On Friday night my BFF, Sara, and I went to see Arsenic & Old Lace at Theatre in the Round over on the West Bank. This was Sara’s birthday present from me….we decided a few years back to give each other experiences instead of things for our birthdays. She chose Arsenic from a list of plays showing this fall. I was looking forward to it; I’ve seen the 1944 A&O starring Cary Grant and Boris Karloff several times and was interested in how the play would measure up.
I haven’t been to Theatre in the Round for many years. Actually except for theatre that has been gifted to me, I’ve hardly been to any theatre in years. (Single parenthood kind of whoops the-evening-entertainment-that-costs-money craving out of you.) When I first moved to the Twin Cities, I did volunteer ushering there for a couple of plays but full-time work while my wasband was searching for a job wore me down and I needed my nights back.
The production on Friday was quite nice. The entire play takes places in the living/dining room of the Brewster sisters; no-nonsense set and props (like the sisters) without too much bric-a-brac to pull your attention away. Lighting was pretty straight forward (nothing fancy like I see in Ben’s photos) and the sound was very good. If the actors were mic’ed, I couldn’t tell; we were in the third row and didn’t have any trouble hearing all the dialogue.
Casting was superb! Not that easy when one of the actors needs to resemble Teddy Roosevelt and another absolutely has to look like Boris Karloff (there are repeated mentions of this in the script). I was a little worried that that these two would be weak links, hired for their looks, but they were both great. Jonathan (the Boris look-alike) was particularly good. Both Brewster sisters were excellent; Abby had a great way of waving her arms to punctuate her lines that was very effectives. And a shout-out to the young woman who played Officer Brophy; she really sparkled in her role.
I was easily able to put aside my Cary Grant memories and enjoy the play on its merits. It was very funny and a couple of times I laughed enough to cry. The woman behind me snorted a few times!
If you’re in the Twin Cities and up for a great night of theatre and comedy, I highly recommend it. I think it’s running for a few more weeks.
Tell me about a favorite theatre experience you’ve had!
YA and I had some Subway last week and we each got a bag of chips to accompany our feast. We’ve had chips plenty of times but last week was the first time I noticed that there is are lines of colored dots along the bottom of the bags. I checked other bags in my house and about half had dots similar to these, although they weren’t exactly the same colors.
Didn’t take me to long to research this. These dots (apparently sometimes squares) are called “Printer’s Color Blocks” and they are used as quality control markers for the ink used to print on the bag. If there is too little or too much of a particular color, it affects the colors on the dots and the printer (human or machine) and adjust as needed.
The reason that I didn’t see these color blocks on all my chips bags is that it’s completely voluntary. Some manufacturers don’t use them and some manufacturers trim off the numbers after printing.
According to online articles, the most common colors are the four major colors used in printing: black, magenta, yellow and cyan, although depending on the manufacturer (like my bag above) can use more if they want/need.
This was a much more pedestrian explanation than I was hoping for and has absolutely nothing to do with the food inside the bag. I was really looking forward to some secret code that I could learn and apply when shopping. Oh well; if it had, I’d be spending way too much time standing in the chip aisle at my local Cub!
Maybe the crops won’t be as bad as I feared. I was looking at the soybeans this past week and there are a fair number of pods higher up the plant. The plants are about knee high, and it looks like the weather will hold for a few weeks yet. We’re at 2845 growing degree units. 368 above normal for Rochester. Mind you, I’m not saying great crops, but not as bad as I thought. Ha, probably just be good enough not to trigger a payment from crop insurance, which is based on 70% of expected (average) yields. I did get a $700 credit on the premium for hail damage. So, I only owe $600 rather than $1300. Which is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp cornstalk.
I did plant some rye on Monday and more on Thursday evening. The rain predicted for Friday morning isn’t going to a mounted to much. We wait and see. I spotted a couple sandhill cranes while out planting on both days. They must like this field. It was interesting: On Monday I had gone around the field once, turned around at the end of the field and was coming back when I saw them in the middle of the field. Were they there on the first round? I was maybe 150’ from them and they didn’t pay me too much attention. But then as I came around the corner and got closer, they flew off. Sorry kids, you didn’t get much of a rest here. Thursday was the same thing; didn’t see them on the first pass and then there they were. I adjusted how I planted that field so they could hang out longer. When the time came and I had to go their way, they had flown off.
