Wisconsin Trip 2015

Another annual visit to my home state of Wisconsin!  We arrived in my home town of Marshfield on Thursday evening and went straight to my mom's place.  My parents live in this building:

It's a really LONG building so I only took a picture of the main door way. It is a retirement home for old folks who are still able to live independently.  They only have one guest room, but so far we have always been lucky enough to reserve it for ourselves when we needed it.  It's a 3-story building, but my parents live on the first floor.  The guest room is that window on the third floor up above the entry way.  

So Friday, we spent all day shopping with my mom, and then took her to the park, and then took her out for some ice cream.  I think we really wore her out.  While we were roaming around, Chuck found this coffee shop:

It became his favorite place and we patronized it several times.  It is the neatest coffee shop.  I love the atmosphere of the brick walls with their antique-looking decor.  I ordered some tea and they steep your tea bag in this cute little pot and give it to you with a mug:

We took my mom there a couple times and, as an extra bonus, she said that she used to work there before she got married, when it was a different cafe.  She told us where the tables were and the cashier register, etc.  She said when she got to work, the first thing she had to do every morning was fill up the ice bin. 

BTW, the park in Marshfield also has a zoo, and they currently have a new bear cage under construction, and after it's done, they are going to get two orphaned Kodiak bear cubs from Alaska!  Pretty cool!

On Saturday, my sister Kris drove up from Sparta to meet us and we all drove to Milwaukee to visit a museum.  Unfortunately, my brain wasn't working very well that day and I accidentally left my camera in the car, so now I'm really kicking myself cuz I have no pictures at all from the museum, and no pictures of Kris.  Anyway, I'm really glad my sister came along cuz she is really fun to be with.

Sunday we went to church, of course.  It was good to see my old friends there again.  After church, me and Chuck went to visit his mom.

We didn't know what to expect cuz we've been getting bad reports about her behavior which has become combative (spitting, hitting, pinching, kicking, swearing, etc.).  She didn't seem to know who we were, but thankfully she was mellow that day and we didn't have any problems with her.  We all think that she was overmedicated.  Her doctor is in the process of weaning her off some of her drugs, so maybe that's why she was docile that day.(?)

After that, we drove to Neillsville to visit Chuck's sister Joyce; his sister Karen and brother Jim were there too.  We had a family discussion about "what should we do with Mom?"  Without going into a lengthy explanation, I'll just say in a nutshell that, in the end, we all agreed that she needs to be moved to a different facility.  Hopefully, it will happen very soon.

While we were at Joyce's house, someone suddenly exclaimed:  "Look!  A snake!"

This snake was slithering through the grass and everyone kept saying "I've never seen a snake that big before!"  That thing was over 5 feet long!  

Then Joyce, being the adventurous one, came up with this idea:

The whole time I kept telling Chuck to hurry up and take the picture cuz I was so worried about picking up wood ticks from that grass.  Everyone kept saying the wood ticks were really bad that year, so I was trying to stay out of the grass as much as possible.  And here I am LAYING in it!  Usually the wood ticks stay in the long grass, but they were saying that they've been picking them up in short grass too now.  Anyhoo, Jim said it was a pine snake, and I'm assuming it wasn't poisonous; otherwise someone surely would've stopped us from doing this.  After this picture was taken, the snake tried to continue on his way across the yard, but Karen grabbed it by the tail and started yanking on it.  We asked her "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"  She said she didn't want it to leave cuz she wanted to look at it some more.  Crazy.

BTW, Joyce is the one in the back (with dark hair), and Karen is the one in the middle.

After we left Joyce's house we saw these deer off the side of the road close to her house:

On Monday, we took a drive to the town of Plover to visit Karen at her house.  We went with her to check out a facility close to her house that takes care of Alzheimer's patients.  The next day Joyce went with her to check it out too.  Karen and Joyce are both in the medical field, so they know what to look for and what questions to ask.  Last I heard, that is where they wanted to pursue moving their mom to.

On Tuesday, we drove to Hortonville to visit his brother Dean and his family.  Chuck had a good time shooting hoops with Dean's three boys and earned the nickname "Mr. Swish".

Then Karen and Joyce came to meet us there cuz they wanted to update Dean on the status of their mom, and also get his input on the matter.  Dean is also in the medical field, so his opinions equally held a lot of weight.

Here is Chuck getting smooches from his sisters:

He loves it.

