what a week

it's been a crazy week, mainly because of work. after the aftermath of drama and excitement, turbulence, craziness and well you get the idea. don't know why everyone had to come out of the woodwork to add to it, but that's the way these things go.

i'm all excited about not working this saturday. i was kinda disgruntled that i had to in the first place, but after the horrors that came my way this week, it went from being annoying to scary thinking about what would happen if i snapped and went postal. fortunately i now can participate in bike pageants and saturday-ish fun.

i spent the day riding my bike to celebrate my newfound freedom. i had thoughts of going down the springwater trail...but instead i found myself out at the tualatin nature preserve. i knew i should have gone in july, i missed out on a lot of good wild edibles, but i did amuse myself with the last of the thimbleberries and some salal berries growing along the path. the trees were quiet and cool, and i had no idea how wonderful it felt back in the woods until i came out into the hot sun.
on the way back home i noticed there was a nice patch of black currants, and no doubt provided hours of amusement for bewildered suburbanites as i stood there entranced by the ribes, and filled up a bag in plain sight of the whole modern world. some kid musta been inspired by my example, but her mom said, "no you can't eat those, they're poisonous".

yeah. they're poisonous. that would be why i'm standing in the hot sun picking them...rii-iiight.

the ribes family is pretty unknown in the united states, but they're popular as hell in europe. i hadn't lived anywhere with an appropriate climate so had not encoutered them until i moved to oregon where they grow quite happily. apparently they were an alternate carrier of white pine rust back in the day and the growing of them was banned in favor of the timber industry. as a result, they are only slowly beginning to make a comeback, and hence the lack of familiarity...although these days most people are so ignorant about the origins of food that they wouldn't recognize an apple tree if they ran right into one. one can make currant jam or liquer like creme de cassis but i'm thinking a gallon of wine is about my speed at the moment.

we have so many tomatoes now. i'm pretty happy about it. the garden is doing well and the mystery squash turned out to be some variety of pumpkin. the mystery tomatoes look like they might be paste tomatoes, and the yellow cherry tomatoes are good. the chard is huge. my greens are looking nice. it's almost time to plant carrots and parsnips and fall crops again.

it's hard to believe i've been here a year. and i still don't know anyone other than the people i live with. kinda discouraging, but that's the way things go. i guess people in the north prefer to keep to themselves and that's just the way it is. if my only friend is the neighbor's dog, then so be it.

tomorrow's the tour de fat. i'm looking forward to gettin' my bike on.
word.