Days to remember when winter comes

These last few days have just been too beautiful for words.  We just want to soak them in and save the memories for the cold days that are bound to come soon.  But we made good use of the day, too.

Our B&B guests left just after noon so there was some laundry and clean-up time after that.  Love that clothesline!  Leann suffered through another Minnesota Vikings game but then went up in the meadow with a friend from town to pick BUCKETS of apples.  I think there will be a few pies and other treats coming from those apples!  Then late this afternoon we finished pulling out all the tomato and the rest of the beans, as well as masses of flower vines from out by our sign.  We finally had a pretty frosty morning a couple days ago, so that signaled the end of our gardens.

And before the sun went down, we took a quick trip down to the Lake and found these beautiful scenes from the slough backwaters.  The picture above looks to the east and below looks to the west...obviously!

This week will be exciting when our old house finally gets moved to its new home just down the road.  Tuesday is the scheduled date with Wednesday as a rain day.

And finally, finally, last night I finished this puzzle!  You might not think by looking at it, but it is the HARDEST, most poorly cut, most frustrating puzzle I have EVER done.  I have done a Jackson Pollock puzzle that wasn't this bad!  The pieces were all basically the same shapes and except for the quilts and browns of the cabin were all a mush of blues and whites!  And even at the end I had one piece that really didn't fit where I put it but there was only one hole left!  I'm passing this one on to some other unsuspecting puzzler.  Any takers?

Harvest Dinner - "Reviving the Swedish Smorgasbord"

Today we celebrated the Swedish heritage of our town--Port Wing--with the annual Harvest Dinner, a fundraiser for our Heritage Museum.  Tonight after the clean-up, Soney Rockenbach, our museum curator, told us how the idea for this dinner began.  Back in the '30's a group of local women started a club called the Civic Club.  They met regularly and contributed to the life of the community with events and projects to promote the town.  One of those events was a Harvest Dinner which was designed to preserve the Swedish food traditions of the area families.  The club members all served the dinner wearing aprons and scarves of blue and yellow, and the hall was decorated with autumn colors.

That was then and due to time and age of the membership, the Civic Club is no longer operating.  But when Soney and her people started up our new museum back in 2001, they decided to revive the Harvest Dinner with the same menu, the same decorating scheme, and even the same apron style, and that's the event we celebrated today. 

Fortunately or unfortunately we had such a record crowd that I didn't get many pictures, and the ones I did get are blurry.  But it was a big success--Swedish potato sausage (Potatiskorv), turkey and dressing, ham, pickled herring (Inlagd sill), Swedish meatballs (Svenska köttbullar), rice pudding, pickled beets, lots of salads and desserts.  All delicious!

The next big dinner is the First Lutheran Church Lutefisk Supper on the second Saturday in December.  Lutefisk, lefse and Swedish meatballs.  Get it on your calendar now!

Driving the back roads and dead ends

The sun was shining again today!  Well, most of the day anyway.  So we went for a ride to see the pretty trees.  We didn't go far, in fact we weren't more than 20 miles from home but we found several new-to-us sites.

Most sightings were pretty to see but the first one was just fun.  Goats--lots of goats and one horse...and one dog that was doing its job and making us feel unwelcome.

We wondered if this was one of the sources of all the goat cheese that is available in stores and restaurants around here.  Looks like an interesting farm.

Our next new road was Romans Point Road, East and West.  This road, loaded with beautiful homes, follows along the Lake Superior shore on the west side looking out on Bark Bay and around on the east side facing Siskiwit Bay.

At the bottom of the east side was a dead end road called Lost Creek Road and it led to this beautiful access point for kayaks, paddleboards or canoes, or maybe even wading people on a warmer day.  

Looking up Lost Creek.

 Looking across to Cornucopia across Siskiwit Bay

Now we're in Cornucopia where we had lunch at the Village Inn and where we found another beautiful, sandy beach.  We never knew this was here or that it was so accessible down west of the marina.  We usually go to the beach on the east side so this one was fun to discover.

And at the marina we saw this definite sign of fall, or winter soon-to-come, with all the big boats out of the water, high and dry.

Our final stop was a quick turn-and-park right off Highway 13.  We've seen this turn-out hundreds of times and finally stopped.  A short walk down a path and here is yet another sandy beach...with LOTS of drift wood--really big drift wood!

The signage for this stop seemed to be directed to anglers but you'd have to be dedicated to fishing to make use of it.  It was NOT accessible!  You'd need to crawl down a muddy bank and through some mucky water to get to the nice sand bar and beach.  Someone had tried to improve it with a couple sets of rickety steps and then a plank to get across the muck.  But...we didn't do that and just enjoyed the view.

Tomorrow:  More kinds of pickles!

Autumn - More fun in the sunshine!

No posts since September 23rd?  Must be the weather.  I think the weather was cloudy and rainy all last week.  Every day.  Clouds and rain and cold.  And on Friday many places in Minnesota and Wisconsin had snow.  In fact, Leann took this picture as she was going through Barnum, MN, on her way home from Rochester on Friday:

This weekend was the big Bayfield Apple Fest--a whole weekend of apple treats, apple orchards, parades, music and all in idyllic Bayfield.  The weather this year was almost a carbon copy of last year with the cold, rain and winds.  Not so idyllic for Fest visitors but Lake Superior was really showing off for all the guests!

And today, we had sunshine!  So we took the opportunity to start putting away some of our garden spots for the winter.  And here are some of our carrots.  We REALLY need a root cellar because we haven't even started with the potatoes.

Several times in the last two weeks I've picked what I thought would be the last tomatoes before a frost, but still no frost.  So we have tomatoes spread out in various flat surfaces around the house, all in shades of greenish-yellow to actual red, ripe tomatoes.  I canned another 13 pints yesterday and will be able to do that a couple more times.  And then we'll put the rest out by the road with a "Free" sign.

Late this afternoon, we took a ride in Cammie up into the meadow behind our house.  It was very wet from all the recent rain but we wanted to catch some last colorful maple trees before all the leaves are gone.  And the sun was shining, the sky was blue...in case this is the only sunny day we'll have!

 There are SO many apples up there and they are really good considering they are wild, volunteer apple trees.

I suppose the trees are just as pretty on cloudy days, but it was nice to see the sun!