Kayak Season

I won't be long before the lakes and bay freezes and the kayak season ends.

Of course - these kayaks might only be window-dressing.

You know.

For show...

Uber Auto

Found on what make of  auto?

A Volkswagen of course...



Another Awesome Peninsula Sunset

click on images to  enlarge

Wide Load

Not just a wide load - but a tall load too.

This is a section of the tower that will support a wind turbine assembly.

It is freakn' huge!

I see these things running down the highway all the time.

My guess is that this was manufactured at Broadwind's Manitowoc facility.

It's a good thing it's not a kayak.

Fall Flowers

Bottle Gentian - Gentiana adrewsii.

Also known as the closed gentian due to the closed flowers.  Nevertheless, bumblebees will force themselves into the flower by means of pushing-apart the petals. 

This is found in our flood plain.

click on images to enlarge

Fall Cranes

I went out for about three hours of bowhunting before nightfall yesterday.  The rains had finally ceased.

Saw one spike buck.  Never drew my bow.

The cranes were making a racket.  Flock after flock flying overhead.

click on image to enlarge

Friday Fish Fry

The Frau and I have been making a ritual of cleaning out the freezers in preparation for the fall hunting season.

Which means plenty of fresh water fish on Fridays.  Last weekend it was walleye and garden pommes frites.  Slaw too.

I recently went to Bed Bath and Beyond and purchased for myself a mandoline.  No - not a musical instrument - but a vegetable slicer.  I don't mind wielding a big Chicago Cutlery chef knife for chopping and dicing - but when you want the perfect slice (or fry) there's nothing like an OXO Mandoline.

Here's what you do.

Soak a double pair of thawed - giant - crappie fillets in an egg wash.

Then you run a double handful of washed and scrubbed garden Yukon Golds (skin-on) thru your mandoline.  Soak the perfectly uniform frites in salt water for a spell.  Drain and pat dry with  paper towels.  Toss with olive oil and sprinkle generously with Emeril's Original Essence.

Spread the frites on a cookie sheet and place in a 400 degree oven.

Toss a half-cup of flour with white pepper and season salt.  Dredge your crappie fillets in the flour and seasoning mixture.  Save the egg wash as you are not finished yet.

Dump some Panko bread crumbs in a bowl.  Dip your floured/seasoned fillets in the egg wash and toss them with the Panko crumbs until coated.  Place on a platter in the fridge to set.

Check your oven to see how the frites are doing.  As they begin to brown give them a toss with a spatula.

Heat some canola oil in a fry pan  When very hot gently place your fish fillets in the pan.

Turn once when golden brown.

Serve-up the crappie and frites with a cup of Pierre's sweet corn nibblets from the freezer. 

click on images to enlarge

Garnish with fresh lemon and tartar sauce.

I recommend a white wine or a hoppy Pilsner as an accompaniment.

Yum!

More Sunshine

Been stoking the wood burner during the evenings.

With fall in the air you cannot have enough sunflower shots to remind you of the warm sunny days of summer.

Bird food on the stalk...

click on image to enlarge

A Taxing Issue

Americans filed 140.5 million 1040s in 2009.  Of those returns - 81.9 million Americans (58%) paid taxes totalling $866 billion.

58.6 million of those tax returns (42%) paid no tax.  More than two-fifth of America's tax-filers paid nothing.  Nada. Zilch.

Source:  Internal Revenue Service

Nectar Feeding

This swallowtail has its head buried in the flower to feed-upon the nectar.

It has been an outstanding season for  butterflies.

What was different?

click on image to enlarge

Scorched

Had the furnace checked by the local contractor before the major heating season.  

Also had the AC checked while they were here.

We haven't used the AC for quite awhile but the technician pointed-out that since we last used it we have had a major melt-down.

Damn critters nibbling on the wires...

Autumn Finches



The goldfinches have almost lost all of their summer gold.

They're sporting  their dull winter plumage.

Amazing at how quickly this has happened.  Have the local 'canary-yellow' birds vamoosed for parts south and northern bird replaced them?

click on image to enlarge

Better Wear a Hardhat

Just in case you haven't already enough to worry about - Add this to your list of anxieties.

You have a 1 in 3200 chance of being struck by a falling satellite.

Mama and the Twins

Been seeing this family unit pretty regularly.  Also another doe and her slightly younger twins. 

