Cabbage Patch Baby

Paletas de Coco

Its hot and dry in a scary way here. No rain for weeks, none in the forecast. The garden is droopy, an apricot tree has withered away, the grass is brown. To beat the heat we've been swimming in the Kickapoo, reading under the fans, and eating and drinking cold things.
I recently bought a homemade popsicle maker- my mom had something similar when I was a kid, except it was much better made than this one. I remember diving into the great big chest freezer that was in the garage to fish out a frozen grape juice-cicle. I also remember apple cider-cicles.

Inspired by the paletas ("Latin American ice pops usually made from fresh fruit") that I've been enjoying from a shop in town (they have paleta punch-cards!), I decided to make my own. I mixed a can of light coconut milk with about an eighth of a cup of honey and a dash of vanilla extract, and added about half a cup of non-sweetened shredded coconut, and froze overnight. They were great! And a nice cool treat for this scorcher of a day- the thermometer on my car said 111 degrees today! I think that car thermometer is a little bit of an exaggerator, but still. 

As soon as this batch is done, I'm moving on to better and more beautiful fruits and herbs... blackberry basil pops! Watermelon mint-cicles! The possibilities are endless. I hope you're finding such pleasant ways to beat the heat!

Fox in the Birdyard

From Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins. One of my very favorite children's books.

That's our best guess anyway... no evidence, except for missing birds and a barking dog. We heard some squawking on Monday afternoon, and upon investigation found that Rutherford Domingo was nowhere to be found. Jake crowed around the yard to be sure. He probably swaggered right up to that fox, ready to fight. His last act was protecting his hens, which is what roosters do, but a fox with a family to feed was not impressed, apparently. I was a little sad... but the yard has been quieter and safer in the days after Monday.

On Tuesday, Jake came home to a missing duck. Maude. Our last runner.

This same Tuesday I rendezvoused with a friend whose dad had hatched out some Blue Swedish ducks and Chinese geese. The yellow goose is Ryan Gosling. The gray one is Cygnet.

They were just on a supervised field trip here. They're not out and about in the big bad world all by themselves just yet.

Hollyhocks!

Jam and Dreaming of a Long Walk

The sapling and I tackled our first canning project of the season this morning.

Last Wednesday we'd gone to a local pick-your-own strawberry patch with my aunt and I came home with 15 pounds of sweet berries for $18. Such a deal, when the picking is so much fun, too! To these I added the harvest of our own tiny but productive strawberry patch, and a bit of rhubarb.

I always use Pomona's Universal Pectin to make jam, because it requires no added sweetener to jell. It is citrus pectin that it is activated by calcium. There is one extra step involved in using this kind of pectin, but this effort yields fruit preserves that are just that- preserved fruit. I usually add a bit of honey, but nothing close to the amount in typical strawberry jam recipes. One recipe in an old cookbook of mine calls for 2 quarts of strawberries and 7 cups of sugar! If I'm canning, I like to go big. Pomona's works with doubling or tripling recipes - or as I did today, sextupling! Other types of pectin advise against this because they are activated by citric acid, and the ratio varies if you attempt to multiply amounts.
You can also make your own pectin by boiling green apples and lemons in water.

While Birch naps I'm washing a shelf-ful of empty jars in preparation for refilling them. I'm thinking about the rhubarb victoria sauce recipe from the Ball Blue book. Canning begets more canning.

That's a pattern with me... one activity inspires me to do more of the same. I've been getting a lot of reading in these past few days, too... it is so stinkin' hot outside! Yesterday I finshed Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Parts of it could be considered some of Birch's first readalouds! It is an autobiographical account of a summer-long hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches from Mexico to Canada along the peaks of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges. I loved it. I am inspired anew... I will do one of those long hikes one day. Around Lake Superior, the Appalachian Trail, the Ice Age Trail, the English Lake District... somewhere. I'm not one for Bucket Lists, but that's a definite goal of mine.

Young Folks

Early summer at TellTheBees... This is the time in which our woodland surroundings are the most vivid. The yards and woods are literally humming with activity!

There are fawns on the driveway,

Baby birds all over the place, in nests and gourds and birdhouses and hollows, like these tiny chickadee babes Jake found in a hollow tree...

The phoebe on top of the railing/branch worked so hard to attach a nest on the quarter inch ledge above Alexander's south-facing bedroom window, and this year found success! For the past several years she's attempted in that very spot, enough times that Jake built her a little platform right under the eaves, but yet again she ignored it to build 3 feet from his crib. I like to think she's the same pheobe that built a nest on the header of what was to become our screen porch five or six summers ago. She seemed pretty tame, hanging around even when we were working right underneath her, and  enough that she let us move her nest to a nearby but safer spot when we needed to close in that area.

Baby raccoons! A few weeks ago this tree on the far side of the garden snapped off about 15 feet up during a particularly strong gust of wind, and a family of raccoons was disturbed. This tree hangs over the compost pile, which had probably been enough to keep these racoons away from our ducks and chickens, so we, and Echo, were surprised to discover their presence. They are our secondary suspects though, in the disappearance of the six banty chicks whom we discovered missing this afternoon on our return from Madison. The mom squawked at us gently from the chicken tractor, those fuzzy peeps nowhere in sight, and a tiny hole burrowed under the fence from one side. Sigh.... lesson learned.

 A human baby popped by for a visit last week too, with her parents who are dear friends who now live far away in Seattle! She was born four days before Alexander, and is already a head or so taller than him! Hopefully this is the beginning of a friendship as special as the one we enjoy with her lovely mom and dad.

Our little guy is seemingly loving life, mostly from inside one of our various packs or wraps, as seen above, or from a supine position, observing ceiling fans or treetops, and more and more frequently making eye contact and smiling. Today, he laughed! Not at us, but reflexively, upon hearing Marco Rubio's voice on the morning news. Those silly Republicans!

Eating with Purpose and the Urge for Going

Last night's dinner was a a beauty of a meal created with and shared among friends. Our good friend came to stay for the weekend, armed with a cooler stocked with foods and accessories gifted to her by friends and family. Beef from her family's farm, rhubarb from a co-worker, a rhubarb cookbook written by a friend of a friend. She also brought a most wonderful cake pan that she and another friend bought for me as a gift!

To these ingredients and components we added some of what was in our pantry and what is ripe for the picking in our garden and woods, and the makings of a seasonal feast were thus assembled. Our purpose was to ring in summer and provide a delicious layover meal for two other friends who were passing through on their way from Minnesota to Memphis.

Oh, the things we ate!

Fried Hen of the Woods

Fresh bread baked by an aspiring member of the St. Paul Bread Club

Pickled rhubarb and grilled kale salad with goat cheese
inspired by a recipe in Kim Ode's Rhubarb Rennaissance

Peterson Farms Beef burgers

Honey cake

Frozen honey cream

Rhubarb sauce

Oh, good gracious.

After dinner, Alexander snoozed while the travelers perused routes to Tennessee.

With full bellies and a thermos of coffee, the roadtrippers drove off into the sunset, leaving the rest of us to enjoy the fireflies from the screen porch. It was delightful.

Today, old friends who live in Seattle came by for the afternoon and evening. The two of them, their two dogs, and their 7 week old baby are on the last leg of their epic three week long cross-country road trip.

I've got the itch to see some new places myself, but we'll see how far I get this summer.

Its nice here, too.