Our property is almost entirely wooded, and the trees have a way of creating their own little ecosystem. It can be warm and sunny elsewhere, but when you turn in our driveway the shade envelopes you, dropping the temperature, delaying the melting of ice and snow, and, in the summer, providing sanctuary to far too many flying insects.
The shade in our house is so ubiquitous that I have chosen the color schemes to maintain a warm coziness, lest the leaves turn everything inside green in summer. In winter, the bright sunlight is a welcome change.
Maintaining this property is a bit like managing a park, and sometimes it means making some hard decisions. This week we are having to take down a healthy sugar maple—which truly pains me—but it was leaning perilously over the house, and after our recent heavy snow and ice, it became clear that it was us or the tree.
Enter Johanna. She runs a small tree care company, and recently won a state championship for her climbing and cutting skills. She is not someone we call for the minor things, but I trust her implicitly with the big stuff. Her calm cheerfulness is warm and reassuring, even as she is dangling from a rope and holding a chain saw.
She has colleagues who manage the ropes, feed the chipper, and help to make sure she is safe, but she does the climbing. Her team will be here for at least three days, felling the tree, cleaning up the storm damage, and cabling another big sugar maple to ensure its stability.
Whenever she is here I am distracted by a compulsion to watch her work. It isn’t something you see every day, and, frankly, her courage dazzles me. So, today may not be a very productive day, but it will certainly be an entertaining one.
My mother was an excellent cook. Her meals were complex, flavorful, and creative. She baked her own bread, catered to my father’s sweet tooth with all kinds of amazing desserts: pies, chocolate eclairs, apple crumble, cookies. Her stews and main courses had depth and richness. She cooked with lashings of wine and butter, and although she used recipes, they were merely jumping off points for her creativity.
She was also not a woman much devoted to method. I think you could fairly call her general style slapdash, except for the fact that her results were so wonderful. Her handwriting was distinctive, but often scrawled (much like my own) and such recipe cards as she had—and she had a lot—are often nearly impossible to decipher. My niece very thoughtfully gave me a dishtowel with some of my mother’s recipes reproduced in her own writing, and when people see it they almost always ask: Can you read that? Usually, I can. A lifetime’s experience. But sometimes reading them isn’t enough.
My old friend, Julie, from sixth grade, like so many Wisconsin natives, is German through and through. She was lamenting recently that most of the old restaurants that served Sauerbraten are gone. Sauerbraten is a dish that requires three to five days to marinate the beef, and comes with complicated side dishes. Very German. My mom always made it, and although I have the recipe, I never have. So, back in December when things were hectic I told Julie—who is a treasured friend—that come January I would make Sauerbraten for her husband and her. It was a leap of faith.
Sauerbraten is one of those things that really does require a recipe. The seasonings and details vary regionally: Some versions have raisins, some have crumbled Lebkuchen, some have a chunk of rye bread at the bottom. But the fundamental seasonings are the same: apple cider vinegar, sugar, bay leaf, peppercorns, cloves, onions, lemon. It doesn’t sound good, does it? But it is delicious: the German version of sweet and sour. The beef has been marinating since yesterday, and today I will make potato dumplings—which scare me— and red cabbage. So I am depending heavily upon my mother’s recipe cards.
The funny thing is my mother’s recipes are a bit like that old Far Side cartoon, where the mathematics professor has a long equation with an arrow pointing to the phrase: And then a miracle occurs. Many of the steps are not clearly explained. It makes me laugh. SO like her. For example, the recipe tells me the ingredients for the potato dumplings (Kartoffelklösse), but it’s kind of vague on how to cook them. The Sauerbraten is the same. I inherited her authentic German cookbook, and it, too, assumes that every idiot knows how to cook dumplings. But the Sauerbraten steps are so elaborate and complex that they tell the close reader much about the German mind.
My mother didn’t have a German mind. She had a passionate, fiery and creative Irish mind—which made her an interesting match to my studious, brilliant, but also passionate father. Tomorrow will be their wedding anniversary—79 years ago they were married at the Navy chapel in Anapolis—so it seems appropriate to be making the meal that was my mother’s specialty and my father’s favorite. And I think the best approach for me will be to throw culinary caution to the wind and adopt my mother’s joyful carelessness. If nothing else, it will be more fun.
We live in the woods, and partly because our property is contiguous with other large wooded areas, we have diverse wildlife. It is endlessly fascinating. I spend more time looking out at the activities beyond our windows than I do watching television.
But I’ve never really paid much attention to squirrels. We have approximately eleven million gray squirrels, and a rapidly increasing population of red squirrels, whose aggressive habits chase other mammals from the territory, and cause destruction to human property. You can hear them scold if you dare to walk beneath any of their trees. They are smaller than gray squirrels, but they box above their weight. All together, squirrels are the most common animals on our property, and I take them for granted. They are not mysterious and fascinating like raccoons or possums; or innocently beautiful, like deer; or showy and cantankerous like turkeys. They’re just squirrels. Always there. Always busy. Almost always solitary except during mating season. Not particularly interesting.
And yet, I recently learned that squirrel intelligence is superior to that of dogs, and this has given me a lot to think about. It certainly explains how in the dog vs. squirrel chase category, squirrels are definitely winning.
