One wood tick crawling on my hand, and now every little hair on my body that twitches feels like one of the critters is making a beeline up my torso to my wild head of hair, where it’s cozy and warm. Go figure on me being phased because I am not afraid of the little beasts, even with all the tick hype out there.
Yes, I acknowledge the dangers of the wee devils, but I just don’t have a life that eliminates meeting up with them, and frankly I just don’t care. Besides, tick checks can be a lot of fun, depending on who is doing the checking!
However, I was a little freaked out tonight when my first tick of the season did some sort of afterlife sling shot into my leftover marinara sauce and pasta when I fried the eight-legged creature in the kitchen sink with my Bic lighter. It puffed up like a marshmallow and launched itself like a pilot ejecting from a plane.
The little jar of marinara sauce cost me seven bucks, and I wasn’t about to sacrifice it to the garbage can over one measly tick. Suffice it to say, I dissected that beautiful red sauce like the meticulous scientists scraping the active living yeast off Otis the Iceman, a naturally preserved 5,300-year-old mummy found in 1991 in the Otztal Alps.
Thankfully, said tick landed on a piece of ravioli floating in the sauce, saving my entire supper from the drink. Otis the Iceman’s story is far more jaw-dropping as the scientists used a strain of the active yeast found on his body to “ferment and bake a sourdough loaf.” Gulp.
In other news, I am in over my head in farm chores and projects. It happens every summer. I still have a to-do list from three years ago that isn’t finished yet. I just keep adding stuff to it, then closing my eyes and picking one and then going for a kayak on the creek in order to calm down and forget about how much I have to do around here.
My first kayak of the season cost me my arms as they were rubber the next morning after plunging into a 10 km premier paddle on the day of the big winds on May 15, hence postponing all projects for days that required me to lift anything. And of course, because I do not know how to stop, I came home from kayaking and planted 26 white spruce seedlings before making a flop landing onto my bed.
However, that kayak adventure really was worth the muscleaches. Being on the creek for the first time this spring and soaking up the sights of Canada Geese nesting in the marshes, cormorants emerging in droves from under the water and flying away, blue herons, eagles, ducks, and a big beaver that I wasn’t sure was a beaver until it slapped its tail, and even then I thought maybe it was a giant Northern.
My best man, Mr. G and I got our hands dirty this past weekend and planted the garden. Cucumbers, potatoes, radishes, carrots, dill, hot and sweet peppers, and a few mysterious seeds that may or may not grow into a beanstalk worthy of Jack. We also planted nine more white spruce seedlings along my driveway that had been growing in my garden since 2023, when I bought them. These to-dos are now happily placed in their forever spots, and may I be lucky enough to see them grow into the beautiful trees I know they will become.
As a reward for all our hard work Mr. G, and I sunk into our lawn chairs by the barn and ate marvellous Double Dutch cookies (double waffles with a special chewy filling) made by Schep’s Bakery of Norwich, Ont., that Mr. G has renamed “Philosopher Cookies” because of all the ideas the cookies inspired, most of which were more project ideas for this neck of the woods.
But that’s another story.
