Citizens of the CommuteThere is something to be said for my commute, these days. Depending on the route, the path is between one and a half and two an a half miles of good walking. The paths all go through a local park, almost in entire, an while parts are on pavements next to roads, a good chunk of it is wooded trail. In the sumer season, this means raspberries to be found at trailside. These past weeks, it has meant spectacular color, entire stands of oaks all blown gold at once. It also means critters.
Three days ago, I turned a corner and found myself meters away from a doe an two fawns. They stepped quickly back into the woods, but not, I think, because of me. There was no panic in their passing.
Two days ago, there was a flock (?) of wild turkeys, bobbing in a clear patch at the top of a hill and digging in the leaves of unknown things. These were more skittish than the deer, an gave me berth. I will point out here that while I know how to cook a turkey, I do not know how to clean one, an I am not tempted to learn by trial and unfortunate error.
Today: crows. The trees of the trail through the woods were heavy with them, chattering the change in the weather and rising up from the brush in an unrelenting racket. There were maybe two thousand of the them in there, under the shedding canopies. My walking was enough to spook them, and I drove them forward down the path, a squawking quake of crows rushing overhead from branches to branches. It was remarkable.
It also pretty much guaranteed I'd get pooped on. My sample of this mornings walk is small, but the data so far bears this out.
So it goes!
Battling the PantryThings are settling in; enough of a semblance of routine has returned that I am reliably making oatmeal in the early hours. The weather is helping here, too. The additions vary from morning to morning, but I find I almost always manage to have the cinnamon handy. The other morning I got a lesson in why, in the dim grey light of the kitchen, I shouldn't keep the cinnamon on the spice shelf quite so close to the cayenne pepper.
This evening as something of a treat (and again, the weather) I whomped up a pot of chai after dinner. Peppercorns, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon stick: somehow, I had run out of nutmegs. I'm not sure how that happened, but the milk was simmering, so I tossed in some allspice. The result was quite nice.
There's squash abounding in the kitchen, now. I need to get more nutmeg.
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