The Summer Book

I have been fascinated by the take-it-as-it-comes whimsical world of Tove Jansson's Moomintrolls for years, but I never realised that Jansson had written other books outside of Moomin Valley -until a friend lent me a copy of "The Summer Book". It was introduced to me as a very different sort of book, written entirely in the form of unconnected vignettes. After I got over my excitement of reading something else by Jansson, I regretted asking to borrow the book. I generally don't particularly get into short stories, and get a little bored by books that "don't go anywhere". This novella changed my mind. I couldn't put it down, and I couldn't help myself from cornering Henry and forcing him to listen as I read chapters aloud. Jansson's precise, descriptive language begs to be read out loud and shared. 

The framework of the book is a young girl and her grandmother have summer adventures on a small island. It is mostly unspoken that the girl's mother has recently passed away, and the grandmother is ill and approaching death herself. The girl, Sophia, is becoming aware of herself and her humanity, while the grandmother's is slipping away. I'm not really comfortable analyzing the book anymore than that, but in the simplicities of Jansson's scenes, larger truths seem to emerge. I particularly enjoyed it however, because it didn't try to be too heavy handedly "deep". The depth was there, but the vignettes stand on their own as simple stories about life on a Scandinavian island in the summer. Humor, intelligence, and great depictions of how to talk to six-year-olds in "The Summer Book" make it a great summer read, I really recommend it. 

Growing

You should see my mom's garden. It's incredible -a huge "kitchen garden", filled with enough veggies that my parents can freeze enough to feed them most of the year. Every summer it seems to grow in size, and I'm in awe of my parents' ability to maintain and harvest it.

I live in an apartment, so my dreams of my own veggie garden aren't so attainable. This year though, we decided that we didn't care anymore that we don't really have our own "outdoor" space, and made a container garden anyways! Its been so wonderful to finally be growing our own herbs, and we can't wait to see what we can get in terms of tomatoes.

With the late spring, we didn't really get things started until the middle of June- beginning of July. Here's what it looked like on July 4th. I wanted to try the "tippy pot" idea that's been all over pinterest, but I didn't have the terra cotta pots to do it. I tried it with black plastic pots, and I'm ok with, but not thrilled with, the result. It looks a little blah in black, but its a fun way to go vertical and take up less space. We visited my parents at the end of June and came back with some leftovers that didn't fit in my parent's garden. I didn't want to waste too much, so I kind of crammed things in -I'm hoping to replant some things so that they make more aesthetic sense.  In the base of the tower are onions, the second pot has hot peppers, the third has marigolds, coleus, and alyssum. The top has starts of perennial onions, but I think I need to move something more showy there until they actually grow tall enough to be visible. Down the line we've got a pot of leftovers crammed together (need to get around to repotting!), more onions, three tomatoes, regular mint, chocolate mint, basil, oregano and a strawberry. We also tried spinach in window boxes, but it didn't do so well. I'm replanting those boxes with basil -I can't ever get enough basil! :)

Here's where I'm at now, the mints are being mints and going crazy, the strawberry is sending out runners, I'm harvesting lots of basil, and some of the tomatoes are just about to pop. I just found some cheap large pots at ReStore (such a cool place!) yesterday, and finally got around to buying more soil, so I'm ready to head out into the beautiful sunshine and work on repotting some things. On the list are to move the flowers from the "left-overs" pot on the ground to the top tier of the tower and to split out the tomatoes that are languishing in the left-overs pot. I'll be adding some of the miracle worm poo from Meredith to the soil to help make healthy happy plants!

     
     

Camping at Long Lake

One of my bucket list goals is to explore all of the state parks in “I need to run away to the woods for a night” distance from Milwaukee. Fairly spur of the moment, we reserved a campsite at Long Lake Recreation Area in the Northern Unit of the Kettle Moraine. The quick escape from the real world was just what we needed to unplug and reset -although if we were to have actually planned a camping trip instead of just letting the calendar tell us a 24 hour period where we might not be missing too much, we might have steered clear of the 4th of July crowd. We were kind of hoping for a peaceful campfire, but it was a little disrupted by the fire crackers going off at the next campsite...

Our campsite itself was perfect, nice and shady and backing up against some nice pine woods. Not much about for wildflowers, but there was a lot of good, dry, kindling to scavenge. While we were pretty shielded from view by the undergrowth, we could still hear most of the neighbor’s conversation. Note to anyone who cares -if you really can’t stand your kids, going out to the woods to yell at them doesn’t make it any more pleasant.

After a picnic lunch, we spent Saturday afternoon on the beach, amusing ourselves watching kids build sand castles. Lots of weeds in the lake, but the water did the trick to cool down.  Henry made a great dinner by wrapping potatoes, garlic, spinach, basil and broccoli in tinfoil and cooking the packets on the fire. Next time I think adding a little lemon to the mix would have made it even better. A little Spotted Cow and Jiffy Pop rounded off the night pretty well! What is it about Jiffy Pop and a fire that is so great?

I loved reteaching myself that doing nothing can be a lot of fun, and also read more in one weekend than I have in a while (currently reading and loving Agatha Christie’s “Poirot Loses a Client”). Its amazing how much time there is in a day when one leaves the “to-do” list at home.

We are hoping that the stars align and we can fit in one or two more escapes to the woods this summer.