ozarks

Missouri Milky Way viewing

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When I was a child, growing up in the Ozark Mountains on a ranch, Milky Way gazing was an old friend that returned each summer.

Technically, it’s spring through early winter for us but the summer is when you’d be up Late and looking right overhead…naturally, lying on your back in a pasture!

The woods obscure skylarking so, you climbed a hilltop with either a glade or open pastureland.

In autumn, as it is now, you can see it sort of overhead to setting, running Northerly to Southerly.

The past several nights have been exceptionally well so, I go stand outside before bed and just gawk.

I don’t have a star trails or astro-friendly camera. This is literally what my camera captured just now for you!

Nyah-nyah, you can’t see what I can see

Here’s a site that gives more specific but layman’s terms information.

‘Can I borrow your pocketknife?’…

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Said every female in the Ozarks.

I am a female and we get them, too, but rarely carry on a daily basis.

My first pocketknife had a red handle, 2 blades and was my 8th bday present.

I had it for years and carved initials in terrapins’ backs, tree trunks, whittled and used it to cut baling twine (something you had to do daily on a working ranch).  

I think somebody swiped it.

Certainly a student swiped my larger ‘grownup’ pocketknife when I was teaching at-risk secondary school.

I know! What? You had a knife in a school with at-risk students?!?

It’s the Ozarks. NOBODY would think twice in the early 90s.

At work, a regular ‘joke’ everybody makes is, ‘OH, let me take a photo with my phone and send it to you’ or ‘oh, let me text you the directions’ or ‘oh, let me use my pocketknife.’ The variation on this, ‘let me borrow your phone / pocketknife.’

The answer is always, ‘sure, here you go’ then nothing as those are felonies, I believe class C just to have.

Long story to say, yes, I have a pocketknife. In fact I keep one in my car because I no longer carry my ‘real’ one in my pocketbook.

So, it was 100% natural to say, lemme see your pocketknife, I need tto cut the ropes off the tomato plants’ and for Spike to hand ‘er over. 

This pocketknife has cut bazillions of splinters and who-knows-its from my feet throughout childhoodbsince I ran barefoot through forests, pastures and rocks and creeks!

Red skies at night (and rainbows at sunset)

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Look at this cool dog turd I found! –half-toasted marshmallow

The town Reed’s have come for the camping but couldn’t be arsed cos they’re city-slickers…

It was what some call ‘rainy’ but even #1niece knows we call ‘damp.’

Then, it very nearly stopped precipitating!

I don’t mean the sunset is many-coloured, which it is. I mean watch the video for when I turn to the east.

nothing says Ozarks lass of a Saturday like…

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Failed to convince Spike to help me switch out the trailer for the boom on the John Deere to pull a fallen tree (80 footer) from the back creek.

What a stick in the mud.

 -see what I did there?
Absolutely true.
We headed out to sink ONE steel fence post. I ended up getting some custom (tiny) firewood for my mini-cast iron chiminea and well, missing the mark on tree removal.
This was me heading out cos nothing says Ozarks lass of a Saturday like boots, Rudolph and Santa pj shorts and piggytails (plus mule-skin gloves).

  
Spike popped in just now, as I’m thumb-typing. ‘Where’s the chainsaw and sledgehammer? Did you get them?’

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‘Yes?’

frying, frying… Turnips, sausages & more

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 These are the salsiccias I got from G & W Sausage. –recommended in the highest, you walk in at 11h and are greeted by, ‘Wanna beer?’
Now, I realise G & W is a German sausagery but they have other stuff and since I know and love salsiccia, I wanted to try theirs. It’s Good. I preferred their Bavarian (don’t know how many kinds are on offer but this stuff is made in house yo) sausages. I wouldn’t ‘not’ buy the Italian links, though.

I diced some turnips and pan-fried them (caramelised) and then added cauliflower and various mixed veg that was pre-cooked, keeping the heat high to scorch them a little.

I added garlic, salt & pepper (nothing fancy as I wanted the flavour to be from the sausages) and dumped about 200cc of chicken stock to loosen the caramelisation & reduce heat. I brought that to simmer whilst the sausages got browned on either side and then added water to the sausages to boil to cook-through.

When they were done, I let them rest a bit and sliced into coins and added it all, turning over a few times (the stock will have reduced by this point).  
 Most wouldn’t want their veg all olive drab but in the Ozarks we like our food fried and boiled to death.

It’s pretty damned good. 

lookie twat I founded!

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Cannot tell you how many people I’ve punched in the bouche with this class ring. Shit, man. I didn’t know that I had it anymore.

Class rings are a big thing in Missouri–or were–as you didn’t get them as graduation / finishing up school (since most kids dropped out and I’m not joking … don’t know today’s stats) but as a sort of gang symbol or clan sigil.

I also wore some ex-boyfriend’s and I swear this might be my great-baba’s wedding band for superior knuckledusting.

It’s the almost-complete set, as the index finger ring is who-knows-where. It had a raised bit and was the shape of a snake ready to strike. Hurt like hell (both ends, reckon) when you punched somebody cos it pushed back, being raised, but I liked to leave an impression. 

If you look closely, all the scars faded but the one on my pinkie knuckle. Must’ve been somebody’s tooth.