the numerous gopher mounds that dot our landscape.

How it went down

How it went down

Dudley isn’t giving way.   He’s caught that chicken and, by George, he’s keeping it.  (Only a beagle named Dudley would say “by George”.)  Running faster than a man his age ever thought he could (Ed’s description), Ed charts a diagonal course across the field, and, catches the dog just before Dudley hits the big Sycamore.  Rather than let Ed catch him Dudley spits out both chicken and feathers, and hightails it home.  (We haven’t seen him in a few days. Any dog who would say “by George” knows when to lay low.)

The newly freed hen staggers around in a circle then falls into the irrigation ditch.  Ed says he followed her as she stumbled up its length until she reached the rocky hollow below the irrigation value where she promptly inserted her head into a gap in the rocks.  At this point she collapsed, butt out to the world.

Figuring she’s done for, Ed lets her be as he chases the other ten birds back into orchard.  Once they’re safe behind the closed gate he returns for their fallen sister.  Figuring on blood he says he hesitated before picking her up.  To his surprise once he lifted her she looked up at him, eyes still rotating in her head I’m sure, but very much alive.

“Hmm, not too bad,” Ed says he told her.  Carrying her back to the orchard fence, he set her down to open the gate.  She looked up at him,  cocking her head one way than the other, then strode into the chicken Green Zone on her own power.

Inside, all the other girls were no doubt discussing as only hens can how dangerous it was to leave the protection of their fence.  “Now girls,” I think Big Red (otherwise known as Gigi) would be saying, since she’s the bully of the group and the most vocal, “we must all take a lesson from our dear sister’s sacrifice.  We must never leave this space,” she no doubt lifted a wing at this point to indicate the area inside the fence, “unless, of course, I see some decent grasshoppers out there in which case you should all stay here so I can have them and you can’t.”

Somewhere in the middle of her speech, their not-so-fallen sister strutted up to the back of her flock.  All the others would have turned at that point, staring in amazement.  “Oh MY GAWD!  We thought you were DEAD!”

By the way, for me chickens always speak with a really broad, very nasally Chicago accent.

the chicken angel

Ed the Angel

“I WAS!” I’m sure she told the others.  “I SAW the light, I swear I DID!  And then it was there, that big THING with the gray feathers below its BEAK.  It’s a MIRACLE!”  At which point she must have paused.  “Funny, I always thought angels would look more like us.”

Heavenly Interest in the chicken coop

Heavenly interest in the chicken coop?

By the time I got home from the vet I couldn’t tell which of them Dudley had taken.

Ed says what surprised him most about the whole adventure was that he wasn’t the least winded after all the running.  “Farming life,” he pronounced to me, “is really getting me back in shape!”

 

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