Grabbing some summer before it's too late

The summer is flying by too fast.  On what can we put the blame for that?

It's more that the usual thought that time goes faster as we get older.  This year we could easily blame it on all the preparation for our family reunion, especially the last month as I furiously tried to get that  family history book ready for printing.  Or maybe I can blame it on this train wreck of a presidential campaign.  There went July!

Lots of town events, lots of B&B guests, and now more coming up with the big Labor Day weekend in Port Wing.  The Baseball Club Fish Boil on Saturday brings 2000 people to town, and the Lions Fall Festival on Sunday features a 5&10K race, a classic car show, flower show, vendors and craft tents, kiddie and Grand parades, entertainment by the Lords of Baltimore, all surrounded by the aromas of brats, hamburgers, sweet corn, beer, and pie from the Lutheran church ladies.  And that brings on the end of summer with a BANG!

But today we could slow down time a little by doing some of the usual late summer garden chores.  Our tomato vines look awful this year, but they're good enough to give us some decent tomatoes already.  Some say it's because of the overabundance of rain earlier in the summer, but the vines are just falling apart!  The cucumbers are so overgrown that we can hardly see the cucumbers.  Never satisfied!

So we canned one batch of tomatoes in pints.  One more batch tomorrow and then maybe some marinara sauce.  We also made tomato chutney today, which is kind of a thick marmalade texture but the savory combination of tomatoes, garlic, ginger, and red vinegar.  Good with crackers and a little cream cheese.  

And Leann finished off the day with a batch of black raspberry jelly from berries we got from a friend.  Some will be sold at the Saturday Market church table, and some will be served to B&B guests.  I love that smell of berries being prepared for jelly or jam.  So maybe it's the good smells - tomatoes, garlic, vinegar, berries - that help us slow down enough to enjoy where--and when--we are.

My first Instagram! #canningtomatoes

A few weeks ago Younger Daughter casually mentioned to me that I might enjoy using Instagram.  I had already started up an Instagram account quite a while ago but, as with so many online tools/toys, I never posted anything.  I did start doing some "following" of others and even had a couple "followers" of my own--those people following my non-existent posts.

Then in early August we made a flying (by car) trip to Kansas City for my cousin's funeral. It was there I learned that one of my youngest Swanson relatives--if I do the math correctly I think she's a third cousin and she's just starting middle school--had just started up an Instagram account.  Her posts were so fun and positive and uplifting, that I just had to get myself into this Instagram stuff!

So here's my first post.  I cut out the "likes" to protect their privacy.

After I posted it, I realized I could have posted it to Instagram, Facebook and probably any number of other online tools/toys, all in the same click!  I even added a #hashtag.  What I didn't know was that when you begin entering a hashtag, it starts auto-completing (or guessing) what you want your hashtag to be, and tells how many other posts use that same hashtag.  Turns out, there were over 700 other posts on the subject of #canningtomatoes.  Who knew?

So, yes, today was another canning day, maybe the last one this year.  We've done batches of spaghetti sauce, picante sauce, three batches of tomato chutney, plus just plain canned tomatoes.   This time Leann said I could can some quarts to give to her Mom since we really didn't need any more.  I just couldn't let all those Roma tomatoes go to waste.  And most people around here have had their fill of tomatoes AND cucumbers for this year.  Remember the zucchini joke and keeping your car locked?  Tomorrow is another Saturday Market, so maybe we can sell/give away some more!

Anyone need any tomatoes?

Trying not to be "too busy"

Back when I was teaching, working as a school media specialist, one of my goals every year was to work on my tendency to appear to be "too busy"--"too busy" to get to know students better, "too busy" to stop and chat with other school staff more, "too busy" to stop and smell the proverbial roses.

Well, not much has changed except that I'm no longer facing a year with 800 middle school students.  I still feel like I always have things I "should" do instead of all the things I planned to do when I retired up here three years ago, which mostly had to do with...reading.  But fortunately, most of the things I feel I "should" do here are as enjoyable as reading.

