Pulitzers/Potatotes

Lolo Hot Springs, on the way home

An uneventful trip over the pass to Missoula and an emotionally draining visit to the Pulitzer photo exhibition on campus. I knew it would be visceral, but I didn't expect it to be that difficult to see. Many made me teary-eyed and some made me feel punched in the guts.

Many of the early photos (from the 40s and 50s) were on-the-spot news shots, from people who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The later ones were more heavily weighted toward feature news and world news.

I also realized how much I miss going to school. Or maybe I was just romanticizing my college days in Missoula. I felt like I was back somewhere I belonged. Maybe that's just what places like Missoula and Portland bring up for me. I still feel like I'm trying to find a way to be myself here...

Toward the end of the exhibit there was a display of a few of the photographs from the Dallas Morning News photographers covering Hurricane Katrina. I could just imagine Mia in that, trying to survive. I saw photos of people in a natural disaster and I thought of our dog. Crazy. I know people who were affected by the hurricane, so I'm not trivializing the human toll. But not many days go by that I don't think about where Mia has been and what she's seen. If only we had a doggie-brain cam!

The pass was just a bit icy going over and it was colder than a well-digger's butt (the G-rated version of one of my dad's sayings re: cold weather) in Missoula. Kind of a freak cold snap. But the roads were entirely clear on the way back and once we got down over the pass on this side it started to warm up. This is what I like about fall. We do live in a beautiful part of the country.

stretching our legs, enjoying the weather on the way home

Saturday evening Keith started ripping out the remainder of the tomato plants and we continued to say Vaya con Dios to the garden.

We had an embarrassing amount of waste in the tomato portion of the garden, but we (the royal "we") canned/processed all we wanted/needed and couldn't muster the energy to deal with the rest. I suppose 16 plants was overkill. (Quite an understatement.)

I don't think we'll be growing a garden next year (related to the Big News tomorrow night), so once the thing is tilled up we'll probably just bed it for winter and let the wildflowers take over next year. Which wouldn't be a bad thing.

Anyway, they didn't exactly go to waste since we fed them to the neighbor goats. They were thrilled. Well, they gobbled them down, so I just assumed they were thrilled. Maybe they were just hungry. Goats are rather hard to read, with their devil eyes.

I was pretty happy with our potato harvest, for our first attempt. My boss gave me some fingerling potatoes to plant this spring and then I took a store-bought sweet potato that sprouted eyes, quartered it and planted it. We didn't get that many, but potatoes are pretty low maintenance, so who's complaining?

We got some of both kinds. Although all of the ones I could dig up were fairly small due to the high clay content in the soil. Some of the fingerlings were crazy shapes, too. I mean round, but knobby.

Keith thinks these little ones would be good for a potato soup or stew and I can't say I disagree. I was thinking of throwing some of the sweet potatoes in a black bean soup. With some ginger-lime sour cream? Drooooooool.

In addition to the Big News we're sharing tomorrow, this week also marks the 1 year anniversary of our tiny house. Last October we took a leap and broke ground.
Happy anniversary, Tiny House!