I was working at the college one day and I dropped a cable down a ventilation shaft. Course it wasn’t a plain old power cord, it was a special 4 pin data cable. I can see it down there and maybe with a long stick and a hook on the end, I’m thinking I can retrieve it. Stay tuned.
I’ve been scraping gravel from the machine shed approach.
Over the years I’ve added a lot of gravel to the road. Now with the cement pad being the same level as the shed interior, the driveway is 8” too high. I’ve mentioned before the water running in the shed door. So, I’ve been scraping. Man, it’s packed hard. Some rain would help that too. I’m not real good at being an excavator operator. And using the tractor loader isn’t ideal either, but it works. I can’t quite tell yet if there’s just dirt under there or still gravel. Dad must have had rock there when he built this shed in 1981. I may have to go an extra 4” deep and put gravel back on top. I’m using this rock to fill in some holes and the extra will go on the other end of the cement where it is more dirt.
Daughter likes to do her chores: whether it’s hauling out garbage, doing her laundry (I know, right??) collecting eggs, and last night she even threw out corn for the chickens and chicks. Mother-Clucker is down to 12, lost one. The kids are getting pretty independent, and mom is giving them their freedom too. It’s not unusual to see them running 20’ away from mom. They’re between robin and pigeon sized.
Ever had a cement pond at your house? How was that?
(Are you aware Irene Ryan ((Granny)) was a Tony nominated actress and has an acting scholarship in her name?)
I loved the Minnesota Zoo Monorail. It was part of the zoo experience for me; whenever we visited the zoo, we almost always hopped on a car and took a spin. We knew when the best time of day was to go (right around lunchtime) and which car was best (the first one right behind the driver/guide – it was the quiet car which most people avoided).
The monorail was “retired” in 2013 – a nicer sounding word than “abandoned”, but that’s how it felt to me. For the last 10 years the rail remained a sad reminder every time we went. When the zoo announced that they were going to put up a walking trail on the old rail, I was skeptical. And when the scuttlebutt was that they would charge extra unless you were zoo members, I was even more cynical.
The Treetop Trail turned about to be free for everybody, not just members (we’ll see how long that lasts) and is built over the original rail. It’s lovely, especially all the places where it overlooks water; there is actually quite a few bodies of water at the zoo. On a cool day like we had on Sunday, it’s a beautiful hike – about a mile and a half – took us about half an hour (I was very slow as my feet hadn’t quite forgiven me yet for the State Fair). There isn’t much shade or cover so it might be a little less fun on a really hot day. Like the monorail, seeing any animals was a little hit and miss, although there was at least constant narration on the monorail. YA can’t always be counted on for scintillating conversation. The trail is about 8 feet across so we didn’t encounter to many pedestrian traffic jams. For those of us with a little acrophobia, the center feels safe and there are lots of spots that aren’t too terrifyingly high.
My final assessment is that the Treetop Trail is nice. If we can’t have the monorail, I suppose the elevated trail will do. I doubt that it will become a perennial favorite for me and it will be interesting to see how well maintained it is during the winter months (if it’s even open during the winter months). But I will recommend it at least once for anybody visiting the zoo.
I read with interest last week the news story of a company that wants to resurrect the wooly mammoth, perhaps in ND. A fairly intact wooly mammoth tusk with all sorts of usable DNA was found in a coal mine here in the state. The company wants to use it to recreate the mammoth.
What is quite surprising to me is that the ND government is paying this company $3,000,000 to consider locating the company to ND. This a pretty fiscally conservative state, and the public reaction to the Department of Commerce spending money on this venture hasn’t been exactly supportive.
The local climate is more conducive to mammoth well-being than Texas, where the company is located. I wonder what you do with a wooly mammoth once you have de-extincted it? Let it wander around the Badlands here? Can it be fenced in at all? Raise it for meat? Have mammoth rodeos? The company thinks they can have a viable mammoth by 2028. I am glad that I will be living in Minnesota by then. I would hate waking up to find a mammoth in my yard eating the tomatoes.
What would you do with a woolly mammoth ? What would you like to see de-extincted?
Some of you have expressed curiosity about my summer kitchen. When the weather gets too warm, I do everything I can here to stave off using the A/C. This summer, though, it’s been used more than usual.
