duck duck gooseberries & mulberries

Amanda got pictures of the ducks geese and horses so hopefully she will email photos soon! Meanwhile here is my goat...


This weekend my friend Amanda (I worked with her to set up our Linens N Things store prior to grand opening) came back into town and emailed/called me yesterday about hanging out.
J. left for EMT school yesterday for three freakin weeks, which sucks entirely.

But it was a good idea too, to hang out with Amanda because we always have a lot of fun. We started out at the Jimmy Bolin memorial birthday celebratory concert thingy which was going to be really great. Except, I think Amanda had other ideas from the very start. We listened to some bands for a while but she decided to call her ex-boyfriend's parents and find out where he is now. She asked if I had seen him, and why yes actually I did about a year ago. I was at a red light and saw him in his car driving around with a fully fledged mountain man beard. Facial hair to the degree which could only be grown on a bet or a dare or for a competition.

She called and sweet talked his parents, jotting down instructions on the back of her checkbook register. We were directed to an area out in the country I am slightly familliar with, and we set off to find him. Evidently he moved 10 days ago so his mom's instructions were a little vague, no street address.

Drove around on the most gorgeous Iowa Saturday evening, the weather was cool and breezy. There weren't many bugs out. At times I was getting chilled, which is unique in August, at least to me. The hills and farmlands and ridges we were driving were breathtakingly green and dotted with ponds, bales of hay, stands of trees and several really well put together homes.

In the process of getting to where I thought I was going, I took a left hand turn which may have been a driveway, and in the process of turning around in that driveway, I met the most delightful goat. He stood there in the middle of the driveway and nibbled my fingertips out the window. I really do love goats. There was also a very happy herding dog who wagged and smiled and paced around but didn't come to the window of the van. That's okay I was too busy bonding with this goat.

So we got on our way again, driving essentially a large looping dirt and gravel road, looking for some places and landmarks that we found, but never really put all together to arrive at any legitimate destination. I would read the directions, travel and find the spot, but then read them some more and get all turned around. At one point we were actually practically there but turned around because from the way I read the directions, it looked like that was the place I was meant to start out at, and then follow them FROM that point, not TO that point. Anyway we had a great time driving around tallking to goats and marveling at the cool weather and beautiful views.

We headed back into town to a bar on the outskirts, which she worked at while we were building and opening the store, and is also where she met this guy. They knew he had moved, recognized her, blah blah blah, and we decided to head over to his parent's house and get an actual map. They were easy to find, we showed up at 10:30, she was apologizing all over herself. I petted a gigantic dog which snotted all over my black teeshirt, and a little strange cat called a munchkin which tried to chew on my hand. It had a regular fattycat body and face, and teensy short little front & back legs. Very cute and strange looking.

Okay well Finally. A MAP. I can follow a map. We found this place out in the middle of whatever. Dark out. Okay she's going in. She instructed me to keep her cell, and if she was abducted I was to go and get help because she was sure she's big enough to fight them off for a while. (This was assuming it might not be the right house after all!) She went in and I played a BopIt game on a keychain. I got really good at it, waiting for her to come out.

When she went to the door, his room-mate answered the door. All I saw was a dark figure in a grey and white striped sweater swoop through the kitchen. As he tells the story, he was hoping she wasn't selling anything. Well, it was after ten at night, what exactly would we be selling? But anyway she asked to see Russ and the roomie smiled and said oh, sure he's here and they went in and got Russ. Several minutes and many painful BopIt failures later, he bounded out to the van and peered in the window. He shouted "Lauren!" and something I don't remember with a big grin and I screamed something about his beard I saw him in his car blah blah blah and then I ran around the car and hugged him and we all three hopped around happy in the front yard. He was so excited. What a surprise to see him.

Russ moved down to Texas with her a few years ago. Finally he felt the call to come back up here and buy 80 acres since he knows he is a dirt farmer and nothing else will do. He really does truly seem to be in love with her, but she has other goals and has since moved to Fla. to finish school. I believe I understand that his goal is to farm organic or even go beyond organic, whatever that might be. He seems to have really great ideas. Right now he's doing beans and corn. This morning I shopped for a combine for him, in a tractor catalog, but there really weren't that many with low hours in the price range we were looking for.

