The tail-end of the fresh, western-slope peaches from a local farmer’s stand; layered atop a buttery shortbread, glazed with a sugary peach-syrup; chilled and then topped with real whipped cream. Light, bright, sweet, zingy and delicious.
I only make it once a year. So I made a few extra for the fam and neighbors.
Thanks to Jane Hagelstein of Norfolk, NE who introduced this to me the fall of 1988. It has been a family-fav ever since, Miss Jane. Recipe {HERE}
Omygosh! {slight scream, heart palpitations}
We brought our slightly-less-than-life-sized Jeremy Camp cut-out, the official HF-skinned guitar and the “fake” cut-out guitars Pearl and Bryan made for the Heaven Fest Smile Booth this year home from the office since Heaven Fest is moving to a new office in the city soon, and they will likely be used to adorn the walls there, just for fun.
I am wondering how many times I can walk into my house and think there is someone standing behind my couch – scaring the daylights out of me!?!! YIKES! He gets me every time.
Tara and Stormie introduced the “real” Jeremy Camp (and his famous “guns”) to the one-dimensional Jeremy Camp backstage at Heaven Fest this summer. They hit it off famously.
Remember waaaaaaay back when children had to write sentences on a blackboard when they were naughty in school? Back in the “Leave it to Beaver” era? By the time I was in school the discipline was still used, but we had to write on paper. I think it happened to me twice. Not much of a punishment, though, because I don’t recall what I had to write and plus I love writing. :)
Saw a piece of sidewalk chalk near a blank board in the kitchen today. I thought to myself, “Maybe we should write sentences of things we need to remember and be doing and saying.” This may be a new exercise for me.
“God bless all in this house.” A quote from The Quiet Man.
Warning: This post is full of non-cussing cussing. But the intent is for it to be the worst cussing ever. So if you know as well as I do that you can say the word “matchstick” and mean it in a cussing way? Then maybe you’ll want to avoid this post.
Omygosh!!! Grasshoppers are horrible, evil, cannibalistic (it is true – they eat the carcasses of their dead) pieces of muscular-mingy-frack-eyed-teetering-chutney-chewing crud-bums.
They seriously climb to the top of my beautiful heirloom tomato plant and eat their way down whole vines, like they finger-licking own the joint! At this stage and full-development, the only recourse is to actually catch the disgusting sons of buffalo-burgers and beat them senseless with a baseball bat.
Yesterday I sprayed one with wasp killer and it just kept going…4 wasp-kill soakings and it kept going. Finally it hopped and landed upside down in a spider web. Dave told me I should pull its’ jumping legs off, but I thought sure the web would hold it. Seconds later the little trundle-teeter flew past and yell “Sucker!”
I hate grasshoppers.
I was winning until I left the week of Heaven Fest. Each day when I go out to water, they dart every which fleeting-flagging way and charge my head in anger while hosts of bees wave a friendly hello and keep right on doing good work in the garden.
But not the honking-twonk-monster-rowlocking-farcists wasps. Oh, no. They get all territorial in MY garden.
I currently water with the sprinkler wand in my left hand and a can of KILLER in my right. Taking down about a dozen a day. O yea.
In other news, as I passed from the kitchen through the dining area, my late summer garden caught my eye and called out, “It really has been an OK, summer. Everything is going to be fine. Life goes on. Enjoy.”
That was a sweet thing to say.
Me: Dad, can I have that antique cubby cabinet that is in your garage holding things like 3M Oil and batteries?
My dad: Sure. I will bring it when I come to visit.
Dad drives to Denver. Opens the door of his backseat to reveal the cubbies…with 4 inches of the length (and the top of the unit) sawed off because it would’t fit. With one end gone, all 837 of the shelves just fell out.
This is what I am looking at.
Oh, my. Not sure if I can get it back together.
That’s all I have to say about that.
Cool weather gardening. If you can, you should.
5 of the 6 graced our lives for the night.
Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!! Averi wins the quote-of-the-day for both last night and this morning.
Last night, Averi (4) and Gemma (5) were fixing my hair and each other’s hair – brushing and affixing clips and just little-girl-talk. Gemma mentioned going to JC Penney’s to get her hair done for school. Averi asked her, “So, you went to the cilantro? So many people go to the cilantro to get their hair done, even me.” Salon, cilantro, whichever. :)
This morning I poured some grape juice for each of the kids into Dixie cups for fun. Hunter cracked me up by walking in, looking at the breakfast spread and commenting, “Oh, communion.” Hahaha. But Averi, sipping her juice expressed to me,
“Mmm. This tastes just like campaign. I love campaign.”
I don’t think she was referencing the presidential campaign. So, I think she was referring to champagne and I want to know what her parents are plying her with for breakfast over at their house???!
Revelation-of-the-day: Ohhhhhh – this is why we used to have to buy milk in such quantities!!
The morning after: Gemma and Averi have picked up last night’s work again, whereupon they are both “in charge” of Heaven Fest and I can now retire. They are busily writing contracts and drawing site plans and declaring Free time for everyone! The main thing Averi wants me to understand is “We’re in charge and I am in charge.”
And that is the truth.
Have I gone a little crazy with the sweet-potato vine?
Oh I have. You know, I really think they are just so sublime.
They are green and they are bright and they are full and they cascade~
What a shame to eat the root when I think of all the leaves they’ve made.
