Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Street Reconstruction Part 17 & More

Yesterday they installed two No Parking signs near the top of our street and the next one over.  Today they installed more down both streets, but spaced further apart.  There is a sign two houses up and two houses down from us, which makes me happy we don't have one on our terrace to mow around.  So rather than take a picture of one of the signs in front of a neighbor's house, here is a stock photo of what they look like.

I'm thinking all that is left is for the extra poles to be removed and trees planted in spring, but they may surprise me with something I didn't think of again.  Happily, it appears people are heeding the signs and only parking on the other side since I'm not sure how many neighbors looked into the work to be done as I did and knew about this change.  And while I'm happy parking is on the other side, that means I'll have to back out a bit more carefully on this narrower street since we're pretty much guaranteed to have a car across the street now, and it may be my wife's at times.

When I got home from my Mom's on Thanksgiving Day I caught this fat squirrel eating from the frozen pumpkins on the stoop, picture taken from the car.  Well, they lasted out front for about a month and a half, through Halloween and Thanksgiving, so it was time to put them in back and let them decompose or be eaten.  

I've had trouble with my display driver on this computer so haven't used the trail cams lately as reviewing all that video does bad things, but you can still see the squirrels eat up our pumpkin from a couple years ago here.  Question:  Does anyone know if you can download a new display driver?  I haven't found anything when I looked, so I fear I may need to get a new computer to fix the issue.  And yes, the driver is fully updated.

I placed the pumpkins on the rotting stump in back, near the frozen bird bath.  (We've been below the freezing point for several days now, though we might manage to get just above tomorrow so we can get some rain that can then freeze for us.  Wonderful.)  Whatever the squirrels leave of the pumpkins can help nourish the wildflower seeds we plan to spread on the stump again next year.

After the break is just some recent baking, if interested.


Homemade pizza with my homemade crust and homemade pizza sauce.  The crust is bubbly and chewy, and very good.  I use 00 pizza flour (or sometimes a 50/50, 00/AP flour mix) and a pizza crust seasoning from King Arthur that is mostly cheese powder.  I've made the pizza sauce a couple times now, but never correctly.  It's still turned out very well, but I'll have to pay closer attention to the recipe next time.

This one is pepperoni, sausage, green olives, banana peppers and whole milk mozzarella cheese.

And on Saturday morning I made the new baguette recipe again.  I need more practice as the dough is very wet and I have to make them a bit shorter than the recipe says so they fit on our peel.  Still, they taste wonderful so the rest is for visual appeal.


Practice, practice, practice!  Stay warm, everyone.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The pizza and bread look absolutely amazing. Well done!

What is the logic behind parking only being allowed on one side? Is it accessibility due to the road width?

I don't like grey squirrels. I once saw one destroy and devour a nest of baby blackbirds. Rats with tails! There are still a very few red squirrels in our area, but I while I have seen them up here in the past, I haven't since we moved up nearly 5 years ago.

Anonymous said...

- BW

Scoakat said...

Thank you, BW. I wish I could share and that you could actually eat them! Is it celiac disease? There are gluten free flours I could use, if you were closer.

Yes, since the road is now more narrow, larger emergency vehicles need to be able to have access, and rightfully so. Especially when winter snow can narrow the street further. And they did this on purpose(!).

Gray squirrels are by far the most common here by us, but we occasionally see red and there's even a blonde one around sometimes.

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