Showing posts with label The Frau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Frau. Show all posts

Thursday, August 7, 2025

Cordless

This isn't some sort of new-fangled kitchen appliance and it isn't even mine - although I suppose I'll be allowed to use it from time-to-time.

Cordless, battery-powered, 12 inch chainsaw by DeWalt. 

It is for The Frau.  Everyone's wife should have one... 

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Love Your Neighbor

I want to be perfectly clear from the outset.

I am not picking a fight.

I want to talk about the subject matter of this post.

Before we permanently made the peninsula our legal residence The Missus had a long and storied career as a poll worker.  She eventually rose to the position of Precinct Captain and was the boss of all of the poll workers who diligently served to conduct free and fair elections at a local precinct level in Wauwatosa.  Don't take my word for it - ask my pal, Six-Deuce, who faithfully appeared there on the occasion of every election to exercise his franchise.

Anyway, I think the last election Jill worked back in The Naked City was 2016.  Even then she began to become jaded about rumors, rhetoric and whispers about how insidious forces were at work.  That the citizen neighbors who conducted and supervised local elections conspired to steal votes and overturn election results.

In 2020 it grew in scale and ferocity.  

While Jill was no longer a poll worker there was no escaping the reality that there was indeed a small group of individuals in our small community that were convinced that our Dominion Voting Machines (used to tabulate paper ballots) were somehow connected to the Italian military or were created in Venezuela at the direction of long-dead Hugo Chavez to manipulate the vote count in such a fashion that the election was stolen by means of an algorithm that switched votes or that the ubiquitous paper ballots were manufactured from bamboo in China. 

I've known our Town Clerk on a personal basis since 1994 and at the time she shared with me that while the accusatory swarm of public records requests were perfectly legal, and answered in their entirety, she had never witnessed anything like it in 42 years of public service. 

It sucks when dedicated and honest neighbors who perform democracy's work to conduct a free and fair election are hounded by furtive glances.  Whispered accusations. Rumor, innuendo and unfounded allegations.  By their own neighbors.

Good people can become discouraged.  This can make recruitment difficult in the face of baseless accusations.  And it can become easier to unvolunteer.

The dedicated neighbors doing the right thing were not Feeling The Love.

I think I know right from wrong.  And this sort of treatment is wrong.

Nevertheless, nobody has quit.  And knowing Jill's background she's been recruited by our honest neighbors to join with other honest people in the community to continue advancing the noble work of honest elections.  Honesty counts for a lot among honest neighbors.

Good people, performing the work of a democratic republic are unintimidated by unfounded lies.  They are patriots armed with only their integrity, character and the ballot box.

Sure, there's election fraud out there, I've blogged about it on any number of occasions.  Don't take my word for it.  Click on the subject:  Fraud to the left of this post and you'll find examples such as this or this and many more on the subject.  All of that aside, the level of fraud is not on the scale to overturn an entire election.

Don't take my word for it - ask the former guy's Attorney General and countless courts that threw-out baseless allegations in the dust bin of legal history.  I hate to repeat myself but as Bill Barr eloquently put it:  It's Bull Shit. 

In closing, I would ask this.  If you have incontrovertible evidence that my lovely wife is a member of a wicked cabal committed to stealing your vote you should tell it to her face.  Then call the County Sheriff and file charges.

Put-up or shut-up.

In the upcoming November elections I shall not cast a ballot for any candidate who persists in spreading The Big Lie that our elections are rigged.

For those of you who have not embraced the Big Lie please vote your conscience whatever direction honesty and character point you. 

Doing the right thing prevails in the end.

And Love Your Neighbor.....

 


Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Kartoffelpfannkuchen

In the interests of enhancing the domestic tranquillity I am on a quest for the perfect Kartoffelpfannkuchen. 

First round tonight. 


 
 
 
 
 
Simple recipe: two russet spuds (peeled), half a sweet onion, a couple of farm eggs, two heaping T of flour, salt and pepper. 

Put the whole shebang in the Cuisinart Food Processor and pulverize. 



Scoop 1/4 c portions into exceedingly hot fat and flip once. 


Drain on paper towels. 

Acceptable result for a first run at it. However, something is needed.  More onion?  A stronger Stuttgarter onion from the garden?  Garlic?  White pepper?  All of the above? Maybe even shredding some of the spuds for more texture. 

I used rendered duck fat for a high flash point resulting in crispy edges. Nice. 

Back to the drawing board so stay-tuned.....

Monday, June 24, 2019

More Blooms

It would seem that the blooming around here is non-stop.  Hardly a day goes by without something else to brighten the day, turn your eye or provide sustenance for the pollinators.

This week it has been Jill's iris - in shades of violet, blue and yellow-white.






Not only are these a feast for the eyes but the bumble bees are going nuts over them.



Just click on an image if you fancy a closer look

Sunday, October 7, 2018

Seasonal Treat

The raspberry patch is turning out a regular stream of fruit.

Yummy, yummy, yummy.








Jill picked these











And made a half-dozen of these cream cheese and raspberry-filled pastries...


I ate two for breakfast today.....

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Indoor Play Rules Revisited

Ahem (clearing voice).

There is a reason for the rule:  Thou shalt not throw the dog ball in the house.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Indigo Bunting

Song bird sighting....

Jill texted me this:  Not a great shot but indigo Bunting is back actually there were two on this feeder earlier.

 click on image to enlarge

That's pretty dang cool.

Considering I've only seen two of these colorful birds in my entire life. 

Edit to Add:

See the bird approaching for a landing?  Upper left corner of the photo!

