Gray-headed Coneflower

Ratibida pinnata.  Commonly called the yellow coneflower this native plant is also a member of the aster family.  

And last week it has been spotted blooming all over the dang place.

What a year for the forbs.  Fantastic.

 click on image to enlarge

Sometimes called the Gray-headed Mexican hat this is a tall plant identified by its showy and droopy yellow flower petals. Beloved by the birds, bees and butterflies.  But mostly the bees.

Roadside Curiosity

Don't know the backstory.

Spotted recently on Washington Island...

Friday Music

Refreshingly nice tune from Houston songwriter Robert Ellis - Drivin'

You can learn more about him here.


 

Cathouse

And you thought a cathouse was a house of ill-repute.

After the grand kids returned home Oma and Opa arranged to have a stash of cheese curds, cheese spread and Maplewood Meats summer sausage shipped to the deep south courtesy of Renard's Cheese.  

You cannot obtain cheese curds anywhere on the gulf coast.  Fresh oysters and shrimp yes.  Curds no.  Believe me.

So as to never underestimate the creativity of your better-than-average five-year-old here is how you repurpose the insulated shipping cooler.

Igloo cat house.

click on image to enlarge

You can learn more about Renard's Cheese and Maplewood Meats by clicking on the hot links.

Peninsula businesses rock! 

Dog Patch

At the end of the day there is hardly anything better than setting on the porch with your four-legged girls and enjoying a frosty adult beverage.

Unsalted peanuts in the the shell for the girls.

Labs will do anything for peanuts.

Why Trump Fails the Commander in Chief Test

In case you're looking for another reason (to add to a growing list of reasons) to vote for just about anybody else but Donald Trump there is this:

Throughout the Cold War and during much of the post-9/11 period, Republicans have generally enjoyed an advantage with the electorate in the area of national security. Yet at a time when threats to America are increasing substantially, the Republicans have inexplicably chosen as their nominee someone with less national security experience than any candidate since the 1940s. Indeed, the gap in national security qualifications between the two major party candidates is greater than at any time since 1952, when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower ran against Adlai Stevenson.

Michael Vickers has served under six presidents - four Republicans and two Democrats - as a Green Beret, CIA operations officer and senior national security official.  Regardless of your political persuasion Vickers lays out a cogent critique of Trump.

You can read the article in its entirety here.

Hanger Queen

Last weekend I got The Beast running.

That's my affectionate name for the 1968 Pontiac that has been taking-up space in the garage.  Last year I never had it out once.  Which is sad because it truly is a head-turner of a vehicle. 

All three hundred and fifty cubic inches of its gas-guzzling glory.  A red convertible with fuzzy dice swinging from the rear view mirror does attract a lot of attention.

And it cleans-up nicely.  

 click on the red car to enlarge

And we drove down to Rosiere on the county line to have a frosty beer and poke our finger in Lee's eye.

When The Beast lived with me in the Big City it was driven all of the time.  I would drive it to the day job when the weather was nice.  I drove it in the Wauwatosa Independence Day Parade with my Kiwanis pals every summer.  Because it was kept in my pop's garage he would drive it when I wasn't using it.  We have been acquainted since I purchased her in 1987.  As the second owner we have enjoyed a long and enduring relationship. Alas, like an old aircraft gathering dust in the hanger lately it's just been taking-up space.  After I get some minor tune-up things complete I'm putting this piece of Detroit muscle car glory up for sale.

I may regret it - but it deserves to be driven.

How to Make Pickled Beets

Last week I pulled-up my pea plants.  They were on the down-side of producing and the heat finished them-off. On Sunday I also picked the first of the beets.  Because I sowed them at three intervals a couple of weeks apart we'll be picking them for awhile.

When my dad was alive he and I raised beets in the garden and he could be counted-upon to help with their care and nurturing and finally the pickling.  Roasted beets are good - pickled beets are better.  Dad adored pickled beets.  Come to think of it all of the old timers in the family like pickled beets.  Me too.
 
Save out the tender tops from your smaller beets and give them a soak in cold water to remove any grit. 

You'll be glad you did.

click on images to enlarge

Sautéed beet tops are not only delicious - they're chock-full of vitamins and minerals. 
Anyway, in the early days of the Door County garden I suffered a stretch of three years that my beets failed.  They either germinated and died or never germinated.  Since 2012 beets have been both reliable and abundant. As I mentioned above sowing your crop at regular intervals results in continued production.

If you like pickled veggies here's a step-by-step guide to pickling your own beets.  They're a terrific side during the holidays and awesome on a toasted peanut butter sammich.
Enjoy!
_________________________________________________________________________
Pickled Beets
A bunch of garden beets
2 medium garden onions – peeled and sliced
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 sticks cinnamon
1 T whole allspice
1 ½ t kosher salt
3 ½ cups apple cider vinegar
1 ½ cups water
Hose-off your beets on the grass. 