Anyway, this is not meant to be a treatise about squirrel species. It is the observation of—if not friendship—camaraderie—and, perhaps, of something more important.
I first saw a pair of gray squirrels running together in the summer months. At the time—and without paying close attention—I marveled over How. Many. Squirrels we had this year. It was like a squirrel invasion. (A circumstance due, probably, to the sudden diminution of the coyote population.) Every morning, they were running together, one after the other: racing across the lawn, spiraling up trees, and looking, to my wandering and inattentive gaze, as if they were either rivals or a mating pair. I didn’t think about them, or pay particular attention. But they were always there.
Only recently did it suddenly occur to me that they were still always there, and it wasn’t just a pair. It was a group of four. And it had always been—I realized—a group of four. There were lots of other squirrels around, but here was this…clan…running together in the clearing down the hill, foraging together, and racing across the grass to a particular tree, where they would run up the trunk and disappear.
Their relationship is as constant as that of the turkeys, and as I look back I realize how much their antics have been a fixture of my mornings, if only in the background of my awareness. The other squirrels nearby did not interact with them, unless it was to run off a competitor. But I think it was the other squirrels who must have been run off most often in the face of this four-squirrel brigade.
I can only guess that they are siblings, but who knows. They seem to have broken the usual squirrel pattern of solitary nut-gathering, but maybe these behaviors have been happening all along and I wasn’t paying attention. Or maybe it is an adaptation, a move to provide a common defense against the aggression of the red squirrels. Not being an authority on squirrels means I have the fun of speculation. Do they feel affection for one another? Do they feel a blood connection? Or is this merely a business/military relationship?
I have one clue—based on pure observation without anthropomorphizing. Last year, I passed a newly-dead squirrel by the side of the road, and beside it, I could see a living squirrel, frantically patting the dead body as if attempting to revive it. I wanted to stop, but there was nothing to be done. Was I going to comfort the living squirrel? Help it bury its dead? I watched for a second or two in the rearview mirror and went on in a somber mood.
It is pouring rain in the precursor to a winter storm, and the rain is just now—finally—changing to heavy, wet flakes. As I sit in my cozy library, fire crackling, coffee nearby, I see the four friends, utterly indifferent to the weather, running together up the tree, down the tree, to another tree, and jumping from branch to branch, tree to tree overhead. They don’t seem to be working, but playing. Maybe to keep warm, or maybe because the hard work of food gathering is seasonal. Or maybe because it’s good squirrel fun. I’d certainly do it if I could. Although maybe not in this weather.
I wish them safety in the coming storm.
***
Gratuitous Dog Photo
Eli doesn’t want to be out in the damp, but he watches Dad and Auggie closely from my office window.
This is his I-expect-you-to-put-on-your-boots-and-come-play-ball-immediately-or-you-will-be-a-deep-disappointment-to-me look. (Grateful for my healthy dog.)
Yesterday I never got out of my pajamas. I walked the dogs in my down coat, so no one could have known it was covering pajamas. I knew, however, and it made me inexplicably happy.
I took a very long scented bath.
I did not put on mascara.
I did not write.
I also did not drink. (Oh, Dry January, get thee behind me.)
I did not cook, other than the avocado toast with poached eggs which we all ate for breakfast. (Except the dogs, who do not like avocado, but just had their poached eggs on toast with rice and ground beef and pumpkin and goat yogurt. They were happy.)
I lay around and read a book.
I searched online for vintage houses in unlikely places and concluded that people who watch HGTV should be prohibited from remodeling any house built before 1970.
I annoyed friends and husband with texted listings of vintage houses in unlikely places. Husband promised to send postcards.
I did not mop the floor.
I did not take down the small tree in the library.
I did not run to the local co-op for any missing pantry item.
I achieved Genius level in a NYTimes word puzzle. Even the venerable NYT has succumbed to grade inflation.
I actually did not nap, but I snuggled my big dogs while they dozed in the sunshine. Auggie purred. Eli snored.
I watched British Antiques Roadshow on the new tv in the library.
I bored myself, which, I think, is something we all need now and then.
This morning I had a full hour more of essential REM sleep than previously, even though I thought I was awake all night.
I was asked recently to assist in a list of book club questions for my latest collection of essays, But Still They Sing. Normally, I can rattle these things off easily, but I’m a bit too close to this one, and possibly a bit too distracted. Yesterday I opened the flatware drawer and found I had put a pot lid in it.
I’m wondering whether any of you have suggestions. Please reply in the comments, or, if you find that tricky, send them to me via email to northofthetensionline@gmail.com.
Many thanks!
And now for your gratuitous dog photo. Here’s my faithful Auggie, keeping me company on a sleepless night.
A little girl wants a beautiful show dog, but she gets funny little rescue dog, Pete, instead. He’s not beautiful; he’s trouble looking for a place to happen. Based on the story of a real dog, this charmingly illustrated and delightful tale about an unwanted dog ends with love and an unlikely hero, while teaching children not to judge by appearances. Perfect for ages 0-7. Fun for parents.
Now available, a special, limited edition hardcover version of MY DOG PETE, autographed by the author.
Price is $22.00 each, plus shipping.
We have only a small number of these available, and perhaps only for a limited time. You can buy a paperback or ebook version on Amazon for a lower price
J.F. Riordan 