On Wednesday, Chuck and I were finally able to take our mini vacation and escape from everybody.  We drove all the way up to the north coast of Wisconsin, to the town of Bayfield, on the shores of Lake Superior, so we could visit the Apostle Islands.  We checked into the room that we had reserved at this B&B:

The house was originally built in 1870-something, and was since added onto.  As it turned out, we were the only guests there because we beat the weekend rush, so that was nice.  The couple that owns the house were really nice.  I didn't know until the next morning that the wife is a huge quilter.  She owns her own quilt shop in the town of Ashland and teaches classes and everything.  I kinda guessed that she was quilter because I was examining the pretty homemade quilt that was on our bed.  I wish I had a picture of these people, but I felt too embarrassed to ask if I could take their picture.  I have a picture of their dog, though!

Chuck and "Tyson"

That evening we went walking around in the town of Bayfield.  There were some hiking trails and the town itself was very interesting because it had so many really old buildings.  Like this library, built in 1873:

Here is a quilt shop that we passed.  I don't know how old the building is, but it looks like it used to be a house.  The wife-owner of the B&B we stayed at personally knows the lady that owns this shop (no surprise there.......)

And of course, Chuck just HAD to find another coffee shop to fall in love with:

We went in there twice to buy coffee.  And a mug.  And a lemon ginger scone.  And a ginger cookie.

Here are a few pictures from the hiking trails in Bayfield:

Okay, next day:  Thursday.  We took the ferry to Madeline Island, the biggest of the Apostle Islands.

On the island, the town of La Pointe is a lot like Bayfield - very historical, but smaller.  First of all, we rented a tandem bike (bicycle built for two) and rode on a trail that skirts the coast of Lake Superior.  It was a very pretty bike ride.  We asked some other tourists to take our picture:

We've never ridden a tandem bike before, so we wanted to try it.  The first couple seconds were a little awkward, but it was actually very easy to ride.  And the nice thing was that Chuck was never half a mile ahead of me and getting impatient.

We parked the bike when we got to this trail to hike on.  Here a few pictures:

The trail took us through the woods and the skeeters were pretty aggressive that day, so we didn't hike the whole thing.  It was a very scenic hiking trip, but if you really want to see some awesome scenery, I think you'd have to rent some boats like these guys did:

We hopped back onto our tandem bike and rode a ways to another hiking trail on a beach:

We were getting hungry and didn't have any food on us, so we hopped onto the tandem bike again and headed back into town.  We found some lunch and then took a walk in town to see all the old buildings.  Here is another library that we found.  It used to be a schoolhouse in the early 1900s.

We went inside it, and it's pretty neat.  The upstairs is a big open room, and then there's a small "reading room" where you can shut yourself in if you REALLY want some quiet time.  The room has some really old books in there that you can get lost in.

Anyhoo, we knew that everything in Bayfield closes at 5:00, and Chuck wanted to go in that coffee shop again so we got on the ferry earlier than we had planned and headed back to Bayfield.  After one last walk around town, and one last coffee from the coffee shop, we headed to the town of Ladysmith so we could visit his sister JudyBug, which would finally be our last stop before coming back home.

I love JudyBug to death, but I was sorta kinda dreading going there because her house is "Wood Tick Central".  She and her husband Al live on the banks of a river, in the woods, and she has wood ticks like you wouldn't believe!  When we got there,  Chuck already found a wood tick attached to his shoe lace just walking from the car to their front door!  While at their house, I insisted on having my feet and lower legs sprayed with 100% DEET if we were gonna be outside for any length of time.  It was the only way that I could somewhat relax and enjoy myself when we were outside.  We had a good time there though.  We played bean bag games and ate S'mores by the fire pit,  and me and Al went for a nice bike ride in the country.  And the next day Al took us out on his boat:

At one time when Al was making the boat go fast, it created a wind that swept my hat right off my head and deposited it in the river!  (Actually it was Judy's hat; she let me borrow it.)  So Al had to turn the boat around so we could retrieve it out of the water.  

The cool thing that happened at Judy's house was this wild partridge that kept following us around.  Judy calls him "Brownie". It was hard to get a good picture of him cuz he camouflaged with the background so well.  All four of us took a walk down their drive way to the road to get their mail, which is 1/4 mile, and that bird followed us all the way there and all the way back.  It was the funniest thing!

On Saturday morning, it was time for us to head back to Minneapolis so we could catch our flight back home. Miraculously, I somehow managed to spend two nights at JudyBug's house without getting any wood ticks on me.  At least, not that I know of, so far.........

  So nice to be back home!  Let's see how my garden is doing, shall we?

Holy Cow!  My rhubarb went crazy!

My peas have sprouted quite a bit - that's good.

I think this is the pollen part of the corn plant coming in:

Overall, everything in the greenhouse looks "okay".  The tomato plants looked a bit weepy, but at least they're still alive.

