24 September 2010

I had the orchard to myself today, and I spent the morning and early afternoon digging up about one hundred fifty willow saplings, labeling about a hundred more half gallon jugs for the cider, and pulling up and cleaning the last of the daikon.

A heavy blanket of fog and mist has crept in from the sea this evening, turning the land into a hauntingly beautiful, eerily otherworldly vista.

23 September 2010

Today is the autumnal equinox, the first day of fall. The trees are just beginning to blaze with color, and each day the weather grows cooler.

I spent all morning picking apples at various places in the area. Have I mentioned that I think I’m allergic to apple trees? My arms are covered in a welt/rash that itches like mad, and the apple trees are the only thing I can think of that would have triggered a reaction. Of all the irony.

I spent the rest of the afternoon collecting a massive headache. I had to cut down Leslie’s two big flowerbeds today for the winter, and everything in there was so pungent it went straight to my head. Catnip, oregano, flox, and heaven only knows what else, but all of it stunk. By the time I’d cut it all down with my dull clippers and wrestled it into the compost piles, I was dizzy with the menagerie of smells.

Leslie invited me to go to Bar Harbor with her tonight to see a movie about the library at Alexandria, but she wanted me to drive. Even after I told her I had a resounding headache and my car is getting low on fuel, she still said, “Well, I’d really rather not have to drive my car.” I suppose I could have pitched a fit and refused, but my parents have raised me to be too polite, so I gave in. Then, when we got there, Leslie realized she had read the advertisement wrong and gotten the dates mixed up. So instead of watching a movie about Egypt, I had to sit through two hours of weird Italian familial drama.

It wasn’t worth my eight dollars or the fuel I burned, but it was nice, I’ll admit, to get out for the evening.

22 September 2010

We started selling cider and apples today. I set up the store and the signs by the road and then spent the morning planting more garlic, cutting down some of the plants in the garden, and helping Leslie make pesto. Then, I had the entire afternoon off. Oh, it was glorious!

21 September 2010

My fingers smell of basil and parsley this evening. I harvested both today, clipping the basil leaves and bundling the parsley. The first cider pressing was today, but I didn’t get to participate because I was busy packing apples and then working in the garden. Aside from the basil and parsley, I pulled up the tomato plant and planted garlic.

Did you know that there is a correct and an incorrect way to plant garlic? That you must place the clove a certain way in the ground or it won’t grow?

20 September 2010

I inadvertently aided in nature being “red in tooth and claw” today. I was washing out bushel baskets, and the plastic baskets are left outside all year when they’re not in use, so I’m always leery about what creatures might be in between them when I’m unstacking them. In one, there was a ratty bundle of tuft, and I thought idly to myself, Huh. That looks like a mouse’s nest. I turned it upside-down to dump out the debris, and out of one of the holes at the bottom of the basket popped a mouse’s head. I dropped the basket, shrieked, shouted a few things, jumped around, and then thought, Oh, no. There are probably babies in there. And there were. Five of them, no bigger than the first joint of your little finger, pink and hairless, squeaking weakly for their mother as she disappeared into the grass.

I did what I could. I put on gloves, picked them up off the cold ground and gently tucked them back into their nest, placed the nest in the grass along the fence where I’d last seen the mother and put the bushel basket over it to keep the cat from eating them. Tim said that the mother will probably come back and find them.

I don’t think she will.

19 September 2010

Much of my studying yesterday involved copying and pasting into a Word document the works/excerpts from works that I need to familiarize myself with for the test. That way, I can study them even when I’m at my Internet-less apartment.

Today, I made it through one hundred eighteen pages of the three hundred forty-two I copied and pasted before my brain said, No más! Sheesh.

18 September 2010

My former professor warned me that, when I take the GRE subject test, I’m going to walk away feeling like a “freaking moron.” Just studying for the test for four hours turns my head to mush. I feel like my brain is a sponge: I can only absorb so much before it is saturated and what it is unable assimilate is left to ooze and puddle around it.

Where is Mephistopheles when I need him?