Monthly Archives: September 2019

Breakthrough!

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Cats rule. This is something all cats understand. Dogs may not get it at first, but wise dogs don’t argue the point — not even when they know it ain’t so. Especially not when the cat is Tux and the dog is Rosie. She might outweigh Tux by 30 pounds or so but that doesn’t make her bigger than Tux.

Tux is the biggest, baddest cat in the valley and he is the boss. He has driven this point home ever since he arrived here back in 2015 or thereabouts. For some reason, though, he has felt compelled to drum the message into Rosie particularly hard.  He’s hissed, spat, yowled, clawed, leaped on, and in general been horribly mean to my ferocious  pit bull I mean Amstaff.

Who has never even curled a lip at him.

In fact, Rosie reverts to her cower position or turns tail and runs from Tux when he goes at her.  At least that’s been the MO for almost all the nearly six weeks she’s been living with us.

Almost all.  Because things are beginning to change.

Last week Rosie and I went out on the allotment for an evening walk but didn’t go far because the cows were hanging out and blocking our way, focused on poor Rosie.  I guess it’s because of her size and because she looks less like a threat than she does a fat bullet with stubby legs (I write that with great fondness, mind you), since instead of ignoring me or moseying off the other way when they see me, when they see Rosie the cows tend to get aggressive.  They line up, shoulder to shoulder, heads lowered, and stare at her.  Then one will take a step.  Then another one will take a step.  I don’t wait for a third one to move, or for the whole line of cows to get the idea, I turn around and take Rosie with me.

This particular walk Tux had accompanied us on the outward bound part as far as the cattle pens.  He was still there, waiting for us when we came back.  Oh no!  What if he went after Rosie and chased her out towards the cows?  But he didn’t do that.  He ran at her but veered off when she hunched down and squinched her eyes.  Then he trotted back towards home, tail in the air, point proven.  We followed.

There was an incident at my gate — a standoff as to who was going to go through it first — but I decided I’d had enough so I abandoned them to work it out.  I had covered maybe a hundred feet towards the house when I heard the thunder of paws.  I just shook my head and kept going.  Next thing I knew, Rosie and Tux were neck and neck, flat-out racing towards home.  Rosie hauled herself to a stop but Tux kept going till he was sure we all knew he had won.

Since then there have been more empty threats and fewer attacks, and yesterday I caught Tux and Rosie sniffing noses.  I don’t know, but it looks like an armistice is in the works.  As long as Rosie lets Tux win, I think this will lead to true peace, and maybe even friendship.

Cat walking under evening sky (Lif Strand Photo)

The boss surveying his domain

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The heavy hand of the law

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Pie Town Pie Festival 2019JUST KIDDING!  No need for bail!

Yesterday I participated in the Pie Town Pie Festival Fun Run. It was my third year. This event is the only run I do, as I’m no runner. My point in signing up and planning for it is not to get the tee shirt but to give myself a goal that not only keeps me physically active during the rest of the year, but makes me push harder than I otherwise might. I’m of an age when many people slow down. Believe me, it is an attractive idea to take it easier but I just can’t do that. I want to not only keep going, but I want to go faster and farther than the year before.

This year I kinda sorta actually ran. Okay, what I did was more like a shuffle. I can’t even call it jogging. And I confess I walked the worst hills. But hey, I couldn’t do that much last year, and the year before I walked the whole course.

So here’s a photo of me with my first place medal and my friend Laura with her medal, being arrested. No, not really. That’s Scott Landrum, Catron County Sheriff’s Deputy, who was working the Festival.  We had been chatting with a friend, Keith, who took a photo of the three of us to send to another friend, author Steven F Havill, to show Steve the big excitement he was missing.

We were chatting about the sudden t-storm (complete with flooding and hail) and how cool the Pie Festival is, and why Keith’s Brit friend can’t enter a meat pie next year and then explaining to Scott what Cornish pasties are and where you can get them in Scottsdale — that sort of thing.

Oh, and the medals? Laura and I were the only ones entered in the Women’s 55+ category. I came in third from last overall but FIRST in my category (big fist pump)! Sure, my medal may not be worth much in the real world but it’s worth something to me because I finished 3 minutes faster than last year.

My next year’s goal is to finish 3 minutes faster than this year. I better start training now!  Okay.  Maybe tomorrow.

P-K Run tee shirt

Nothing so sour as success

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Sourdough bread (c) 2019 Lif StrandI’m flyin’ high and I cannot lie — I finally made a loaf of sourdough bread that not only tastes good, but is actually sour! It’s a kind of miracle!

Oh, it’s not San Francisco sourdough, but then I don’t live in San Francisco, whereas San Francisco sourdough yeast does live there.  And that’s the key, it turns out.  Love the one you’re with.

Yeast, that is.  If I can’t have the San Francisco sourdough I love, I can love the New Mexico sourdough I’m with.

Okay, enough play on song lyrics.

Last week I was poking through a permaculture forum thread that was focused on sourdough bread.  More specifically, on capturing wild yeast for bread.  It’s something I’ve tried before, with poor results.  This time, though, the directions were different.  Way less complicated.

Easy, in fact.

