Our Dirt II

I hadn't made bread in several years, and mine was never that great anyway (except for one particular loaf of sourdough rye that took something like seven days to make—that was good), so I went back and read the recipe again, in Julia Child, and it paid off. This bread is excellent, maybe the best I've ever made. First time using White Lily unbleached bread flour, and I like it. Chewy-crisp crust with fine blistering on the surface, good flavor, and a light but chewy and holey crumb. The best part, though, was how the bread made the house smell all homey while it baked. On a cool, drizzly day—almost fall!—after driving the bug around for an hour and a half as she tried to sleep, it sure was nice to come home and put bread in the oven and pour a glass of wine. Supper last night was bread with a weird sort of ratatouille, and sausage.

The collards survived the lawnmower (we don't have one ourselves, so we hired a service to do it these last few times before fall takes care of things).

The fig tree did not.

Maybe it'll come back from the roots.

Adding to the list of fruitless projects, right after training Wagner to be a better dog so we don't have to give him away, here's the latest. I promised the bug (although, what does she know about promises?) I'd have all the glass and broken pottery and shotgun shells cleaned up out of the side yard before she learns to walk. The only way I can see that happening—there's so much trash out there, and it's mostly buried in the top (I assume) few inches of dirt—is if I treat the midden as an archaeological dig, and do one quadrant at a time.

I've laid out a portable grid that I can move around as I work. It's a start, anyway.

I didn't get any actual glass up yesterday because it started to rain on the bug and me, and Wagner escaped and ran across the road to the neighbor's chicken coop.