I have several times of the year here that I consider my favorites--maple sugar time in March/April, apple blossom time in May, fall color weeks in September/October, and the first big snowfall whenever it hits.  But maybe my favorite "favorite" time is right now when the gardens are producing and the flowers are beautiful.  We've started some canning already--six quarts of pickled beets, 4 pints of dilly beans, can't remember how many jars of strawberry jam.  We've picked our first cucumbers and had the first "gurkensalat"--cucumbers & onions in a vinaigrette, almost like Germany.  And the first tomato is just about ready to pick!

Here are some picts from our gardens:

Butterflies on the echinacea

Day lilies going strong

Monarchs on the milkweed in the Monarch Station

More butterflies 

Petunias happy on the south side 

Peppers, garlic & shallots in front - Tomatoes behind

 Herbs & peppers

Tall ones are the tomatoes - I had to go through and hack out all of the extra foliage so the tomatoes could see the sun!  Also with the cucumbers.

Impatiens are happy on the north side

Too much fun!

And Astro Bob from Duluth says peak night for the Perseid meteor showers will be Wednesday night.  Our guests saw a few already tonight and I think I saw one, too, but the sightings should be great by Wednesday!

Spindly to abundant in one month!

It's already the 9th of July and the gardens are growing like crazy!  Just one month ago, or even less, we didn't have much hope for our garden efforts.  Two nights of frost at the beginning of June nipped several of our plants, causing us to replant peppers, some tomatoes, and some petunias.  And, yes, we covered them, and, yes, we knew we had probably planted too early.  But the month of May was so nice!

This is part of our milkweed collection for the monarchs.  A month ago we didn't see much sign of any milkweeds this year, but here they are, ready to flower!

And here is our first monarch-to-be caterpillar.  Now in a couple weeks begins the chrysalis watch.

We even have some milkweed plants that have migrated to the other side of the silo ring and are growing in the Egyptian walking onions.  And there's another caterpillar!

These petunias looked just pitiful a month ago.  All the vines and filler vines had been nipped out and it all looked pretty sad.  A couple nights ago the weather guys predicted storms--hail, wind, etc.--so I went out quick and took pictures in case the predictions came true.  They didn't!

I love those colors!

Don't you love summer?

Here is the strawberry bed Leann made out of a pallet back in May.  The plants are also supposed to be coming out the holes on the side but some of them have succumbed.  I know that in the rest of the world you have strawberries in June.  They're ready a few weeks later here.  I hear blueberries are starting to show here, too.

Our onions this year have been a lesson in waiting...waiting to see if they would recover from their waterlogged beginning.  Our neighbor orders onions for about 30 people around here from a place in Texas.  When it was time for the place in Texas to harvest the little onion plants, they were flooded out.  The plants eventually came but they weren't in quite the usual hardy condition when they arrived.  So we planted them and waited.  And watched.  And waited. And watched.  And they just stayed spindly and puny.  Every week or so I'd pull one to see if it was growing at all underneath or if it was rotting in the soil.  But there were roots and what would become the bulb was still firm.  So more waiting and watching.   And now we have these lovely onions!  And beans for dried beans on the right.  One row is Swedish brown beans!  We found the seeds on the Internet!

And here are some of the not-so-puny-anymore onions!

So much fun!  Pretty soon...beets!

Always catching up!

I hate when I drop off the blogging train.  I get so behind!  And then there is too much to write about, but I guess I'll just get started.

Spring has definitely come, but before we get too enthusiastic about planting gardens full of flowers and vegetables, we are facing one more threatened dose of snow tomorrow night to Monday.  So far we have only planted onions and also some spinach that hasn't shown up yet.  We moved the onions to where the potatoes were last year.  Definitely didn't need that many potatoes!  But they are so fun to harvest!