I have them here, I have them there, I have planted every possible pot
With springy-green potatoes’ sweet
I love these vines. I think they’re neat!
From purple petunias in pots on the patio to the wildflower borders edging the yard, I tucked sweet-potato vines into every possible space!
The pot on the left was once full of pansies and begonias, shaded by the tree. They are still in there, now just shaded by the vines.
Yes, that’s right. Not only have I planted cascading sweet potato vines, I have planted them everywhere. I have the burgundy version, too, but I really love the bright spring-green version. They sort of outshine the flowers. And I love them so much they make me write silly things. But they are taking over the whole potted world in my universe.
On the right you are getting a bonus peek of the sweet banana peppers, but above, cascading from a higher pot: you guessed it! Sweet potato vines.
In the photo above on the right, behind the vines, is a 5-gallon Terra Cotta planter filled with snapdragons and spikes, stock and petunias, celosia and carnation. But they are certainly being crowded by the vines. This is a major wasp-mafia hide-out. Boo.
The burgundy version is on the left. It is doing very well, too. On the right, you can see that despite the overabundance I already have, I still tucked in a young plant just recently. This is how they start!
Miss Zinnia asked if she might say hello to my readers.
“Gladly, my pleasure,” I assured her.
Teasingly she chided, “Do you work for Chick-Fil-A now?”
“They do not own ‘my pleasure,'” I smiled back.
So hello from Hot-Pink Zinnia, making my summer sweeter.
Baseball. Movies about baseball evoke such strong emotion in me – reaching back to my earliest memories. We didn’t have a TV for years as I was growing up, but every summer night, we had a radio tuned to baseball. You could hear the roar of the crowds, hear the crack of the bat against the ball, the organ igniting excitement, and plenty of beer commercials. We didn’t “believe in” beer, but they sure had memorable jingles! And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if much of my colorful-word love was nurtured by the likes of Harry Carey calling a game.
When I think of those nights in Des Moines, Iowa, I recall open windows and a swinging screen door, azure-blue-sky dusk, home and family. I recall St. Louis Cardinal program books I would scour for hours and I embraced my dad’s love of the game. Because he loved it, and I wanted to please him, I loved it, too.
My first trip to a Bookmobile, I checked out my 3-book limit in baseball books for my dad.
A good baseball movie awakens every romantic summer notion in my soul.
Little known fact: I know what a baseball smells like. I even know how it tastes: salty to the tongue. And I know a glove that has been around for a long time is a part of you. It stays. Forever.
Well, I mean – this is my favorite. There are a million things to love. Kevin Costner – a farmer from Iowa, people. That alone. The father-son relationship thing, finally maturing and then understanding. There is history and a writer (James Earl Jones) and “If you build it, they will come…” Heart-heart-heart!
I mean, I am a 40s girl deep inside. And a baseball girl. And when, just a few minutes into the movie I saw the scene of the motherless young woman from Fort Collins at the train station leaving her beloved father to go to Chicago with the crass scout – the train pulls away from the station (there is this God-mom-apple-pie music that starts to swell), she is looking at her dad wave good-bye with a tear rolling down his face and you see a reflection of a flag waving in the train window glass…well, I was in, baby! I love the clothes, the hair and the characters. It is family, sisters, values, love. Great soundtrack, “Now and forever, you are a part of me. And the memory cuts like a knife…”
Roy Hobbs, “the best there ever was,” played by Robert Redford who kind of falls into that category, too.
Children. Innocence. Timelessness. These could be kids I knew in the neighborhood, my brothers. James Earl Jones shows up again here and Babe Ruth gets the homage he deserves. It is silly and gritty and realistic and not. And every kids remembers the friends who made them feel a part.
Adults-only…a little naughty. But some great quotes!
“I believe in the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft wet kisses that last for three days.”
An aging, once-great pitcher, who has loved baseball like nothing else, pitches the perfect game and leaves it to find that love has been waiting for him.
I have actually only seen it once, but I loved it and will watch again!
“I believe there is a championship team that we could afford. Because everyone else undervalues them. Like an island of misfit toys.”
That, my friends is true in every area of life. I have never had to pay the most to have the best of the best teams (like with Heaven Fest). I just look for the people with heart, loyalty, commitment and ability not always seen with the naked eye. Look past the glitz and buzz of the obvious and you will find treasure in people rarely recognized! Brilliance!
This film was nominated for 6 Academy Awards in 2011 and won several prestigious titles including Movie of the Year from the American Film Institute. Brad is perfect as Billy Beane and Jonah Hill’s Peter Brand is just cute-as-puddin’-pie in this biographical sports drama. Great movie!
Eight Men Out, The Pride of the Yankees, It Happened in Flatbush, It Happens Every Spring, The Rookie (Dennis Quaid!), The Bad News Bears…there are many others I have enjoyed and more I haven’t seen, but want to watch soon (like “Game 6” with Michael Keaton).
But for right now, I can turn on the TV and see the boys of summer running the bases, listen to the crowds cheering (the Cardinals are even in town this week playing the Rockies) and I am just the girl on York Street again, playing paper dolls, enjoying the long summer of carefree days and nights, and singing beer commercials.
MVP: Kevin Costner. He loves baseball and he has acted baseball (Chasing Dreams, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, For Love of the Game and The Upside of Anger, in which his character is a former pro baseball player) and I love Kevin Costner.
“This field, and this game, Ray, it reminds us of our past, of all that once was good…” Field of Dreams
