Fall Clean-up

It's been a busy fall and so we haven't gotten to our usual fall yard clean-up ritual until now.  Luckily, it's been really mild.  Sometimes we have snow by this point in the year, but it was 79 degrees as late as this past Thursday.



The first step is harvesting what I can from what's left in the garden--blooms, herbs, hot peppers--and preparing them for storage and use throughout the winter.  Herbs go to hang in the attic from the rafters. Hot peppers are strung up using needle and thread and hung as decorations and to dry in sunny windows.  When they feel sufficiently dry, I will grind them up to make red pepper powder.  The blooms--we just enjoy those for the next few days and then compost them when the turn brown.

The second step of fall clean-up is more Dan's thing.  He likes things tidy--so, he cuts all of the herbs way back and off the sidewalk.  He rips out old dried bean and tomato plants and mows the lawn one last time.  But every year, I swear I'm going to dig up dahlias and save their tubers for the next planting season.  I never get that done.  Ha!  Well, I have done it this year.  And if I am successful and the tubers survive the winter to grow again next spring, I will invest money in some larger showier dahlias.



But this time of year, I feel like I always think about the cycle of things and how strange it is that beauty comes from such unusual looking starts. Seeds, these tubers, bulbs--none of them handsome things, but they are what make the growing part of the year so gorgeous.  Digging them up, cleaning them, and storing them carefully throughout the winter feels like paying homage to that, and to being a steward of the future.  I'm storing dahlia tubers--but by extension, I am storing summer nights sitting out on the front porch with friends, grilling out in the back yard, fireflies winking off and on as they rise from the garden where they hide and rest during the day. 

 

It feels like righteous work.

happy. sad.

Went to the Art Institute with my mom and aunt and in the hall on the way to the textile installation and the Lichtenstein show, I saw this ridiculously loveable cutie lion (my new favorite object).  Other end of the hall to balance things out was this grumpy disapproving head.

August

It's getting to be that time of the summer, when I start wishing summer could stretch on forever and ever and ever.  By the end of August, I'm usually dreaming of wool sweaters and crisp cool walks with Dan and the pooch.  But right now, cicadas revving up at sunset every night, lightning bugs winking off and on across the lawn, the distant hoot of children playing the last round of tag before their moms call them in. . . it can feel like the most perfect time of the year.

Cloud Atlas Trailer

You read a few perfect books in a lifetime, I think. . . And David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is one of those books.  It is ambitious and expansive and big.  Truly.  It's about big things all of which are difficult to explain--and none of which I want to, because you ought to get to experience this book without spoilers.  But it's made up of 6 connected stories, though I'm not sure they're actually connected so much as sitting inside one another like Russian nesting dolls.  Except by the time you finish the novel, you find that the smallest doll within the set is also the largest and contains the other stories, just as much they contain it.

And the Wachowskis have gone and made a film version.  The preview makes it looks impressive and the Wachowskis have no end of talent at creating impressive visual effects. 


But I admit to being disappointed that Tom Hanks and Halle Berry are the leads.  I think this particular movie would have been better served with less well-known actors.  And also that rather than adequately create connectivity between the stories, they have used a trick of repetitively using the same actors throughout.  That could simplify this and make the story about reincarnation--which I neither believe in, nor think the original novel was about.  The novel was about the actions--no matter how small--of one man in time rippling out to create the world we end up with hundreds of years later.  Strangers affecting strangers lives not just today, but forever and ever, across time, for good and for ill.

And nevertheless, I can't wait until it comes out.  I'm super excited.  If it's even half as good as the book. . .

Apple Sauce

For the first time ever, the farmer's market had sour apples. Not sour apples like they have on the farm at home. . . But pretty sour.

Which means I had to buy them and make homemade apple sauce.

Apple sauce is crazy easy to make, and there are few things finer than thawing out frozen freshmade apple sauce mid-winter to eat with pork or as a side for a winter sandwich and salad.  (Please Note:  However, I think you have no business making it unless you have a food mill.  Food mills create the perfect silky apple sauce and nothing else will do).


Ingredients:
Apples (at least 4 lbs.)
Water
Lemon peel
Lemon juice
Brown sugar
Cinnamon

Core and cut apples into fourths.

Put in pot with enough water to cover half of the pile of apples. Boil/steam with the lid on the pot for 20 minutes.

 

Place food mill over second empty pot. Once apples are soft, using a slotted spoon, transfer small batches of cooked apples into food mill.

 

Once all apples have been run through food mill, mix in juice of one lemon, 1 heaping tsp cinnamon, and 1/4 cup brown sugar per 4 lbs apples. Taste and then add lemon juice or sugar to suit your personal taste.

Eat right away or freeze. Frozen, it will last throughout the winter.

Quiltin'

I whipped out a simple quilt over two weekends.  If not for a brief power outage, I would have finished it by my deadline of Tom and Casey's visit.  It was meant for little boys to sleep under--that seemed like a lucky way for a quilt to start its life.  But I actually had to finish it in the middle of their visit, doing the last step of hand-sewing on the binding while Zapruderpoint practiced for their Transistor gig.

But it still turned out alright, right?

Nice Things on Nice Walls

"Nice Things on Nice Walls" is a three-artist show currently on view at Columbia College Chicago in the Hokin Gallery of their 623 S. Wabash Building .  I believe the artists are a mix of current students and alumni and it's on view until this coming Friday, July 20th.