Hey, look!  A pickle!

Future pumpkin!  (I hope)

It's good to be back home again, so I can once again take charge of my garden.  It's a little nerve-wracking to put your "baby" in someone else's care, not knowing for sure if they will take good care of it.  But they did okay.  Today I stayed pretty busy trying to get everything revived.  Did some pruning, watering, and harvested a lot of rhubarb, and also spent a lot of back-aching time getting all those weeds out of the flower garden in the front yard.  What a chore!  It all looks so much better now.

Now I can relax.

More Projects

The weather has been so nice this past week.  Even my kitties went outside - to find some shade to sit in.  It was that HOT.  That kind of weather is so nice to have, but can also be frustrating because it puts me in a dilemma.  It's too nice out to stay indoors, but when I go out there, it's too hot be out there.  So I'd go back in the house, and feel guilty for not being outside.  What to do?  Pray for rain?

Anyhoo, we finally started getting some rain yesterday, which was a good thing because all the trees were looking unhappy.  Now they look happy again.  And the nice thing is that it gave me a break from having to water everything in my garden beds.  BTW, my peas are sprouting!!!  YAY!  The only thing I'm waiting to see yet is my carrot sprouts.  Also, Chuck was pointing out that we still had three more blue Lowe's buckets that weren't being used, so we planted more cucumber seeds in them.  If they don't produce anything, it won't be a big deal.  He just hated seeing those buckets sitting around when we could be using them to plant something, so the important thing is - the buckets are being used.

The forecast says that the temps are supposed to get cooler with and on/off showers now for the next few days, which I am very thankful for because we are gonna be leaving for Wisconsin tonight, and a little bit of rain and cool temps will help my kids out a little bit, since I am leaving my garden under their care.  Now that I have my garden well established and growing, I will be very hard to live with if they kill everything that I've worked so hard for.

So, what have I been working on?  Whenever I go "home", I always want to bring something for my mom, so I made her these little jars:

I've been saving all my glass spice jars as I empty them because they are too nice to throw away.  So I converted these into treat jars.  I have them filled with chocolate covered plums, and chocolate covered cranberries.

I also made this placemat for her.  These colors always remind me of her for some reason, so I thought it would be perfect for her.

I know it's a little bit skewed, but she knows that I'm still a beginner quilter, and I know she will like it.  I also made this Halloween one to give to one of my sisters:

I used the same pattern for both of them, which I copied from this:

It's one of those "Quilt Block of the Month" patterns that you can find at JoAnn's.  I've been collecting them because I like the block patterns.  I know it's supposed to be used for making a whole quilt, but I just use them individually to make place mats.  Maybe I will actually make a quilt out of them some day.

Another project that I just started yesterday is sorting and cutting down all my fabric scraps.  I've had this bin of scraps sitting in my closet for YEARS, and now that I'm just starting to get "into" quilting, I've been digging through them, trying to find what I can use up.

I know my collection of fabric scraps is pretty small compared to most quilters, but I want to "nip it in the bud" while it's still feasible and not too overwhelming.  These are my bigger pieces that I don't want to cut down just yet.  But my smaller pieces, I have been cutting down:

I'm about half way through this stack.  I found some ideas on the internet what other people do with their scraps so I'm using some of their ideas.  I am cutting them into different sizes of squares and different widths of strips, depending on how big the fabric piece is.  Eventually I will have enough to make a scrap quilt.

Right now I am just putting them in plastic sandwich bags, but I'm sure I will eventually have to use a different system, using bins or something.  But as of right now, the plastic bags are working, just to help me get started.  I was hoping to get through the rest of that stack before we leave for our trip, but I don't know if that will be possible, with the laundry and the packing and the cleaning yet that I have to do.  I'm actually surprised I'm using up my time writing this post, but I wanted to say "goodbye" before I left.  Hopefully, when I get back, I'll have some interesting pictures and stories to share.

'til then!

Relaxing Weekend

We had a beautiful warm sunny weekend!!  And we FINALLY made it to the cabin!!  In a previous post I told the little story about why we couldn't get there last time.  This time we took our Side x Side, but we still could've made it in the truck cuz we found that someone had filled in that big mud pit.   So we still didn't get that old bed to the cabin, but that's okay.  Another time.

There really isn't much to tell in this post cuz nothing exciting happened.  It was just a time of quietness, tranquility, privacy, and work.

First, we had to vacuum up all the dead flies.  The cabin is full of them every spring.  Pretty disgusting.  But that's just part of cabin life, I guess.

Then Chuck wanted to cut some wood up.

