Autumn Olives

A couple of weeks ago, Luke and Dante rode their bikes from our house along the airline trail to the beaver pond on River Road in Colchester. Lucia and I packed a picnic and joined them. Dante took a pretty nasty spill in the sand that collects at the bottom of our hill (can you spot his bloody knee?) but he soldiered on the rest of the way.
These berries are called Russian or Autumn Olives. We have a tree of these in our yard, and are starting to notice them everywhere. These Dante are holding aren't quite ripe -- hence the pucker. Last week we went on a hike to the old landing strip on the other side of the airline trail and collected 18 cups of these berries!

We made 2 batches of jam out of them. The second batch didn't really set (I think because I cut back on the sugar from 3.5 cups to 2 cups) but it makes a nice applesauce-consistency that still spreads well on toast, and would be good on pancakes, and even things like squash. I found the recipe for the jam here but I'm going to paste it below in case this woman kills her blog.

Recipe for Autumn Olive Jam

* Gather 8 cups of ripe autumn olive berries. (In New England the pick date is near Sept. 25)
* Add 1 cup of water to the 8 cups of berries and bring to a boil then simmer for 20 minutes. Run the mash through a sieve and you will have about 5 cups of pressed fruit.
* Measure out 3 ½ cups of sugar. Take ¼ cup of the measured sugar and mix it with the contents of a package of no-sugar-needed pectin. Mix it in with the pressed fruit and bring to a rolling boil. Add the remainder of the sugar to the boiling liquid and return to a rolling boil and let it boil for one minute.
* Then can according to canning directions and cool.
I ended up with a little more than six 8 oz. jars of well set jam. Nice and tart, beautiful ruby red color.

catching up

We went to check out the new location for Riverview Farms up where Rob's ice cream is in Glastonbury. They had some baby chicks that they let the kids hold -- it's hard to remember our girls when they were this size.


This past week saw us very busy now that all our classes are in full swing, but my lovely family found time to celebrate my birthday even so. Dante picked a bouquet of flowers from around the yard, a mixture of wild and cultivated flowers.

My floral designer even included greenery and pebbles!

On Wednesday, we'd arranged for the kids to have their first sleep over with Lil and Jo, so we planned to go out to dinner, Luke surprised me at the end of the meal with tickets to see Regina Spektor at UCONN! The show was great -- it's a pretty intimate venue anyway, but we were in the front row of the balcony. And he hooked me up with a bunch of live shows of hers to listen to, AND did I mention my new wilco rooster shirt? Thursday night, my dad got pizza and a cake and Dante, Lucia, Lil and Jo helped me blow out some seriously big candles.

Fall gourds from Old Maid's Farm.

Dante caught this spotted salamander under a rock at the edge of our property.

Big news in Chickenland

Well, it's happened. Our rooster crowed. Except it's not the one we knew was a rooster! Our older silkie, Pong, was crowing his head off the other day. The kids and I raced through the house to the side where he was thinking someone was being attacked, but instead we found a group of startled chickens standing almost in a circle around him, watching warily. I haven't heard him since, but will try to get some video so you can share the love.

Lucia, nibbling tiny bites of apple to throw to the girls, while Mushka lurks in the doorway behind for some fresh air.

Dante cuddles Bandit.

Peepers' tail is really starting to look like a rooster tail, and his feathers are turning a nice dark red. He's a few weeks younger than Pong, so perhaps he'll pipe up soon.

Izzy and Clover chill on the front stoop.

Bandit, nicely speckled. The darkest part of her feathers is irridescent green.

The ever-gorgeous Speck.

Dante languishes in the heat of indian summer with Tinkerbelle.

Lucia gets in on the love -- notice how poor Tinkerbelle is panting. Get that bird a drink!

Suffer the little children to come unto me...

Julian's christening was September 23rd at St. John's Church in Old Saybrook with Father Joe.

Many of the cousins, sitting on the altar, with JoJo so bold as to sit in the velvet chair.

Not to be outdone, Lucia gets her bum into this exalted seat as well.

One last hurrah in the warm sand and on the rock wall.

Pharoah in Philly

We went to see the King Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia last weekend. We spent most of the day at the museum, with brief interludes at the Swann Memorial Fountain before and afterwards.

Alexander Calder's father designed this fountain -- repete with river gods, vomiting frogs, turtles, and fish. Wikipedia has this to say about it: "Adapting the tradition of “river god” sculpture, Calder created large Native American figures to symbolize the area’s major streams, the Delaware, the Schuylkill, and the Wissahickon. The young girl leaning on her side against an agitated, water-spouting swan represents the Wissahickon Creek; the mature woman holding the neck of a swan stands for the Schuylkill River; and the male figure, reaching above his head to grasp his bow as a large pike sprays water over him, symbolizes the Delaware River."

The Wissahickon Girl.

All lit up and no place to go. We, however, did have somewhere to go. We climbed into the car and headed to Capogiro's for some awesome gelato (I had Cioccolato Scuro mmmm...) and espresso for the long trip home. But I get ahead of myself...

Backtracking, Lucia gets the chance to fly in the airplane simulation thingy at the F.I.

Our little red blood cells...

Still 1 hour til our admission time for Tut.

King Tut's canopic coffinette -- I'm pretty sure this one held his liver.

Honey, Tut ate the kids! coming soon from Disney.

the big eh

We headed up to Springfield for the Big E, the largest agricultural fair in New England. I was a little disappointed by how commercial everthing was, and would probably go to the Durham Fair or things like the CT Sheep and Wool festival instead. We're also contemplating a trip to the Early 19th Century Agricultural Fair at Sturbridge Village which looks interesting as well.

We were really disappointed to find that they no longer have the poultry show, but Dante manged to get the chicken lady in "Farm-a-rama" to let him hold her game hen. What a docile bird -- she was so mellow compared to our ladies, and is way smaller, tho she's the same age.

We took a break from the sun to watch the horse jumping for a while. Lucia was in horse heaven.

goodbye, fly

We came home to find a necklace of feathers around the pine tree. I thought they were all gone, but after a few minutes the rest of the girls emerged from their hiding spot under the side deck. Fly, so named for flapping across the laundry room long before the others, was missing.

castles and crabs and a flounder, oh my

Lucia and I built a dribble castle while Daddy and Dante attacked the tide pool.

Baby flounder

walking the sand bars

We suspect the oozy drippy thing is some worm egg case.

Daddy nets the elusive tutu fish.

Julian airs his bum on the beach.

Crazy that my baby is big enough to hold a baby!

jumpin off the jetty

Dante

Lucia

Lil jumps, Lucia cheers

JoJo strikes a pose

Lulu rides her bike to and from the beach.