Remembering Wordlessly

 









I am an introvert who seeks recognition, but only a little bit. I live in Southern Wisconsin and yes, I do enjoy cheese and a half-dozen or so beers each year. Somehow I found someone willing to marry me back in 1976, and so far so good. We have children and grandchildren and they are all really something.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Garden Motivation

Image
Comedian Demetri Martin says that swimming is a confusing sport, because sometimes we do it for fun, and sometimes we do it not to die. In a way, gardening is the same. All over the world people grow food in order to survive, while most gardeners I know do it as a hobby, albeit one with health advantages that come from the work involved and the food harvested. With food prices at historically high levels and with more concerns about food safety, the hobby part of gardening is taking a back seat to the pragmatic part. More gardens are popping up, and even people without yards are finding ways to plant some food in pots or with hydroponic set-ups in spare rooms. It is interesting to see, especially in community gardens where many people have plots, that some people start with enthusiasm but succumb to the reality of heat, bugs, and weeds, while others endure to harvest time. I think we fall half-way between those two extremes. We keep at it all summer and generally have a good harves...
Read more

Getting Pickled

My lovely and charming wife has been setting family records for food preservation this summer.  In  recent years -- make that decades -- this time of year has been too busy for her to commit the time needed to can, freeze, dry, or pickle things.  So, I think she's making up for lost time.  Or thyme.  Or something. Here's something we figured out: if you're freezing things, it really pays to put individual meal quantities into a small sealed bag, and put those bags inside a gallon size freezer bag.  It takes away the "freezer taste" that frozen vegetables can get. There are only two of us at home now, so in many cases freezing makes more sense than canning, but she's done that too.  We haven't gotten the dehydrator out yet, but I'm sure we will. She's also become fond of fermenting things.  Yogurt is fermented, as is sauerkraut and a bunch of other food.  It is said to be good for us, which it probably is.  There is some art that goes wit...
Read more

Dear Garden Diary

Image
Dear Diary, I can’t believe it has been three months since my last garden blog post. I really can’t believe it. After spending May watering every other day to keep the new plants alive in the dry, windy, 90+ degree heat, the annual Japanese beetle invasion, and the weeds, it’s time now to take a breath. Not that much of a breath, of course. Any vegetable gardener knows that the harvest mostly starts in August around here in Southern Wisconsin, and it’s far from done now. One thing we learned about not cleaning things up right away after harvesting is that some plants – cabbage being one – will give you post-harvest gifts. Little cabbages (the inspiration for the French term of endearment, “Mon petit chou”) arise from the place where the original cabbage was cut. They are tender and mild. Surprisingly, we got to harvest all of our sweet corn, despite nightly visits by various deer. At least one of the deer developed a taste for moss roses and pulled most of them out of the ground....
Read more