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home grown treat

It's July 14, and we have already eaten some of the fruits of the earth that Don grew from seed and planted in May, such as zucchini.

We've used some of the herbs we planted in the herb bed. The basil is there, just in front of Phoebe, the little stone girl.


Today, we combined some of the best home grown ingredients for a special meal of veggie wraps.





It began with pesto. I knew I wanted to make some with the fresh basil in the herb bed. When Don saw a recipe in a magazine he bought yesterday for pesto dressed sandwiches, we put a twist on it and decided on lettuce wraps with veggies, shrimp and pesto.

The Silver Spoon cookbook is the equivalent of the Joy of Cooking for Italians. I found a pesto recipe there, and one in that magazine Don bought, and combined them.











25 basil leaves, 1 c. of grated parmesan cheese, two garlic cloves, 1/3 cup of pine nuts slightly toasted, salt, pepper and 1/2 cup olive oil.



Put everything but the olive oil in a food processor, pulse until blended, then pour in the olive oil in a slow, steady stream while the food processor is on.
Yum.
We've been without rain for too long. We've heard predictions of thunder storms, without them ever arriving. Sometimes they land all around us. Today, just as Don went to get the ladder to hang the oriole feeder, it began to pour.
I cut some leaves from the cilantro plant. Then picked one of Don's zucchinis from his squash/pumpkin patch.















Lettuce wraps bought from the store, all pre-washed, are ready to smear with the pesto, then load with the sauteed eggplant, red pepper, zucchini and shrimp. Top with cilantro, and they're ready to eat!

We drank sangria and served the veggies from the $1 dish Don bought at a yard sale.

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l'atelier, continued


I promised I would keep you updated on the progress in the studio. Don and Peter laid the framing joists yesterday for the wood floor. This was the hard part, getting it level. Don's level (which was my dad's first, and he had repaired it once before) broke in the process. Now it will be a relatively quick step to lay the 8" pine boards on the frame.

Don snapped this photo of Peter using the power screw gun on all the joist hangers. I think that was Pete's first time using a power tool, and he liked it, and did a good job.

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Family Reunion II


For our annual 4th of July reunion, over the course of 5 days 40 people descended upon "Hukilau" - our family cottage.


It rained Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, when Don and I were there alone before anyone else came. The rest of the week it was sunny and beautiful.

I'm not going to concern myself with sequence or what day was what. This is just a little photo album.

This pair of swans toured the lake throughout the week.

All 7 siblings were there (Bennett alone was not there; he died in 1996). This is Nelson, the eldest. See his t-shirt? We all have "HUKILAU" t-shirts.

We celebrated Peggy's 65th birthday, she's Nelson's wife, here with their daughter Tammy.



Susan is #2, here with her husband Rodger.


Here is #3, my blogging sister and close friend, Ginnie (aka "Boots") and # 6 Jim (aka "Jimbo")

Forgive me, Nancy (#4) for this terribly blurry photo - the only one I have of you! with grandson Asher. It's not easy to catch this baby in a still moment.


John, #7 (in that other, obscure Michigan university's t-shirt, poor man)


And here's me, #8, at Ginnie's request, so I've added it. These birthday glasses of Nicholas' made the rounds, as you see.

And there were lots of kids and grandkids.



Audrey is Todd and Lisle's 4-year-old (Nancy's granddaughter)


Amy is Ginnie's daughter, from Atlanta, with her fiance Dennis, in from California



Wilma (Jim's wife) with daughter Stacy and granddaughter Greta

John's wife Sandy with granddaughter Ever Eden
Nicholas (Ginnie's grandson), Eli and Lydia (Jim's grandkids) and Audrey (Nancy's granddaughter) watching Wilma, Stacy and Greta in the kayak. Owl is watching over them.


Some of us swam across the lake and back. Here is Simon (Stacy's husband) in the water, with Sydney, Eric and Todd. Eric and Todd are Nancy's sons, and Sydney is Eric's daughter.


