Day 239 (Tuesday) – March 27 – Mending Day
Mending day … only it’s not clothes that I’ve been mending. The hail and the storm did more damage than I’m happy with but it was so hot that the ice really didn’t have time to do the damage that it could have. And those sun shades that I had put up yesterday helped with some of the super tender plants. The worst of the damage was we had two trees down inside Sanctuary – one in the compound proper and one in the animal enclosure area – and a couple of really big limbs that came down as well. Trash out of the trees, especially the turkey oaks, was everywhere.
We had some melted wiring on the cell tower but thankfully nothing that made it to the radio shack. Dix completely disconnected it from all outside wiring or things could have been much worse.
First thing this morning, before I could do anything else, I needed to take care of baby Cinda. She is resting better between feedings and her coloring is better though if it came down to a fight between her and a feather, the feather would still win. I was able to lower the dilution of the formula a bit more today than I expected. It looks like maybe she was just crying and causing herself to spit up as much as anything else being wrong.
And I need to say that Patricia’s labor pains stopped during the night but they are keeping her in the clinic for at least another few days. During the day, while I was saying hi to Patricia, she told me that Ski and Iggy were talking about using Magnesium Sulfate if necessary to stop her labor. They don’t want to because of the potential side effects but they can. I suppose that’s a good thing. She is 30 weeks along. If she can hold off on having the baby another five or six weeks the baby’s chances of survival without medical intervention goes up significantly
I did have a fairly odd … well, OK, not odd just unexpected … thing happen today. Maddie. Maddie who will bear the scar for the rest of her life of the explosion that killed her family. The scar isn’t near pronounced as it used to be, certainly not as shocking, but she is still self-conscious about it. Brandon is too young to be a father figure for her, only a year or so older and caught up in his own grieving and troubles. Josephine and Maddie never really got along because Josephine resented out Maddie and Marty treated Brandon. I’ll admit to not really knowing how to deal with Maddie, she hung out more with Tina and Becky than with me or mine. But with the others gone to Aldea, this has left Maddie to find solace and friendship where she could.
Enter Charlene. Apparently she and Maddie have become friends without me even realizing what was going on. Certainly I’m not sorry for it. Charlene is 16 and needs girls her own age for company. Rose just doesn’t have a lot of time and prefers to hang out with Melody and Rilla and the older Morris girls. Anyway, Maddie came over this morning to say hello … and I suspect to get out of the house because Brandon and Josephine were arguing again.
I was surprised as heck but Cinda took to Maddie without a single chirp or fuss. She volunteered to help at the clinic so that Rose and Melody could get done what they needed to get done and would just oversee her taking care of the baby.
I admit that has been a relief for me. I think Cinda is a cute little bug and won’t mind taking her in but I already have more work than I can get done every day. When someone would bring up that “it takes a village to raise a child” phrase I used to roll my eyes, but these days they aren’t kidding. I can’t be on top of all the kids 24/7 and do the work that I need to do to make sure those kids have food in their bellies, etc. It’s a good thing I’m not getting too attached to her because Tris was extremely anxious by the time we got Cinda to the clinic for weighing, etc. Tyce is doing better as well and both boys didn’t like the baby being gone from their sight.
I left Maddie to help with the baby as Charlene and the rest of our littles trooped over to the community kitchen. Good brown gravy! What a mess!! Charlene set the littles to wiping down tables and sweeping debris while I tried to clear out the prep and cooking areas. The screen door had been ripped off and the screening torn in several places and there was all sorts of leaves and water inside that had to be cleaned up. Betty wasn’t too far behind in showing up. While she started breakfast itself I sewed up the rips in the screens as best I could and James put the door back on. Two of the hinges were reusable but one was completely broken and had to be replaced. New holes had to be drilled for that one because we didn’t have a match to replace it with.
After breakfast I went out to the gardens. Well, it could have been worse.
I had a few plants that had some leaf and fruit damage but it wasn’t as bad as my worst fears. I think I have lost a few things but it wasn’t from the hail. There was a large tree that I thought was far enough away from the gardens that it wouldn’t be able to damage anything or over shade it. Well, the tree laid down in the storm last night. It must have been drought damaged and a microburst might have just been too much for the roots to handle.
The shrubby uppermost part of the tree is down over the corner of one of the squash garden. I don’t know if they’ll come back or not, the plants were pretty damaged. I’m not going to pull them up though until I am sure there isn’t anything to salvage.
We also had a big limb come down really close to where we have the bee hives. No damage; but the bees weren’t exactly at their most friendly this morning. All of the sawing and people over in their area really hacked them off. Mr. Morris decided that under the circumstances he might as well pull the next batch of honey so that the bees could relax undisturbed after this for a while.