I have mixed feelings about deer in large enough numbers that eat my trees.

Nevertheless, they are fun to see and are mighty tasty!

click on images to enlarge

Chill in the Air

Over night low of 35 degrees. There is more than a hint of autumn in the air.  My tomato plants are looking a little wilted but are hanging-tough.


Laid-in two cords of firewood last weekend so it's nice to be sipping a steaming cuppa joe and stoke the wood burner while I am working this morning.

Sunshine

Earlier this year I found a collection of sunflower seeds that had expired a long time ago.

I figured - what the heck - plant them and see if they'll germinate.

Well, they did.

They're doing just fine.  As a matter of fact they are huge!   Seven to eight feet tall.  

I'm going to leave them standing for the birds.  These seeds should make a nice snack.

click on image to enlarge

Achoo!

Sneezeweed - Helenium autumnale. 

A member of the Aster family this native perennial is found in wet meadows, prairies and along streams.

How did it get is name?

Historically, its dried leaves were used as snuff.

click on image to enlarge

A Walk Down Memory Lane

On this date in history - only three short years ago - the US Treasury refused to bail-out Lehman Brothers.  After 158 years in business Lehman filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 15, 2008.  At the time of the filing it was the largest bankruptcy in US history.

Source - Financial Times

The Hazards of Canning Vegetables

Canning your own vegetables is not without its risks.

Food-borne illness is only one risk.

Take for instance the random exploding jar.

Every so often a jar in the canner will unexpectedly self-destruct.

Whether it is due to a flaw, glass fatigue or internal pressure build-up is hard to say.

All the better to keep a lid on your canner to avoid the launching of molten tomatoes or hot, hurtling pickles about the kitchen.

Then there is the matter of lifting the jars from the canner with a jar grabber to transfer them to the counter-top so that they can cool.

This is like removing the detonation device from a bomb.  One slip and splat.  Glass shards, vegetable napalm and screaming hot juice all over the floor.

I work in bare feet and shorts so this concerns me.

Observe the two jars. The jar on the left is a modern Ball jar. The jar on the right is an old-school model obtained at a yard sale.  If you look closely the jar on the right has a much more robust ring on its neck.  It is under this ring where you position your jar grabber to lift.  Alas, the modern jar has a smaller diameter ring to grab under. With less shelf to fit your grabber beneath the greater the risk of dropping a jar.

I suspect that the smaller ring saves glass thereby making the modern jar more profitable.

That doesn't make it safer though.

More Deer

Pictures taken under low-light conditions.

Nice six-pointer has started to move through the vicinity

Charlie Hustle

Today marks the 26th anniversary of Pete Rose breaking Ty Cobb's all-time career hit record. 

"Charlie Hustle" Rose made his 4,192nd base hit on September 11, 1985.

Rose retired in 1986 following a career spanning 24 years and 4,256 hits.

Rose later admitted that he had gambled on baseball thereby making him ineligible for induction to The Baseball Hall of Fame.  Today he remains the only living member of the ineligible list.

Swamp Gas

Let the dogs out the other night to do their business when all of a sudden they started barking.

Crazy in the head - crazy-dog barking.

We were thinking they had a bad case of the haints but that wasn't the case.

They were spooked by the swamp gas down in the low-laying area near the creek.

Where everyone knows that The Creature lurks...

You can click on the picture to enlarge but it has been photoshopped to brighten it for the low light conditions.

A Perfect Cumulonimbus

We find it entertaining to sit on the porch and watch a big-old thunderstorm develop or roll-in.  Depending on the wind direction all you have to do is shift your chair to the lee side of the porch to watch the events unfold without getting wet.

A couple of weeks ago we watched this storm cell advance westward to the north.  It was so large that the weather radar was tracking it across the bay in the UP and northeast Wisconsin.  A super cell.

click on image to enlarge

This is a very mature thunderstorm with its easily identifiable anvil shape.  The cloud is formed by warm air rising until it cannot rise any further creating the giant cumulonimbus formation.  Water in this cloud is actually frozen from the extreme low temperatures of high altitude - as it falls it melts to become rain.  If the updraft is powerful enough the frozen moisture will fall as hail.

The sun stayed out for us.  And all the action for this storm was north of the bay. 