In the past I’ve tried making starter with the yeast off of berries (juniper berries is what I’ve got around here, and trust me, gin flavored bread sucks).  I’ve tried enticing yeast already in my house, using complicated methods of “capturing” it similar to what was being discussed on the forum.  Unfortunately, if successful, that method creates a starter that you’re shackled to for life.  I don’t know about you, but much as I want to keep a 2500 year old starter that came by boat and on foot from the cradle of civilization on the other side of the planet (I made that up) fact is that it’s tedious, wasteful, and before I end up forgetting about the starter and killing it, it never makes a good loaf of bread for me anyway.

This method is so simple it’s scary:  mix a couple tablespoons of rye flour (organic of course!) with enough water to make a thin batter.  Cover with cloth.  Next day add more flour and a bit more water.  The third day clean up the mess because I used too small a container, add more flour and water.  The following day make bread with it.

No retaining a bit of starter back, feeding it, throwing out excess when I don’t bake with it right away, feeding it some more, shoving it into the back of the fridge to make it stop nagging, and then letting it die of neglect.

Better yet, inviting wild yeast (really, I think of it as feral, not wild) that’s been hanging around my kitchen watching me use commercial and alien yeasts from who knows where is like inviting wallflowers to join in with the dancing.  It’s like finally asking my friends to help me with a project.  It’s ultimately making bread that is truly of this place and time.

Yeah, it doesn’t taste like San Francisco.  But you know what?  I haven’t had any legitimate San Francisco sourdough bread in decades.  I don’t even know if my memory of it is real.  I know the bread I baked last night is real.

It’s dense, it’s sour, and it’s really mine.

And as a bonus…

Here are photos of tomatoes from my garden.  Will they ripen before first frost?  Will I get around to covering them at night when there is a first frost (generally mid-September, and it’s darned close to mid-September right now!).  Stay tuned!

unripe cherry tomatoes unripe Early Girl tomatoes

 

Normalizing

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Rosie denying the evidence I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream when I came home the other day and found this.  Rosie had torn open a bag of plastic bags that was headed for recycling.  They were everywhere.

Rosie first crouched down as if waiting for the blow that never came.  I did express my dismay — not to her, but to the world in general.  Not yelling, just my patented (hah!) technique of dramatically expressing woe at normal speaking volume, said woe not directed at any perpetrator.

I’ve very good at sounding like one of Terry Pratchett’s Nac Mac Feegles: “Waily waily!  Bags on the floor!  Waily waily!”

But the perp always knows who’s really guilty.  Rosie would not look at me nor, after she sat up again, would she look at the mess.  She gazed fixedly out the door, as if no bags were there.  Or maybe as if she was simply bearing witness to someone else’s crime.  Perhaps she expected I’d believe one of the cats did it.  Or maybe some other dog.

No, none of those things.  I think it was a test she had devised for me, to see what I would do.

The good news is that Rosie was seeing if she was a bad dog.  On purpose.  Yes, that’s good news!  Tearing up a bag of plastic is such a normal (if unwanted) thing for a dog to do.  It makes me happy that Rosie feels comfortable enough to risk exploring what the rules are in this house.  Even I, dense human that I am, know that she can’t ask me in any other way other than by doing.

That’s the trick, isn’t it?  I can’t just tape a list to the refrigerator door.  I can’t expect her to try to learn if I punish her for exploring the boundaries, either.  I do expect her to notice my reactions and to remember them, though.  I expect her to not repeat the actions that elicited my reactions, and then — eventually — to understand the rule that governs that set of circumstances.  That sounds pretty complicated but dogs are good at figuring the rules out, as long as the human is consistent with respect to the actions governed by those rules.

Think of it as an inter-species game of charades.

One day Rosie picked up a slipper and marched across the room with it while I was sitting at the computer.  I removed it from her mouth and put it back.  She has not done exactly that again.  Instead, she next gathered all my shoes that were not in the closet and brought them to her bed by the door while I was out of the house.  When I returned and discovered the pile of shoes there I picked them up and put them back.

She did not chew on the shoes.  She just moved the shoes.  She hasn’t touched any shoes since.  So could she assume that the rule is don’t touch Lif’s shoes?

Maybe.  How could she be sure without testing?  So next was the plastic bags.  While there were some bits and pieces of plastic scattered around, I don’t think she was purposefully tearing them up as much as accidentally doing so as she pulled them out of the containing bag and separated them from each other.  And again, she did this right by her dog bed near the kitchen door — not by her other bed next to my own, but where I would see the crime the moment I came entered the house.  Again I expressed woe as I picked up the bags and then put them out of reach.

To me this was about Rosie asking questions and not about Rosie being a bad dog.  The questions aren’t like we would ask.  They’re more like hot and cold (a form of charades).  If I do this, how will Lif respond?  If I do more of this, what will she do?  What if I do this other thing, which is kind of like those first things but different?  

Because I’m not punishing her when I discover these things, Rosie is free to ask the questions in a way that makes sense to her.  I don’t mind people or critters asking questions.  Picking up a few shoes or plastic bags is not a hardship for me.  It’s a small thing in the bigger picture.  Rosie has only been here a few weeks and she’s trying to learn a whole bunch of rules all at once. Not only rules like going outside to pee and poop, or not messing with the cats.

Rosie is learning that Lif’s stuff is Lif’s stuff, not Rosie’s. Also, she’s learning that Lif is a safe human being to be around.  Maybe even a fun human, someone a dog relax around.  And I think most important of all, Rosie is learning to feel that this is her home — and as a resident she can ask questions without fear.

I say, ask away.

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