Signs of Winter

 

Autumn is leaving us rather quickly. We've raked up most of the once vibrant leaves that have fallen and the trees are becoming bare. David has been chopping wood for Lin's fireplace and we see smoke curling from the neighbor's' chimneys on many crisp mornings. The sky tends toward gray instead of blue. Dusk comes in late afternoon instead of late evening. We've dug out our gloves, warm jackets and heavy socks. The screens have been replaced by glass windows. The furnace comes on regularly though I always seem to be cold. Winter's coming … all too soon.

When we were in Vermont recently, we saw lots of woolly bear caterpillars crossing the road. All were mysteriously heading southwest; they prefer the warm evidently. I'm with them. Actually those poor guys freeze solid as a rock over the winter and thaw out in the Spring to become tiger moths. Short lives and most of it frozen. In the meantime, though, they're heading out of town.

Canada geese are honking up a storm. We see their V-shaped flight patterns regularly ... heading south, too.

Evidently some opt to stick around though, because we've seen them ice skating on the local ponds during the winter months. Crazy geese.

Squirrels have been busy here. They chatter away as they scamper up and down trees, mouths full, collecting their winter stores.

There are ads in the newspaper for cords of firewood, coal and plowing services. The barns and silos are full of hay. The cold and snow are sure to be upon us soon. I'm not wishing for a white Christmas.

After having summer Christmases down under for the past few years, I must say that going to the beach for a BBQ beats shoveling snow and freezing my tush off. Definitely time to return to Nine of Cups soon. Summer's coming to Australia. In the meantime, brrrrr!

Apple Picking

It's apple picking time and we couldn't let the season escape without heading to an orchard to pick apples. We usually eat as much as we pick, so it's a good bargain for us. We know of several orchards in the area, but Lin suggested the Nashoba Valley Winery and Orchard. Hmm... apple picking and wine tasting… a stellar combination for a Sunday afternoon and off we went.

The early morning fog burned off by Noon and the sun prevailed for the rest of the day. The orchard was crowded with apple pickers. 'Tis the season. The winery tasting rooms were filled to bursting. Still, we managed to enjoy ourselves. A couple of wine tastings and all was well with the world.

We sampled a Gravenstein dry white wine (pucker up!), an okay chardonnay and a passable pinot gris. The Dry Blueberry and Blueberry Merlot were tolerable, but the St. Croix won the day in the red department. Lin sampled a strawberry rhubarb semi-sweet and the Nashoba Mead. Okay, but not great. The Northern Comfort (their version of cognac) was not quite up to to cognac standards and David drank my Oak-Aged Apple Brandy preferring it to what he ordered. On a whim, I tried the Baerenfang, used 100 years ago by hunters to catch bears. It might have snared the bears, but it certainly didn't do anything for me. We didn't buy any wine to take with us, but we maintained a pleasant glow while apple picking.

Branches were bowed over with the weight of ripe apples. We wondered how some of the branches could support the weight with breaking. McIntosh, Cortland, Mutsu, Golden Delicious and Bramleys were ripe and available for picking. We were obligated, of course, to try one of each before committing to actually picking. At this time of year, standing in this beautiful orchard on a crisp, sunny autumn day, with the smell of apples in the air, sweet and rich, they all tasted good. We picked a half bushel before you could say “McIntosh”

I love apples, but I'm pretty persnickety about which ones I'll eat. I like apples to be hard, crisp and tart. Soft, mealy, sweet … no way. I take a bite out of an apple that's not up to my standards and well … let's just say, David eats a lot of apples he wasn't planning to eat.

We see lots of apple crisp, apple pies, baked apples and just plain old apple eating in our near future, not to mention dark rum and hot cider. It doesn't get much better in the autumn of year.

Gum Chewing... An Age-Old Enjoyment

 

I'm a gum chewer. Sad to say, this is not far from a cud-chewer when I'm in my best form. Yes, I was one of those kids who was made to stand in the corner at school for an hour with a wad of gum stuck on my nose. That would definitely not be allowed in today's classroom; it would lower my self-esteem. Back then it obviously did not. I continued to chew gum … just more surreptitiously. Oh, Miss Thompson, if you only knew.

