Roast Turkey

I always dither over how to prepare the turkey on Thanksgiving and it's that time of the year again. So I've read eighty recipes and read fifty discussions and here's what I've concluded: whatever I do will be fine.

I'm going to go to Byerly's and buy a fresh turkey that's been humanely raised to assuage my notions of food politics (I can't raise my own turkey, after all). Then I'll bring it home, bring it to room temperature, stuff it with lemon, orange, onion and rosemary, rub it with a butter and olive oil and dry herb mixture, then roast it at 425 for about 2 hours. I'll let it rest under foil and a towel for half an hour and then do the best I can to carve it.

While it's resting, I'll make gravy, serve up all the other parts of the meal (which have been assigned to the others), and converse with my guests. The food is important and I want it to be delicious, but the people are much more important.

Larkyn

My companion is a dachshund named Larkyn. He came to me when he was 10 weeks old, huge flappy ears and great big paws, with the softest fur imaginable. He came from a breeder of championship smooth red dachshunds who I found on-line. She emailed me pictures of Larkyn's parents, his mother Breeze and his father Chester (who Larkyn resembles very closely). When the litter arrived, she sent me pictures of all the little baby dachshunds, with their mother and playing dog with each other.

When he was a puppy, Dennis and Kevin, my second and fourth sons, still lived with me. Kevin often brought his whole tennis team around and they all picked up tiny Larkyn and petted him and passed him among them and laughed at him as boys will laugh at a puppy. Since I wanted Larkyn to be a social and welcoming dog, I encouraged all the interaction. I had no idea I would spend more of Larkyn's life being just the two of us. After years of raising children, I could not at that time imagine having a bathroom all my own or cooking for one or a dog who would only go for walks with me.

Larkyn is an AKC registered dog with champion parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, so he is beautiful. Many people find dachshunds to be comical but I think hounds are lovely, especially the smooth-coated ones. Dachshunds are the smallest breed of hound and make up in chutzpah for what they lack in size. Originally used to hunt badgers, dachshunds have very strong front legs and paws so they can dig into badger tunnels and very strong back legs so they can back out of the tunnel with the fighting badger clamped in their jaws. Once a dachshund clamps his mouth around something, he will not let go.

Larkyn's greatest adventure was the trip we took together, driving from Minneapolis to Austin, TX, where my oldest son, Brian, lives with his wife Wendy. I drove and Larkyn was my navigator. His job was to make sure we stayed on I-35. The first day, we drove to Wichita, KS, stopping at a dog-friendly motel, after nine hours of driving, with only a few stops at road-side rest stops. After a breakfast supplied by the motel, we got going early the next morning and reached Brian's house at about 4:00 having crossed the Oklahoma-Texas border around 11 in the morning. Texas really is huge! Both Larkyn and I were glad to get out of the car and stay out of it for a week. On the way back, Larkyn didn't want to stop for the night. I had to insist. I might have driven all the way through, but I hate driving in the dark. As it was, we shaved almost two hours off our return time and we were both very glad to get home. We were also really glad we went and when I go anywhere else, Larkyn is the first to want to go too.

Mostly we walk and where we live now, we have lots of interesting paths to follow without leaving the grounds of our apartment complex. Larkyn walks with his nose to the ground and sometimes wants to go under spruces or through large shrubs, places he could manage to go, but I couldn't comfortably follow. We haven't lived here through a winter so I'm not sure what will happen to our walks once snow is on the ground. Larkyn doesn't like walking in the winter because his paws freeze. If we go too far, I end up carrying him home and since he weighs 25 pounds, I try to avoid long outdoor winter walks. We can walk around the apartment inside when it's cold.

Larkyn is eleven years old now and a little gray around the muzzle. He hasn't slowed down any though and I'm sure that if he encountered a rabbit, he'd take off after it and probably catch it, as he did when we lived in Minneapolis. Dachshunds are tenacious hunters when they get a chance. They are tenacious dreamers too: sometimes Larkyn awakens me in the night, having a noisy and energetic dream, probably about hunting badgers. Or maybe he's in the car, keeping me on I-35.

My Apartment

I like my apartment because:

1. It is big, or, at least, the livingroom and bedroom are big. The deck is big too. The bathroom is big enough. The dining area is large enough for a table that will comfortably seat six.

