Again with a post? Already? I know, but I wanted to get these photos registered. Alan, one of the landscape guys (the cute one) has started his own business, Stone, Soil and Wood, and has contracted with us to clear the huge mess left by the ice storm.

I’d like to get these side by side, but my program won’t let me, so:

Big job, and this is just the west side along the fence. On Friday he started down below in the riparian area, where there even more downed trees. He’s making huge slash piles, which he will burn when the weather and the county permit. Taking the wood suitable for his mill, stacking the wood to be cut into fireplace size and sold. Wow.

So back to the tomatoes. Larry’s garden is just now providing an enormous crop. Of course I want to get them canned and/or frozen. This means strapping myself into the kitchen with a long rope that does allow me access to the garage pantry and bathroom breaks. But whew. First batch, I put up by the “open kettle” method and scored 7 pints, cooked and slightly muddled with a stick blender. They all sealed. Went out to the garage and looked at the jars of frozen tomatoes already there from years past. OMG. We will have to eat tomatoes every night for the forseeable. But one does not complain of having too much food. Right?

We were talking to son David on the phone this afternoon, and Larry had the floor. He talked about the cat he’d seen in the orchard this afternoon. Which, on seeing Larry, ran, leaped to the top of the 12 foot fence post and disappeared.

“Cougar?” David asked. No, Larry said. “Long tail, but just a feral house cat. Gray.”

Parenthetical aside: “Grey” is meaningless when reported by a color-blind person. I’m sitting in my chair thinking that was no feral house cat. It probably wasn’t even grey, and what house cat can leap 12 feet in one bound? But I’m not a female cat person, so what do I know. “Probably a cougar,” I said. But Larry’s sticking to his story.

I was talking with my sisters this afternoon, as usual on Sundays, and we wandered into a conversation about religious faith. How had Mary chosen to become a Quaker, and why do we — some of us — insist that this is a “Christian” country. Mary is the smart sister and her knowledge of Christian history is vast (Martha and I just listen). But I remarked that we had not experienced a particularly religious upbringing, did not, for example, say grace before meals.

“Yes we did,” Mary claimed. “Of course we did.”

“No we didn’t,” Martha said, in a kind of snorting way.

So I know memory is fungible (does that word work here?) But’s so odd. Three of us, living together all those years, and we don’t agree on this simple thing.

So now it’s completely dark, one of the cows is calling her calf, the wind is still, and let’s all go to bed.