Last Long Weekend of Summer

Freedom is sweeter after a couple of weeks of school.
 

End of Summer Festival

 
These are from two weeks ago, at the Summerset Festival that celebrates the end of summer. We went with R's best friend E.

We went for the dog competitions. Agility, Flyball--all the events that border collie owners like to watch to get ideas how to keep our own dogs occupied. The frisbee dogs were so much fun to watch. The pure joy and the soaring and the effortless catches, which you know took months and months of training before it looked effortless.

They spent a lot of time at the dog adoption stations and were careful to pet every dog. They said they were looking out for ones that seemed lonely. There was a lot of sadness about the dogs we couldn't take home, especially in the car on the way home.

Remember the petite Sno Cones of your youth? They got about one-third of the way through these.

We ran into a little friend from school, who had just added to her Pillow Pet collection.

And we were so happy to come across our neighbor friend playing bass with the kids' band on "Rhiannon"!

There is a corner of the park with a giant old weeping willow. The girls spent most of their day climbing the smaller trees around it and playing underneath it. I kept waiting for them to pull us back towards the rides and the festival, but this is what they wanted to do.


 The park is right next door to Columbine High School. The girls are walking back to our car through Leawood Park, where people congregated and injured kids were treated right after the Columbine shootings. This is the first time we've been here, although we live not far away. It was strange to see Columbine High school for the first time when there is carnival music playing, and kids running everywhere and laughing. You find yourself looking around for the scenes you saw on the news, the pattern of windows. It's not here. It's not here today. Is it good or bad, that waves of life just wash over this ground and mute the history underneath it. Life is fleeting, and today I am grateful for a sunny September day in the park. While I was there, I thought of the kids' voices and music as a celebration that the victims and families would be happy to see.

I lost that completely on the way home. I had a strong impression that moving past what happened there is a privilege that belongs only to people who lost someone close to them. I think we are not meant to give it only a glancing thought, "oh what sorrow took place here." On the way home we said Our Fathers and started a Rosary, but it still feels like I left something unfinished behind.

Play Practice

We are putting on a show! A play written and performed entirely by kids. We had our first rehearsal with about half the cast, and they wrote two acts. Thank goodness for the patient Big Kid who agreed to be the director. And essentially the writer--he gets his ideas from the other kids, but he's the plot and dialogue man. R came up with the title "Amazing Animals" and the names of the characters.

Bangs for everyone! This is the little brother of the director. He and R are the villains, Aiden Alligator and Dianne Dingo. They terrorize the other animals.

They are both really into their parts and enjoy being evil.

S is a good and very practical director. His first question once we had scripts printed out: "Ok, so which of you can read?" In this scene, Bonnie Border Collie and Hermione Horse try to reason with the villains. To no avail.

But they peacefully broke bread together later that night.


And just as the sun was setting, a magnificent rainbow. It was a sign of good things to come for the mom of Hermione Horse and Bonnie Border Collie, who has had had a rough few weeks. But soon she will be sitting in our backyard watching the world premiere performance of "Amazing Animals."

Strawberry Sweet Woodruff Preserves Day 1

This is my second summer of canning and preserving. Last year, I learned that what sells fastest at farmer's markets and makes the best gifts to friends, is berry preserves. That's what we use the most of in our house too. All winter long we bring jars up from the basement. We met our goal of no store-bought jam for a year, even after giving lots of jars away.
A trifle dish holds four pounds of strawberries.

I don't like commercial pectin, so I have learned the French method where you macerate the fruit in sugar overnight, then bring it to a boil and let it sit for another six hours or overnight. Then you boil only the syrup to the gelling point, and add the fruit at the end, so the fruit stays whole and doesn't overcook while you're boiling away to the gel point.This year for the first time, I'm adding the sweet woodruff while the berries macerate, instead of while they are cooking.

Sweet woodruff is an herb that's a natural accompaniment to berries. It tastes like vanilla and grass. We have it all over our backyard, and I am so grateful to whoever planted it years ago.

Strawberry Sweet Woodruff Preserves Day 2

After the strawberries have steeped overnight in sugar and sweet woodruff, put them in a sturdy pot and bring them to a boil. I like a lot of bright, clean lemon flavor, so I add lemon slices to infuse while it boils.

Then let the mixture sit for another two or three hours at room temperature, or six hours in the fridge. This two-step process helps separate the liquid from the fruit, so you can reduce just the liquid and then add the fruit at the end. This is the only way for fragile fruit like strawberries to keep their shape and not turn into mush. Put the fruit in a colander, and drain the syrup into a pot.

