Entering earth’s shadow.

Nearing totality.

Total lunar eclipse.

Total eclipse and Orion. See Betelgeuse?

Total eclipse.

Emerging from the shadow. See how much brighter the moon is here compared to the last image?

Brilliant night–even when it was dark.

When mine still didn’t arrive today, I called the election office in AK. Whoopsie! They never sent mine.

Do I have access to a fax? No.

Well, too bad, so sad then. Bye-bye.

Hrmph.

And then I get a phone call from Carol at the election office. Do I have a computer and printer? Yes…I think so…maybe. Carol emails me a “Sample Ballot” posing as a “By-Mail Replacement Ballot” which she tells me will be turned into an “Official Ballot” upon receipt in Fairbanks. There may be toads, newts, and a large black iron vessel involved in that transformation. I’m not sure.

After downloading an appropriate printer driver, I am, indeed, able to print my ballot and get it in the mail several hours before the deadline.

So, did I get special treatment, or is this the way things work all over?

The weather forecast for today was rain, too. The only rain around here is spruce cones being hurled to the ground by industrious red squirrels. They clang on the metal roofs and thunk on the ground. Watch your head.

We are again at the Kenai Fjords Glacier Lodge for a couple of weeks doing some post-season work and post-season play. Even here, the sun’s been shining most of this month–and this is a rainforest. But no more.

It’s been raining for two days, and this is the marine forecast for the weekend (the highlighting is mine).

…HURRICANE FORCE WIND WARNING FRIDAY…

.TODAY…SE WIND 30 KT EXCEPT E 40 KT NEAR THE COAST E OF MONTAGUE ISLAND. SEAS 13 FT. SHOWERS AND ISOLATED THUNDERSTORMS.
.TONIGHT…E WIND 30 KT EXCEPT E 45 KT NEAR THE COAST E OF MONTAGUE ISLAND. SEAS 17 FT. RAIN.
.FRI…E WIND 50 KT INCREASING TO 65 KT IN THE AFTERNOON. SEAS 20 FT. RAIN.
.FRI NIGHT…E WIND 65 KT BECOMING SE 45 KT AFTER MIDNIGHT. SEAS 27 FT.
.SAT…S WIND 40 KT. SEAS 22 FT.
.SUN…S WIND 15 KT. SEAS 14 FT.
.MON…SE WIND 20 KT. SEAS 11 FT.

The lodge is well protected, but we may see some dramatic weather tomorrow. I love the drama of this place, even the blustery wet kind. We’ve got a cozy cabin, lots of wood, some books, and stitching supplies. We’ll weather the weather just fine.

And then one day it was winter. Just like that. On Saturday, I gathered the last batch of peas, and on Sunday, Mike and I harvested the carrots, beets, garlic, onions, and potatoes–while it snowed.

The freezer is jam-packed, the garage smells like onions (that will go away), and the potatoes are growing thicker skins. The garden beds are put to bed. We’re all ready for winter.

Well, mostly.

I’m not sure what this plant is thinking, but I admire its determination against the odds, its valiant effort in hopeless circumstances, and its pretty flowers.

I loved my cranberry butter.

This year, I’ve picked a bunch of cranberries so I can make both. With the first batch, I aimed for jellied cranberry sauce and got it. Woot!

With the second batch, I aimed for cranberry butter and decided to try adding allspice and cinnamon. Now, last year, the butter was an accident. I don’t know exactly why or how I got the gloppy stuff I did; to the best of my knowledge, all I did was triple the recipe. For the second batch this year, I didn’t triple the recipe, but rather tried a shorter boiling period, reducing the liquid less.

It didn’t work. I had two batches of jellied cranberry sauce, one spiced. I haven’t decided if I prefer it with or without the spices.

So I tried a third batch.

Since I liked the butter so much, I thought maybe I had inadvertently added too much sugar. I like sweet. Maybe I mis-counted the number of cups I added. So I tried adding extra sugar this time around, and I stirred pretty much constantly.

I now have three batches of jellied cranberry sauce: one regular, one spiced, one extra-sweet.

Hrmph.

I’ve searched for cranberry butter recipes online, and what I get are recipes that combine cranberries with butter-butter, the dairy kind. I have recipes for apple butter; I have recipes for jellied cranberry sauce; I have a recipe for cranberry ketchup. They’re all pretty much the same. I can’t figure out what alters the texture, what makes the liquid set up and what makes it gooey.

I’m not giving up. I’ll keep experimenting until I run out of cranberries. If any of you kitchen or cranberry gurus have ideas or advice, I’m listening.

• Yes, those are all really carrots.
• Yes, I grew them.
• The seeds are all from the same packet.
• I got the seeds at Bell’s Nursery in Anchorage. They don’t seem to have a website.

I picked more than a gallon of cranberries both yesterday and today. These are much harder to find in quantity than blueberries, but that’s part of the fun, especially in weather like this.

Now it’s back to business. Funk & Weber business? Uh…no. Stitching for Literacy business? Nope. Writing business? Negative. You know what that means.
That’s right! Gardening like nobody’s business.
Are these the coolest carrots you ever did see, or what?

I love gardening and harvesting and putting up produce for winter, but I’m fickle. I’ve seen the light at the end of the tunnel, and I look forward to settling down to some serious writing and stitching. The quiet winter life dangles before me like a big red or purple or yellow or white carrot.

There are still plenty of berries in fine shape to be picked, so it’s hard to stop. Pretty soon, I’ll start picking cranberries, though, so there’s more tundra traipsing on the horizon. Thank goodness.

I still haven’t made blueberry pandowdy, and it will be a couple of weeks before I can, but I will. The 2009 blueberries are about gone–I’m down to mere cups–so the Blueberry Adventure inspired by Stitch Bitch Anna was a smashing success.

Our first cucumber! I’ve been trying for several years, but it took the creation of a “warm bed” (raised bed covered with black plastic and watered carefully with warm-ish water, not freezing cold well water) to finally get something we can call a real cucumber.

Mike’s been watching it, saving it, planning to pick it when his folks arrived. They’re here. Bob found the cucumber and picked it because that’s what you do with ripe produce, but Mike hadn’t filled him in on the back story or explicitly told him to pick it yet, and thus it wasn’t picked with the necessary reverence for a first-ever, cherished, and saved cucumber.

But it was delicious all the same!

If the temp doesn’t drop for a while, we just might get another one or two.

Mike has collected a bunch of windows previously destined for the dump and is talking about a greenhouse for next year. That will require some prep work this year, but it could happen. Never underestimate a cucumber lover motivated by a first-ever homegrown cucumber.