Thursday, June 30, 2022

June 30 and Strawberries

It's the end of the month so this is the end of clothes hanging on the line photos. It was fun to revisit some of my photos and remember  what I did to get the shot.  Sometimes a little trespassing was happening and sometimes some hiding in bushes but mostly not.


The end of June also marks the almost end of strawberry season.  There are some pickings left but it's more work now.  I think we will go picking  one more time for one more pie.
 
This is almost exclusively what we do with our berries.  We aren't jam people, it can take us a whole year to eat one jar of jam so I don't bother making it, but accept a gifted jar once in awhile.

Yesterday I read Friend Laurie's post and started thinking of the many different ways we would rather eat strawberries.  When we were sitting in her kitchen this morning we clarified things a little. It just goes to show ya there is a different way to do everything and we all do what we were raised doing -  most of the time. This brought me to thinking of  "would you rather."  We used to  have conversations that started this way when the kids were younger and there always was some thinking in the replies.  Lots of wishful thinking. 


After reading Laurie's post I got to thinking, WE cut the berries, sugar them a LITTLE and wait for them to juice a tiny bit  to put on ice cream. WE don't eat  strawberry shortcake with biscuits, it's pound cake for us. In fact I can't even remember when we've last had strawberry shortcake because this pie has taken over our strawberry life.  WE don't munch the berries to partial mush and then sugar them and put them on a biscuit because that just creates soggy bread.  I have a physical reaction to soggy bread ( no French toast or bread pudding in this house.) Laurie said it's a sacrilege to put ice cream on pound cake and then top with strawberries. For her, it's absolutely no ice cream and only whipped cream is allowed.  Whipped cream is the fattening part, right? So it's ice cream for us.

We laughed about the rights and wrongs of strawberries  but one thing we agreed on, strawberry season in Michigan is just too short.  Of course we have to gorge on them. 

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Monday, June 27, 2022

June 27 and Churn Dash


As you can see by the clothes on this line, it's summer here.  It's warm and sometimes hot, it's sunny and sometimes not, it's not very rainy but we've had some.  It's also not a time that I'm inside much even if being outside just means sitting on the porch reading the afternoon away.  We spend just too much time inside in Michigan so when the windows are open and the sun is warm I'm not going to be  sitting inside sewing.   So when Donna tossed out the churn dash SAL I was very reluctant.  She is in the midst of winter, turning on the heat and closing the windows and stitching.  She is also very convincing. She doesn't easily take no for an answer. So I agreed.  I mean if  these peeps are my stitching group now I will do what I can to play along.

BUT when it's very steamy and we turn on the air conditioner (temperature has to be 90 degrees before we do that) I DO come inside.  So. Last week when we had those days I hunkered down with my stash and cut churn dashes and then did a blitz with the machine and sewed them ALL together. 

I now have all 32 of them done. So I suppose that makes me ahead of deadline and able to wait a bit for another couple of very steamy  days to put them together and it gives me time to think of sashing.  

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Saturday, June 25, 2022

Friday, June 24, 2022

Thursday, June 23, 2022

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

June 21 and Fossil Hunting


 

 

 

I don't even know where to start with this one

Last weekend was Father's Day here and we spent the weekend at our daughter and son-in-law's cottage up north.   Now, if you're from Michigan you have the advantage of having a map of the state in our hand.  Michigan is shaped like a mitten so when we  tell someone where we live or where we  vacationed or went to college or whatever we hold up our hand and point to the  general location.  OK, for this, hold up your left hand with the  palm showing outward.  

The cottage is just above the knuckle on your ring finger.  The little finger and ring finger  are preferred, premier vacation locations here. Spread those  two fingers apart a bit and you create some of the most beautiful  bays.  