So while he was doing that, I went for a stroll in the woods to check on my blueberries.  Last year they didn't do well at all.  This year they are looking pretty good -- so far.

After my stroll, Chuck was still cutting wood, so I bleached out the outhouse and got that all cleaned out.  Another one of those spring cleaning projects.

Then I made myself a nice hot cup of tea.

Since the outhouse was nice and clean now, I wasn't afraid to use it.  Therefore it didn't bother me to know that the tea was going to run right through me and I would have to use the outhouse.

So I sat outside on the porch sipping my tea, listening to the sound of Chuck's chainsaw, and admired my clean outhouse.

Soon enough the sound of the chainsaw stopped, so I went over there to see if I could help him with anything.  Now he was splitting the wood and throwing the pieces into piles.

I knew he wanted the wood stacked in the wood shed, so I told him, "if you bring the Side x Side over here, I can load this up".  So he did, probably thankful for a little break, and I loaded the wood into the Side x Side, while he continued to chop away (he's pretty sore today).

And then we stacked it into the wood shed.

All that kindling wood was removed and put onto the porch for easy access before we stacked the new wood.  The wood shed is pretty full now.

After the work was done, Chuck went for a stroll through the woods with me to see the blueberries, and then we took a joy ride on the Side x Side through the trails before we packed up and went home.

There now you see?  It wasn't an exciting weekend.  But it was nice being there.  

How about a big pile of moose poop for excitement?  No?  Well, I tried!

Kasha Encounter

I found some kasha (buckwheat) flour at the Natural Pantry store last week to experiment with it.  It's kind of an ugly unappealing color and has a funny smell to it, but it's supposed to be really good for you.   It boasts of having all of the amino acids that a human being needs, especially lysine.  Plus it's high in copper and magnesium and your B vitamins.  AND it's high in protein, easy to digest, and gluten free.  (not that gluten is an issue for me).  But in this recipe, only 1/2 cup was distributed into the whole thing, so that's probably not enough to be of much significance, but just to make myself feel better, I figure anything healthy that's added to the evil white flour has to make the evil white flour not as evil.  Just my theory.

It looks and feels exactly like volcano ashes.  It even has the little black specks in it.  When you rub it between your fingers, it feels like soft talcum powder.  If it tastes anything like it smells, do I really wanna eat it?

In one of my recipe books, I found a recipe for Kasha Bread.  The recipe calls for kasha groats that I was supposed to cook, but I modified the recipe for kasha flour instead, since that is what I was working with.  I looked at some pictures of kasha bread on the internet to get an idea of what kasha bread is supposed to look like, but they all looked unappetizing to me because they looked dense.  I guess I learned to expect healthy looking brown breads to be heavy and dense.  I like my bread light and fluffy so, feeling turned off of this experiment, I was going to give up it, while I imagined myself chucking a hard brick of bread into the garbage and saying "well, THAT was a waste of my time!!".

But then curiosity got the best of me so I went ahead with the experiment.  The recipe called for 7 cups of flour total, which I knew was going to make a lot of bread, so I cut the recipe in half, using 2 cups "evil" white flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, and 1/2 cup kasha flour.  Usually I don't use a 2:1 ratio of white/wheat flour cuz the bread ends up heavy.  I usually prefer to use a 3:1 or a 4:1 ratio.  Plus, not knowing what the kasha flour was gonna do it, my hopes for this bread weren't very high.

Maybe it's because I had to modify the flour into the recipe (instead of using whole groats), but I ended up using extra white flour because the dough was too moist.  But after I got it all kneaded together, I became more hopeful for the outcome of this bread.

The drought turned out nice and soft, and didn't feel heavy at all, and it had no problem rising.  See my finger indentation?  It's ready to shape into loaves now.

Instead of the tradition 9x5 (meatloaf) pans, I prefer to make my bread in the 8x4 pans.  Every time I make bread in the 9x5 pans, the slices won't fit in the toaster very well.  Besides, I like my bread slices a little smaller anyway.  So I divided the dough into two 8x4 pans.  And they rose very nicely.

And here is the finished product:

Don't let the brown color lead you into thinking it's one of those dense heavy breads.  This bread actually turned out nice and squishy, and it tastes good too!  This recipe is a keeper!  NOM-NOM!

And it passed the hubster test!!!

Here is a picture of Kiska who doesn't care at all for Kasha Bread.

Pre-Gardening

I didn't want to write so many posts about gardening this year cuz I know that gets tedious and boring to all my many numerous fans out there (yeah, all two of you!), but I wanted to show you what we are doing different this year.  Here is a picture of the greenhouse that we found at Costco:

For the price, it's actually a pretty good one.  During the first few days after we put it up, we kept checking the temperature inside to see how it fluctuates during the day, just to get an idea of whether or not it would be warm enough.  And, oh yes, it does get it warm in there!  And humid!  