The bees may not have been happy this morning but they’ve been doing something to make themselves happy since the last time. We got another 1000 pounds of honey from the 12 hives and Mr. Morris has set up three more super hotels to try and attract some of the feral hives that are looking for homes right now. It wasn’t quite three pounds of honey per frame this time but it was close enough as makes almost no difference. We’ll split this batch of honey with Aldea. Mr. Morris said that if he can catch another few feral hives and get them domesticated he’ll help to transfer at least one hive over to Aldea if for no other reason than to help them to keep their garden pollinated.
I know 1000 pounds of honey – 500 pounds if you back out Aldea’s share – seems like a lot of honey but it’s not as much as you would think. A simply gallon of honey weighs about 12 pounds though it varies by moisture content. So doing the math 500 pounds of honey yields about 41 gallons. We got 1000 pounds from the first run of honey back on the sixth of this month. We haven’t transferred very much of that to Aldea yet until they have a bug-free container set up. They are working on another Cooler but it takes time and they have so much other stuff to do.
We have a “Honey House” set up which is basically a portable building that Mr. Morris had the men haul in and he’s fixed it up quite a bit. Half of the building is the honey equipment and the other half is for honey storage. Mr. Morris is a bear about keeping both areas clean to keep the bugs away.
But like what I was saying about 500 pounds of honey not going as far as you think it would. Say you have 40 gallons of honey. One batch of mead takes about one and a half gallons. You might not make 40 batches of mead in a year but I can frankly foresee the men wanting to make 10 or more per year with no problem; and that doesn’t even include if they decide to trade their mead. So 10 times 1.5 equals 15 gallons; that leaves you 25 gallons of honey. A cup of honey is about 12 ounces. For every cup of processed white sugar that you would use in a recipe you use about ¾ cup of honey (plus backing out some of the liquid and adding ½ teaspoon baking soda). Trust me at that conversion, and if we were having to use nothing but honey as a sweetener for cooking and for canning, it won’t take long at all to go through that amount of honey.
Thankfully, Mr. Morris thinks we can get another four harvests out of the hives before we need to back off and leave them alone. Harvesting once a month from March through July should give us a total … assuming we can get around four hundred pounds per hive for the year … 4,800 pounds total; that’s nearly two and a half tons of honey. That will let us split with Aldea, make enough mead for the men to drown themselves in a couple of times a year, have enough in storage for cooking and preserving, and if we are fortunate we may even have enough to trade with. Certainly we’ll have enough beeswax to trade with.
Mr. Morris said we should get between five and ten pounds of beeswax per hive by the end of the year. That will give us anywhere between 60 and 150 pounds of wax depending on how much wax per hive and how many hives we are able to get up and running by catching the feral hives. That’s a lot of doggone wax. I can use the wax in some of my home and herbal concoctions and of course the wax will make great candles if we need them. But if you think about it more, if we use the beeswax for candles alone it could take up to a pound of wax to make one decent taper candle. Geez, on second thought, maybe 60 pounds of beeswax isn’t that much after all. It sure wouldn’t be enough to keep Sanctuary and Aldea in candles for a year.
Spent the day hoeing and harvesting; gotta make hay while the sun shines. Still took the time though to bake a honey cake for Sarah’s birthday tomorrow. I made a carrot spice cake. This is the recipe:
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 cup honey
2 eggs
2 cups finely grated carrots
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1/4 cup orange juice
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 Tablespoon ground nutmeg |
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In large mixing bowl, cream butter until fluffy. Beat in honey in fine stream until well blended. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. In small bowl, combine carrots, raisins, nuts, orange juice and vanilla, set aside. Combine dry ingredients; set aside. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with carrot mixture, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Turn batter into greased 12x8x2-inch pan. Bake at 350°F 35 to 45 minutes or until wooden pick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Turn onto wire cake rack. |
I was out of pre-made frosting so I made a cream cheese frosting from scratch. And when I mean from scratch I mean all the way from the cow from scratch. First I had to make the cream cheese; well, actually I used cream cheese that Reba had made up a couple of days ago and had in the Cooler. And then from there I beat, whipped, and whisked just the women of days gone by had to if they wanted frosting for their cakes.
I wish we could do something more for Sarah’s birthday. Scott and I sat down with her and explained that it wouldn’t be quite the number of kids there as was at Bekah’s but she said she didn’t care if it was just family. Sarah used to be our social butterfly and it concerns me a bit that she has turned away from people so much and is so totally focused on animals now. Or maybe she just has deep friendships now instead of flitting between superficial ones. She and Callie Morris get along really well. Of course there is Samuel and they are really good friends, both love working with the animals.
