feels like July, continued

They say it's cooling down, but today is transitional -- not beastly hot, still humid, very wet after yet another rain shower overnight. 

Up early, snipping away. And yes, I exceeded yesterday's count: 672 lilies. Two bucketfuls! This is what a cleaned up garden looks like:

(stepping out of the farmhouse)

(lilies by the porch)

(the never seen by anyone --including us! -- bed to the west of the porch)

(to the east of the house)

(just by the door)

(to the east again...)

(along the secret path)

(by the driveway)

(nymphs and shepherds and everything else)

(checking on the new orchard: lots of pears this year, and a meadow that's beginning to look a bit like a prairie!)

(returning from the new orchard: the Big Bed)

(Breakfast)

I pick up my now finally fixed car, I stop at the grocery store once more, I come home. And again I lose myself in the details of daily life. One task -- finally completed! -- is to put together my new camera. It used to be simple: by a UV filter, screw the darn thing on, call it a day. These days, at least for certain compact cameras (namely Fujifilm compact cameras) the procedure gets complicated. To put on a filter, you need an adapter ring. Separate purchase. But what if you also want a hood? You know, for the glare? (I never used my hoods in the past because they were too clunky to pack, but this small camera has a very nice small hood, so I add that to the list of necessities.) I pick up a recommended hood. Which has a separate adapter ring. Off comes the other adapter ring. I screw on this one, then retrieve the filter then attach the hood. With screws. Meaning -- that baby is not comin' off until I croak! It all has to work together: moving parts, separate pieces. 

I'm done now, but it took a while to figure all this stuff out. Here's a photo taken with the new kid in town, with its hood and filter. I'm sure you would not have noticed any difference. Indeed, much of this initial prep stuff is to have your camera ready for those extreme conditions that will hit you just as you're crossing Tasmania, or some such destination. All you get is the farmhouse, in the late afternoon.

The kids are here today. Again, they want solo pictures, then one together. Happy to oblige!

(he always picks this spot for a photo...)

(together; we'll skip the shots where she photo bombs his solo pic!)

A bit of a rush at the end: she has Girl Scouts, he needs to get home. And I need to get home for my own period of far niente (doing nothing)! Wait, did you say I need to fix dinner first? Damn! There's always something, no? How about a kir vin blanc, to give the appearance of a vacation moment? A dash of cassis, a splash of white wine. Just like on vacation! With a smile...

And with love...

feels like July

Another storm, another rain dump, followed by another hot and humid day, which of course will result in more storms, more rain. We've been stuck in this pattern for a while, but hey, it's July! It would be unusual not to have the heat, the storms, the humidity pay us a visit now. People think of Wisconsin as being very cold, and it is, come January. But summers are hot here. If you don't have AC, you're in trouble.

The flowers are having a good season, though the tall ones have given up and I have not yet bothered to pick them up after the last pounding rain. I'll wait until things have settled down a bit. Most of my garden work is still devoted to lily snipping and this morning I picked off 665 blooms. That may be this year's high. It felt like it! The bucket was heavy because they were saturated with water. It took a couple of hours to work my way through the flower fields!

Breakfast? On the porch, despite the heat. We turned on the fan! And we had croissants because we were dying to try them with the freshly made blueberry jam.

Verdict? Well, good, of course. Hard not to be good when you use such fantastic berries. But we both agreed that the strawberry jam had greater flavor intensity. Still, we sure have a lot of jam and a nice balance of blue and red fruits to last us... a very long time.

 

Monday is my day without kids and I like to use it wisely, but inevitably I get sucked into chores that pile up the rest of the week. Today was all about the car: it needed another body shop adjustment. I grumbled a little and perhaps to shut me up, I got one of their new cars to drive around. The thing is huge, and it does everything for you! Since when have we gotten to be so lazy that we cannot use a key, close the trunk or push a seat forward? Everything is done with a touch of a finger. In ten years, we wont have to walk to the car -- a long arm will reach for us and carry us to it!