Well last night we played dice, sat around, bullshitted, drank some beer and finally it was way too late to be up and everybody went to bed. I fell asleep on the most uncomfortable pull out couch. That should never be used as a hide-a-bed. It should only be used as a couch. I woke up laying width-wise on the couch, because nobody should ever, of course, lay length-wise, on such a torture device as that couch. I woke up at 8 and looked out the window on a really gorgeous morning. More fields and trees and bales of hay, all tinged iridescent green covered in dew.
It was decided that we should have coffee. Russ' roommate, named Aaron but Amanda calls him James, announced he has a French press but doesn't know how to use it. He pulled out a big clear glass coffee pot (of the same make, but different model as my ancient clear glass double boiler. Metal ring around the glass pot, clear plastic handle,) and no, this thing is not a French press!

This, I announce, is a percolator. There is a glass funnelly do-hickey, a metallic basket, and all of this goes assembled into what appears to be a nine cup pot. He filled it up with water to the metal ring, dumped a whole sample pack of Columbian Supremo into the basket, and set it on the big burner of this electric farmhouse stove. And we watched. And waited, peering into the pot, waiting. As if it were the most fascinating thing we'd ever seen. Like we were watching TV. But better. The escapee grounds floated around the center of the clear funnelly do-hickey. The water began to boil, little bubbles of water travelled up the funnel, and finally it began to perck with great gusto. I whistled the old tune to a commercial about percolating coffee. We had no sugar so we drizzled honey into the coffee, added milk and proclaimed this the best coffee we had ever ever tasted. And he had used so much coffee to begin with, he added 9 more cups of water, percked it again, and came out with even better darker coffee than the time before. Glorious!

Following the coffee adventure, we went outside to sit on the porch and look at the morning. We discussed the types of trees in the yard, because I've been looking for a low spreading mulberry for a few weeks now. It is very important that I have mulberries if at all possible. We identified, Blue spruce, a trio of black walnuts, a possible cedar, and what Russ claims is a hackberry but I'm not sure. We smashed the cedar berries and it smelled like Christmas.

I tried to talk to the horses, but they were having none of it. Even with the treat of a bale of hay dumped over the gate, they just stood in the middle of their field and peered at me from under their forelocks. Ears pricked, stamping at flies, suspicious horses aren't much fun anyway. So Amanda wanted to see the geese, so I walked down the driveway to talk to the ducks and geese. They too were unsure of our intentions. Their group consisted of two geese, two mixed-bred runner ducks, and a big fat white farm duck. We named the speckledy twin runners Laurel & Hardy, I think, or something like that. Oh! Not Laurel & Hardy. They were Elvis & Costello. And the geese were Lucy & Ethel. The white one got Daisy.

Then I saw the mulberries. I picked mulberries for about an hour and got maybe a pint with a handful of gooseberries thrown in. I had Amanda holding the branches while I picked and put them in my shirt-tail. Oh and a gigantic peachy white spider fell down onto my shirt and was going for blood. Mulberries were flying everywhere but we got him flicked off. Then Russ came down and helped us too, and I got a plastic quart size container... which I filled half way with the remaining berries. We discussed the possibility of what I think is a great idea, espalier-ing mulberry trees to make the branches more harvestable. Amanda thinks we could get a tree shaker. She saw one on tv, used to shake the apples down in an orchard.

The boys finally went out and caught the horses for me, so I got to pet them. They thought for sure they would "exercise" the chubby one by making her trot around on long line, but no, she thought that was a stupid idea and told them as much. There was a cute pony named Magic and some goats in the next field but I couldn't get to them. Magic was funny though, he whinnied at us and rolled around on his back with his big dappled belly showing and his sweet little hooves waving around in the air.

Ugh, after that it was getting hotter, so we went inside, which wasn't much better, and once it got to be 2:30 we took Aaron to work and went to Townhouse for bacon cheeseburger pizza with extra pickles. By then I was done. My headache arrived promptly at 3, my eyes began to remember they hadn't closed well the night before thanks to beer-dice-and-the-hide-a-bed-torture-device. I drove Russ and Amanda back out to his house so they could continue the discussion of why he left her because he wants to farm in Iowa and she really doesn't but she still likes him and yet seems unavailable for committment because she wants to finish school in Florida. blah de blah de blah.

I REALLY need a pony. And some goats and runner ducks. And some espaliered mulberry trees. And a farm implement sculpture. And a house. And a yard.