My Mom could chew a half stick of Dentyne (prevent decay, sweeten your breath, keep teeth white) all day long. I'm never happy with one stick, or even two. Though I'm promised “intense flavor that lasts”, it never does. I need more … and more. Sometimes I consider a pack equal to a single serving. Oh, yeah, I take my gum chewing quite seriously.

Gum chewing is quite popular in the USA, but not so much in other countries. In fact, parodies of Americans many times show gum-chewing bimbos. They always seem to have that vacant look in their eyes … akin to the aforementioned cud-chewers. In actuality though, Kantar Media found that the Middle East nations of Iran and Saudi Arabia had the most gum chewers, some of which is accounted for by the fact that vendors give pieces of gum in lieu of small change. Heck, the gum industry is a $19 billion market worldwide. That's some serious chewing.

Chewing gum dates back at least 5,000 years. They found a piece of bark tar with tooth imprints from the Neolithic period somewhere in Finland and concluded that they were chewing gum way back then. In Mexico, they refer to gum as “chicle” which I always though was based on “Chiclets”, a candy-coated gum pellet I used to love when I was a kid. Plus you could use the gum as fake front teeth and considering the amount of sugar in them, that wasn't a reach. Chicle actually was the base for gum products until it was replaced with a cheaper “rubber-like polymer” product in the 1960's. The Mayans and Aztecs chewed chicle and the ancient Greeks chewed mastiche. So you see, I'm in good company.

In 1848, John B. Curtis developed and sold the first commercial chewing gum called The State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum. It's still available, but only as a specialty type product at a specialty price. In 1871, Thomas Adams patented a machine for the manufacture of gum. It's the same Adams name that's part of Cadbury Adams today and still produces chewing gum.

Speaking of specialty gums, do you remember Blackjack, licorice-flavored gum that you could use to black out your front teeth? Blackjack was the first flavored gum and the first to be offered in sticks. Huh! Now that's entertainment. Then there was Beeman's clove-gum, a flavor/smell I always associate with old ladies for some reason (who probably had false teeth and couldn't chew gum anyway).

Do you remember bubble gum cigars? or wax lips and moustaches that could be chewed like gum? How about baseball cards that came with a flat, baseball card sized hunk of bubble gum?

Today, it's hard to get out of a store without seeing a chewing gum display. The flavors now include root beer, apple pie and orange. Give me spearmint or something refreshing, please, nothing frou-frou.

Schools, by the way, do not allow chewing gum because “students often dispose of it inappropriately, the chewing may be distracting in class, and the gum might carry diseases or bacteria from other students.” Sounds like bunk to me. The under side of desks was and probably still is the “inappropriate” depository for chewing gum at school, but did you ever see those tourist places that tout the blobs of chewing gum stuck to the walls. Talk about disgusting. Get this ... The Singapore government outlawed chewing gum in 1992 because it was becoming a danger when it was wedged in the sliding doors of underground trains. However, in 2002 the government relented and allowed sugarless gum to be sold in pharmacies if a doctor or dentist prescribed it.

Bubblegum, though it's usually not sugar-free, is fun to chew. The 23-inch bubble blown by Susan Montgomery Williams of Fresno, California in 1996 holds the Guiness Book of World Records for largest bubblegum bubble. I'm definitely not in her league. I did like chewing Dubble Bubble and Bazooka, partly for the gum and partly for the comics inside.

There was always something neat about bubblegum machines, too. I guess begging for a penny (now 25 cents...inflation), having my parents give it to me and then going through the complex process of inserting the coin and getting the gumball was always a satisfying experience for me as a little kid. I was easily amused then.

I know, I know. This is more than you ever wanted to read about chewing gum, but you know how my mind works … in mysterious ways. So relax and chew. The ADA says chewing sugarless gum is good for your teeth.