181. Blue Pine

 This blog is part of my belief that gratitude brings happiness and meaning to life, so the entries are of simple things for which I am grateful.

borrowed image

In the upstairs landing and up the stairwell of my house there is cedar wainscoting and I took a couple of hours last week to stain it (we’re still smelling it!). I like the look of the traditional wood paneling that is common throughout North Idaho, including pine and blue pine, and the cedar that’s in my home. The staining process got me to thinking about paneling and I couldn’t help but focus on the unique aspects of blue pine that I often see in other buildings.

Blue pine is the wood that comes from pine trees that have been infected, usually killed, by the mountain pine beetle. The bluish tints that go streaking throughout the wood come from a fungus that is spread by the beetle. Oddly enough, it can be quite expensive because of its unique appearance. The wood works best for decorative purposes such as paneling or other woodwork, like furniture. But like all soft woods, you have to be careful with blue pine in furniture if you don’t want nicks or dings in the surface. It certainly wouldn’t make good flooring because of that, but there are now several types of vinyl floorings that take on the appearance of blue pine.

In these days you pay extra for blue pine paneling, but in the old days you can see it on walls in small sections. The entire wall will not be blue pine because it was just a fluke that any of it turned out to be blue and the carpenter probably just ran out of the good pine so they ended up using a little blue. I think typically the pine free of the blue was preferred because a bit of blue pine just ruined the consistency of the look. (Somewhat like my now obvious sections of staining on the cedar wainscoting that need a second coat!) I also wonder if the bark beetle was less prolific in the area. I certainly don’t remember large stands of infested pine trees, but that’s also my memory as a child. It was in the early part of the twentieth century that the white pine tree—Idaho’s state tree—was nearly decimated by blister rust and that’s the primary reason you can’t find big white pine trees. My memory is only a little more than fifty years…

At any rate, I like the look of blue pine. I don’t have any and I don’t want to encourage its use too much because I love the forest. But I also know that its use salvages dead trees that have little other use. At any rate, I do appreciate its appearance and I’m going to have no problem buying some vinyl flooring that has imitated the look of blue pine.

180. NCAA Basketball Tournament

We’ve been living through a year of lockdowns, quarantines, and not gathering together in groups so we’ve had plenty of time to either get depressed about or reflect upon the things we enjoy and are going without. Gradually some of these things are being brought back, hopefully in safe ways. I haven’t played basketball in years but it’s one of those sports I enjoy watching because I have played it and I understand it. March Madness has been one of those things, upon reflection, that I have missed.

The NCAA basketball tournament has been brought back this year with several restrictions. I missed having that bracket showing who plays who. While I may have had the chance to watch regular season Gonzaga Bulldogs last year, I didn’t get to see them vie for a national championship last year. This year all of the teams that made it into the tournament plus the four that had a chance to play off for tournament seats have converged in Indianapolis, Indiana for a single location tournament. Spectators are only minimally allowed in to watch and full masking and social distancing rules are in place.

Those young men and women gave up tournament play, partly because they had no choice, but largely to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and overwhelming hospitals and increasing the death rate. It’s hard to imagine that we could lose even more to this terrible disease but that would likely have been the case had the tournament carried on last year. This year it’s back in an altered form and there has not been a crazy outbreak, so they must be doing something right. I’m thankful that I have some basketball to watch on TV this year. I’m thankful that the young men and women of our university system are getting to play in a safe tournament. And, of course, I’m overjoyed that the Gonzaga Bulldogs men’s team again made it to the sweet sixteen in the tournament. I’m rooting for them to go on all the way and win the national championship as an undefeated team—the only undefeated team this year. I’m grateful for basketball and sports. Go Zags! 

179. Dried Foods

(not my image)

This is my blog focusing on gratitude and sometimes I think I forget to be grateful for the most common things that we have. For me some of those things include dried foods. While it’s true that in this era most people don’t worry so much about whether or not fruit is in season because we can get it, thanks to refrigerated transport, from other parts of the world right in our local grocery store. But it hasn’t been that long that apples were available in March. Not so long ago the only apples in March would have been those preserved in a hard cider, a can, or dried. That also went for every other fruit or vegetable that wasn’t in season, so it’s no surprise that the season of Lent and giving up foods such as meat occurs at the end of winter and the beginning of spring. Very few foods are available at this time of year except the preserved varieties. That, right there, should alert me to a reason to be grateful for pretty much every food I get at this time of year.

