2008 April Archive at Beside the Stream

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Archive for April, 2008

Birds at the Beaver Pond

Published on April 18, 2008 in birds. 2 Comments

Here’s a little beaver pond at 8,300 feet. See the beaver lodge?

This gander’s mate is sitting a nest of eggs nearby, and he’s keeping watch over the pond.

At first he keeps a close eye on my dog and me, but after a while he’s back to

preening and

doing very fancy flexibility tricks with his neck.

Meanwhile, two great blue herons across the pond did neck tricks as well.

here’s the short version,

and here’s the tall version.

This heron made me wonder who else was watching us, but I’ll never know.

Apricots in bloom

Published on April 17, 2008 in gardening. 4 Comments

The apricot trees are in bloom throughout the valley.

These are the neighbor’s apricot trees: Bob prunes them, and I help pick them. Last year a late frost took the year’s blooms and there wasn’t any fruit. This year, the trees are blooming really fervently since it’ll be their first crop in two years.

Apricots are thought to have originated in the region where China and Russia butt together, and humans have been growing these trees for ages: they may date to 3000 BC. No one knows what the oldest cultivated fruit is, but it’s not the apricot. Contenders for the title include (in no particular order after figs)

figs
dates
pomegranates
mangoes
bananas
grapes
lemons
pears
olives.

Since these fruits have grown for the longest time, you could call these our best loved fruits. For myself, it’s the olives and lemons.. but that’s just me.

The stream is swollen

Published on April 16, 2008 in riparian edge. 1 Comment

This is our stream, swollen with spring. Right in the foreground is a boulder under the water. There is a dip in the water before the boulder, and a tail of white water behind it… and otherwise it’s hidden.

This is the same place 3 weeks ago. This boulder is why boaters get so good at reading the river.

Three weeks ago you saw it,

and now you don’t.

Treehouse curtains, Part 2

Published on April 16, 2008 in Colorado women. 0 Comments

For the treehouse curtains, we started with two of the old insulated curtains from the Yosemite Hotel… the original fabric from the original hotel. Suzy had them stashed away.

Our guess is that this cotton was block-printed by hand. There was plenty of height and no width, so I turned under the top and bottom edges with a 2-inch hem

and cut the insulation and lining to be exactly the width of the curtain. Then I pinned the three layers together, ironed the edges again, and sewed the top and bottom hem. See how I’m letting the top and bottom edges float when I pin the three layers together?

There isn’t enough width, so I sew tape on the two vertical sides to be able to hem them

and then I iron the tape over, and sew it down. It comes out looking fine, and is done except for the loops.

Here are the raw silk curtains that I lined with an old blanket. I have plenty of this fabric, so I iron in nice 3 inch hems all the way around. This is the last curtain and there isn’t enough blanket left, so I sew two pieces of blanket together and call it good. This is just a treehouse, after all.

This is ready for a lining, so I cut a piece using the curtain as a pattern.

and then I tuck it under all four hems

and pin the three layers together, leaving the hems free. Another ironing,

and I sew each end and take out those pins.

Then I sew the ends. And I’m done, aside from sewing on two loops.

It took a lot more effort to tell you about it than it did to make the curtains. But such is life. And finally, here’s a few of them up.

Nice!

Burning the fields

Published on April 15, 2008 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Around here, grasslands and national forestlands are managed with fire.

For grasslands, spring fire kills weed seed, transforms last year’s thatch into available nutrients, and kills small trees. It’s an integral part of the ecosystem.

This is George Catlin’s painting called “Prairie Fire”, from 1871, back when the Indians fired the prairie regularly. Fire wasn’t used for forest management for nearly a century, and now it’s commonplace. Have fields always been burned in the West?

I never saw a prescribed burn growing up in Vermont, but I learned that the state agencies started using fire for forest management in New England in the late 1990s. Now they’re burning there too.

And here, plumes of smoke are a regular occurrence; first the fields, and later the forest underbrush.

They say that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, but when it comes to grassland, it doesn’t take much fire

to make a heck of a lot of smoke.

A great cheesecake

Published on April 14, 2008 in recipe. 1 Comment

When I’m asked to bring a dish to a party, I usually suggest a cheesecake. This dessert feeds a lot of people with very little effort and no chance of failure. Since it doesn’t rise, it can’t fall. As my Dad used to say, it’s big enough to bother about, and once you add the fruit topping it’s almost like a health food, if you’re feeling fondly towards cream cheese and eggs.

