In your typical southern Wisconsin summer, the lilies in our flower fields slow down precipitously by the end of the month. Yes, there will be August bloomers. Yes there will even be September bloomers. But the vast bulk will be done for the season. August is for phloxes andSeptember is for asters. And honestly, much of the color will continue, but in the tubs, where annuals never stop until the night of the first frost.
But we no longer have typical summers. We haven't had the mosquitoes, we had a late spring and a dry summer. And it looks to me like the lilies have a good week still ahead of them. I never count snipped lilies beyond July, but as this is still July, I did my final counting today: 605 snipped flower heads. That's more than yesterday!
My morning work and meditative indulgence in the fields:
It's another beautiful day here. Perfect weather of gentle breezes, partly sunny skies. I mean, I would like some rain. My flowers would like some rain. But if you're just trying to judge what's out there on this day -- well, it's splendid.
Breakfast, of course, on the porch.
And even before I finished my leftover half croissant half pain au chocolat, I set to work on the sour cherries.
What's the game plan? Well, my friend who had lived in Denmark for a bunch of years emailed me this note (in response to yesterday's post):
In Denmark we pitted a whole bunch of cherries, laid them out on a baking sheet, put a piece of glass over the baking sheet and set them out in the sun until we had dried cherries to put on our oats for weeks.
What a splendid idea! I dont really have a clean piece of glass, but the Internet tells me I can use cheese cloth. And so I start in on pitting the cherries.
(about half done...)
And I am reminded again of preparing food at the restaurant. I rarely had to do the real grunt work there. I worked from 5 (after I'd be done teaching at the Law School) until closing (around 11 or even later on the weekend) and since service began at 6:30, someone else had to prepare most of my ingredients. I would just cook and plate from a nearly ready mise en place. That means I would never have to pit cherries.
But someone else did. Carefully, because if a diner would crack a tooth on a missed pit, you'd hear about it.
It is, in fact, a boring job. And I'd say the same holds true for much of ingredient preparation. Sure, if you're cooking for your family, pulling off thyme leaves and chopping them into fine bits is not big deal. But for an evening service? It's tediously dull. Typically, the dullest tasks were passed on to the dish washing crew. Peeling potatoes, chopping onions -- that kind of thing. Probably they were the guys who also pitted the cherries. I was thinking this morning as I sat there with that heaping full bucket, that no one ever thanks those who pit the cherries in a local foodie restaurant where everything is fresh and honest. Maybe you will next time you get served some exquisite dish with cherries swimming in their own juices. Thank you for doing this so that I can enjoy the chef's creative ideas!
I put out a tray of the cherries for drying.
What are the chances that the cheepers wont notice the fruits on the picnic table? Hmm... Out comes the cheesecloth, secured with heavy objects.
In the afternoon, I drop by the young family's home. They're back from a Michigan beach vacation and I spend a few minutes catching up with them.
Our schedule isn't yet regular and I'm not sure it will ever return to a set pattern for the rest of the summer, so I'm not cooking Sunday dinners just yet. With a free late afternoon, I drag Ed out for another walk. Nothing ambitious, but it did feel so good to be out in the forest yesterday that I was itching for doing it again.
In the evening I was going to roast the chicken Ed and I bought from One Seed farmers up the road, but it is still frozen as can be so instead we order pizza. Of course, there is also corn.
And the evening is beautiful and I understood why so many poets have, over the centuries felt compelled to write about times like this: fading light, sweet smells of meadow flowers, cherries drying on a tray. Summer magic.
With love.