So yesterday, we went a little farther in getting it ready for planting.  Here Chuck is mixing up some new dirt to put into the planter pots:

This year, we decided to try these "Smart Pots" after Chuck heard about them:

They are made of some kind of fabric that's supposed to absorb heat and also let the roots grow freely.  My initial intention was to have one pot for each tomato, zucchini, and cucumber plant.  But right now I have 10 tomato, 3 zucchini,  and 3 cucumber plants started, and at $7 for each Smart Pot, it would be expensive to use only those for these plants.  So we came up with another alternative:

We put a garden bed inside the greenhouse.  The greenhouse is 10' x 10', and the garden bed is 4' x 8', so that gives me room on either side of it to line the sides of the greenhouse with pots if I still want to use them.  This year we are starting with 4 Smart Pots just to try them out.  So I'm going to use one for tomatoes, one for zucchini, and one for cucumbers, and the last one for corn.  Then I will plant the rest of the tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and maybe some corn in the bed, and that way I'll be able to see if there's any difference as to what growing method works best.  The bed will also provide me a little more room to start more seeds in there if I want to.  I am just waiting until late May to make sure it'll stay warm enough there at night cuz we don't have a heater in there.  Maybe next year we'll have one if this year proves that we need one.  The plants that you see there on the left are the ones that I keep hauling out there from my windowsill every day when I know it will be warm enough in there for them.  So far they seem to really like being out there, but every so often I have to go out there and check to make sure they aren't getting burned up.  So far it's been working to partially keep the door unzipped and/or open up the window flap if it gets too hot in there.  By the way, I get a sentimental feeling every time I go into the greenhouse because Chuck mixed some fertilizer into the dirt and it smells like a barnyard in there!!  AAAHHHHHHHhhhhhh..............!  I love the smell of cow manure!!!

While Chuck was mixing dirt together, I decided to try planting some of my "cold weather" seeds.

On my window sill, the only "cold weather" plant that I already started was a lettuce plant.

It looks pretty lonely, doesn't it?

The other veggies that are supposed to be able to tolerate frost are radishes and spinach, so I went ahead and planted a few seeds.  But I didn't plant a whole row because I wanted to have a "continual harvest" - planting a few seeds every few weeks or so will give you a continual harvest instead of a whole bunch all at once.  Since I'm the only one who enjoys radishes, I thought this would be a good idea. Plus, if for some reason the seeds don't sprout on account of being too cold, then at least I didn't waste a whole row of seeds.  By the way, I saw this idea on Pinterest:  to write the vegetable name on a plastic utensil and stick in the bed.  Why didn't I think of that!!?

Kiska came out to join in what she apparently thought was "much ado", but for some reason she was being really skittish and kept running back into the house every time she felt spooked about something, like an airplane flying overhead, or maybe Chuck was getting violent with his shovel in the dirt, or the zipper on the greenhouse door was too loud, etc.,  I don't know, but she must've been in and out of the house a million times.

Here is how my rhubarb and chives are doing right now.  Coming along just fine!!

I've already snipped off some chives twice to use in my cooking.  I won't have to buy any green onions now for awhile.  I know, my flower garden looks terrible.  One of these days I will rake all those dead leaves out.  I always like to try and get that job done before the spiders get too prevalent.

So far, we haven't seen any moose in the neighborhood, and that's a good thing.  Maybe this year we will actually get to enjoy the fruits of our labor.  Now........I wonder how our blueberries at the cabin are doing.  We tried to go to the cabin this weekend, but instead of bringing the side-by-side, we brought the truck (because we were hauling Justin's old bed to the cabin to put in the loft).  Halfway through the backroads we ran into a deep squishy mud hole that had "TRAP" written all over it.  So Chuck tried to get past it by another way that ran adjacent to it.  That one didn't look AS BAD, but I kept telling him "don't do it, don't do it, don't do it".  He attempted it anyway, only with not enough "oomph", and of course we stalled in the middle of it, and the tires were happily spinning, yet we did not continue moving forward.  He managed to back us out of it, but he wanted to try it again.  Then it started POURING RAIN.  I told him, "the rain is only gonna make that mud hole softer and squishier.  I would rather turn around and go home then dig us out of a mud pit in the POURING RAIN!".  He still thought about it for a few minutes cuz he hated the idea of turning around and going back home.  But thankfully, he listened to me, which proves there's a first time for everything.