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Doing What Comes Naturally

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a friend of song birds.  Cavity-nesting and especially ground-nesting birds.  Nevertheless, I struggle with the birds that insist-upon nesting on my house.  It's messy after-all.

Yesterday, Jill opened the crank-out window of the kitchen only to discover that swallows had begun to compromise the Nixalite above in an attempt to build a nest.  She texted this:
 
Warm outside and cold inside so I cranked open the kitchen window. Unbeknownst to me swallows had been trying to build a nest at the nixalite. So when I opened it and with the outside breeze, pieces of nest and dust blew in to the kitchen.  So first I cleaned out the kitchen and then I cleaned out around the window outside.  Hmmmm...How to keep them from trying to rebuild? Trying a woodpecker and a cat.  So far so good.



click on image to enlagre

Woody Woodpecker and Garfield the Cat were deployed as improvisational scarecrows and at last report they were winning the upper hand.

Stay tuned - and if you want to learn more about Nixalite Bird Spikes click on this link

Raising a toast to American ingenuity...

Saturday, April 22, 2017

It Pays to Volunteer


click on image to enlarge

If you examine the photo above you will note a forest to the left.  These trees were planted in the spring of 1998 and they've grown into a nice stand of hardwoods and conifers.

The stand to the right are big tooth aspen.  In the winter of 1997-98 The Frau and I went in there with a chainsaw (a wedding gift to each other) and cut-down several hundred mature aspen along the northern line fence.  As a consequence of the patch cut new popple sprouted from the root clone and they are now a nice mature stand of newer aspen growth. 

The little conifers you see growing in the foreground and just now getting above the height of the grasses.  Those weren't planted there at the hand of man.  They just showed-up.  Seed progeny from the white spruce that were planted in 1998.  They are volunteers.  

Planting trees is the gift that keeps on giving... 

Sunday, April 9, 2017

Headhunter

Last year at the end of the deer season The Frau took one of the deer heads that was lying around and jammed it between a couple of closely-spaced tree trunks near the edge of the yard.

No, this wasn't some sort of weird voodoo, pagan talisman - rather our hope was to let nature clean it-up so we might have a clean, fleshless deer skull to do something-with.  It also kept the tempting apendage out of reach of the dogs.

As per usual, the best-laid plans were thwarted by wile e coyote.  

click on the varmint to enlarge

How this varmint managed to grab the head is beyond us.  I guess coyotes climb trees too? 

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Coy Cutie

Psst....

Don't tell her I posted this cutie pie photo on the interweb.

 

Monday, March 6, 2017

Who is Clark?



Jill is off to the French-speaking region of Canada to participate in a women's international curling invitational - a bonspiel.

She emailed me this photo nabbed in the reception area of the hotel.

I asked her if this 'Clark' was the concierge?  Or perhaps the front desk clerk?  Or someone else of hotel importance.  Alas, she knew not of the comings or goings of this 'Clark' who is off saving the world from whatever.

Then it struck me.

Clark Kent?

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Cherry Pie - Breakfast of Champions

I am a lucky dude.  

I love to cook and grill but my pastry skills end at the shoreline of muffins, cookies and scones.  The Frau is the pastry chef around these parts.

Lately I've become doubly-lucky.

I have enjoyed two Door County tart-cherry pies in the last couple of weeks

click on the cherries to enlarge

Door County cherries are what made America great.  

I recommend a slice of pie for breakfast!

Monday, June 8, 2015

Meatball Surgery

By the time this is published and you read it I will either have recovered, developed a raging tetanus infection or have had to visit the Urgent Care.

I like to run around in bare feet during the summer and bare footedness is associated with all sorts of inherent risks and hazards.

I began my Friday by venturing out on the porch and managed to  impale the sole of my foot with a championship sliver of Douglas Fir.

Managing to pull most of it out I limped around for the balance of the day completing my chores and working around the yard and in the garden.

By Saturday morning I was a red, angry, festering wound.

On Saturday morning The Frau managed to dig most, if not all, of it out with a tweezers, a red-hot needle and plenty of rubbing alcohol to sterilize the surgical site.

Looking a bit better by Saturday night.  My shots are current...

click on image to enlarge


Edit to add-

I finished my day today at the Walk In Clinic. After some lidocaine the PA dug out the remaining quarter inch of Douglas fir. Five days of cephalexin 500 mg and I should be dancing.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Contrails

Trail camera photo of my lovely Frau.

But what is stunning are the contrails in the sky above.

click on image to enlarge


Meteorological conditions were such that the usual commercial airliner traffic left a larger trail of larger, puffier and more persistent collection of contrails than usual. 

I should make a practice of looking up in the daytime sky more often...

Friday, March 13, 2015

The Frau

This good-lookn' babe showed-up in my woods to perform corrective pruning on some smaller oak trees.


Monday, January 12, 2015

Packers

Green Bay vs. Dallas divisional playoff game recap.
 
Trailing 21-13 in the third quarter, A-Rod threw a couple of touchdown passes in the second half leading the Packers over the Cowboys 26 - 21.It was a nail biter.

On to Seattle for the NFC championship game.

Some game day photos.  The Frau and Yours Truly, network camera crew, a fan with a dead animal on his head, and me with House Ways and Means Committee Chair and former candidate for vice president - Paul Ryan.

Next weekend is a tough game.  Go Pack!




 click on images to enlarge

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Walk

Now that the trails are beginning to be cleared it's much easier to go for a walk and stroll with the pooches.

You don't have to fight your way through brush and grass that is waist high in some places.

click on image to enlarge

Thursday, April 3, 2014

The Frau


Not much escapes the relentless gaze of the patient trail camera.

Not even The Frau...