Another Way to Preserve

We are loaded with apples and have been giving them away to anyone interested.  We have 8 different trees - 1 Macintosh, 3 Cortland, 2 Honey Crisp 1 Wolf River and 1 Yellow Newton Pippin. .  This was an excellent year for apples and that was nice because last year was the opposite for Wisconsin apples.  I've frozen slices for apple pies and cakes, made sugar free applesauce, canned apple juice and made a few pies and now I'm turning to a time honored method of preservation - dehydration.  We have an electric dehydrator but long ago, people used the sun or wood ovens to dry their fruit or veggies.  It's a clever way to keep the goodness of the food and conserve space.  The dehydrated product has concentrated flavor and nutrition and can be eaten as is or rehydrated with water.  I love the tasty little dried apples and they make a nice portable snack to carry in a small plastic bag............. Parsley from the herb garden is easy to do too and keeps us supplied for the year. ...........In case our planet gets a little too crowded in the future, perhaps our scientists will figure out a way to dehydrate people in a humane and workable way.  The human body is made up of 57 to 65 per cent water.  We'd probably need less food and living space if we were paper doll sized folks and wouldn't it be fun to float from place to place on the wind?!

Looking at the Big Picture

I was reading the National Geographic the other day and was stunned by one of its facts.  I guess they can't be perfectly accurate, but they estimate that since human beings appeared upon the earth there have been 107 billion of us.  That just boggles my mind.  Oh sure, I knew a lot of people preceded we who now tread carefully and not so carefully upon this nature based orb we call home.  But 107 billion is a lot of moms and pops and kids and food to feed us all.  We really are nothing new.  We have benefited so much from all of the advances made by earlier generations and hopefully we will leave this place a little bit better for having been here but if you know someone who thinks the sun rises and sets because of them, just remind them of the bigger picture - the bigger picture with 107 billion people smiling and laughing and crying through the ages.  And thank you, God, for not giving up on us!

Raspberries and Reminiscence

Wow, time really got away on me this summer - it must have been that month long road trip that threw us for a loop.  Here it is "back to school" time already and some of the leaves are turning color, the duck and geese babies are adult size and the part timers on the lake are getting ready to take out their docks.  Due to the erratic and downright cold summer weather, the garden produce is about a month late and that adds to the confusion too.  ( Today it got up to 94 degrees so who knows what is in store for us - unpredictable is a good way to describe our Wisconsin weather.).........I thought I'd tell about one of my favorite crops - the ruby red, fragile, gloriously tasty raspberry.  The bushes we planted about four years ago are producing nicely now and I've been picking a couple of quarts of raspberries every two days for a couple of weeks.  We eat them with cereal, with milk and mostly in the seedless jam that I make.  I love the little red orbs but every picking brings my mind back to years ago when a friend and I would go to the nearby forests and together pick wild raspberries.  Each of us had small children so we'd rise early and get out to the woods before our husbands had to be at work at 7:45.  Then we'd rush home with our bounty and tend to the homemaker/mom things till the next foraging day.  It was fun to pick in the early morning forest air and share stories and friendship on the trips to and fro.  My friend was Karin and an exceptional person in my eyes.  She was kind and brilliant and the mother of four children, three girls and a boy.  Karin came over from her German homeland when she was 19.  She spoke English fluently with a little German accent, also spoke French and of course, German.  She had an incredible knowledge of botany and seemed to know every species of plant and tree and weed.  While she was homemaking, she earned a degree in education and then a job at the local high school as a German and French teacher.  The students loved Frau Karin and she showered them with her special kind of attention and affection.  She rode her bicycle the five mile trip to and from her teaching job and one bright morning, a driver with the rising sun glaring in his eyes, did not see Karin on the highway shoulder and drove right over her as a school bus passed in the accompanying lane.  Karin was killed instantly and some of the children were witnesses. She was in her mid forties and it still hurts to think of the loss.  There have just been a few funerals in my life where I just could not attend because I knew that my sobbing would be impossible to stop, and Karin's was one of them. Raspberries remind me of Karin but they also remind me of the good times we had.