On Tuesday we went to Hauser's Nursery and Orchard in Bayfield to check out their selection of plants and trees.  And what a selection!  And what a view of Lake Superior from up on that hill!  Notice the barn quilt there on the side of the barn.  Leann wants to make one of those for our very much smaller "barn."

We left there with three new trees--a Honeycrisp and two Connell Reds, a currant bush, burning bush, two forsythias, several new perennials and some herbs.  Most are all planted except the herbs and maybe I should bring them inside tonight!

Our wildlife viewing is also going into summer mode.  One of the last pictures on our wildlife camera when it was still located in the backyard aimed at the deer feeder was this cute little guy checking out the food situation.  By this time, I don't think there was anything much there that would interest him.

Also in our back yard was this pile of evidence that the bears are out of hibernation.  I have a closeup if there's any question it's from a bear...  We haven't seen any actual bears yet but someone saw a mother and three babies not far down Highway 13.  Gotta watch those bird feeders now!

So,  now I moved the camera to a spot across the field in our front yard.  There are always a lot of deer out there, so I put it there to see what else visits us in the night.  Here's another not-so-little raccoon:

And here's the back end of something dog-like.  It doesn't look straggly enough to be a coyote and it's got a pretty bushy tail so maybe a fox, but foxes are usually a little smaller.  Wolf?  Probably not...

This deer posed nicely...

And then today we have this wild species riding a different kind of "deere!"  Yes, it's mowing time again.  A sure sign of summer!

What a difference two weeks away makes!

Yes, we've been traveling...a major road trip!  Our main destination was Boston to visit Younger Daughter and see the sights, and we did that and had a great time.  A first visit to Boston is overwhelming with the combination of all the history and culture, combined with all the possibilities for shopping, restaurants, city tours and harbor cruises.  And we filled our days with all of those things!  We parked our car at our B&B and then she helped us get from place to place using the "T", the Boston subway system, along with lots and lots of walking!  Remember the Kingston Trio song about the M.T.A. and Charlie who "couldn't get off of that train?"  Well, Charlie is a key symbol for the "T" and we rode the trains using our "Charlie Card" all the days we were there.  We had a great time in Boston!  More about our trip another time.

We left here on the 22nd of October when Port Wing was still in the middle of beautiful fall weather.  We returned home yesterday to signs of major winds and everything definitely looking like November.  Much had changed in two weeks.

No, that's not snow, although they had some snow in the last week.  That is milkweed fluff (seeds and carrier fluff) from our remaining milkweed plants.

Here they are still connected to the pods on the plants.  Yes, it's true...I really enjoy milkweed plants in all their stages!

And here is what's left of our herb beds.  The summer savory is surprisingly purple, a couple kinds of oregano, some nice rosemary and parsley like crazy!  I think we have more tabouli in our future.

We planted this before we left.  It is our first attempt at planting garlic.  We got some tips from our friends up the road and a key point was to get the bulbs planted either before or after October 12th.  And because we couldn't remember if indeed it was before or after, we decided to plant them right ON October 12th.  Stay tuned...

Big changes up in the meadow, too.  The trees are still full of apples, but now looking a little strange with all the leaves gone.  The word is out that we have lots of apples up there so now people are asking about getting some for deer apples.  Hunting season, you know.  It's coming soon!  Time to get out the blaze orange jackets.

So...we're glad to be home again!

A frosty weather reprieve & time at the Lake

BTW...the big storm predicted for Tuesday evening turned out to be pretty tame--a little wind, a little rain, but nothing dangerous.  Then the big threat last night was a possible freeze overnight.  This is when people usually get out the sheets and/or blankets to cover up the more tender garden produce.  So, since it was only September 12th and we'd like to get a couple more tomatoes from our gardens, we got out our own covering cloths. (But we're tired of beans so we didn't cover them.)

But first we picked anything that was close to being ripe!

