During a quiet evening last winter, we buried Gertrude after dark, beneath the hesitant drops of the second of the serious winter's rains that were starting to drizzle down. We dug a small grave in the backyard aside the patio next to the roasting pit, laid her in, said a few ambiguous words, sipped a dosage of whisky and splashed the rest in before covering her up. She gave us many a good egg over the seasons, but something happened in the end to cause her quiet suffering for a few days before she decided to let it all be done. Despite a quiet box, some clean food and drink, and a warm heating pad underneath, it was time for her to leave. Cheers, Gertrude, come back again someday and let us know how it turned out.
Now a half year later we finish a cold bottle of mead and some stale magazines on the deck as the last light and heat of midsummer decay into the lively sounds of Mariachi bands in the park across the street. This heat wave reminds us of east coast August nights, with fireflies in the trees and the smell of a thunderstorm on the horizon. Unfortunately, rarely do thunderstorms really ever make it to California, and most nights we have to bundle up even in midsummer, so this feels all the more special.
A good deal of events occurred during the Year of Absent Historical Accounts, and the greatest sin is that we didn't write about them soon after they occurred. Do we need to document events immediately so that we remember them in perpetuity? Well, maybe not. But as the memory of old events fades by filling our heads with those anew, more often than not a quick account of recent memories serves to refresh the mind with associated visions, smells, and tastes of events gone past; clearing the palette and triggering a memory of drinks, meals, friends, and laughs that we love to recall over and over as years go by.
Late summer and fall did not stop while we honeymooned in Hawai'i. We arrived home to a multitude of adventures: sailing again out of Berkeley, traveling out to John's reunion in Wisconsin, another yearly trip with EFN to Tahoe for July 4th, and several cycling events that John had to quickly get in shape for. And the one event that stands out, Quail Cottage's first Thanksgiving! John's parents made it into town, as well as Uncle George. Autumn's parents came up from down south, and Ben and Aurora stopped by as well for the feast. Time to show off what the Quail kitchens could do! We found a decently sized bird from a nearby farm (easy to do in California), roasting it to perfection with a crisply browned skin fattened with its own drippings! Stuffing made its appearence as a special guest through the Quail Yeastery leftover sourdough, which when paired with a crumbled sausage and drizzled with the turkey's gravy was simply amazing, fatty and savory and bready and crispy! Greens shone through as well, with our favorite Brussels sprouts roasted under the broiler with fatty chunks of bacon, a large frisée salad with a light citrus dressing to smooth out all the other fats, and a crispy sautéed broccoli bowl. Aurora brought her favorite twice baked potatoes, and we made a cranberry avocado chutney as a token to California. Decorated with several magnums of our favorite winery's Cabernet, what a feast it was! Food and wine and laughter and family and friends: our first hosted Thanksgiving turned into the definition of what such a large feast should be!
I could regale you for ages with stories of foods and feasts, and that will probably come later, but I must continue by talking about our smaller friends and family. Early on in the Year of Absent Historical Accounts, we continued our feline fostering at Quail Cottage Senior by taking in a neglected pair of housecats, whom we renamed Onyx and Cream. (All cats who pass through the Quail Cattery get renamed. Autumn was adoring the book Oryx and Crake at the time and was trying to figure out how we could name the cats as such without being *too* obvious.) As exemplified by Dan and Jeanne then renaming them Fatty and Tugboat, they weren't the nimblest of cats, being rather a large black meowler and a cross-eyed white mottled. They eventually made their way to a quiet law student who was looking for somebody to care for other than textbooks. We took in after that a touchy but delightfully looking white and blue-eyed slender cat we named Cloud as soon as we saw her. She lasted a few days - long enough for John to take some glamour shots - before the photos were posted and she was desired elsewhere. (One of the secondary reasons for fostering so many cats is to get better photos on the adoption website; flash photos with a point-and-shoot isn't amenable to viewing these adorable cats as glamorous!)
Two boys arrived, however, shortly after Cloud left. Oh, these boys were so fitting for life at the Cottage, their ears were munched on, they were suspended upside down while their bellies were scratched, and they adopted us as much as we adopted them. And we did! After a worried phone call from a prospective adopter, Autumn looked at John and they both knew they needed to get them off the adoptive website. Permacats had arrived! Now as I write, they've aged and mellowed, but still exemplify the spirit of Quail Cottage as we like to teach: playful but mellow, loving without smothering, curious but respectful, and tolerant of anybody rubbing your belly and biting your ears. (Okay, they might not be as respectful of our space on the kitchen counter as we'd like, but that's more about teaching us to learn animal behavior with regards to exposed food than teaching them about manners.) Two more cats have arrived one after another since then, a gorgeous deep-red-haired Maine Coon whom we named Red (eventually adopted by Em and Jamie after finding she needed a quiet solo-cat home), and now Sepp, a very young and shy but loving black tabby who has a bit of separation anxiety when you leave him alone for the day (hence the name). The boys eventually adopted Sepp as well, for playtimes and cleanings, although maybe a bit eager to steal his food every now and then.
This account weaves back and forth in time slightly, but I must reverse and mention the chicks that arrived after we found a nice coop on Craigslist and found space in the backyard. What better way to have fresh eggs than backyard chickens! Unfortunately, a miscommunication with our friends that were sharing the quantity of chicken-lings with led us to end up with five of them. Oh, they were adorable when they were young! All in the same cage, you could reach in and hug handfuls of baby chicks, all peeping and sleeping and trying to keep warm by huddling next to the heat lamp. But growing up quickly, we found that five seemed to be a lot for the small space we had planned. In the end it didn't seem *too* small; and free-ranging in the backyard on the weekends seemed to keep them happy enough. If only we could feel as good about all the ground-level plants they razed or dug up...