And because I went to see the show initially with my friend Jill (I've been back twice).  She is the owner of the Clodfelt elderly couple and I am the proud owner of the photo of children BFFs.

 

It's a show filled with talent. . . and my favorite?  A sense of humor.

A few pieces by Don't Fret

 

Eric Lundquist

 

Pete Clodfelter

And because I went to see the show initially with my friend Jill (I've been back twice).  She is the owner of the Clodfelt elderly couple and I am the proud owner of the photo of children BFFs.

Party

Music, like life, should be a party.  That doesn't always mean everything has to be a hoot.  Sometimes that party is rip roarin', but sometimes it's a salon filled with serious talk and soft cheeses, or sometimes it's a wake--half somber, and the half that is celebratory is still tinged with sorrow--or it could be a small party, an intimate one, just a few of your closest friends or family.

But I hope a bunch of it is like this:


"The Way We Move" by Langhorne Slim & The Law

Luckiness

We've been lucky to have been visited by a number of lovely folks in the last month.

First Auntie M and Uncle David took a short trip to Chicago and treated us to dinner at the Honky Tonk BBQ.

 
And then the Millards--Casey, Tom, Ben, and Hap--all came to stay for a long weekend.

 

We hung out.  They played a show with Dan at Transistor.  And then we threw a big party for all of their friends (and ours. . . :) ) on Saturday--replete with shrimp boil, watermelon, salads, scape dip and so on.

Ben took this last picture.  Rock Photographer Millard credit.

We're unbelievably lucky to have such good people in our lives--both local and far away. . . and it's nice when the faraway ones stop in.

Kilian Martin and the Beauty of Abandoned Places

I'm not what you would call a skateboarding fan. Most of the time, it's the sort of thing that doesn't even register. . . not until a kid cruises by me on the sidewalk, arms arcing and cutting the air around him, or when we visit friends in Logan Square and see the kids in the murk and deep of the skate park under I-90. But this video is beautiful and sad and nostalgic and filled with grace. Art lives where art can. . .

More Reasons Why Columbia is Cool

This past Saturday, after Anniversary brunching with Dan, we started wandering north to the Art Institute. . . but didn't get very far.  Why?  Because we caught Columbia College Chicago and its students being their usual amazing selves.

For example, what do continuing Columbia students do in preparation for the arrival of brand new students?

Paint giant welcoming murals. . . duh.

 (hehehehe.  i heart corn.  that was totally me 13 years ago. . . )

PLUS, Right upstairs in the very same building, Columbia was hosting The Chicago Alternative Comics Expo.  And it was amazing.  

  

Dan and I spent more money than we should have (based on our bank account balances), but less money than we wanted to (based on the talent in the room).  And Dan got to meet Sarah Becan face to face.

How my Garden Grows

So, remember this back in early May?

 

My totally ugly backyard garden that Dan converted into the lovely ready-for-planting wonderland pictured below?

Well, now it looks like this--beans up, zucchini and squash growing like gangbusters, tomatoes all either flowering or already sporting green tomatoes.  Totally amazing.

Gardening and then getting to eat what you've grown during the summer?  It's one of the best things in the whole world.

And look. . .

Baby baby baby squash.  I can't wait until he grows just a little bit more. .  . so I can EAT HIM!

We Licht It Up at the AIC

This blog post title is in honor of my honey who thought an awesome ad campaign for the Art Institute's Roy Lichtenstein retrospective could involve--with slight lyric changes, of course--Kiss's "Lick It Up."  My husband is funny, singing "Licht It Up" through the Asian artifact wing. .  .

Anyhoo, the show was good. . . though I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the giant Composition Book (my fave).  So, I took pictures of Engagement Ring (in honor of our anniversary day). . .

this Radio (which was Dan's favorite early on)

Modern Painting with Bolt (which D and I both liked and agreed would make a great album cover)

And then these. . . Seascapes . . . which I think are unceasingly terrible.

More than a decade ago, Casey and I went to go see a Monet retrospective.  In a lot of ways it was fascinating--seeing haystack after haystack after haystack or water lily after water lily after water lily.  You could see measurably how light and time of day altered the subjects of his painting and likewise, how age altered his sight and what he produced.  But, man, early on in the show, there was this whole set of bubblegum pink garden/cottage scenes.  They were commissions.  They were hideous.  They looked like starving artist paintings you'd buy in a parking lot for $29.95.  Casey and I were beside ourselves, giggling, poking fun, and we got shushed by a set of middle-aged women who gave us a brief lecture on respecting genius.  Gah.  Monet was a genius, but that work was not.

That's what seeing Lichtenstein's Seascapes reminded me of. . .

Anniversary Breakfast

Our anniversary is actually June 10th, but Dan had a show so we delayed until this weekend. We started our hang-out day with a train ride into the city and then brunch at the Eleven City Diner.

(my honey is so cute. . . even when he's messing around)

nom nom nom nom nom

 
These are not our drinks. But we sat at the bar and watched the bartender crank these out, non-stop, by the dozen the whole time we were there.

Super entertaining. . . and do Bloody Mary's usually have a deli cheese/meat garnish?  That detail almost made me want one.