Greta, Jim's granddaughter


Lisle, Todd's wife, with Asher, their son

Ginnie and her domestic partner Donica (in the Wahiawa shirt), with Ginnie's daughter Amy and fiance Dennis playing Spades. That's Nicholas in the background.


When I needed to be quiet, I got away and read. I think I read one entire page over several days.


Nicholas, our son Peter, and his girlfriend Caitlin weren't resting with this book that Nicholas got for his birthday. (Our Lesley in NYC couldn't make it this year. Boohoo.)



Don with Audrey and Nicholas in one of many boat rides.


Amy and Dennis celebrating the holiday (and Nicholas' birthday). Please notice Dennis' MSU hat (he's a USC fan, being from southern California). How nice of him.



Nicholas (hiding), Caitlin and Peter in the paddle boat, that needs fixing - mostly goes backwards!


On Friday night we did our fireworks. Here are Lydia, Audrey, Sydney and Nicholas with sparklers.

Eli (Jim's grandson) with Uncle Don, shooting bottle rockets

There were fireworks all around the lake for several nights.



Here's most of the gang in one spot. Nelson, Peggy and Tammy had already left. Even though I didn't get a closeup of everyone, they're all in this photo (I think). That's me in the middle in the white pants right after hitting the auto timer on the camera and running to sit.


There are many family members in New York, Georgia, Florida, Alaska, Arizona, Michigan and Australia who couldn't make it. We missed you!

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Family Reunion I

Cheryl and Pete (Cheryl's dad Jay was son of Looman, one of Frankie and Johnny's 9 sons) in the center welcoming the mob to their farm, with the hay wagon loaded with food. My favorite dish was fruit pizza. Yum.

Every year at the end of June, Don's father's family relations get together for an afternoon at Cheryl and Pete's farm in eastern Michigan. We were there yesterday with 100 people, including distant cousins. These are all descendants of Frankie and Johnny, Don's father's grandparents. Frankie and Johnny had nine sons, including Don's grandpa "Guy." One interesting thing is that Grandpa Guy (who died the first year Don and I were married: 1978), born in 1898, was 6' 5" tall. His sons were tall, but shorter than he. Don's dad is 6'2". Don is 6'. I find it strange and interesting that these men have gotten shorter by generation, which is the opposite of the norm. Our son Peter is 6'1", I believe.

Rob and company letting off balloons for his father (one of Guy's sons), who died last year. This was the first reunion without Uncle Bob, whose favorite color was red.

Peter, son of Cheryl and Pete (not our son Peter, who wasn't there yesterday, nor was our Lesley, who's in NYC) with daughter Lily, asleep to the mob. Peter teaches outdoor subjects at a local grade school, promoting youth ecology, schoolyard lunch gardens, and Native American growing projects for kids. I could have listened to him all day. He lives in a house made of hay. I'm serious. Here is a sample of what he does to promote ecology.

I don't know this little one's name. A distant cousin.


I know their names: Katie and Barb. This is Don's sister Barb who came from Tennessee for a week, and her granddaughter Katie. Katie was swimming in the pond.



Don't know their names


I know his name: Don posed for me on Pete's stone chair. Pete has a landscaping business, and he builds these stone chairs, which are surprisingly comfortable. And they bounce. You can see some of Cheryl's lilies, which grow all over the farm. Oh, I just realized, Cheryl loves lilies, and her baby granddaughter is named Lily!

Next week for the 4th of July we'll do the same with my family - Family Reunion II - but in that case I'm in the "older" generation and the cousins are not distant. I'm guessing there might be 30 people off and on over the course of 5 days at our family cottage.

Don and I come from big families. He's one of six children, I'm one of eight. Sometimes we complain that we are too busy with family activities, especially in the summer. But as Cheryl said yesterday, we're so fortunate to have lots of family members, because some people have no one.

