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Charlotte not too mopey
Monday, August 12 2024
Since we got Charlotte back in October, Gretchen has had difficulty taking Neville to work at the bookstore. Charlotte wants to go everywhere Neville goes, and it's hard to exclude her from the car once Neville jumps in. Charlotte would actually be a good bookstore dog too were it not for her tendency to push open the front door so she can run out and meet every passing dog. (The front door at the bookstore cannot be latched except when it is locked, which an open store can never be.) This has meant that Neville hasn't had many opportunities to work at the bookstore. Today, though, Gretchen managed to take just Neville with her when she left, leaving me to make Charlotte feel less miserable by giving her a large glop of peanut butter. Something about seeing Neville leave with Gretchen seemed to help Charlotte better process what had happened to him and perhaps reassure her that he'd be returning later the way Gretchen always returns. She was a bit mopey upstairs in the bedroom, but when it came time for me to take her on an afternoon walk, she happily joined me.
We walked up the Chamomile Headwaters Trail and then went to Funky Pond Summit, which I've noted in the past is the second-highest point on the Kingston West quadrangle. The last time I'd been that way had been back in 2020, though I don't remember visiting the little pond that gives that prominence its name. Today Charlotte and I went to that pond, which was no more than three or four hundred square feet in size even after all the recent rain. It's strange that there is a pond up there given how small of a watershed it must have. But it usually contains standing water, and one time I actually saw a snapping turtle in it.
As I walked home via the Stick Trail, I happened to notice a sprig of poison ivy, one of several I'd seen back in the woods in various places. Up until this year, I'd never seen any posion ivy back there at all, but perhaps climate change and the opportunity brought by tornados and various tree plagues have altered the conditions enought that there are now niches for it.
Late this afternoon, I gathered a bunch of tomatoes from our garden. Some of them were half-rotten, but I cut away the bad parts and cut them up into little pieces and cooked the hell out of them in a large frying pan, producing a thick reduction. I then added that to a pan of fried tofu, mushrooms, and onions. Then I added lots of canned beans, nutritional yeast, a small amount of flour, chili powder, and a half of a ghost pepper (we have a beautiful ghost pepper bush out on the east deck). This ended up being a pretty good chili, which I ultimately used as the major constituent of a burrito once Gretchen and Neville returned from the bookstore.
Charlotte at the edge of the small pond on Funky Pond Summit.
Click to enlarge.
Unlike what Neville would've done, she didn't wallow in it.
Click to enlarge.
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