YA was three when I took her to the fair for the first time. We took her umbrella stroller although she didn’t use it too much that day (YA never liked any kind of enclosure – no exersaucer, no playpen, no doorway jumper). The following year we didn’t bother with the stroller at all – she kept up with no issues or complaints.
Since this is our experience, we are both a little surprised at the stroller revolution. Strollers have gotten bigger and bigger as the years have gone by. Now there are side-by-side doubles, front to back doubles, not to mention all the additional pockets, cupholders and clip-on fans. They seem like a lot of trouble to me but they are clearly popular with parents of toddlers.
I shouldn’t be surprised that strollers have taken the next step – wagons. The fair was full of them – large wagons, almost all with canopies. They remind me of the old Conestoga covered wagons that took settlers west. Most of them also have a lot of extra storage area and, of course, cup holders. Most of them have seating and trays (think tv tray) inside. And have I mentioned storage? Cookies, stuffed animals, shirts, bubble blowers, straw hats…. If you can find it at the fair, YA and I have probably seen it in one these wagons over the last week. I saw a handful filled with so much stuff that there wasn’t room for the kids. On Wednesday, a family with their full wagon held up the bus back to the park `n ride as they figured out what to do with all their stuff before they could fold it up to go in the bus luggage compartment.
Who know what the next step in stroller evolution will be but for now I’m absolutely sure that if I looked closely enough, I’d find that one of these covered wagons was named “Intimida”!
What would you have wanted in your Conestoga if you were heading west?
Wednesday was the most frustrating day. I drove from St. Cloud to near Oshkosh, WI to visit husband’s sister and BIL. I have never encountered such road construction for so many miles. The trip took about six hours. The day before our trip to St. Cloud took seven hours. I haven’t encountered such traffic for a long while. Where are all these people going?
One of the detours near Watoma, WI took us past several huge fields of cabbage. That was lovely to see. When we arrived at the family house, I found that they didn’t have wifi, so I couldn’t use my computer to show them the Ancestry info I had promised them. They have a computer and pay for wifi but have it all unplugged and turned of. This is a low tech household. We will go to the local library to access the wifi there. Whatever works, I guess. One problem is that I couldn’t figure out how to insert a header photo on my phone. Maybe I will add it tomorrow at the library.
Tell about your most memorable trip? How do you deal with being off-line?
The breed standard for our Cesky Terrier calls for a rather long skirt and long fur on the legs, with long bangs that go all the way to the tip of his nose. The fur on his skirt and legs is very fine and feathery, and attracts weeds and sticks. He really dislikes being brushed, but he would be a tangled mess if we didn’t attend to him. Here he is sitting on the bench in the front looking for bunnies in the garden. He is a rather pretty boy by Cesky standards. It takes a lot to maintain that beauty.
Husband always wanted to grow his hair long when he was in college in the early 70’s but his hair is so curly he could only get it a little above his shoulders before he started looking like Bozo the Clown. My boy cousins in Pipestone were mortified that their dad insisted they keep getting crew cuts when everyone else had longer hair and bangs. Uncle Harvey thought that a crew cut was all a boy needed to look good. I had the standard long, straight hair popular in the 70’s. My mother had a wash and set every week at the beauty parlor. I read the other day that a North Dakota man holds the record for the world’s longest beard, at 17.5 feet. Oh, the things we do for looks!
Who did you want to look like when you were a teenager? When have you been the happiest with your hair?
Last Wednesday was our grandson’s first day of Kindergarten. He was happy, proud and confident. He is, after all, 5 years old, and in his mind, he can do anything! His parents were dewy eyed, and our DIL had to redo her eye makeup when she got to work after dropping grandson off. I reminded son that I missed his first day of school since I had moved to Iowa to do my psychology internship, leaving him for the year with his father.
My first day of school was in Mrs. Helling’s room. I teased my mother in the weeks before school as she, a Grade 3 teacher, was getting her room ready and I would go with her to the school , warning her that I would slip into Mrs. Cooney’s room next door. Wouldn’t you know, my teasing got me all confused and I actually went into Mrs. Cooney’s classroom and was told to go next door. I was mortified!
What are some of your memories of first days of school?
My best friend from Howard Lake texted me on Tuesday to say that the heat index there was 114 degrees. She had never experienced such heat in Minnesota before. It is hot here, too, but not like that.
I wonder how we would cope if there was no air conditioning. I remember as a child we spent a lot of time in the basement on really hot days before my parents had an air conditioner installed in the living room. It was one of those that sat in a hole especially cut in the side of the house. Most of my relatives on farms never had air conditioning in their homes. They just hung out on their porches and tried to keep cool. There was no air conditioning in the school in Luverne. The nights were the worst, as it never really cooled down because of the humidity.
