Broccoli and cauliflower

I don't trust the weather forecast anymore. I feel that in previous years it was more reliable than it has been this year, but in May they kept promised respites from rain, and now that July has arrived (and even in June) they keep promising rain that fails to materialize. Thanks to sprinklers, and copious amounts of time spent positioning hoses and timing waterings, our gardens are looking pretty spry, but corporate lawns along the outer urban road lines are looking pretty dead these days. In fact, it looks a lot like August around here.

And rain or no, we took the opportunity of previously promised rain to hide indoors from the heat (making little sense since don't use air conditioning) to play games and read books.

It was hot.

Speaking of gardens, Calvin and I learned something today. A month ago we planted our square foot garden plots with tomatoes, chart, kohlrabi, beans, egg plant, peppers, onions, and cauliflower and broccoli. Since then we've harvested the chard several times, and waited patiently for the rest of the plants to grow and mature to the harvesting point. I've never grown broccoli or cauliflower before, but I know what it looks like in the store and the little heads of white and green that sprouted weeks ago were like miniatures of the real thing, so we thought the thing to do was to let them grow. Since then we've watched them grow, and grow, and grow, and for some reason it wasn't until today, as I harvesting chard for dinner yet again, that I decided that, from their current state, they could never grow the heads we are so used to seeing at the market. By this time they were tall and gangly...and flowering. For shame. It took only a very brief internet search to realize where I'd gone wrong—harvest the baby broccoli head and next week you'll get more of them, eventually leading to a full, market worthy, head of broccoli. No one told me.

I wonder how many things in life we fail to research and thus let pass us by. I remember reading once that intelligence isn't so much how much or what you do know as the state of recognizing how much you don't know. Calvin laughed with me at over error, and I cursed myself for not taking the time to look into the art of growing cruciferous vegetables. And because I couldn't let the flowers go to waste, and because they had a sort of rustic charm to them, we made bouquets of cauliflower and broccoli flowers and took one to my mother when we stopped by to share dinner. I'm not sure she was amused, but any gift from a grandson is enviable.

milkweed

We came home from the western side of the state to a garden nearly in full bloom. It can't be in full full bloom because we've carefully planted so as to have blooms throughout the growing months of the year, but the summer blooms are now out in full force. Bee balm, yarrow, cone flowers, daisies, in pink, red, yellow, white...even the milkweed finally bloomed this year. I still remember, the first summer we spent in the house, sending Jon and my dad into the field behind us to dig up a milkweed or two before the mowers came and plowed them down. Digging up wild flowers is against the law in Michigan, but they were about the mow them over, so I think nobody probably noticed. Digging up milkweed is not as easy as one would think. This one had a rather developed root system, a huge cluster of tubers, that required hacking much more than digging. I nursed the three pieces in buckets of water to encourage them to send out new roots, and I carefully planted the two that survived. I was ecstatic when they grew the following year, and again the year after, but this is the year they've finally decided to bloom. Look how happy I am over a weed.

milkweed

Pink yarrow

red yarrrow

true phlox, and a coneflower in the background

We were gone for just two nights, but getting back to our routine is going to take at least that long, or maybe we just don't have a summer "routine" to return to. The library was closed on Monday so we sorted today instead. Piano, journaling, games, and the garden all called to us. And some quiet time laying on the floor with books during the hottest part of the day, watching birds visit the feeders and letting what breeze there was wash over us. We're hoping for rain tomorrow, or else we might be playing in the sprinkler yet again, but that's what summer is all about.

Independence Day

Time regained, a special family weekend

On Friday morning we packed up and drove to the west side of the state with Jon's parents for a family reunion of sorts with Jon's dad's family, fully intending to come home Saturday morning. Two days at the beach and two barbecue dinners later, we rolled into our own garage late Sunday evening. The unexpected, the unplanned, can be fun and exciting, and we were having such a great time, and such great weather, that we just couldn't bring ourselves to leave.

