We did next to nothing over the weekend. Too bad, because it was pretty nice weather. The only outdoor activity was a walk around Cutler Park on Sunday afternoon. Cutler Park is between the Charles River and route 128 (I-95 if you prefer) next to the Needham industrial park. For years we looked for something that was listed in a book of state parks as Newton-Brookline Waterlands, and never found it. Cutler Park is in about the place we were looking, just east of the Highland Ave. highway exit. There's a parking lot off Nahanton street -- well, I don't know what the name of the street is in Needham; on the Newton side of the river it's Nahanton Street -- and a trail between a medium-sized pond and the Charles, looping around the pond, with side trails that lead to the riverbank or up towards the highway. It was pretty muddy yesterday, after the rains of last week. Aside from a great blue heron we saw only lots of robins, bluejays, chickadees, titmice, and white throated sparrows. Oh, and two yellow-rumped warblers. You'd think there would have been some waterfowl in the pond or the river, but we couldn't find any.
I spent a lot of the weekend stamping. I worked on another reduction block print, and it took a couple of hours to print two stages of it. There are at least two more stages of printing to go, and probably three. Meanwhile, I wrote up a web page about the reduction print I did last weekend.
Hmm. Friday I went to the dentist for a follow-up on the work he did two weeks before, polishing a filling and packing an antibiotic-impregnated thread into an area that had been infected. All he really had to do on Friday was pick out the remainder of that thread and look, and it looks OK. It feels fine, too.
On the way back from there I drove past what was (up to a year ago) a farm stand on the Waltham-Watertown-Belmont border. Bentley College has bought the land, so there's no more farm stand, but there was a sign for a pumpkin sale. I stopped at the UMass Field Station next to it, where the follow-up sign was, and walked across a dewy field to a table covered with pumpkins. The foliage in the background was about as bright orange and yellow as you would hope to find in Vermont. With the pumpkins in front, it was as good a fall in New England scene as you could find anywhere in the area. I got one good jack-o-lantern sized pumpkin (that is, a little bigger than a basketball) and one pie-sized pumpkin.
On Saturday I took the advice Diane had given me last weekend and tried microwaving the pumpkin (the pie one, of course) instead of boiling it. I cut it in half, scooped out the seeds (to roast, of course -- wash 'em off, pick off the pulp, put in a pan, sprinkle with salt, and put in a 300 degree oven until you remember them) and microwaved half a pumpkin at a time. It took about 8 minutes for each half. YPMV (your pumpkin may vary). It's probably best to microwave for 4 minutes, check your e-mail and let the heat spread through the pumpkin, microwave another 2 minutes, answer an e-mail, and another 2 minutes. At that point you can scoop the pumpkin meat out of the shell and put it through a Foley mill. Results: better pumpkin puree than from boiling; you don't need to drain it. We're back in pumpkin pie.
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