Strawberries are very low in pectin, so I add a high-pectin fruit like green apples to help the jam to set without overcooking. I dice the apples and put them in the syrup. I also put the skins and seeds and cores in a mesh bag, and float that bag in the boiling syrup. Skins and cores have a lot of pectin, and it will leach out of the bag. You can push on the apple bag with a spoon to release more pectin, but be careful not to splash yourself with boiling jam.

Sterilize your jars and lids and tools in boiling water while you wait for the syrup to reach gel point. Waiting for gel point takes some patience and attention. Each batch took about 40 minutes for me today, at mile-high altitude. It's easier and faster to use commercial pectin, but it requires much more sugar, and I don't like the texture. This method makes a luxurious preserve, with strawberries and little squares of candied apple suspended in clear, ruby-red jelly.

Keep a close eye on the jam while it's boiling.

Just before it reaches gel point, the frothing reduces and the bubbles get bigger. You can almost feel it seizing up a bit when you stir it. The color is amazing, a deep, glowing pomegranate-red.

To check the set, use the plate test. Put a plate in the freezer, and drop some jam on the cold plate. Put it back in the freezer for a minute or two. If the jam wrinkles when you push it with a finger, it's done. Add the strawberries back in, and boil for another 5 minutes or so, until they are hot through.

Ladle the hot preserves into the sterilized jar. A jam funnel helps keep the outside of the jar clean. Remove air bubbles, cap the jar with a hot lid, and screw on a ring.

Place the filled jars in a boiling water bath, with rapidly boiling water to cover the lids by at least two inches. Follow boiling instructions for your altitude.

Nine pounds of strawberries turned into 14 pints of preserves. I used four cups of sugar and four and a half pounds of strawberries for each batch. There is nothing better than the 'ping' sound as the jars seal when you take them out of the boiling water bath.


The preserves are silky and gorgeous. The familiar strawberry taste, with a note of vanilla and grass from the sweet woodruff, and a bright citrus pop from the lemon.

Please note that this is not meant to be a comprehensive instruction about canning. It's important to follow all the rules carefully for a safe end product, so be sure to follow an approved method.

Monsoon Season

I didn't think Denver had a monsoon season, but we seem to be in it now. The ninth straight day of torrential afternoon and evening downpours. I can't get enough rain. I grew up in New Mexico, where the weather never matched the brooding novel I was reading. When I first read Cormac McCarthy, I got a little pang of regret. If only I had read him in high school! I might have seen something romantic and interesting in the high country desert. All that love of New Mexico came later, long after I didn't live there any more.

If there isn't lightning, R and I have an agreement that we will run out into the storm and lie in the grass. It's irritating, because sometimes I am busy and not inclined to get wet. But rainstorms are few and far between, so I always indulge her. Most often the storm ends before we get tired of the wet grass. If it doesn't, we run inside to dry off and read books in bed until the storm is over. Usually we do that once every three or four months. We have both been enjoying the ridiculousness of doing our ritual every single day for over a week. We have gotten through a lot of chapters of Prince Caspian.

Yesterday there was a storm that looked to me like hurricane footage from tv. Sheets and walls of water, trees bent sideways, a river pouring down the street.

Once it had been over for awhile and I was sure the lightning was gone, I went outside to take pictures. The water had been much higher than this. It flooded the lawn and stopped just short of the basement windows. I tried to take pictures from inside the house, but you couldn't see through the sheets of rain.

For the first time I can remember, this storm was something other than, hurray! rain! It briefly turned into hail at one point, and we watched out the windows as water flowed up over the curb and cascaded onto the lawn. The thunder was tooth-grinding, earth-shaking, Charlie dove under our bed and wouldn't come out. That's when you start to think, what happens if this doesn't stop. The streets are flooded out. How is D going to get home? What's it like downtown?

And then the sun comes out, and the birds are singing.

D got home fine, Charlie got his walk and the water was almost gone by then.

We are back to appreciating how much the flowers, and the lawn, love this weather.

R and her best friend E are building a dam of rocks, against the next deluge. R is in a phase of wearing her Easter dress every day. Que sera.

I'm not sure what they mean for the dam to do. If it worked, it would stop the flow of water and back it up so that it flooded E's house across the street.

E told me that this is "the lock where I keep my friendship with R." I love that, because it's not a locket, it's really just a padlock. I asked her, does it have anything inside it? And she looked at me like I was crazy.

Trail Walk

I am so grateful for the trail system that winds all the way around our house. We are always a minute away from feeling like we've taken off for the mountains.

Yesterday was the third straight day of afternoon downpours. It left the world so clean. Eerily green and glowing.













A hot bath, pj's, and falling asleep on Daddy's lap with Charlie after a long walk. Summer is good.