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nowhere near as good as Rao's Wednesday, September 18 2024
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
On our first full day back from Europe, it was just another Wednesday. We'd awaken several times in the night, our bodies thinking it might be afternoon, but then our pineal glands noticed the fact of the darkness and made adjustments. It never takes long to adapt to a timezone when going east to west. (And it's really not that bad going the other way, for that matter.)
Gretchen eventually went off to work at the bookstore, leaving me at home to process the data from our trip. I also had the assignment of finding the source of the piss smell pervading the first floor. Gretchen thought it was cat piss, but I wasn't so sure. My nose detected a few new "hot spots" of dog piss on the big carpet in the living room. And I completely removed a long narrow carpet from the hallway in front of the first floor powder room, putting it out in the garage to see if its absence made a difference. I also did a small laundry, putting the laboratory beanbag blanket through a second time (as Charlotte had clearly peed on it during our absence, though she hadn't peed on the beanbag itself.
A little before 3:00pm, I took both dogs on a walk up the Chamomile Headwaters Trail and then on a shortcut over to the Stick Trail and home again. I was relieved to find that the mosquitoes plague from late August seemed to have greatly abated.
Back at the house, I cooked down a large number of tomatoes from the garden into something of a sauce reduction while boiling up a pot of spaghetti and frying up a pan of tempeh and onions (we didn't have any mushrooms). When Gretchen returned from the bookstore, she added a bunch of fresh basil and, garlic powder, and oregano. We used the sauce on our spaghetti, but it was nowhere near as good as Rao's.
Since there was no Jeopardy! to watch, we instead watched the first episode of Kaos, a contemporary reimagining of Greek mythology. It wasn't a great show (at least not yet) but it was intriguing (and refreshing) to watch a depiction of Western society where people adhere to a completely non Judeo-Christian religious framework. (This was one of a whole suite of innovations that had made Game of Thrones such compelling television.
White snakeroot on the walk today.
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A wintergreen plant. Both the berries and leaves have a strong wintergreen flavor.
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A mystery plant with palmate leaves. Google Image Search was no help.
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A white pine seedling in a bed of moss.
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Japanese stiltgrass looks like a miniature bamboo forest at this time of year.
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Cairns peaking out of the stiltgrass forest.
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There could be a snake in there for all I know. That is the Stick Trail.
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