It was a perfect day for a canoe trip. We loaded the canoe with our favorite gobbler sandwich from Saranac Lake, safety gear and yarn. Right after this picture, I fell in the water while getting into the canoe. Good one.
We traveled for about an hour when we found a mossy covered ledge for lunch, a nap, a little blueberry picking and knitting.
Perfect day topped off with an ice cream soda at lakeside.
Or knookie in my knickers? I try to hang dry all my laundry. The other day, I went out and found clusters of June bugs, clustering, or whatever June bugs do, on my clean laundry!
Two singles
One double
I shook them loose and carried on with yard work when I stumbled upon our diminutive fruit tree crop. Probably crabapples but perfectly formed.
Speaking of small, I live in a community so small that a piece of mail addressed to me, with only my name and town on it, found its way into my post office box. Small fish in a small pond.
It all began when Tim took me out to the ball game. We went to a minor league game in Burlington and watched the Lake Monsters, the minor league team for the Oakland A’s, play. They played the Lowell Spinners! I looked hard for Spinner souvenirs but couldn’t find any.
I love minor league baseball. The game is fast and there are lots of diversions…and hot dogs. I haven’t had a hot dog since we joined the CSA and craved one. Their mascot is the Lake Champlain monster, Champy, who kept the kids entertained. I wasn’t scared one bit.
I pulled my knitting out of the bag and set myself up to start knitting when a young boy behind me tapped me on the shoulder. I thought, oh my he’s a sweet Vermonter about to ask me about knitting. Instead he told me there was a grasshopper sitting on my head!
Later In the week, I took a trip to Albany. With a stowaway. A baby mouse had somehow gotten into my car and came along for the ride. It took me a full 12 hours, during which I slept eight of them, to find and remove it from my car. Then I had second thoughts because I had placed it on the asphalt parking lot and thought he’d never survive. So I caught it a second time and released it on a patch of grass. I was wary the whole way home because I kept expecting the rest of its family to show up. I scoured the engine and trunk but couldn’t find any others.
This spider was hanging around the house yesterday but I’m not sure where he is today.
Well actually, I jar. Why isn’t it jarring? I made a batch of sour dill pickles, watermelon rind pickles and pickled beets.
The dill pickle recipe is from a book, The complete book of small batch preserving, which I think will be useful to help me preserve the farm produce. We generally pick up all we need for a week, but when the crop is in we can take more to preserve. I have been blanching and sealing some veggies but our freezer is pretty small and I will quickly fill it.
Our growing season is about two weeks later than downstate. In fact we just celebrated the 4th of July on Sunday.
Fifteen minutes of stupendous fireworks seen up close. We heard the first blast at 9 and headed to town and had a front row seat. We came home to find Loki the cat cowering under a bed.
Not yet but I am ready. I found this vial of Muddler Minnows at a yard sale today.
They are nice flies and look good enough to eat. I hope my local fish thinks so too. I am not sure Muddler Minnows attract trout but time will tell. I’m sure it has nothing to do with my fly casting.
I came home and made a batch of watermelon pickles. These are one of my favorites and not available In stores here.
These really look good enough to eat. Tomorrow I will can them and make a batch of dill pickles. We already tried a jar of strawberry jam and it was pretty tasty. I hope we can save some until the middle of winter.
Today I won a book from a knitting magazine, Knitcircus; saw a pink sunset
And am heading out now to see fireworks. It’s an auspicious day. I missed all the other firework displays because the Fourth of July can no longer be celebrated on the 4th because overtime wages for support staff is too high. Instead it’s celebrated on the 3rd, 7th and 21st.
The critters and I spent the day close to home. We had much needed rain and thunderstorms so I headed to the cave and finished weaving my placemats. They are off the loom and drying now.
During the height of the storm, the hummingbird feeder was the place to be.
And even the grasshoppers sought cover.
The weather has been fabulous. Warm during the day and 40’s at night. It was so cool the other night, Shirley the cat was sitting in front of the fireplace longingly.
We’ve been sailing, entertaining and I have been sewing and knitting and working. Today I got to enjoy lunch with the ladies – in the mountains. Tim was hiking a few High Peaks on his own. See him on the far hill in the distance?
Perhaps I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth but at some time during my childhood my parents bought a set of silverware for me. I think they gave it to me after my divorce. Interesting timing. I thought it should be for a wedding. In addition, during that time I lived out of my car for a short while. But that’s a whole other story.
I write today about the care of silverware. I decided early on this would be my only flatware. Silver tarnishes. I am well aware of this because, while growing up, I polished the silver coffee set we had, which we never drank anything from, but kept well polished. Sort of like the candles on the table we never lit.
For a while “we” were hand washing and drying the silver and this kept it polished. Then Tim and others balked at washing silverware so we started putting it in the dishwasher (I think they started throwing out the teaspoons because we seem to have lost a few). This caused it to get tarnished more quickly but otherwise kept the “dishwashers” very happy.
Now my sisters-in-law from both sides of the family are coming to visit and it’s time to polish the silver ware. I remembered trying a technique several years ago that was intriguing but had disastrous results. Basically you create a chemical reaction by lining a pan with aluminum foil, placing the silverware on the foil single layer so each piece is touching the foil and then pour a solution of boiling water with baking soda in it over the silverware. It’s miraculous to watch. Silver sulfide returns to silver and sends the sulphur to the aluminum with the associated smell of rotten eggs.
In seconds the tarnish is gone. The disaster I had the first time I tried this occurred when I heated the Pyrex baking pan on the stove and the whole thing exploded with glass, silverware and water all over the place. I was traumatized for years and reverted to hand polishing, which actually removes some of the silver – not good for the long term. So I bravely took the plunge today and mixed 2 qts. of boiling water and 1/4 cup of baking soda in a separate pot and poured it over the foil lined pan with the silver pieces in it. In minutes (I had to do a couple of batches) the whole set was done and my silver drawer is ready for inspection.
With my free time, I put up another batch of beer, an Irish Red Ale. It may be a little hoppy for my taste but I will let you know in about a month. I am waiting to take my initial specific gravity readings.
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Our farm CSA was at the end of strawberry season and offered each family the opportunity to pick your own 10 qts.
I went on one of the warmer days of the year and had the whole field to myself.
I put 10 qts in the bags but probably ate a pint while working.
Then what to do with the rest of them?
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I canned a batch of strawberry jam and froze the rest. I look forward to them this winter.
They’ve been spotted hanging around, literally, by both Tim and me. He saw one on the side of a local retail store and took a photo with his phone without knowing what it was.
I saw one ( well actually, he spotted it) yesterday at the marina. I looked it up and learned it was a Luna Moth, a silk spinning moth!
The mind reels! Could I spin its silk? More importantly, how do you collect it. My questions were answered by a site written by a fellow spinner from Ravelry, Wormspit.
Alas, no free fiber for me. What a beautiful moth.
Island and North Country Life 