A Pop Up Storm

The weather people have lots of curious terms and one is a "pop up" storm.  Our summer has arrived and we are now enjoying sunny days in the eighties and just enough rain to eliminate the need to water the plants.  The lake water is now a comfortable 78 degrees and I'm back to exercising in it whenever we pontoon over to the state owned land.  I wear my trusty speedo water running belt and it keeps me up while I pedal like a cyclist in the cool clear water.  I love it and usually go for about a half hour, merrily splashing with the loons and herons and the occasional eagle.  Bing prefers to use the time on the water to cast a line or two and often pulls in some walleyes or perch.  Well, the other day, we headed for the swimming hole and it was sunny and warm.  (I should emphasize that Bing is a veteran weather watcher and studies the patterns and radar maps and whatever else the TV and internet offers.)  When we arrived, it started to drizzle, not expected but we figured we could handle it and decided to proceed with our cycling and fishing.  It was so refreshing to be in the water and watch the pretty little raindrops splash on the lake surface.  We both thought that this was a short little cloud passing over and we'd soon be high and dry again.  Then the rain intensity increased gradually to a pour.  The wind began to blow and the rain splashed harder.  I looked to see where Bing was, and a white haze and pouring rain blew the placid lake into a sea of whitecaps.  Soon the raindrops were large and cold and I kept praying that it wouldn't turn to hail - the veggies in the garden were finally shooting up but their tender shoots couldn't take hard hail.  Bing managed to drive the boat back to my area and it was good to see him.  We waited out the storm, me in the water and Bing soaking wet on the boat.  He estimated the winds were 25 to 35 mph. .....So, that's a pop up storm.  Very interesting!   

I didn't have the camera with me but included pix of the lake  anyway.

A Reluctant Summer

Reluctant is a real neat word.  It conveys a subtlety to unwillingness to do something.  When one knows that something should be done, and it is the right time to do it, but one is opposed to doing it.  That is exactly what is happening in our neck of the woods with this magical time of the year called summer.  We've already passed the longest day of the year,  June 21st.  The daylight is getting shorter now.  The fourth of July fireworks are beginning to echo across the lake.  But those warm sunshiny days are rare and the spring flowers, ( peonies and irises,)  are just now blooming.  The piers and boats are in the water and ready for sailing and skiing, for canoeing and kayaking.  But instead, the people are tending their landscapes in sweatshirts and raincoats.  They're using their campfires for warmth and heating their cabins and homes at night.  Instead of garden rows bushy and tall, tiny plants are fighting to grow.  Summer teases us with  a day or two near 80 and then sends hail to add a touch of irony. According to our local weatherman, this area has been in drought for the last ten years but this year we're getting caught up and that is very good but we're hoping for some nice steady sunshine to get the garden caught up to its usual splendor.  O, reluctant summer, unloose yourself and smile your sun upon us!

Bear With Me

Omigosh, it was a happy happy Memorial Day for me.  We've lived up here in the deep dark woods since 1972 and I've really really wanted to have a close encounter with a bear because when you live in a deep dark woods for over 40 years, you should be able to brag about your ursine encounters.  You should be able to top the story of the three bears and Goldilocks.  You should be able to at least say that a bear ate your homework.  But no! It hadn't happened.  Oh sure, we had shoveled dead skunks into garbage bags, chased raccoons from our wading pool filled with crayfish,  swum with the loons, and harvested deer.  But no bear for  me!  Until last Monday.  Bing had gone to golf with his league and Bernie and Jamie had left to return to DePere.  I decided to go to town and get some groceries.  I went to the bedroom to change into my "goin to town" clothes, looked out the big bedroom window and there was a fine black bear right outside the window, ready to climb the mighty white pine at the top of the hill.  I could hear dogs down the hill barking and the bear started clambering up the tree.  It looked like a yearling bear and I grabbed the camera and snapped away as he or she got higher and higher.  I could hear whimpering from the bear and opened the window wide to hear it better.  Then I quickly closed it in case a Mama bear was nearby.  The bear seemed to be watching me and kept climbing and climbing till it was way up in the branches.  The bear seemed to be planted up there till maybe it was dark so I left for town.  Coming back, I was curious to see if
my furball friend was still in the tree but as soon as I drove into the driveway I saw the bear teetering along the deck railing like a gymnast hoping for a ten.  Oh boy, I snapped into digital action and had the time of my life watching that creature, whom I have named Ebony,  show incredible patience, forebearance, ingenuity and perseverence, trying mightily to reach the bird feeder half flled with bird seed.  She never did get to the bird seed but I watched her lunge off the railing , grab onto the pole and helplessly slide down the pole, then she'd climb back up on the deck and try again and again and again.  After at least forty minutes of trying, she finally gave up but as she lumbered away, I thanked her for the excellent entertainment.

Love - A Many Splendored Thing

Love is precious.  Love is a gift.  Long long ago, Bing's Mom and Dad introduced their baby girl, Susan, to Bing and his older brother, Paul.  Bing was almost 8 and Paul was almost 9.  Love blossomed with these siblings and still flourishes.  The picture shows Bing and Sue on the deck.  Sibling love is a special kind of love.  It comes from all the shared family experiences and the intimate day to day exposure to each other.  It's fun, as the years go by, to examine the likenesses and differences between the siblings.  Certain traits from the mom and certain traits from the dad are evident and having decades to watch makes it easy to identify them. It's a comfort after your parents are gone to still have a connection to the family and all those days long ago when you ate and drank and housed together. Enjoy your siblings!