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l'atelier

inside l'atelier

L'atelier, the studio, is going to get a wood floor.


prism from sunshine through the leaded glass window at the peak

For centuries artists have owned or rented studios for their craft. I'm not an artist in their sense, well at least not a visual artist, well I like photography. Ok, what I'm trying to say is that I'm not putting myself in a category with artists over the centuries, but I have a studio!

old jump rope


Sometime after buying our little farm in 2003 we decided to turn the old chicken coop into a studio. You know, I might as well call it a playhouse, because that's probably more accurate. I don't know how much work we'll do in it. Maybe we'll just read.

But I can picture writing in here. And you can see my grandma's easel in the top photo. I want to learn to paint.




We haven't spent much time here yet, mostly because the cement floor and foundation allow lots of bugs in, and it's hard to keep clean. They get stuck in the crevices.

But Don has bought pine planks, and he's going to install a level wood floor! (It slopes 6 inches now. They used to hose it down and the water drained out the back.) Don't worry, Don power washed this building several times and painted fresh paint. See the ceiling? That's my favorite color: robin's egg blue.


Like Mrs. M. and the Renaissance dress she's making from scratch for the high school feast in November, I'm going to show you this process. Don has promised to take pictures for me when I'm at work. This might take a few weeks, so please be patient. Don has other things to do also. He's on summer vacation for goodness' sake!
I'm glad this teacher husband of mine likes to vacation this way. (hehe)
P.S. Today's is my mother's birthday. She would have been 90!
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Today in 1868 the typewriter was patented

I learned to type in high school in typing class on a manual typewriter. I got pretty fast: 75 words a minute. It wasn’t easy to type all the keys with consistent pressure so they all looked the same. There were no letters on my keys, which forced me to memorize them.

My parents gave me a Brother typewriter for high school graduation in 1974, which I used for typing all my papers in college the next three years. Back then we had to use something like Wite-out to correct mistakes. It was a pain in the butté to put footnotes at the bottom of the page, let me tell you.

Later, when I worked as a secretary, IBM Selectric typewriters were on the scene, with a backspace key that pulled mistakes right off the page. What a lifesaver. I got so fast on those typewriters I would get ahead 0f its capabilities and it would freeze for a second, making me slow down. Man, too bad I didn’t use this agility to develop my piano playing skills.

In 1991, when Don went back to school to finish his teaching degree, we bought our first personal computer, a used Apple 2C – 6” floppy discs and all -- from his brother. With word processing, we could write, rewrite, move words, paragraphs, delete with a highlight and a button. We bought a new home computer every few years as old ones became obsolete.

Last year I got my first laptop, using a money gift I received just for writing a special report for a study abroad program. (That’s when I got my Olympus camera too. Pretty nice gift.) I use my laptop for work and personal use, and I have a desk “port” in my office for easy and quick clipping in and out. I take it home with me most evenings since our home computer got zapped by a thunderstorm last year. We just have dialup at home, bummer.


my office desktop

Before all this technology, I remember seeing dip pens in my father’s desk growing up, the kind with removable nibs, for dipping in an inkwell. My favorite author, Jane Austen, used these. The fountain pen wasn’t invented until the 1850s. If you’re into calligraphy (Ginnie, rauf), check out this in depth page about flex nibs. With carpal tunnel, I can hardly write a thank you note these days, let alone do calligraphy. My sister Boots (aka Ginnie) has beautiful handwriting. It could be its own font style.




I write poems on my laptop. I love starting with that fresh white empty page. Hit “enter” four times to start the first line (the title usually comes later) in Times Roman size 12. Stroke a key and type the first words. My friend Inge loves to write poems in longhand. It’s a beautiful mind-to-hand process, more organic. But me, I love typing on the computer. Sometimes I retype four lines 20 times. Imagine the paper I would waste if I wrote it out!

Out of curiosity, I’d like to know if you:

~ write hand written letters any more?


~ If you write poems, do you like to write them in longhand or on the computer (or on a typewriter)?


~ What’s your favorite pen or pencil? I like rolling ball pens, especially Pilot Precise or Uni-ball.


~ When you post a blog, do you type the text out in a word processing program first?

~ What's your favorite font? At work I use "Comic Sans MS" size 10 in most emails and other documents. When writing poems I use Times Roman size 12.

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