Right now I’m especially grateful for dried fruits and meats. While I’m not a huge fan of any dried fruit, I do enjoy an apple chip or a chewy dried apricot. I’m also especially fond of dried jerked meats. Beef jerky is a great snack to have at any time of year, to take on a hike or to munch on during an afternoon. It goes good with bread and cheese, or cheese and crackers. I can easily imagine it being my main meal with some dried apples, a sharp cheddar and a hunk of sourdough bread (a sort of ploughman’s lunch if you’ve been to a British pub) on an evening when the power is out and I’m stuck eating by candlelight. It would go nicely with a good glass of merlot or a beer.

Of course, that last bit is just my imagination. The truth of dried meats and fruits for me is that I typically buy some beef jerky for hiking and I might throw in a few raisins or dried cherries. Sometimes I’ve made fruit leather from pureed fruits. They aren’t a regular part of my diet aside from a few raisins thrown on a salad, but I know such forms of preservation are what sustained my ancestors and I’m glad we still have them around to enjoy every once in a while.

 

178. Screened Windows

 

Living in the west, whether in the desert or the mountains, always brings hot dry summers. But the temperatures always drop off at night (unless, perhaps you’re on the coast where the Pacific seldom lets it get very warm anyway) and in some places like the Rockies, the nights get so cool that you can entirely avoid air conditioning in your homes just by opening up the house at night. That’s how it is where I live. Of course, you don’t want to leave things opened up if you don’t have screens on your windows.

Screened windows became a thing in North America when diseases such as yellow fever and malaria spread like fire because of those annoying little mosquitos that still irritate us (and carry diseases) in the cool of an evening. You aren’t able to shoo the pests away if you’re asleep, so getting bit by the annoying things is intense at night. Before electricity your house was likely to get super hot if you were building fires to cook, so you had to leave your windows open to just breathe, let alone sleep. So, people put screens on their windows to prevent mosquito entrance and disease spreading while cooling their homes before air conditioning was even a possibility.

It seemed like a sensible thing to do and now you never find a home in North America without screens on their windows and often times they also have screen doors. I had always thought that was just the way it was and for good reason, but when we went to Europe we found that there weren’t screens to be found on any home. In Britain that seemed all right for the most part because they didn’t seem to have many mosquitos and we were on the coast so we didn’t leave our windows open that much, but still there were flies and other critters. Italy, however, was hot in the summer, and like most of Europe no one had air conditioning in their homes. But they did have mosquitos. So now I don’t take the screens on my windows for granted, but I do wonder about the silly stubbornness of Europeans…

177. A Little Fire and Candle Light

Image is not mine

It doesn’t happen very often anymore, but sometimes the power goes out (maybe once every other year). While I certainly don’t enjoy going without electricity for a long period of time, I do enjoy an evening here and there when you have to use candles to light your way. Of course, the power doesn’t need to go out to enjoy a candle lit evening, but so many of my modern responsibilities depend upon electricity and a good old power outage can briefly relieve me of those responsibilities. With the power out I can just relax and forget all of that for awhile and just hearken back to a time before people had electricity, maybe to the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries or further back.

I like to read, so sitting around reading by candle light can be especially enjoyable. Since I don’t have a wood stove or fireplace, just a pellet stove that depends upon electricity, I have to either hope it’s warm enough, or snuggle up in a blanket to enjoy my book. Candles do give off a bit of warmth as well, so they create a coziness that easily brings a good historical novel to life. I realize many people tend to stress out because they can’t get things done, but I just view it as a momentary release from those impending responsibilities and that is a gift.

There is a bit of magic with candle light that takes me away from things for a while. We all need that and a power outage might just force that upon me of a spring evening and I just have to stop doing things. If I were getting ready for dinner I might have to cook outside on the grill or over an open flame, or I might just have to eat a cold dinner. I just have to do things more like my ancestors did over a hundred years ago. When that happens, if that happens, I just embrace it. If it happens to you just get out the candles and a good book or some board games and relax. The power will come back on soon enough.

And all that enjoyment and appreciation I get out of a power outage is also the thing I love about camping, which I don’t get to do nearly enough so a forced “camping in place” from a power outage gives me that chance to enjoy a little fire and candle light.