Here we have the Leaning Tower of Cheesecake. This is a cake that needs to be shopped for, since it uses up 5 packs of cream cheese and most of a box of eggs in a fell swoop. The box of graham cracker crumbs makes three cheesecake bottoms, and the recipe also calls for flour and sugar, but they don’t fit in the picture. As for the lemon, vanilla, butter and heavy cream, well, it’s possible that these might already be at home.

Making cheesecake requires a commitment not only because of the box of graham crackers (and the implicit promise that you’ll make a second and third crust), it also needs a cheesecake pan. I prefer two.

This makes a little one for the house or Miss Roberta down the road, and a big one for the party.

The first step is the graham cracker crust, and the recipe is on the back of the box. It takes the oven at 350F, and

1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
5 TBSP butter, melted

You dump it all in a medium bowl

and mix it up with a fork, and then you line the bottom of both cheesecake pans.

Just use your fingertips to press it into a sheet on the bottom of the pans, and as far up the sides as it goes. In this case, not very far, because the little pan uses most of the excess. When the oven is heated, put it in for 6-8 minutes, or until it’s browned. And when you take it out, turn up the oven to 475F.

Meanwhile, that cream cheese wants to be whipped.

5 packages of cream cheese (8 oz. each) AT ROOM TEMPERATURE
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon rind
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 TBSP flour
1/4 tsp salt
5 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup heavy cream

This project is easy if the creamcheese is at room temperature, and not-so-easy if it’s not.

In a big bowl, beat the cream cheese with the vanilla and lemon rind.

With room temperature cream cheese, this makes a smooth paste. Then you beat in the sugar, and the flour and salt. One by one, beat in the eggs,

and then add the egg yolks. Beat in the cream.

If you started with room temparture cream cheese, the batter is smooth and creamy at this point. Fill the pans and check to make sure the oven is at 475F. When it is, pop in the cheesecake(s) and bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until the top edge is golden. Turn down the temperature to 200F, and let it cook an hour or longer, until the cheesecake is set. Then turn off the oven and crack the door, and leave the cheesecake there overnight to cool slowly slowly on the rack. This prevents cracks.

You cut the sidewalls and put the cake on a plate, and then the final step (when the cheesecake is cool) is a fruit topping, depending on what kind of fruit you might have in your freezer. It only takes about ten minutes, so it’s hardly worth it’s own tower of ingredients, but here goes

Any kind of berry will do–I’m using raspberries from last summer–and we also need sugar, lemon and cornstarch.

Put a few cups of frozen berries in a non-metal pan along with a scant 1/4 cup sugar, the juice of a lemon, and a few tsps cornstarch. I stick it on high heat and stir it until it boils and the cornstarch-y liquid has gone from chalky to clear, and then pour it on top of the cheesecake.

And that’s it: a big, tasty, professional looking dessert that doesn’t have a trick.

One less deer in the herd

Published on April 13, 2008 in deer herd and dogs. 5 Comments

When I came home yesterday, Sam and a friend were in the road. Back up 100 ft, he said. Really. You’ll want to see it.

One of the little yearling deer in ‘our’ herd had been hit by a car, leapt a neighbor’s 10′ deer fence, and was lying unable to move. There was no blood and he was unmarked, but he couldn’t get up. A woman walking by with her dogs said she was a deputy sheriff, and that she should shoot the deer in the head instead of having it torn apart by dogs. Since we both knew that the two German shepherds that live there would in fact tear it apart, I drove her and her dogs back to her house (my dog and her two made three in the back seat), where she picked up her gun.

She shot the deer in the head.

She was sad that she had to kill it, and made the Catholic sign of the cross over the deer’s broken body.

The carcass was dumped up the hill, and although she said very nice things about completing the cycle and returning the body to the earth, we both know that if the birds don’t finish it off really quickly, the dogs will have a heyday. But we both pretended that’s not part of the schedule.

Amen.

A good spring hike

Published on April 12, 2008 in deer herd, dogs and riparian edge. 3 Comments

In some areas, the snowmelt reveals unexpected surprises. This road was closed for the winter, and it’s the first time I’ve been here since fall.

I get a kick out of gravity. It’s so predictable.

This rock is so big it’ll take heavy equipment to move. And when I look up,

it seems like that rock might not be lonely much longer. I move right along, since I definitely don’t want to be standing under this many tons of stone, soil and tree. No thank you.