So long as I am out and about, I do my grocery shopping for the week. This is when I get really nervous: I'm spending too much time on too many details that are forgettable, even as they take up lots of time. And so, when Ed proposes a walk in the park, I jump. And suggest we add a bike ride to it. And so this is our afternoon: in our favorite local county park. Among the prairie grasses and flowers.

Was it hot? Yes it was. Was it beautiful? Undeniably. 

And the day suddenly goes from being very ordinary to being so very fine!

with love...

white birds, blue fingers, cheesy thoughts

Happy Bastille Day! Meaning, bring on the baguette and cheese, pop a cork of something, and celebrate the end of the rule of monarchs and despots. Or, just celebrate the middle of July.

Oh, did we have the storms at night! Loud crashes, pounding rain. Crazy stuff. Branches fell, tall flowers toppled, our basement flooded, the power flickered off a few times. And it continued thus into the wee hours of the morning, foiling our plans to be up early so we could beat the heat wave that's slated to build in the course of the day. Well, we were up (it was so loud!) before 6, but no one wanted to give the day a push forward. Not until the rains stopped and I finally dared step outside, at around 8. 

I stepped outside to a drenched world. Yes, I snipped lilies. Sure I did. But there wasn't time for a full scale job. I did just half the work, took a few pictures, fed the animals and came back inside.

Here are my few pictures, celebrating the garden beauty that is always a central feature of all my Bastille Days:

By 9:30 we were on the porch, eating breakfast...

And by 10 we were on the road.

Where to? We'd signed up to pick blueberries at Jenehr Farms. I've known Kay Jensen (who farms there with her husband Paul) since my days of market foraging for L'Etoile, but I never knew she grew blueberries and that she opened up her blueberry fields to outside pickers. In fact, I've never picked blueberries at u-picks before. Strawberries -- yes. Raspberries -- yes. Apples -- certainly. Even pumpkins, with the kids. But not blueberries. 

The farm is just a half hour's drive from us and when we got there, the one other group of pickers was just winding down their operation. The whole blueberry field was all ours!

To say that this was fun is an understatement. Though Kay will tell you that this isn't really for kids, as the picking is inhospitable to little tykes (blueberries require a delicate touch and more importantly, the weeds around the bushes are significant!), for us it was a total delight! Add to the sunshine a good breeze (so no great heat, no bugs!), and absolutely an overload of pickable berries -- I mean, we were in heaven!

(six quarts to take home)

On the way back we made two stops: one at the company for which Ed has been designing a new machining option (so that I could see the result of months of effort), and the other -- way more photographable -- at a small parking space by a lake that we had noticed driving up to the farm. We'd never known about this place! Patrick Marsh Wildlife Area. Yet another beautiful expanse of prairie with a lake and some wild pelicans diving for fish.

Such intense serenity is hard to come by these days. Imagine, all this and a trunk full of blueberries too!

At home, I finish snipping lilies. 616 today (without the front bed, which will remain unsnipped this summer... I can only do so much!), so holding steady now at this new peak. More than last year, less than the year before. 

(It's getting hot out there!)

And in the afternoon, we set about making blueberry jam. 

 

 

Inspired by our newfound love for the flavors of the homemade concoctions, we're once again guided by a recipe that is lower in sugar than the average jam would have you use, that has no pectin, and that will be frozen rather than stored in the pantry. (With blueberries, we go by the three threes: three pounds of berries, to three cups of sugar, to three tablespoons of lemon juice.)

As soon as this is finished, I move on to prepare dinner for the young family. They'd not been here for several weeks now so it's especially great to have them for a Sunday meal.

(arriving in dry weather...)

(for the love of that French cheese...)

(leaving just as another storm, with a significant downpour, comes in...)

And now I am officially in need of a snooze! But hey, not yet. Much needed couch-time first. With Ed. To end a beautiful day celebrating, well, life! And summer and flowers and pelicans and little tykes and blueberries. And no more monarchs in France.

With so much love...