And I'm happy to report that this morning there was no sign of frost.  In fact, I don't think the temp went below 40˚, mostly because it stayed pretty cloudy all night.  And THAT was why we couldn't see any of the predicted Northern Lights last night.  I think it's still possible for tonight.  Below are our late-summer flower boxes.  They stayed nice and perky all summer.  Back in the distance is another tomato bed covered by a sheet.

It's kind of quiet tonight here.  Leann left to go be with her sister for the start of her 5 1/2 weeks of radiation therapy at Mayo in Rochester.  The eight chemo treatments did their job of shrinking the tumor down to a size for possible surgery, but she needs to do radiation to zap it some more.  We're thinking positive thoughts and thankful for all she has gained from her experiences at Mayo.  

Late this afternoon I went down to the Lake to read for a while.  It was a little too breezy to get too comfortable for long.  A couple people were fishing on the end of the pier, and the water is still reddish from all the wave action Tuesday and Wednesday.

I chuckled when I saw all this driftwood mess.  We're always telling our B&B guests about our "beautiful" sand beaches.  This one didn't look very beautiful today!

I thought this was pretty though.

As I was walking back to my car I saw these mushrooms.  They start out as these little balls oozing out of the ground and then blow up to look like the one on the right.  I don't have anything to show size comparisons but it was about 6-7 inches high.

And then I checked an area in our yard that usually has mushrooms this time of year and I found this colorful specimen. (Is that how you spell specimen?  Looks weird!)

No frost tonight and it should warm up for the next few days.

Taking the long way to the garlic farm

Today we got the call that we could pick up our garlic.  This is from our neighbors who have been raising garlic here for probably twenty years or more.  We thought they had ended their garlic business two years ago, but it turns out the weather ended their garlic business for those two years--especially 2013 when we got 53 inches of snow in April.  Not good for garlic!  But this year they had a bumper crop and it was time to pick up our order.

Since they live just around the corner and up the road, we decided to take the back way...the REALLY back way...back through our woods.  This is a trail we haven't attempted since sometime early this spring because it's been so wet.  But today would be the day.

This is what it looks like at the start:

Even when it's really grown up--like it is now--you can usually tell where the trail is, or at least Leann can.  Today there was one point where she asked ME where the trail was.  She should have known better!

When several weeks/months have passed without going through on these trails, we often run into places with branches and logs crossing the trail.  Some are small and just require a clippers like the ones below.

And some are bigger and need to be dealt with in a major way or we need to back up and turn around.  Luckily we had the right equipment with us.

 This giant mushroom was right in the middle of the trail.  I placed the saw next to it for some perspective.

The rest of the trail was pretty uneventful, but she put the pedal to the metal so we could get through the swampy parts without getting stuck.  And then on to the garlic farm.

But first, here are some of their onions!  We got to go upstairs in their barn where they have already dried all the garlic--and onions--and have them all organized by kinds.

She had all her garlic orders arranged in boxes like this, all categorized by numbers according to the varieties she's planted this year.

And here's her list of kinds of garlic for this year--22 kinds!  And she still has more left after all her orders, so if you'd like some garlic, I'll let her know!  And the sad part is that she says this is absolutely her last year of doing garlic.

She wants to have more time to do/plant more of what she wants to do.  Their gardens--flower, succulent and vegetable--are all beautiful.  We love going there to see what's growing.  She has two climbing bean plants that must be 10 feet high!  Below are some of her dried beans--this one is the yin yang bean.

 And here are some more beautiful beans.  Don't you love the colors?  So we went home with our garlic and two eggplants--a variety that grows up in this climate...unlike the ones we planted that DON'T grow in this climate.  As with all things garden, live and learn from others!

Sometime around 7:30 we went for a ride down to the lake.  It seemed almost too dark at our house to catch the sunset, but we made it in time.  This is the marina area looking west.

And this is the slough or backwaters looking east toward tonight's showy full moon!

Wow!  Just, wow!