When we moved here in 1987, our house didn’t have air conditioning, and we really didn’t need it because it always cooled down at night. The humidity here is low. After about five years, things changed, the nights didn’t cool down, and we decided to put in Central air. I think that was my first direct knowledge of climate change. I don’t know what we would do without it now.
When did you first live in a home with air conditioning? How did your family cope without it? Share some weather songs.
The past weekend was supposed to be relatively quiet one devoted to housework and gardening, with very little cooking. The only dish I was going to make was a rice and cabbage minestrone to use up one of our lovely savoy cabbages from the garden. We had almost everything we needed from the store on hand, and just needed to pick up a few things.
Everything changed rapidly when we got to one of our two grocery stores and discovered they were having a Hatch chili extravaganza and were roasting the peppers right there in the parking lot. The smell was wonderful, and, of course, we had to get some of the freshly roasted medium hot peppers. Husband started feverishly thinking about cooking with them, and by the time we got into the store he decided we were going to make roasted tomato and tomatillo salsa. Since he was going to fire up his grill to roast the veggies, he figured he might as well get a rack of baby back ribs and some of the Hatch chili brats. He insisted that we had to get the tomatillos at the Mexican grocery store downtown. Once we got to the Mexican store, I realized that I had left my debit card at the first grocery store, so we had to drive back out to get it. We drove home after that.
Husband got more tomatillos than he needed for the salsa, so I decided that I would make some Texas green sauce with the leftovers. My recipe called for six Serrano peppers, which we didn’t have, so I ran to another grocery store to get them and some more limes. When I got back home, I couldn’t find the Serranos I had purchased, so I drove back to the grocery store to get more. I must have dropped the first ones in the parking lot. Husband roasted all the veggies and meat, and we ended up with three pints of Texas Green sauce and seven pints of salsa, and they are all in the freezer. It was rather exhausting running to various grocery stores five times in one day. We also planted a late crop of cold hardy spinach and fenced it in to keep bunnies out. Sunday we slept in. I never did get the minestrone started.
What are your biggest distractions that get you off task? What fresh produce are you enjoying now?
We took a long weekend last week. Daughter has been saying we needed to take a vacation, and we fully agreed with her. But May through July is Kelly’s busiest time, and of course spring is bad for me, and, well, we can always come up with an excuse NOT to go somewhere. Spur of the moment, we decided, let’s just take a weekend. We asked daughter what she thought we should do; I mean are we renting a cabin on a lake or are we going to a hotel. Well, she wanted swimming, and rides at Mall of America. OK, sounds like we do the Embassy Suites, which has been a family favorite over the few years because they do complimentary breakfast really well. They set the standard for hotel breakfasts! Fruit, yogurt, Sausages, bacon, eggs (not as good as ours of course), hashbrowns, bagels, made to order omelets, cereal, drinks: milk, juice, coffee.
We got there late evening Thursday and had supper at the hotel restaurant. Friday we all slept in and took naps and didn’t leave the room until 3:00 PM. Over to “THE” mall and had lunch, then walked around a bit and bought some ride tickets. We waited in line for an hour so we could all do the log flume ride. Because there was some bad weather in the area, the rides were going at half capacity, so the wait was longer than it should have been. Boy, if we didn’t get covid waiting in that line. Then daughter and I did a crazy spinning loop de loop roller coaster and I think I learned I might be too old for those rides. Woo boy. A couple times I had to just put my head back and close my eyes and I’d think, “DON’T CLOSE YOUR EYES!” There was a young boy about 8 years old who was on the ride with us; he said he had two little sisters and mom had to stay with them. After the first spinning loop he said “That was unexpected!” Yep, sure was! When it was over, I told him I had no idea what had happened in the last 40 seconds.
Even daughter, who’s a daredevil, was a little shook up after that. We all went to the Ferris wheel from there. And then Daughter and I went on our favorite roller coaster from 10 years ago; the one that goes straight up, then straight down. And upside down and right side down and over this way and around and back upside that way. Aye aye aye. Whew. That was easier last time I did that. Kelly and daughter did the carousel and we decided that was enough. I saw a sign that read, ‘Barking Lot stroller parking’, and I thought it said ‘Barfing lot’ which I thought was really appropriate.
I bought the 30 point arm bands, but no one put them on our arms, so I’d just show them to the ride operator. The first ride scanned them all. The second person was talking and looking away and only scanned one, and the third ride just put us on without even scanning the tickets. We gave them to a young couple and told them to have fun.
Daughter also wanted Red Robin for supper. We don’t have one of them in Rochester. At some point in her brief past, she had a shake at a Red Robin she really liked and wanted another. Supper was really good there and my vanilla malt was yummy. I don’t know about hers.
