Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Summer must be close

We have enjoyed (or suffered, depending on your viewpoint) a really cool May.  Temperatures have struggled to get out of the 50's as it seems the winds have mostly come from the east or northeast.  This means, for those that might be a bit geographically challenged, that the wind comes over Lake Michigan before hitting us.  With the lake still in the 40's it means our temperatures stay low.  Last week we finally seemed to be routinely getting into the high 60's with the occasional day into the 70's.  This was the sign for Jo and I to finally start thinking about some of our favorite summer activities.

We have attended our first Brewer's game - Brewer's lost unfortunately, but we are rarely good luck for them.  This last Saturday we headed to Estabrook park to for our first beer and pretzels at our local beer garden.  It was a wonderful day and we ran into some people we know there (since what else would Milwaukeen's do on a warm, summery day but be in a beer garden) and spent the afternoon chatting while enjoying our first pretzel of the season.

We have also made our first rhubarb/strawberry crisp of the season with rhubarb from our yard.  Unfortunately, our strawberry plants didn't survive the winter too well so they had to come from the store.  This had to be topped with homemade vanilla ice cream to ensure the maximum calories possible in a small bowl.


Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Gardens are Ready

As you have probably noticed, there haven't been any news for a while.  Two primary reasons for that: 1) we have had multiple problems with identity theft over the last six months and decided to not provide anyone with additional information about our lives and 2) after almost 20 years of writing some sort of weekly news to family and friends, I grew tired of it.  So, I have decided to post just periodically.  One downside of not writing something weekly is that I'm not quite as good at documenting our lives photographically - well at least I think it might be a downside.

We are finally experiencing a few warm days - although today is cloudy and 48 degrees at the moment.  So I got outside this week and started to prep our garden beds for another season of vegetables.  It was nice working in the sun and enjoying the smell of freshly turned earth.  Of course the warmer weather has also meant the start of mowing season as the first grass cutting happened last week.