Heat Advisory

This part of the Wisconsin has been in a heat advisory since Monday. It is projected to extend until Friday.

Yesterday morning we got a brief respite from the arid heat during a fifteen minute thunderstorm.

Look! Actual rain pouring off the corner of the screen porch roof!

Later in the afternoon, though, the heat was back. I packed up and we headed to the only beach I know of in these parts, a tiny patch of sand in a dammed up convergence of two creeks. The night before Jake had come home with the tiniest life jacket he could find, complete with not one but two crotch straps and an Elizabethan collar. It is pink and purple. A classy accessory, that. But... it works!

Look at that!

He just bobbed around and kicked a bit while we swam around him. It made me laugh a lot.

Spongedog Sandypants watched from the blanket, old dog that he is. 

A good day. 

Next blog post: back to originally scheduled programming.

  

Pizza Farm

At long last, I finally made it to A to Z Pizza outside of Stockholm, WI! My aunt had been telling me about this place for years, but it is only open on Tuesday nights, and my usual summer schedule made it tough for me to make the trip. Now that I know how great this place is, though, I'll throw caution to the wind and head up there as often as I can.

It was good to go with someone who'd been there before to learn the ropes. Nancy, said aunt, packed a quilt, plates and forks, nonbreakable wine glasses, snacks for pre-pizza appetizers, and a garbage bag. We drove to Stockholm and puttered around. Stockholm is beautiful little town on the shores of Lake Pepin, full of art galleries and shops and cafes. Before heading up the hill, Nancy and I stopped at the Stockholm Pie Company to pick up some dessert. She said it was tradition.

We meandered up the hill, onto the bluffs flanking the Mississippi. There were no signs advertising the way, so I was again glad for my guide. We rounded a corner and she pointed to a line of parked cars on the horizon. It felt like knowing a secret! We parked a ways down the road and walked over.

We looked for a spot in the shade and got settled. It was a gorgeous evening!

For a few discombobulated minutes, I thought I'd lost my keys, but Nancy hiked back to the car and found them safely on top of the car's roof. I've been doing that a lot lately. 

All was well by the time my friends Abbey and Ole arrived. Ole was dressed for the occasion. 

He hadn't met Xan yet, and greeted him with "knuckles!"

We walked over to main building to order our pizza. We were pizza number 153, I think, and were told we'd have a 55 minute wait, which we were happy about because it gave us time to visit and people-watch and explore the beautiful setting and have a glass of the homemade wine that Abbey brought. Ole pointed at cows and ran and touched tractors. Xan mostly slept.

After a while, we went to check on our pizza.

Then, we ate it. 

And it was great.

We walked around a bit afterwards too... even though Xan and I had a long drive ahead of us, we didn't want to leave. It was like a festival! People brought dishes and beer and folding tables and chairs, lawn games and candelabras.

Truly, truly, a great summer evening. I hope to recreate it sometime real soon.

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.