Saturday, we got the swimming in and had the pool to ourselves for an hour. We saw the Barbie movie, (and got a free icy drink), and had supper at Giordano’s pizza with a hostess named Joy who was super helpful and sent us back to the hotel with plates, drinks, and plastic ware.
Sunday, we stopped to see our son and daughter in law. When we got home, the dogs were glad to see us, (our neighbors took care of the dogs and chickens while we were gone) and Humphrey just had to stay outside for a couple nights. Once in the house, he had a big drink of soft water, and slept for several hours on his pillow.
Everyone survived on the farm, and Monday morning, daughter said she wasn’t ready to go back to her program. None of us are kid, none of us are.
We called this our ‘practice vacation’ to remember what works and what doesn’t when travelling together.
The soybeans are looking good, you know, for 6 weeks behind. They’ve finally started to canopy and, to add insult to injury, the weeds are coming too. A few buttonweed, lambsquarter, and ragweed are towering over the soybeans. Plus, a lot of volunteer corn. Which doesn’t really hurt anything, it just looks bad in a nice field of soybeans.
I started working on the shop again and started getting 2×4’s put on the walls and removed from the work bench an old radial arm saw that I haven’t used in I-don’t-know-how-many years. Back on Amazon Prime day I ordered one of those 360 degree green laser levels. It is pretty cool!
Remember a few months ago I showed a bunch of eggs under the deck? Well, the chicken hatched out 13 baby chicks the other day. She’s a good momma and moved them down to the main pen and she’s keeping a good eye on them. Thirteen chicks?? Don’t hold your breath for all of them. The other chickens seem jealous: ‘How come YOU got chicks!??’
My brother came out and we unloaded the last load of straw into the barn. 600+ bales in there again. Coming up, planting winter rye as a cover crop! Deep roots good for the soil, but it will over winter so it will have to be killed off in the spring before planting corn.
And back at the college, all my computer stuff is working this week! Yay!
We find recipes from numerous internet sources, and are rarely purchasing cookbooks these days. I subscribe to the The New York Times Food app, and that has tons of great recipes as well. We like to have paper copies of the recipes, however, and a week doesn’t go by that we aren’t running recipes off on the printer.
Husband loves putting the recipes in plastic slip covers and filing them in their respective three ring binders. He has the binders labeled. There is one large binder devoted solely to rye breads and sourdoughs. I am not allowed to rearrange the binders. That is his role.
When a sufficient number of new recipes have accumulated on the buffet, Husband puts them in their binders, culling older recipes we either didn’t like or never made in the first place. There are fewer and fewer of those. His devotion to the recipes does not extend to our bank and tax papers, however, and it is my thankless task to organize those.
How do you store your recipes? What is your filing system for important papers? What kind of a librarian or museum curator would you have been?
The other day we got a call on our landline from a neighbor on the next block letting us know that the Postie delivered our Bismarck Tribune to her house instead of our house. We walked down to get the paper, and realized that neither of us remembered exactly what house the neighbor lived in. Husband asked someone in the yard next to the place we thought was the correct house if that was where she lived. The person indicated it was and then said “Oh, you are the people with the wild garden”.
I suppose our garden does look pretty wild in comparison with the tame and typical lawns and flower beds in the rest of the neighborhood. It looks particularly wild these days now that the butternut squash and cantaloupes are running amok. The butternuts are taking over the flower bed on the north side of the driveway.
If you look closely toward the back of the last photo, you can see cantaloupe vines growing up the red rose close to the house
This is the view from the street looking south and west.
The pole beans look sort of wild, I think.
My last name, Boomgaarden, conjures up visions of exploding vegetables and flowers, although the name is just the Dutch word for apple orchard. I suppose there are worse things to be know for than having a wild garden.
What are you known for in your neighborhood? How has your mail delivery been lately? Any garden updates?
Daughter came up with an interesting proposal for a winter family gathering this year. She thinks that we should go to Hawaii with her, her brother, and his wife, and all take a class being offered there in November to become Certified Barbeque Competition Judges. I don’t know how much call there is for Barbecue Judges, or how rigorous the one day training is. I suppose we could fine other things to do as long as were there. I would rather go to Paris and work with a master baguette maker.
Ever since I lived in Canada I giggle whenever I hear that something or someone is certified, as it has a different meaning in Canada and England than it does in the States. Those who we call Certified Public Accountants are called Chartered Public Accountants in Canada, as being “certified” there can mean that you have been declared seriously mentally ill, and may have been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital. Perhaps one would have to be a little crazy, though, to become a barbeque judge.
What would you like to become certified as? What are your experiences with judges or being a judge?
Trail Baboon 