Friday, November 26. The Satsuma Crop Comes In. Shepherd's Pie. Mary Leigh and I walked together across the field to the satsuma grove. It's a happy moment for both of us. She loves satsumas, and eats them by the sack. I have satsuma trees now, and this year's crop has been ripe for the picking for the past couple of weeks. I've held off the gleaning until she was home from school, and then for the Thanksgiving labors to end. But today's the day. The sun was shining and the temperatures warm. She held the clippers around the stem holding the first golden fruit to its branch. The cat Twinnery (above), lying in a bed of pine needles just on the other side of the tree, his orange color a perfect camouflage in a satsuma orchard, continued to snore through the excitement.
Snip! Finished. One satsuma, the entire Cool Water Ranch production for 2010. Better luck next year!
Lugging back the oversize Thanksgiving newspaper from the box on the road (we never had time to get it yesterday), I saw that it was fat not so much because it included a lot of news, but because it was stuffed with catalogs (they were much bigger than mere brochures) for all the stores that hope Black Friday will live up to its name. I saw that many respectable stores are opening at four or five this morning. One of them opened at three. I don't know who goes shopping in a department store at three in the morning, but I don't think I want to know.
All of us knew that even thinking about going to a restaurant today would release a tirade from Mary Ann. She is the queen of leftovers, and derives a giddy satisfaction from consuming them (and watching them be consumed by those under her sway). This concupiscence is not shared by the rest of the Fitzmorris family.
Maybe she knows this. Her first artwork in leavings was actually a
new dish. Shepherd's pie, made from the spicy ground beef that wasn't consumed in yesterday's meat pies (most of which were never made in the first place). Plus leftover mashed potatoes and leftover grated cheddar cheese. Well, I can live with this. It was actually pretty good, even in the darkness of the knowledge that this dish made from leftovers will itself become leftovers after today.
No reason to go into town today. It's an official day off at the radio station, and nobody will be there but me and the other on-air people and producers. Did the show from home, and spent the rest of the day writing. Never a day off from that.
