Around OakMeadows

Just looking over some of the Yosemite pictures.  It was so beautiful and so peaceful. Next year we are going to Yellowstone. 

I am finally over my month long cold and my energy levels are back to normal. Yea for that!!

I have seen a few butterflies--1 Monarch on the milkweed and 1 Gulf fritillary on the clematis but nothing like what we usually have. Maybe it was the month of rain we had in May. I don't know. 

My baby quilt is coming along. I have the blocks together and tomorrow I plan to put the borders on it.  Then I need to buy the batting and find a fabric for the back. 

I am reading A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir by Donald Worster.  So far it is very interesting. The author takes the time and effort to place Muir in the culture of the time and it makes him a much more human person. Joe and I are still reading The Weight Brothers by David McCullough and finding it just fascinating. I'm listening to The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny. It is an Armand Garmache murder mystery. So far so good. 

Every morning when I take the birdseed out, I have a pair of cardinals and a pair of woodpeckers waiting for me.  I didn't know woodpeckers liked peanuts so much!  There are also some squirrels waiting for me to bring their morning repast too. Our nightly visitors include raccoons, possums, and deer. 

Our sweet daughter came over this afternoon and we enjoyed a visit and made chocolate chip 

cookies. I wonder how many times we have bakes cookies together? Must be in the hundreds, if not thousands of times. You know when you are in the middle of child rearing, you wonder if you are doing anything right or if everything you do is wrong. But somehow we all got through it and what a wonderful person she is. 

We have had no rain for long enough now that Joe has been able to get everything mowed. It looks so nice now and the crepe myrtles are beginning to bloom too.  We have another set of barn swallow babies in a nest on the front porch and  of course that is a mess but so worth it when we get to see the babies learn to fly. 

That's all the news from OakMeadows where the cats are all lap cats and the people are all retired. 

June Cooking

Wilted Spinach Salad with Bacon and Red Onion

2 (5-ounce) bags baby spinach
10 ounces bacon (10 slices), chopped fine
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 red onion, minced
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
6 tablespoons cider vinegar
3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and quartered

Place the spinach in a large bowl.  Fry the bacon in a 12 inch skillet over medium heat until crisp, about 5 minutes. Transfer the bacon to a paper towel lined plate. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat. Add the extra-virgin olive oil to the bacon fat in the skillet and heat over medium heat until shimmering. Add the onion, garlic, sugar, salt, and pepper and cook until onion is soft, about 3-4 minutes.  Off the heat, stir in the vinegar, then pour over the spinach and toss to wilt. Portion the salad onto individual plates and garnish with the bacon and eggs. Serve immediately. 

June Meditation

Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it. 

Augustine of Hippo

The Wild by Wendell Berry

In the empty lot--a place
not natural, but wild--among
the trash of human absence,

the slough and shamble
of the city's seasons, a few
old locusts bloom.

A few woods birds
fly and sing
in the new foliage

--warblers and tanagers, birds
wild as leaves; in a million
each one would be rare,

new to the eyes.  A man
couldn't make a habit
of such color,

such flight and singing.
But they're the habit of this
wasted place. In them

the ground is wise.  They are
its remembrance of what is.

Where have all the butterflies gone?

No butterflies, zero, zip, zilch. Not one caterpillar on the abundant milkweed or anything else.  I know the milkweed was not poisoned by the nicotinamides because I grew them myself from last year's seeds.  And it isn't just Monarchs that are missing, there are no swallowtails or even yellow sulfurs. It is like a silent spring of butterflies. 

June Goals

Physical
     Sit & Be Fit
     Water
     Fruit

Quilting
     Finish new baby quilt top

Reading
     The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
     A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir by Donald Worster
     The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

Cooking
     CB Hash
     Slow Cooker Chicken Stew
     Cutlets, GMP, GB

Home
     Finish sorting out VCR tapes and DVDs 

Personal
     Lunch with P&W&C&B
     Make arrangements for side trips on Alaska cruise
.

Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow

 Stewart Dubinsky, a middle-aged reporter, knew his father served in Europe during WWII, but the War was a subject off-limits in the Dubinski household. Upon is father's death, Dubinski discovers that his father had been court-martialed and imprisoned, and sets out to find the decades-old answers. The story that follows is an emotional and painfully realistic drama of the horrors of war in the European theater.

In early 1944, and Dubinsky's father, David Dubin, is a young lawyer assigned to the US Army's JAG Corps headquartered in Nancy, France, recently re-occupied by the Allies. He is assigned to investigate the alleged insubordination of Robert Martin, a Major in the CIA-forerunner OSS. Martin is a shadowy figure; a living legend of unparalleled heroism and bravery behind Nazi lines, but perhaps also a spy the loosely allied Soviets. Gita Lodz, a Polish immigrant turned French resistance commando, is the inseparable companion of Martin, setting up the first two legs of the triangle that Dubin not surprisingly completes. In pursuing Martin - and Gita - through northern Europe, the lawyer Dubin finds himself pressed into service as a front-line infantry officer to replenish Allied troops decimated by the Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge. Told from foxhole-level perspective, Turow paints a horrific picture of the war, culminating in a morbidly riveting portrayal of a Nazi concentration camp and ending in an unexpected twist to Major Robert Martin's story.

Delivered with the historical authority and authenticity, Turow applies his trademarked plots, clever twists, and human struggles, adding up to a moving and educational drama. Excellent!