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Autumn sun and a light wind from the south carried the weekend up to seventy degrees (21ºC) and blue skies after a few weeks of cold weather (30ºF, around 0ºC). Towels whipped in the wind. The last of the garden peppers went into white chili (with turkey Don raised, white beans, onion, garlic, cumin, homemade chili powder from our neighbor's friend (we'd run out - thank goodness! wow was this good stuff), cilantro, lime juice and chicken broth, no tomatoes - save those for red chili).
Rosemary and parsley puffed out like it was August.

Beverly and Berta wondered where the cold went.

Don even let the turkeys wander outside their fence a while, but it didn't last long. He remembered how dumb they are, worried they'd head toward the road and penned them back up.
Floozie found a rock and wanted to brood. Wow, she looks big all of a sudden, as fluffy as the parsley. She used to be such a skinny squirt. A nosy one. (See sidebar toward the bottom.)

Spearmint, peppermint, ever-ready strawberries and frost-flattened rhubarb kept two other garden beds alive and green with red trim. Don had transplanted the foundering rhubarb here where it looks to be thriving now. I tasted a chunk of pink rhubarb stalk, thinking I'd make pie, but it was tasteless. I used to eat rhubarb raw when I was a kid from a patch in my parents' backyard - crisp, gritty, juicy and SOUR. We will have to wait until spring for this plant to grow fresh tasty stalks. Save room for warm strawberry-rhubarb pie a la mode in June. Something in the pairing with strawberries eliminates rhubarb's gritty feel on your teeth.

The lumberjack chain-sawed dead wood by the pond, which I later stacked in the corncrib. So far the forced air furnace has hardly kicked on in spite of cold weather the last few weeks because the wood stove is efficient and keeps us cozy. It will be cold again soon enough.

What can be said - except Hallelujah, Praise the Lord and pass the sour cream (for the chili), and butter and honey (for the cornbread)!

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