Trim-off the tops leaving a couple of inches of stem and the tap root. Reserve the tops from the smaller beets for sautéing greens.  Soak the beets in a sink-full of cold water to remove the remaining grit. Transfer them to a pot of boiling water and cook 30-40 minutes until tender. Add your beets to the pot beginning with the largest first.  Periodically add more progressing from larger to smallest. This way they will all be cooked-thru at the same time. Transfer the cooked beets to a sink-full of cold water to cool. 

Combine everything else except the onions in a non-reactive pot and bring the brine to a boil. Simmer 15 minutes. Returning to the sink slice-off the beet tops and tap roots allowing the skin to slip-off. Set aside your whole beets. Keeping the residue of beet tops, skins and roots in the sink makes clean-up a snap. 

Slice the beets and pack into pint jars. Apportion the raw onion uniformly among your jars. Remove the cinnamon from the pot and ladle the hot brine over beets leaving 1/4 inch of headspace. Add lids and rings and process pints 30 minutes in boiling water bath.
I doubled the recipe and ended-up with nine pints.  There was enough brine for a dozen.

_________________________________________________________________________
Helpful tips- Use non-reactive cookware. When canning - cleanliness is right up there with Godliness. A dishwasher will sterilize your jars. Boil water in a Pyrex measuring cup for sterilizing your lids. Make sure your lids have 'popped' before storing in your root cellar.

Spinach, feta, cherry, almond salad.

Garden spinach and Door County cherries.

 

Dang Technology

The blog is down temporarily due to technical difficulties.

Who Was Joe Pye and What's With His Weed?

Meet Eupatorium maculatum - commonly known as Joe-Pye Weed.

This stuff grows all over around here - not a single plant introduced by us.  A member of the aster family it is a native plant.  Like blue vervain it also likes wet feet and you can find it here in the lower areas of topography and along the creek banks.

Butterflies love this plant and if you could successfully propagate it - it would make for a showy addition to your home garden.

Joe Pye?

Some say he was a native American medicine man from Salem, Massachusetts who earned fame and fortune curing colonial settlers of typhus with his eponymous herb.  There are other theories as well.  You can learn more about the story of Joe Pye and his weed here.

Blue Vervain

Aside from the abundance of Baltimore orioles around here is the abundance of flowers bursting-forth in the prairie planting north of the house.  Its genus category - Verbena - is Latin for 'sacred plant' likely harking back to the past when this plant may have been used for purported medicinal properties.

click on the flowers to enlarge

Coming online in the past two weeks is Verbena hastata - Blue Vervain - a native plant with a long stem and a bright blue flower spike that blooms from the bottom-up.  Big, giant clumps of them like in the photo above.

This plant likes wet feet and wet feet we have around here what with the abundant precipitation.The bees like this flower for its nectar. 

Stay tuned as more native plants begin to show-off their colorful flowers.

Friday Music

Number 1 in the charts in October 1965 was this song by the McCoys.

Coincidentally,  this tune happens to be closely associated with Ohio State University after the marching band began playing it at football games back in the 1960s.  To this day  it is tradition to play the song before the start of the fourth quarter of every Buckeye game.

 

Midnight Munchies

Someone left evidence of an overnight foray into my garden to satisfy a case of the midnight munchies.

 click image to enlarge

Judging from a forensic analysis of the tracks left behind as evidence I know who it is.

And this would constitute a capital offense.   

Grrr...

Trail Camerea Maintenance

click the cam to enlarge

Moultrie trail camera getting a fresh SD card, replacement batteries and a lens cleaning.

Good to go.

Battery life is excellent - the set replaced were installed early last winter.

Ghost Deer

Trail camera photo from a couple of weeks ago of a deer in low light conditions.

click image to enlarge

Infrared technology sure makes an ethereal result.

Ghost deer.

Excavator

Meet Ictidomys tridecemlineatus. 

Sometimes called the striped gopher, leopard ground squirrel, squinney, or the leopard-spermophile back in the day this is the thirteen lined ground squirrel.  And a family of them has decided to move in and build a home in the front yard.

That would be until blonde dog discovered one of the tunnels and excavated it. 

 

Blonde dog is now relentlessly vigilant from her OP on the porch.  Raising the alarm when one of these ground squirrels scurries into sight.

Making America Great Again

I know this guy who would tell you that if Donald Trump is elected president we will no longer have to make accommodations for immigrant groups.

 click on the warning sign to enlarge

 He's really pissed-off that anyone should be allowed to come here without being fluent in the English language.

"Build the wall, round-up and deport the illegals, ban the Muslims, make the Muslims here register with the government - and Make America Great Again" (he says).  And he actually believes this is possible.  True believer.  Drinker of the Kool Aid.

Sheesh. 

Visualize This

Reagan negotiated with the Soviet Union, he also stood up to Russian aggression in Europe and defended democratic principles abroad.

Visualize Paul Manafort as White House Chief of Staff.

The Garden Chronicles

Garden one month apart.

June 19th

July 16th

click on images to enlarge

Peas are done.  Harvesting steady crops of lettuces and spinach.  Pumpkins, potatoes and onions are doing well.  Same for the beets, green beans, tomatoes, sweet peppers and pickles.  Broccoli has been replaced.