Across the river, the slope is made up of decomposed shale, which repels water.

It’s a peculiar material, because that water-repelling quality makes it hard for plants to get their roots down. This slope isn’t recently denuded; it’s been that way for ages. It makes for an odd riparian edge.

Another dog joined us back a mile ago, and now I see why: it’s not just fallen rocks that the snow left behind; it’s fallen deer too. This dog has visited this carcass before, I think.

My dog was so happy to be able to help.

The not-so-nice ending to Thankful’s story

Published on April 11, 2008 in horses. 8 Comments

The winner of the “Name that Photo” contest is

Solitude

Nice title. And here’s the end of Thankful’s story… but it’s not very nice.

I called my friend Paul, who worked for the Bureau of Land Management for 18 years and managed their Wild Horse Program in Nevada. He said that when the horse was on public land, if someone puts food and labor equal to the value of the horse then they legally own the horse, and can legally take it away. He estimated that a wild yearling mustang was worth $300 to $400, so Susie already legally owned it if it lived on public land. But on Indian land it was a different story: she had to get permission from the Tribe to take it. Since the horse would’ve died and they’re liable to charges of animal abuse, he thought they’d agree the horse was hers, but that agreement had to be in place before he’d help her take the horse. And it was no problem for him to catch the little filly–he’d put up his portable corral with a one-way gate, and put his old mare inside it. Little Thankful is so lonely that she’d go into the corral for company, the door would shut, and he’d load them both into his trailer and take her over to Suzy’s. But she needed to get permission from the Tribe first. (Is that a nice guy, or what?)

Suzy had called the tribal headquarters back when she started feeding the horse late December, but no one responded. When I gave her Paul’s information she made a few calls, trying to track down permission to take the horse. Well, word gets around, and she got a call about it today. He wasn’t a bit nice. Not a speck.

He said that he heard she’d been feeding his horse. That he knew it was left behind on the mesa, and he’d tried to catch it but couldn’t. When the deep snow came, he tried to snowmobile in to take the horse out, but the snow was too soft. So he left her. And Suzy said, yes, it was starving and stuck in the snow, so she brought it food.

This is the horse when she started bringing it food,

and this is the horse last week, and the only reason this filly is so plumpy and nice is because Suzy skied in all those bales of hay.

We figure he was mean to her because he was afraid that she would file charges of animal abuse. He had an accent, and lived in Towaoc on the reservation–maybe his first language was Ute. He made out like Suzy had been overstepping to have fed his horse. And get this: he said he was coming with a portable corral to pick up the filly; would Suzy come help him get her? I thought, this guy has cojones that put the gelande jumpers to shame. No, I’m thinking, I won’t help. No. And I’m getting my chair back tomorrow.

But since Suzy is a much nicer person than I’ll ever be, she said yes, she’d help. That she brought the horse food every day last winter, skiing miles each way, because she wanted the horse to live.

And in the end he said

“Thank you”

in a very small voice. I say, Pooh pooh to you, you big poop. You shouldn’t be mean to someone who saved the filly you left to starve. You big poop.

And since I managed sludge for the Boston Harbor Clean-Up twenty years ago, that phrase has always held particular resonance for me. Ya big poop.

A big herd of elk

Published on April 10, 2008 in elk herd. 5 Comments

Bob called me and said, There’s a big herd of elk on the way in to town. I think there’s about sixty.

So I took my camera, and sure enough there’s a giant herd of elk. I parked my car on the road and climbed the fence to get closer to them… but they aren’t interested in getting closer to me.

At first, some of the elk were lying down, and others were grazing. As I approached, they started organizing themselves in relation to me–here, they all faced me. Look how tightly they bunch together. These animals don’t have much personal space.

Then they collectively decided that they didn’t want to see me at all. All of these butts in a row, with their backs to me, makes it seem as though the elk are making a statement.

Herd life.

The collective noun for elk is either a herd of elk, or a gang of elk. In the deep snow, the elk sometimes gang up and steal the hay put out for horses and cattle. The next valley over, a gang of elk pulled down a haybarn and helped themselves.

Mad, bad, and dangerous to know–that’s how Lady Caroline Lamb described Lord Byron. That part I get. And when I look at this gang of elk and see how few men there are to go around, well, no wonder they’re so ornery.

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