(mid-June 2022)
Our trip to Iowa was the last overnight excursion we had planned for a while so it was back to dealing with the old homestead and keeping busy around town until we found an excuse to go somewhere else.
One Saturday morning in late May featured perfect weather so I got on my bike and was off. My first stop was just down the street – Starkweather Creek.
The situation was rather mellow on the water but the air was alive as birds flew from tree to tree and sounded out their calls with the Stentorian (for a small bird) squees of red-winged blackbirds being most noticeable, in addition to being easily recognizable for me.
I turned around and saw a family of Canada geese heading underneath the bridge. When they emerged on the other side, I was able to get some photographs before they disappeared downstream.
A short time later a couple mallard drakes swam by. Overall, things were rather quiet. There were no waterfowl locked in mortal combat nor any hideous half-fish, half-human creatures emerging from the murky depths with angry looks on their squamous faces so I figured it was time to head over to my beloved Acewood Park. When I was there last, it was snowing but now it was all verdant.
The goose eggs I saw back in April had hatched and the goslings were probably pooping on a nearby lake shore to the chagrin of local swimmers because that's what Canada geese do.
Well, a goose couple will be back next spring, I am sure, and the whole cycle of life shall begin anew.
Across the pond I spied a great blue heron.
I wandered over to that side of the pond but it was long gone when I got to that shore. I call this spot the Acewood Arch as 2 trees curve to frame the pond.
I noticed that some tree trunks that had fallen into the pond were a popular sunbathing spot that day.
So, I went into ninja stealth mode and slowly crept closer to the turtles. I don’t know that I have ever seen so many of them at one time. This photo captured about half of the sunbathers. After taking this picture, I made one teensy tiny silent(ish) step forward and most of them immediately jumped into the water after having sensed something on the shore. Oops.
It was a lovely time anyway. I didn’t see another human while I was there.
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Sadly, I couldn’t spend all of my time out riding my bicycle or at a park. We need a new deck. I’d been putting off demolishing our old one but I finally got motivated and tore it down.
I took out a couple rows of screws and found that this provided enough leverage for me to just rip most of the boards up as they were quite rotten. I found 2 opossum nests which were both unoccupied. It had been a while since I’d seen the opossum wander out from underneath the deck so I was confident that it was dead or had moved on. Still, I didn’t want to rip up the boards and find a nest full of baby opossums that I’d be forced to find a home for.
It was a real half-assed job with the stringers touching the ground in spots and shimmed with bricks in others. I dug up the electric cord that had been used to run a fountain out in the yard as well as a rubber natural gas hose for a grill that I had tossed years ago. I was not expecting a concrete slab under there - it's floating - but it'll have to go so we can dig post holes. Uff da!
Now I just have to schedule a weekend with a friend to build a new desk. That and pay through the teeth for lumber.
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A few months back I received a complementary issue of The Week, a, well, weekly magazine that presents a curated selection of articles and columns from other news outlets around the globe. The food section had a recipe for Gong bao ji ding which apparently translates as Sichuan chicken with peanuts. The picture accompanying the article looked very tasty so I decided to give it a try.
The recipe called for a few things I did not have on hand and didn’t think could be obtained at my local supermarket: light soy sauce or shoyu, Shaoxing wine, Sichuan peppercorns, and Chinkiang vinegar. I went to a local spice store for the peppercorns and then my favorite Asian grocery store for the rest. Of course the liquids didn’t come in anything smaller than a quart and, since the recipe calls for about 2 tablespoons of each, I am good on these ingredients for years to come.
It turned out pretty well, I thought.
Next time I am going to cut down the peanut payload and up the chili count. I didn’t want to go overboard on the heat lest the Frau find it inedible but I was overly cautious. Oh, and more green onion too.
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I was given a copy of Ben Logan’s The Land Remembers: A Story of a Farm and Its People by a friend of mine, Jason, whom you met in a previous entry. He’s the baseball nerd. The book is an autobiographical account of growing up on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless Region. That is, where there were no glaciers during the last ice age
When I started the book, I didn’t know when it was published nor when the events chronicled therein took place. Before long it occurred to me that the farm didn't appear to have electricity. I looked it up and found that the events took place in the 1930s. I am unsure when rural electrification came to that part of the state.
The book is a folksy account of life on the farm, Logan’s family (parents and 3 brothers), and the area around the farm and its inhabitants. When new-fangled farming methods came along, Logan’s father was skeptical and kept with the tried and true until the new ones proved themselves. The kids found fun out in the countryside, not in front of a television.
I was reminded of one of my grandmothers who told me a bit about growing up on a farm. Every Wednesday she had to scrub the outhouse floor, she reminisced one time. In 1933 she went to Chicago to see the World’s Fair. Upon discovering electricity and indoor plumbing, she vowed not to return to the farm.
Reading the book made me glad I did not grow up on a farm. It is back-breaking work and the hours are terrible. When I was in high school up north, I helped out friends who did live on farms with chores but it was the easy stuff like collecting chicken eggs, stacking bales of hay, slopping a pig, etc. I have great respect for people who choose to farm the land and am happy to support my local farmers at the grocery store. But that life just isn’t for me.
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I recently went to see Petite Maman, a film by French director Céline Sciamma. Her last film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, was not only enjoyable, but it was the last movie I saw in a theater before the Covid lockdowns began. So going to see this felt a bit like coming full circle.
It concerns a young girl named Nelly whose maternal grandmother has died. She and her parents head out to the grandmother’s house to empty it so that it can be sold. Nelly meets a girl her own age named Marion and things get a bit weird.
In case anyone who hasn’t seen it but wants to, I won’t give too much away but, at some point, I asked myself, “Is that that the same house as in the previous scenes?”
I found it to be a nice, little examination of the mother-daughter relationship which I suppose you can broaden to be parent-child. It is interesting thematically and had an expected twist to boot.
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Bonus photo! Here’s a neat mural with a lake theme. Those squares bring the old video game Q*bert to mind.
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(Go to the postlude.)
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