SIL is a geologist.   He wanted to go drumlin hunting.  That means he was looking for the landforms the glaciers left hundreds of millions of years ago.  These two fingers are prime drumlin locations for Michigan.  The weekend before he took the family and  found a prime location for these land forms clearly  cut in half for the highway and in the distance planted now with cherry trees.  Where the drumlins were cut through you can clearly see it if you understand what you're seeing.  I sure do now.

So, the other thing about this area in the state is it's a prime location for finding Petoskey stones.  These stones are fossilized coral from when Michigan wasn't even IN Michigan hundreds of millions ago.  The glaciers, the pressure, the life forms, all contributed to fossilizing these coral into stones. They are from the Devonian period, considered the Age of Fishes  because everything was pretty much just fish and coral and the first seed bearing plants where there was land and  ammonites, trilobites, brachiopods populated the coral reefs.  Today you can find people walking bent in half along along Lake Michigan's shoreline hunting for Petoskey stones in the water.  They're easy to SEE in the water because you can see the design but they aren't easy to FIND.  You will pay a lot in gift shops for one because they are Michigan's State Stone. Everybody wants one to take home with them and  bragging rights that they found them on the shore.  I sent one to Jenny's grand daughter once.

Well, a weekend ago as SIL, daughter and both grand and their friends got out of the car along the side of the road and wandered up the hill of the cut in half drumlin they were finding Petoskey stones the size of your hand and bigger and smaller  all over the place. They were finding them on what used to be Devonian time shores.  Ancient.  And, holy cow, other fossils, too.  It was, to his eye, like picking up confetti.  

So, Saturday he took PH and I  along and we hunted, too.

                        Honestly, they were just laying there on this exposed cut of the drumlin calling out.

                                                           You can see the steepness.

Adelaide found  one lying on the ground but  the more she dug the bigger the fossil got and she finally had to call her dad over to help.  She had the find of the day.  It was huge and after we washed it off at home we saw  how big the coral area was plus the number of  other fossils stuck in this ancient piece of mud.
                                                                         Even I  found some!! 

 PH had his hands full, we all did.  You can see, we just pulled off the highway along the side of the road and started picking up fossils.  PH rivaled Adelaide for the find of the day. He found, and I still don't know how he knew to pick it up, a fossilized wave. When I looked at it I just saw a stone. But SIL was so excited  and showed us what to look at and, yup, there is was, a wave. A stone wave. A wave turned to stone.

I'm not going to show lots of  photos of our finds because honestly, they look like rocks until your eye "sees" it.  Elizabeth has the eye.  She just sees them and other  fossils. Mom had to use all of her names to call her down from the top of the hill when it was time to go.  For her it was like picking up candy from the street during a parade. Trick or Treating without the trick.

                                        This was Adelaide's huge rock after it was rinsed off at home.
At the upper left you can clearly see the  coral that we call Petoskey Stone .
                          Toward the bottom the other corals and semi-shelled critters fossilized.

SIL showed me how to polish the stone with four different grades of sand papers and here he is polishing it at the end with felt and polish.

         To get to this.  I can't even tell you what you'd pay in a shop for a Petoskey Stone this size.   

When we left the drumlin we went to a lakeside park and sure enough, there were people bent in half walking the shore searching for what we had  buckets full of in the trunk of the car. 

I've always said when you go to the beach with  Son in Law you don't sit on a blanket with a book.  

You learn. 





Monday, June 20, 2022

Sunday, June 19, 2022

Saturday, June 18, 2022

Friday, June 17, 2022

Thursday, June 16, 2022

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Monday, June 13, 2022

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Saturday, June 11, 2022

Friday, June 10, 2022

June 10 and Lemonade


 

 

Wednesday night we traveled to the other side of the state to see our Ceci in her dance recital.  I mentioned at Christmas the Christmas Extravaganza this studio presents is quite professional, the sound, staging, lighting is all very impressive but compared to their annual recitals (there are so many dancers there are five different programs  over four days.  Your child/student dances at one of them) the Christmas one was a delight but nothing compared to the no-holds-barred end of year  program recitals.  Our Ceci was in four  different dances. 