2. There are three closets. Three!

3. There is lots of light. My African violets, that didn't bloom for three years, bloomed once I moved here last May.

4. The walls are tan, not white like most apartments.

5. I have a gas stove.

6. My livingroom and deck look out on a park-like setting with bermed trees, shrubs, evergreens and grass, and picnic tables and benches here and there.

7. There's an indoor swimming pool.

8. The carpet was brand new when I moved here last May. The walls were freshly painted, too, but that's normal with apartments.

9. There's a squirrel's nest in the linden tree just beyond my deck and many different birds visit my feeder. A rabbit lives under the spruce nearest to my deck.

10. Most of the time, it's very quiet here.

11. Larkyn likes to sniff around when we go out for walks, probably because everyone here seems to have at least one dog and there are rabbits and squirrels.

12. I'm a ten minute drive from work.

Two of My Favorite Stores

I had to go through Uptown today so I took advantage of the opportunity to stop at Penzies and Magers and Quinn Bookstore, two of my favorite places to shop. Although I only needed nutmeg, I walked around Penzies, opening the sniffing jars to take a whiff of this and that. There were two kinds of nutmeg and I took a great deal of time deciding which I liked best. Since I'm a big nutmeg fan, that decision was very difficult. I chose East Indies over West Indies, thinking it was just a bit richer smelling. With the holidays coming soon, there's no question I'll use lots of nutmeg in the next few months.

At Magers and Quinn I pretended I had a hundred dollars to spend. Even at half price, the decisions were very difficult. Many paperback novels at roughly eight dollars each? Four or five cookbooks? Two gorgeous art books and a map of Africa? Maybe a book about trees and shrubs and a landscape design book? Finally I decided to get one of everything and by that time the money I'd put in the parking meter was ready to run out so, the hundred dollars and decisions being in fantasy, I left, happy with my little, but potent, jar of nutmeg.

Spruce Tips

My work world has moved outside to what is called the veranda where spruce tips and other greens are stored. My job is to tell people how many bundles of spruce tips or boughs they need for the number and sizes of pots they are filling. A 12 inch diameter pot, for example, requires two or three good-sized spruce tips and a bundle of white pine boughs. But I encourage folks to add red-twigged dogwood sticks and juniper boughs, cedar boughs and red-berried twigs, anything but plain greens. I encourage folks to regard the pots as a flower arrangement. Have fun and please your own eye. Be creative and have fun.

I don't know if people south of Minnesota bother with spruce tips since they can plant a boxwood shrub or an upright juniper in a pot for the winter. We can do that in Minnesota too, but it'll be dead as soon as it thaws in the spring, so few people waste the money on a rooted plant. Spruce tips are the Minnesota answer to that welcoming potted evergreen by the front door.

Or, in my case, on my deck, where my container garden grew last summer. I've missed having anything green on the deck since the horrible frost of early October, so my two pots and two baskets of evergreens are very pleasing even though November is warmer, drier, and altogether more delightful than October, when we got the year's worth of rain day after raw, cold day. I had a great time putting them together, actually following my own advise. I was creative, pleasing my own eye and having fun.

A Cardinal

This morning, as I opened my lap-top, I noticed a bright red, male cardinal sitting on a branch of my now-bare ash tree. Since cardinals generally don't lie far from where they're hatched, he must live near enough to be a regular visitor. Safflower seeds and black-hulled sunflower seeds should insure that he returns.

I've been planning to put some shell-on peanuts on the deck to see whether I can lure black-capped chickadees who are my favorite bird to watch because right-side-up and up-side-down are meaningless to them, the acrobats of the northern bird world.

Anything will draw finches who are considered nuisances by many. I would like them more if I could have a pair instead of a flock, but their internecine bickering can be entertaining for a while and if it becomes too warlike, I can withdraw food for a few days. Many people believe that once they start feeding birds, they must continue forever and don't begin in the first place. Birds will certainly appreciate any and all offerings, but they won't become dependant on your food alone. If you don't refill feeders for a few days, or even weeks, they won't die. They'll find other food sources, whether another feeder, naturally growing plant seeds and fruits, or insects hiding under tree bark for warmth.

Feed birds if and when you want. I have a tube feeder for seeds and I'll also put out peanuts and pieces of bread. I won't do it on days when I'm too busy to enjoy the bird show my food will create, but when I'm home to enjoy the birds, I'll feed them.