Ramble with Storm: Counting geese & poblano peppers

Mulling things on my morning ramble

with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.

A rabbit flushed into the rail bed brush as the meathead and I turned to do an extended ramble this morning. The white flash of its tail lived up to its cottontail name.

It just seemed like a morning for an extended ramble. So we did, starting out well before dawn.

Cold enough this morning for a heavy frost outside of town, just some frost on windshields and some lawns in town.

A flock of an even dozen Canada geese flew over, circled and landed on the north clay pit. Another flock I counted at 16 flew from a different spot, I guessed feeding on a different picked cornfield.

Crop harvest continues at an absurd rate.

On the cornfield on the far edge of the extended ramble, the farmer already has started disking the field he picked weeks ago.

A great blue heron flapped silently across the nearly dark sky, coming from another lake and landed on the far north end of the north clay pit.

As we approached the north clay pit, I counted 32 geese on the water, tight to shore and quiet.

Now I consider myself pretty good at math. A dozen and 16 geese should have added to 28. So either four flew in from another side that I didn’t see or four were already on the water and pulled the two flocks down.

Two other geese swam quietly on south old clay pit. I noticed them despite looking at my feet to count how many hedge apples fell in the last day.

Signs of change are everywhere.

Last night, my daughter and I pulled all the pepper and tomato plants from my garden and picked all viable peppers and tomatoes.

This was my first year growing poblano peppers and they were just tremendous. I had far more than I could use. I so took a big bowl to my neighbor, a third-generation Mexican-American.

She gave me a bunch of advice on using them, including baking them, then freezing them in plastic bags. Or simply cooking them on the grill.

Stuff to try. I have found I like the heat/spiciness of poblano peppers much more than I do of even ordinary chili or jalapeno peppers.

No doves, no squirrels this morning.

Something seems right about mulling poblano peppers in the chill of a fall morning, one warming with the rising sun.