And now a flood

After days and days and days of cleaning Brussels sprouts, Hilda and I finally had the task done. The next task was to sort them by size. Larger sprouts need to be blanched longer than smaller sprouts before freezing. I started with bowls for large, medium, and small. I quickly changed my categories to medium, small, and weenie. It was not a good year for Brussels sprouts. They barely developed all summer long. After that, there wasn’t enough time for them to get very big.

Clockwise from upper left: weenie, small, and medium Brussels sprouts. The weenie sprouts are pea-sized.

I set aside some nice Brussels sprouts for Thanksgiving. I cleaned them the day before. I also made the cranberry sauce, giving Terry very explicit instructions about reminding me to put it on the table. Cranberries are not something I miss if they aren’t there. Years ago, Terry spent the entire Thanksgiving dinner wishing there was cranberry sauce, but he didn’t want to offend me by mentioning it. It was in the refrigerator the whole time. Now I make sure he knows that I’ve made it.

I planned what I thought was a simple menu. Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sprouts, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. And yet, I was busy all morning. And the turkey wouldn’t get done. When it was finally up to temperature and resting, Jane made the gravy. I am gravy-challenged. Jane makes the best gravy ever. Dinner, which I’d planned to serve at 1:00 so Jane could get home before it was too dark, was half an hour late, but it was a small crowd, and no one seemed to mind.

Here I am carving the long-awaited turkey.

For once, I remembered the cranberries all by myself. I came very near to forgetting the dressing. The turkey was taking so long in my oven that I put the dressing upstairs in Hilda’s oven. It had a lovely crispy brown crust when I remembered with a start that it was still in the oven. I would have been mightily peeved if I’d found a blackened block of bread crumbs in a casserole dish after dinner was over.

Here's the food on the table. I have recently decided that the best ever gravy boat is a glass measuring cup. If the gravy gets cold, you can just pop it in the microwave. I'm all about function. Just about everything has something in it that we grew. The turkey was stuffed with onions and garlic from the garden. The potatoes, the onions, eggs, and herbs in the dressing, the eggs and pumpkin in the pie, and, of course, the sprouts were all our own. It makes me quietly proud.

Dinner is served

After we’d all eaten too much, we took a break to put away the leftovers, clean up the kitchen (thanks, Jane!) and play several rounds of Mexican train before the pumpkin pie.

And all the while, it rained. Poured. Periodically, one or more of us would reflect on how very glad we were that it wasn’t snow. The rain gauge this morning measured 1.7”. That would have been nearly twice as much snow as last weekend.

After Jane went home, I finished up the last bit of clean up in the kitchen. I was exhausted and sleepy. It was dark outside, and I thought certainly it must be almost time for bed. The clock on the stove said 4:36. How could that be right? But it was. I took a little nap against my better judgement. Contrary to my fear, however, I slept well when it really was time for bed.

We have water standing in all the low spots.

Flooding in the maple saplings

I walked out to check on the two Brussels sprouts I left in the garden for Pat and Nancy. Ruined, as I expected they would be after that morning with a temperature of -2°. Even the sprouts that had green leaves on the outside (the wrong dark green of post-freezing) were brown and squishy in the middle. Fortunately, I kept one from the previous harvest, just in case.

As I walked over the sodden lawn, I heard an odd popping noise unlike anything I had heard before. When I stopped walking, the noise continued for a second or two, and then ceased. Step. Pop, pop, pop, pop. I saw nothing move, but the huge number of worm holes everywhere suggested that the noise emanated from night crawlers retreating into their burrows whenever they sensed vibration. Will I ever have seen/heard everything nature has to offer?