There is a small stand on the patio, just outside the back door, and next to it a former potting table/cart (on wheels) that a neighbor left out on the boulevard when they moved.
You can see from the photos some of the appliances and their homes. The toaster oven, when I bring it out for baking, stays on the stand to the left. There’s a large ceramic tile on top of the potting cart surface.
I do most of my prep work in the kitchen, and then bring the food out to cook outside. The flaw in this system is that in “high summer”, the back patio is not in shade except in early morning, and late afternoon. In the sun on a hot day it’s just too hot to be out there at all – I need to rig up an awning of some kind. So this works best in early and late summer, like later this week when temps will be low 80s.
We tried several chilled soups this summer, one of them being this one:
Chilled Cantaloupe Mint Soup
1/2 Medium cantaloupe, cut into chunks and pureed in blender with several mint leaves
Add and mix well:
1-1/2 Tbsp honey (less if you used sweetened yogurt)
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 – 8 oz container plain yogurt (or sweetened yogurt and reduce the honey)
1/4 cup buttermilk , or 1/4 cup fruity white wine
Cover and chill 1 -2 hours before serving.
Garnish with fresh mint leaves, and float some blueberries if you have them.
Serves 2
What experiences have you had with outdoor cooking?
Have any good non-heated recipes to share?
Pretty sure I’ve mentioned that I’m reading biographies of the English monarchs in order. It’s been awhile since anything got added to the list and when I clicked on the tab of my spreadsheet, I realized why. Richard II is up next. I suppose there might be a few more controversial English kings than this one but it would be a close race. I don’t know all that much about Richard II but I do know that his death ended the reign of his line and that victors always write/rewrite history. So when I went looking for a biography, I tried to find something more recent and hopefully balanced.
I did watch the series “The Hollow Crown” a ways back but never read the book so when I found Within the Hollow Crown I thought I’d give it a shot. After two pages it went back to the library. I’d prefer to have a more straight-forward biography without the author writing whole swaths of what they believe the historical figure is thinking. If I had known this book was historical fiction, I wouldn’t have checked it out. Just not my cup of tea.
Now I’m back to a hunt for a balanced biography… or even if I can’t find one that doesn’t absolutely vilify Richard II, I’d at least like one that doesn’t try to fill in the mental gaps!
If you start a book, do you feel compelled to finish it? What was the last book you abandoned?
I don’t think of myself as clueless but I will admit that most of the time my brain is going 100 miles an hour and I’m not always as observant as I would wish.
Dog walking has returned to my schedule now that I’m RE-retired. We normally go for 45 minutes to an hour. I tend to wander around Tangletown or towards Lake Harriet; I like the neighborhoods and I don’t think Guinevere cares where we go as long as we go. So if you count all the walking we did during pandemic/furlough as well, we’ve probably trekked down Belmont Avenue 50 times in the last couple of years. But it wasn’t until last week that I noticed the ginkgo leaves on the sidewalks. The first one I noted, the second one I noted and after the third one, I looked up and down the street. With few exceptions, all the boulevard trees from 51st all the way to Minnehaha Parkway are ginkgos. And they are big, sturdy trees – obviously planted decades ago. Just lovely.
I did a little bit of research and found that the city has always controlled the boulevard trees but I can’t find anything on why this particular stretch was planted with ginkgos. The current policy, thanks to Dutch Elm disease and the Emerald Ash Borer, is to diversify trees on the boulevards so going forward I doubt any replacement trees on Belmont will be gingkos, although if it were my boulevard, I might petition hard to get a gingko replacement!
No rain to speak of around here yet. We had some mist a couple different days, and at least it’s cooler now and I like that.
I see some farmers chopping corn silage. I miss doing that; it was a fun job. It smelled good, it unloaded easy, and it was a very satisfying job. The loads were heavy and if it was muddy that made it harder with the small tractor I used to pull the wagons. For a lot of years, Dad ran the chopper and I pulled the wagons home to unload. There were a few years I did it myself because he was working or retired. Maybe that’s why I just feel like doing things myself so much these days. Yes, fall is coming; I have seen some corn crops really drying out and turning brown both because of reaching physical maturity or because they’re on lighter soils and it’s so dry, the crop is just done. (Especially noticeable in rocky ground; that dried out sooner).