Perhaps one of the greatest things about this trip, besides the hours spent enjoying the waters of Lake Michigan, was the time spent with family that Jon remembers only from childhood, I remember only briefly from our wedding, and Calvin remembers not at all. The Ophoffs are a large family and spread all over, so to gather almost all of the siblings (for Jon the aunts and uncles) in one place for a weekend is a special event, and we spent precious time gathered in kitchens and sitting rooms talking, for some of us reacquainting, and ahhing over babies and children.

It's hard to believe, but for all the very valuable time spent in those gathering places of the home, I have almost no pictures of enjoying the people, only of enjoying the environment. On our first night there we attending the 87th birthday party of Jon's great uncle, the event that was ultimately responsible for the weekend. Tag, bubbles, and Popsicles with second, third, even fourth cousins, barbecue, cake, candles, and a belted kingfisher catching fish in the lake below.

On our second day we went to the Grand Haven State Park and staked out our towel spot with umpteen other beachgoers, who graciously left and gave us more space an hour later when the clouds started rolling in. Clouds didn't stop us from swimming and building with sand, and they lifted later as we walked along the lighthouse and pier.

This is a location from Jon's childhood. I've seen pictures of him as a boy on this very beach and along this very pier. How appropriate that I'm reading Proust these days, because these are things once lost in time, and are now found again.

Grand Haven has a quaint main street of shops (and a tiny museum) that drew us to town after dinner, and sent us home with a dragon puppet and a book about blacksmiths (because every vacation, no matter how impromptu, deserves a souvenir). And our second night in the welcoming home of Jon's aunt and uncle was again spent giggling with family over summer snacks and glasses of chilled white wine after the kids were in bed.

Impromptu is impromptu, and the next morning, about when we intended to be headed for home, Jon was on the phone canceling his two afternoon piano lessons while Calvin (successfully) lobbied for a second trip to the beach. He came to me at the achievement of this success and declared triumphantly that we were indeed going to the beach and that everyone was coming "even Aunt Karen and...and...the other man!" and that is why we were there, because these, Jon's aunt and uncle, are people Calvin had never met, but after a weekend of introductions he found them special enough to include in his conquest, and maybe he can even learn their names and to become comfortable with them.  The beach was fun, but it was the time with these people that was most notable from the weekend.

And now we're home. Being away for two days, by surprise, and having no internet access has left me feeling a little off, as far as time is concerned, and Jon staying home on a Monday is going to leave me even more confused. I feel as though we've been gone for a week, and yet I've lost days in my mind as well. We are home now, the pictures are edited, the time catalogued in the mind, then tomorrow is another holiday, another day of celebration.

Nature Thursdays—life in logs at County Farm Park

I now know the difference between a millipede and a centipede. It's not knowledge I coveted, but if I'd really minded I would not have taken Calvin to the "living world inside a log" Nature Thursdays program today. Or I might have, but I would have quietly watched from a few paces away instead of actually touching all the multi-legged inhabitants we discovered in the logs that are in the process of returning themselves to the earth. What I would not have done, however, is tiptoe through the forest and screech every time a bug was mentioned as being nearby, or threaten his head if he so much as thought of bringing such "creepy crawlies anywhere near me". We actually had one of those on this trip. I think the guide almost asked her to leave.

In the quieter moments, when we got a bit away from the 20+ kids and their parents, some more squeamish than others, we found some pretty great things. Like an inch worm, a millipede, a cabbage white butterfly flitting through the dappled sunlight, and a plethora of daddy longlegs. We saw red squirrels and one rabbit. We even spotted a Flicker woodpecker, along with scads of other birds. Like last time, at the end of the program Calvin and I picked a spot for lunch, then headed back into the woods for our own quieter, calmer hike. We found a creek, which was clearly swollen past its banks but a month ago and is now down to a surprising trickle. We found a meadow that was teeming with butterflies and dragonflies and beautiful wild blooms. We found more squirrels, more birds, and a great hunger for more days just like today. We sketched nature, and we talked about it. Though a month ago I complained about the unceasing rains, and lately I've been begging the skies for more of it, the warm, sunny weather with the cool, dry breezes has been a perfect joy.

We finished our nature day with a stop at the park of my childhood. Slide hair and a beautiful, ancient tree, bathing in warm afternoon sunlight and calm, joyous laughter.