This photo is grainy because I took it from far away in a dark auditorium but you get the idea. Ceci loves to dance, it's her thing and I was so impressed with her poise.  That's not something you tend to notice when the kids are running around the yard.

But this was a different night for everyone.  Almost through the first half of the show the lights went out. The stage went black, the music stopped, the auditorium had just emergency exits lighted.  Yet, YET on stage the group that was performing went on. We could barely see their legs moving, their arms wide as they finished their dance in darkness and silence.

The studio owners came on stage and said there was a power outage, please stay seated and we would be told what happened soon as they knew.  And that's what happened.  They tried to contact DTE, the energy company but couldn't get through.  Someone in the audience worked for DTE and  they knew who to call and did. We were informed. a car hit a pole.

And then this happened.  We were asked to hold our phones up, turn on the flashlight and a call was out for anyone who might want to sing a song.  And someone did.  And then, oh, my God,  up onto the stage climbed a 3 1/2 year old little girl to sing. Solo (that means all by her little self.)  She sang The Wheels on the Bus and after the first verse the entire audience was singing The Wheels on the Bus with her, phones giving her her spotlight.  I knew then we were in the company of professionals. 

Somehow the dance school kept everyone in the building, in their seats, happy.  No one complained, no one left, no one threatened this evening for our kids.  The dancers were all backstage, the littles being minded by the biggers, no tears, no panic. 

After maybe, maybe 30 minutes a few auxiliary lights lit the stage but the sound system still didn't work. So, something that looked like a boom box was hooked up to a microphone and the show went on. Those kids came out onto a semi lit stage dancing to their music to the roar of applause for their professionalism.   The show does indeed go on.

This was not the recital the Central City Dance studio planned but they proved last night they are indeed a class act and I am so glad our Ceci is in their hands.

Oh, and  exactly two hours after the lights went out, we stood to leave the lights came on.



Thursday, June 9, 2022

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Monday, June 6, 2022

Sunday, June 5, 2022

Saturday, June 4, 2022

Friday, June 3, 2022

A Good Day

 Today Friend Laurie and I went to Shipshewana. "Shipsy " is a destination for quilters and I try to stay away now that I'm not buying fabric anymore. In my  attempt to use what I have it's just not safe to go to a place like Lolly's or Yoder's or any other fabric store, especially there. But today I did. Truly if I was going to look for anything it was something to use as a background for the churn dash stitch along Donna convinced me to join. I found that. And a few other bits. Self control was the name of the game.

Laurie and I stopped at food places, too. Oh, my, I bought more in the bulk food places than I did fabric! 

I never carry a purse anymore but this day I wore slacks that didn't have pockets so I HAD to take something.  I told Laurie I  won this bag at retreat.  Barb made it and I won it and it is so cheery it was a good take along today. I LOVE it. When Barb made it she texted a picture to Sally and me and I flipped. What luck that I won it a couple of months later.  Laurie took my picture to document I was carrying the bag, any bag, AND paying for my fabric(s).  Yes, I did buy but was pretty darned controlled about it.

 

There seems to be a lot of photos on IG and FB showing a photo of the day.  Last night I thought about what I could post one photo of per day. I don't do enough IG to remember and never post on FB so if I were going to  try it it will have to be a blog thing. And since I can't get PH to brake for antiques or ice cream he will, with much grumbling, stop so I can take photos of clothes hanging on a line. It's June. Warm enough to hang clothes and today was plenty windy and warm enough to dry them.  So. Since we were driving through Amish country and I  "encouraged" Laurie to stop a couple of times ( it could have been lots more than a couple of times ) I'll   reminisce some of my favorites each day. I hope I remember to do it.

These are for the first three days of June.

                                                                           Amish dresses
                                           It was a very windy day today but perfect for line drying

                        This one was from a year ago but still Amish. And ingenious in design.