Quite Contrary

Okay, I’m back. Sorry. I got a bit distracted for a while because Thursday was Hidden Gardens Day on Beacon Hill. I work on Beacon Hill, for those of you who didn’t know, and Hidden Gardens Day is a yearly tradition in which people who don’t have gardens open their twelve-square-foot terraces of ivied brick and potted plants to the public to show off the expert watering they pay illegal immigrants to do.

Well, not open to the public as it were. To paying ticketholders. And the profits go to – hang on a second, let me look this up. Because I don’t have any idea what the profits go to, and I wouldn’t want to be unnecessarily snarky and make up something obnoxious, only to find out it's a purely altruistic and civic-minded affair...  

Got it: they are “committed to the beautification of Beacon Hill” (“and areas of immediate proximity”). They dress it up in a lot of talk about conservation and flying Garden Club members down to Washington (and thank god, because these people would otherwise probably have to use their private planes, and that would just defeat the whole purpose of all their conservation talk), but that's the gist. Phew. I’m sure glad I caught myself before getting all snarky.

Anyway, so on that one day every spring (and they don't see any need to post a notice letting the neighborhood know ahead of time exactly what day that might be), the area is overrun. Every wanna-be society lady from Weston (and areas of immediate proximity) comes down with her tennis sweater (over her shoulders, naturally) and her new straw hat, and spends the day pretending to all her wanna-be friends that she knows her way around. They stand on street corners looking at maps, pointing in random directions and saying names of streets that lie somewhere else entirely, then agree that the whole thing was just lovely and spend the rest of the afternoon stopping abruptly on the sidewalk to peer in the windows of every twee café, deciding which one they ought to pay eleven dollars for a mini-quiche in. It’s the one day of the year I allow myself to fart openly in public, and if I could only remember to find out ahead of time what day it was, I’d spend the week before it eating nothing but canned baked beans and brussel sprouts. Alas, again this year, I didn’t know. So instead I spent the weekend trying to tuck my poor prolapsed colon back in where it belongs. 

Speaking of gardens, though, and speaking of snarky (but not, thankfully, speaking of colons): I do appreciate all of your wishes and sympathies and advice about the lawn mower saga that I wrote last Tuesday, but if you'd all done better on the reading-comprehension portions of your SATs, you would have retained all the way to the (very) bitter end the information I gave in the first sentence. Namely, ahem: “the lawn mower’s finally fixed.” 

Seriously. I said it. Go back and check. I’ll wait...

See? I told you. What happened was this: 

Before we knew that it would turn into a fruitless wild goose chase at the Sears store, Johnny told George we were on our way to get the part, and George said he’d be over the next afternoon to put it in. When our snipe hunt turned up snake eyes, I told Johnny to ring George and call him off, but George said that if worse came to worse he would fix the old push mower for us (which is still in the basement even though it’s been broken for three years) – and since we desperately had to cut that damn grass somehow, Johnny decided to just let him come. 

I sort of somehow managed to forget all of this when I went to work on Tuesday. And when I came home there was Johnny, in Alice’s yard, mowing Alice’s lawn with Alice’s mower, while our grass was still knee-high to Manute Bol. As shocking as it may seem, however, this did not annoy me. I didn’t even raise my voice to ask him what was going on. I just brought him a beer, because I knew. 

See, the week before, on the day George and Johnny spent replacing parts and failing to crank up our Crapsman tool, Alice had been in her yard with her son doing the same. So when George showed up that afternoon, instead of bringing the push mower from the basement, Johnny rang Alice’s bell and said “If we get your mower going, can I use it?” She agreed and -- naturally, because it's George we're talking about here -- they got it going in about an hour. 

Johnny did her yard first (because that's the kind of guy he is), and it was dark when he was finished, so he rang her bell again and said that he'd call for the mower in the morning. She tried to pay him, but he told her to shove her money up her arse. The next day, he mowed our lawn, and we pretty much assumed that would be the plan for the summer (or until the economy turns around and he has work again). But a few days later, without us knowing he was going to, George came over with a new carburetor for our Crapsman that he’d built for us from scratch. Well, not from scratch, probably. I mean, I don’t think he mined the ore and forged the steel or anything. But you know, from spare carburetor-looking pieces that he found lying around. 

We seriously have the best friends ever, don't you think? Plus, if you put your thumbs up to strategically block the sight of certain houses, we’ve got some awfully darn good neighbors round here, too. And now, thanks to all of us (except for, notably, me), our gardens are looking fine. Maybe not as finely-planned and manicured as what they’re charging $35 a pop to peek at on Beacon Hill, but I think ours are nicer – in their untamed, wild way – and I’ll stand on Mrs. Weston’s straw hat in my shit-kickers and say so, anytime.  

Just let me give old George and Alice time to get upwind.