Soybeans are starting to turn yellow and will soon be losing leaves. Not mine, but most or the better-looking crops. My weeds are flourishing in the bean fields. My sister made the comment that she was glad to see some weeds because that meant I wasn’t “drowning the fields with herbicides”. Hmm, Well. All those weeds will be going to seed and making that many more weeds next year. And if the beans dry out but the weeds haven’t frozen yet, that makes harvesting more difficult. Plus the nutrients they’re using that the crop should be using. We can be pro or con to herbicides and chemicals, but we have to be sure we’re looking at both sides of the situation. Crop rotation helps with weed control too, so these fields being corn next year will stop next year’s weed, but those seeds…you know they just hide out and wait.
A few weeks ago, I talked about planting winter rye as a cover crop. I haven’t planted yet because it won’t grow until it gets some moisture in the soil. It’s just hot, dry dirt right now. Chance of rain again Sunday, but that’s the only rain in the forecast. And if it gets too late in the season, is it worth planting? I don’t know yet.
The barn swallows have moved on. It sure is quiet with them gone. We miss them a lot.
Lots of acorns falling. And walnuts. We have one horse chestnut tree I planted from a seed that I picked up outside of our church when I was a kid. Mom says it’s a wonder it ever grew as I was always digging it up to see if it was growing yet. Well, boy, it has a lot of nuts on it now and it seems like 60% of them sprout in the spring. I’ve used the chestnuts for barnacles in plays. And I used to fill my Tonka dump truck with acorns. There are oak trees around the college theater and every morning as I walk in, I step on the acorns and have warm memories.
Mother-clucker still has her 13 chicks!
The John Deere Company stopped making moldboard plows this year. A moldboard plow is the traditional looking plow that you’d picture in your mind. The name ‘moldboard’ comes from the biggest metal curved piece that tips over the dirt. That fact it was metal is what made the man, John Deere, famous. From 1837 to 2023, the John Deere company made plows. It’s what started and made the company. It’s a big deal to let that go and there’s been some online debate over it. But that style of farming has changed. The benefit of the moldboard plow was how it could cut the plant roots and turn over that virgin soil. For a lot of years, that was the tool that was needed. These days, as we do more conservation tillage and have equipment that can plant into more plant residue, turning the soil over completely isn’t as critical. At the bottom of the moldboard was the ‘share’. The tip of that was the first piece to wear away from the soil contact. (Isaiah 2:4, “…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares…”)
Here’s a website with more about plows and plowing than you knew you needed to know:
I still have a 4 bottom plow at home. I used it when I took some Conservation Reserve ground out of the reserve program and put it back into cropland. Using a chisel plow on sod ground– (“sod” being alfalfa hay, grass, or pasture. Basically, any kind of grassland with the deep, tangled roots) — using a chisel plow, it takes about 2 years for the soil to really break down enough to be workable because it doesn’t turn it over completely or cut the roots so cleanly. I also use the moldboard plow when a neighbor wants part of his hayfield plowed up in order to reseed the next year.
Plowing makes a ‘furrow’ after the last row. That furrow is a trench about 5” deep and 16” wide that you put the tractor tire in for the next round. (If everything is lined up right). At the last round of the field, you try not to make such a deep furrow. That last round is called the ‘dead furrow’. You want to remember how you plowed this year, so the next year you can go the other direction, therefore moving the dead furrow to the other side of the field. Clyde, what would you like to say about plowing? At the end of the field, how did you turn with that? Did you have to lift it or roll it on the side?
Woman #1: We ended up having to rent a u-haul to get everything to college.
Woman #2: Makes you wish they would just go to college locally, doesn’t it?
Woman #1: Absolutely not. Two u-hauls would be OK with me!
Girl: He’s throwing berries at me.
Boy: I am not.
Girl: Are too.
Boy: Am not.
Field Worker: Wouldn’t you rather just be eating them instead of throwing them?
Boy: I’m only throwing the white ones.
And then awhile later…..
YA: What are all those scratches on your arm?
Me: From the raspberry brambles.
YA: Why don’t you wear long sleeves when you pick?
Me: Well, it’s hot and the scratches are kinda like badges of honor.
YA: SIGH (and biggest eye roll this side of the Mississippi)
What shall we do with all the fresh raspberries this year?
Trail Baboon 