This was very cool as you do not get to witness cumulonimbus in such a perfect form very often.

Giant Dills

Dill pickles on the agenda too.  Big dills too.

Start with sink full of perfectly-sized pickle cukes destined to become giant dill spears.

Cut your cukes in fourths lengthwise, stuff in quart jars spiked with garlic, dill and other spices.

Add hot brine and process in the canner for thirty minutes.

Imagine one  of these babies in your Bloody Mary made from fresh garden tomatoes. 

Ouch!

Since the first of the month the routine for morning dog walks is to grab the shell vest and my trusty 12 ga. Browning auto loader and a handful of dove loads.

I figure the little blond dog (unfazed by the report of a shotgun) can learn from the big black dog what flush, fetch and retrieve is.

Yeah - I know you don't flush doves but wing shooting is wing shooting and before too long we'll have woodcock and grouse to add to the list.

What's with the thumb and that nasty rotten spot?

The first time out I got my thumb caught between the bolt and the breech.  Never put your thumb in the receiver when releasing the bolt.

A thousand times I have handled this gun and never made this mistake.

Sheesh....

The Deer Camp Guys Hatch a Plot

Last month Braumeister, New Guy and I did some deer camp prep.  We fixed some stands and overseeeded and fertilized  the clover patches in the trails.

We also planted three food plots from scratch.  Disced the soil.

Broadcast fertilizer, forage rape and turnip in the strip above.

Drove over it with the tractor for good seed/soil contact.  The plot above is a couple of clovers, rye and some brassicas.

Forage rape, turnip and buck forage oats in this large plot.  As you can see they're doing rather nicely.

click on images to enlarge

Super Bowl Salsa

I have been canning up a storm lately.  Tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, green beans up the yazoo.

Just this last weekend I picked fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes.  An entire sink-full!

What to do? 

Make salsa.

Using the tomatoes as my base I blanched, skinned, cored and seeded the fruits.  There were green peppers from the kitchen garden too.

And sweet onion, carrots, garlic and secret spices.  Even a couple of jalapenos from the grocery.

Ordinarily the salsa-making is a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants affair which ceases when the pot is full. Traditionally - I call this garbage salsa - a little bit of everything from the garden. 

Since it is my prediction that the glorious Green Bay packers will return to the Super Bowl - I now call this Super Bowl Salsa.

Eight glorious quarts on hand for this winter - including deer camp.

Harvest Time

It's a good day when you can harvest a boatload of potatoes and onions.

And it's a better day when you are a Labrador retriever and the Frau shares fresh green beans with you.

Things are certainly winding-down.The nights are noticeably cooler.  The days shorter.  The harvest coming-in.

The onions will be cured in the machine shed and the spuds will go into cold storage.  Most of the spuds are going to the food pantry so long term storage for them is not an issue.

I ran out of quart canning jars this weekend and the tomatoes are still coming-in.

Yikes!

Death at the Park Bench Stand

There is a slogan here at The Platz that goes like this:  Door County - Where the strong survive and the weak are killed and eaten.

Sure, that's meant to be snarky but it's also true.

What follows is proof positive that if you leave a trail camera out for a long enough period of time you just might capture something really interesting.  Check-out this sequence of photos retrieved last weekend..

First, a bunny is pounced-upon by an owl.  The owl  subsequently dines upon the deceased rabbit.

Then a turkey vulture stops over the pick at what remains.  

A few days later the dogs find the remnants of fur left on the ground and determine it is worth rolling-in...

click on images to enlarge

Park Bench Stand

More deer cruising through in the vicinity of the Park Bench Stand.

click on images to enlarge

I wonder if they are aware that bow season opens in only a couple of weeks...

Park Bench Stand

There's a trail camera located north of the creek and just west of the Park Bench Stand (so-named by the fellas that rebuilt it to include a couple of park-like benches).

Anyway there's a great deal of critter action going-on over there.

The resident fork horn buck.

Check back for more deer tomorrow followed by something special.

click on image to enlarge

Bee Balm

Wild  bergamot - Monarda fistulosa - also called Horsemint or  Bee Balm.

These lavender flowers attract many insects.

Commonly used to brew a minty tea in home cures or folk medicine over the centuries this plant's oils are an essential ingredient in Earl Grey tea.

click on image to enlarge