Eventually the cycles of food within the Cottage became routine, if only for all the animals rather than the humans. First and Second Chicken grew out of the initial squawks of daylight and looking for breakfast, then the Egg Laying Song around midmorning, which all the birds joined in enthusiastically, as if on the cheering squad for the layer. First Chicken was adorable for the first part of Spring, until Summer realized that first light was getting on 6am or earlier. Then it was several months of trying to figure out how to get them to shut up for at least another hour or two until a decent human waking time. Mostly, this was ameliorated by reaching into the egg box for up to five eggs every morning ...!
First and Second Cat took a similar amount of time to figure out. Given the ... girth ... of Onyx and Cream, we had decided that our boys were not going to grow up to be free-fed fat cats. Which means that we were on call for all meals of the day; eventually this boiled down to breakfast and dinner. Until one day when Autumn got caught on a work call at a home in the morning after her own breakfast. Trying to finish up the call, she asked John why the boys were being all noisy and hungry only a few hours after breakfast. "Um, well, there might be a secret John feeding time that you don't know about." ... as he slipped a half cup of dry food into the cat puzzlebox on his way out the door. Thus was christened First and Second Cat, alongside First and Second Chicken, being not necessarily punctual but eminently reliably occurring times of the day.
Summer arrived, and found our kitchen loaded with dozens of eggs. Recipes flew around like papparazzi articles, with frittatas, quiches, souflées, shirred eggs, poached eggs, and egg bakes all making appearances over and over again. What a fascinating historical element, that we found nearly all worldy cultures had recipes for baked things with eggs dropped in, and scrambled eggs baked in a something with other things in it! This avian food source really is universal. Take the "baked things with eggs dropped in it": we found Italian (sautéed onions with tomato sauce baked with eggs dropped in it), African (tomatoes and peppers and spices baked with eggs dropped in it), Indian (lentils and onions and spices baked with eggs dropped in it), and American (bacon and bread and more bacon with eggs dropped in it). Autumn perfected her egg bake while John perfected his souflées. We even had to ask relatives how to freeze raw scrambled eggs! Might have to dig those out of the freezer soon...
Summer brought with it another obsession for Autumn, something that originated with the OCLF many years earlier; as the name implies, the Organized Citrus Liberation Front attempted to help neighbors with too much excess fruit in their yards feed those citrus-loving neighbors that might walk around in want of vitamin C. Thankfully this obsession took on a more philanthropic tone as she and Jesse eventually took over the neighborhood citrus pickers to form the local chapter of a food bank harvest! Spending weekend mornings harvesting fruit from neighborhood trees to donate to the local homeless food bank, she found a great way to pick, eat, donate, and then capture whatever leftover citrus was unfit for even short-term preservation. This led to a number of amazing things: thousands of pounds of fruit donated to the food bank, becoming a board member of a local nonprofit, and weekend afternoons of sitting on the patio squeezing leftover citrus margaritas and chatting with friends! We often filled our second freezer with orange, lemon, and grapefruit juices, if only just for a week or two until we had another craving for summer margaritas. What a life!
As the days eventually shortened, the weekends seemed to shorten as well, with a Fall of Weddings where great friends often required John & Autumn's attendance. Fall weddings led into late fall and winter holidays in other states. At the cottage, things slowed and prepared for the winter. While a summer heatwave had claimed the life of Gertrude, an early winter week-long drenching of rain caused the illness that claimed the second Gertrude at the beginning of this tale. (The five chickens had about seven names, along the lines of Helen, Carol, Margaret, Chastity, etc. When one was referred to in the abstract it was always "Gertrude".) And eventually, John & Autumn departed for a month-and-a-half sabbatical to Australia for the Winter of More Absence. Two great friends Cuyler and Elizabeth lived in the house during the time; they posted some photos, but too late did I think to ask them their stories for this history! The cottage stood strong though and they fed it well.
I catch up every now and then, but it still feels like so much happens beneath and around this roof. Too much, sometimes, perhaps? We work and we play and we drink and we eat and we host and we relax, and inevitably projects pile up, books and magazines pile up, and the garage and our closets get filled with things we'll take care of later. How nice it was when we took weeks of time off to spend on the cottage. Sometimes cleaning the house with a beer and a podcast is all it takes to make you feel once again like a true steward of this home.
But time moves on, and so shall our lives. Many of our close friends have continued their families with small ones, as shall we someday soon, which will just make the projects pile up even more. But isn't that the nature of the home? Never a dull moment, always an excitement here or a new friend there or a new recipe over there or another party next weekend. It's why we bought a house, to delight in the hosting of friends and the curiosity and construction of projects, or the delight in curiosity of small ones :)
It will have to be next time that we share the tales of the Spring of Tardy Plantings and Stone Soup. Once again, the photos have likely betrayed some of the punchlines, but hopefully you'll enjoy the stories and happenings nonetheless. Until then, sleep well, as it's far too late right now, and my nip of lavendar rosemary limoncello made from the cottage flora disappeared a while ago. Here's hoping you can come share a glass some day more early in the evening. Good night!