 Vive le Jardin Magnifique!

Oriole Nation

 click on the fledglings to enlarge

Today we opened the tenth container of grape jelly for the burgeoning Baltimore oriole population around here. I'm serious.  A huge population of orioles - possible the largest ever.  We've got feeders on three side of the house and they require cleaning and replenishment at least daily - sometimes twice a day.

Having raised the one brood per year this year's newborns have fledged and instead of perching on a feeder and demanding that mom or dad feed them they're now coming to the feeders on their own to help themselves to generic grape jelly and orange halves.

These birds are prone to returning to the same area year after year.  My theory is that the bumper crop of birds that is eating us out of house and home is a consequence of the concierge service they've been receiving on our behalf over the years. 

The oriole is among the last to arrive around here - early to mid May - and the first to leave.  By September they'll be gone. And when they're gone we'll miss the pretty song and bold flash of orange until the following spring.

The Garden Chronicles

click on image to enlarge

Nice looking Romaine lettuce eh?

From garden to table is a nice situation to be in.  Made a big, old chicken Caesar salad for dinner the other night.  Amazingly fresh and tasty lettuce.  Organic too.

Vive le Jardin Magnifique!

Sunset

Another decent peninsular sunset tonight...

 

Supper Club

End of the work day beer on the porch with my girls.  A supper Club from Capital Brewery, Co.  Middleton, WI

Not bad beer.

Cheers!

Flood!

If you've been paying attention to news accounts northern Wisconsin was hammered with record rains last Sunday evening and early Monday morning.  About six inches fell here at The Platz within a relatively short period of time.  My rain gauge was filled to the brim - never happened in memory.

In any event - yesterday the girls and I made our circuit of the trail cameras to swap-out memory cards and replace batteries as needed.

Of note was the amount of water still on the landscape.  Standing water everywhere in the trails - so trail maintence is going to be on hold for a spell until things dry-out sufficiently to get the tractor and mower out without getting mired and stuck.  And Silver Creek was running a full-bore - largely a spring phenomena - a rare occurance in mid-July.  All of this almost a week following the great monsoon.

Then there was this: 

 click on images to enlarge

The waters have since receded with only the flattened turf as evidence of the extent the creek overflowed its banks seeking a way down stream.   

From a trail camera north of the creek was this dramatic proof of the great flood of 2016.  This matches the locating in the first photo above...

Meet the Cranes

The cranes that arrived early this spruing when the pond was still frozen and snow upon the ground have successfully fledged a pair of young ones - colts they are called.

This large birds have also been particularly cagey - not showing themselves on a regular basis but they have shown-up on a trail camera from time to time. 

Speaking of which - patience and persistence is sometimes rewarded.

Like this interesting sequence of photos here.

Adult crane enters the field of view from stage left.  Followed by a couple of colts.  While all the while a red wing blackbird enters the field of view and alights on the back of the first youngster.

 click on images to enlarge

That are the odds?

The Garden Chronicles

Peas are done!

Got three very nice pickings of English peas including the last picking today.

Pulled-up the vines, cleaned and folded-up the fence and shucked peas over a frosty beer on the porch.

The girls always enjoy the shucking of the peas since they get the errants ones that hit the deck and any pods that are not fully developed.

click on image to enlarge

Labs like their vegetables.

Vive le Jardin Magnifique!

Friday Music

A Memphis pop rock band dating to 1963 the Box Tops greatest hit was The Letter.  Composed by Wayne Carson this was the number one hit in 1967.

 

How to Make a Proper Pudgie Pie

A few days ago I turned my hand at a task and tool that has grown dusty with age - a Pudgie Pie maker acquired in a campground store from my camping days of yore.  That rhymes doesn't it?

In any event the art and science of making a proper pudgie pie is firstly to have a pie device - a hinged clam shell tool with long handles.  

They're not very expensive, readily available and considering I've had mine for somewhere around three decades (give or take) they're pretty durable and very versatile.

Spread butter on a couple of slices of cheap white bread, slap a slice of cheese between the slices, clamp the pie maker around the sandwich (butter-side out), thrust it into your campfire and in short order you will have a fabulous toasted cheese sandwich.

click on images to enlarge

Care for something different?  Mozzarella cheese and pizza sauce.  Or pre-cooked taco meat and cheese.  How about ham and egg?  Raisin bread with cream cheese?  If you're avoiding butter use nonstick cooking spray.  

Short on inspiration?  If you Google 'pudgie pie recipes' you will get 44,400 hits in .52 seconds.

If you are disinclined to camp in the great outdoors use your BBQ kettle or gas grill.  If you have a gas range in your kitchen you can do this on your stove top.

We experimented with dessert pies this week and met with some success with the following combinations:

• Wonder Bread, strawberries and milk chocolate

• Wonder Bread, peanut butter and Nutella.

• Angel food cake and strawberries

• Angel food cake, Nutella and strawberries.

• Wonder Bread, honey crisp apple (cinnamon and sugar) and Brach's caramel.

The possibilities are endless. We're thinking blueberries and cream cheese need to be involved next time.