I Dare Say It Even Gave a Merry Toot

Why won't EGE write, still?

Because I farted, okay? 

I slipped on the ice -- not bad, just a few degrees off vertical, I didn't even almost fall -- but my every muscle instinctively tensed to right myself. And when I say my every muscle, I mean my every one. It was the musical kind, too:  

Twee!

Good thing there was nobody around, because I giggled like a mad woman while I walked the final block.

Adventures in Wine-Making, Day Nine

Sorry for the delay. I got distracted. This week, on Dirty Jobs, my Dirty Boy was making all kinds of Dirty Jokes about his Dirty Tool. I had to go to bed for two days with the Dirty Vapors...

But I'm back now, and ready to tell you all about Day Nine!

Day Nine is when you put it -- the juice/wine/must stuff, whatever you call it at this stage -- into the secondary fermentor. Which is just a fancy way of saying "clean bucket." Or bottle, as the case may be.

As the case is here:

That's it when it was still up on the counter full of sterilizing fluid. A.K.A. bleach.

No! A.K.A. not bleach! I was only kidding about the bleach! A.K.A. Something Else! I don't know what it is because Johnny's in charge of Buying Stuff, but it comes in a package that says "sterilizing jazz" (or something along those lines) so that you know it's not really just bleach -- just like you know that what's in a package labeled "lips and assholes" is not really just hot dogs.

Now, what you have to do is, you have to siphon the wine-solution out of the primary fermentor (first bucket) into the secondary (jug). Johnny got this step set up and going too fast for me to take a picture, because he didn't want you-all to know that he was using his mouth to get the siphon going.

I said "So what? How else are you supposed to do it? And besides, I'm just going to tell them anyway."

And he said "Well, then make sure to tell them not to swallow what they suck up in there, or else they'll have the scutters for a week!"

Which sent me into a fit of such hysterics that it was half done siphoning before I managed to get this shot:

(Okay, maybe not quite half done, but still...)

Here is where gravity -- the real gravity, not the specific kind -- comes in handy: bucket on the counter, jug on the floor, both of them covered with white napkins so God can't see them eating baby birds.

Whoops.

Okay, now both of them covered with -- well, so, that's a wad of toilet paper, but it works. Really it's just to keep the fruit flies out until we put the lid on.

Which, ta da!

Now the wineless primary looks like this:

And if you thought the wine would give you scutters, boy howdy! You don't want to go anywhere near that scudge. The glass or two of plonk you might manage to salvage just ain't worth it. Trust me. Or trust Johnny, actually. I wouldn't know. Cuz I don't poop.

And that's it! Put the glass jug somewhere out of the way and try not to jostle it for the next couple of weeks. The airlock will bubble away and the cloudiness will settle out as the yeast eats up all the sugar it can find and farts and dies.

Which, oddly enough, is almost exactly what I do when I drink it!

Adventures in Wine-Making, Days Four Through Seven or So

Well, really that title should say "Days three through six or so," but since we forgot day three, we're starting on day four and tacking an extra day on to the end. We don't know if that's necessary or if it's just plain wrong, but it's what we did.

Really, you're supposed to measure the specific gravity of the wine to tell you when it's done, which has something to do with how much heavier or lighter than water your liquid is, which tells you (I think) something about the alcohol content. But you need a special tool to measure it and we say bollocks to that. Dionysus didn't have no specific gravity measuring machine, and he did pretty well for himself, as far as we can tell. Right?

So for days four through seven or so, here's what you do:

Step One: Open the bucket...

See that scudge floating on top? That's yeast poop. Or dead yeast. Or something. Actually, I've no idea what it really is, but it's supposed to be there, so don't worry.

Step Two: Stir it...

You can't see it in this picture, but there's a spoon in Johnny's hand and he is stirring it. Make sure you stir in all the scudge, and get down to the bottom where more yeast poop/dead yeast/whatever has come to rest. Johnny says it doesn't matter if you scrape every last bit off the side of the bucket, but when it was my turn to stir I did anyway. Because I'm good like that. And maybe just the slightest bit obsessive.

Step Three: Squeeze the bag. This is not a euphemism. Use the spoon.

The neat thing is that it will turn itself over for you. As you squeeze the gas out of one side, when you release it the gas that's still in the other side makes it bouyant enough that it flips gently over and presents itself to you for squeezing. Very helpful.

Oh, and that gas, by the way? Definitely yeast farts. Definitely.

It's not necessary for you to taste a little of it every day, and in fact Johnny refused because he's scared of live yeast, but I did. Just, when I was done, I let a drip from the spoon fall on my finger. The first day (which as we know was technically the fourth day) it still tasted like Welch's grape juice, but by the last day it was actually starting to taste like wine.

Not good wine. Not yet. But at least we know it's working.