I suppose I shouldn’t worry about the kids as much as I do. It’s just that in such a short period of time their whole lives have been upended and they are at such an impressionable age too. Look at Rose. Her future was just starting … there was going to be college, driving her own car, more independence … and now she’s practically locked into a full-time position in the clinic and possibly marriage to David, though they’ve both got the sense to know they aren’t ready for that quite yet. And she won’t be 18 until June.
And James; he wanted to play football and try and get into UF and then maybe even go into public service behind the political scene after he experienced a little bit of life first. Now all he does is experience life. The only time he gets to play football is if Scott or David have the time (and energy) to toss the football back and forth. Barely 16 and he’s already been forced to kill men and sanitize zombies. The insanity of it. How on earth has all our lives changed so much so quickly?!
I found Josephine crying in the orange grove a little after lunch. She and Brandon had another fight. She keeps trying to push him into public confrontations thinking that will force his hand. But Brandon isn’t as weak as he appears to be. I let her cry and little longer and then asked her what she had wanted the outcome of the argument to be. She doesn’t want to “have a bastard” and “her grandmother would never have understood” and “it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
I don’t know what these young girls are thinking when they start having sex. Oh, I know what the boys are thinking about it doesn’t get much farther away than hand’s reach down south. Guys’ brains are just one huge hormone until they get a little age on them. And girls aren’t much better but we have the natural consequences to deal with and a built in monthly reminder in case we forget. Sex is beautiful with the right person under the right circumstances but the consequences, even when you are married to the perfect person, have an incredible responsibility with them. And since guys seem to be handicapped by their own bodies it’s up to the girl to keep it under control. I’ve always taught the kids not to do anything they wouldn’t do in front of Scott and I. Rose and James get a little more detail on that advice but the bottom line is still the same. If you don’t intentionally put yourself into situations of excess temptation then you give yourself a better than even chance of being able to resist that temptation and keep your head and your hands where they are supposed to be.
I guess Josephine and Brandon missed that particular talk or decided they knew better. And now there is a baby. And forced maturity isn’t necessarily deep or consistent maturity. I’ve seen the same thing in James and Rose. I continue to catch glimpses of their childhood not quite being as over as they think it is.
Frankly I think Josephine is just plain scared. She claims she is sick all the time. And she sees all the things that are going wrong for Patricia; she claims her mother had the same problems so she’s worried it will be that way for her too. She saw how crazy Laura got although I’ve tried to point out that the pregnancy didn’t cause that. And she sees Kitty and Cinda and what happened to them; being raised by people other than their biological parents. And now Rose and Melody hardly talk to her except for medical reasons. She’s just scared and lonely.
And frankly I don’t know what to say to her to make it better. “You made your bed now you’re going to have to sleep in it,” isn’t exactly the most sympathetic way of putting it. I’m thinking that maybe Cindy or Becky over at Aldea would know how to say this stuff better. At the very least it would put some distance between her and Brandon and give them a little perspective … maybe. I’ll have to see who comes to Market Day; hopefully one of the women will and I can get some news.
Speaking of Aldea, they want to remain a “hidden community.” Sanctuary will be the main contact with the outside population but Aldea would remain our “ace in the hole” so to speak. The plan is to have some place to send our wounded or bolt to if Sanctuary becomes uninhabitable. An Avalon to our Camelot is what Glenn calls it … I just hope we coexist without the personality conflicts and drama.
Aldea plans to send some representatives to Market Day but they spent most of today cutting their way out. It appears that between one thing and another – damage from the hive and from NRSC movements, last year’s drought, and some pretty significant microbursts during last night’s storm – they had a number of large trees across their main road in and out. They are leaving some of these in place closer to former main entrance to what used to be called Lettuce Lake Park and it will camouflage that area even more.
Scott tells me things are so overgrown in that area that you couldn’t even find the entrance unless you knew it was there. All of the USF-owned land and parks around the river are all ridiculously overgrown and a lot of the buildings have been ransacked; the docks too when people were looking for wood to burn. They want to drop the main bridge on Fletcher Ave that crosses the Hillsborough River but I’m trying to envision how they will get access to the rest of town if they do that. I suppose they could try and cut a path/road through Rock Hammock and come in on the back side of the Tampa Palms Golf Course and from there go through Tampa Palms and come out onto Bruce B. Downs Blvd.
I still think that is a lot more work that I’d be up to doing, especially with good rains filling those hammocks in there with swamp water, gators, snakes, and who knows what all. And they’d still need to be able to cross the river at some point to get to that side of the hammock. Oh well, that’s up to them. If it was me I’d leave the bridge on Fowler Avenue. The bridge where I75 cross the Hillsborough River has already collapsed thanks to fire damage and a couple of the supports being blown out by NRSC tanks.