I
spent an hour in the garden on Sunday. I pounded in some steel
stakes and ran some wire between them so we can tie up more of our
red raspberries as they bring on the fruit. Besides this all I
have really helped with in Ellen’s garden this year is tilling the
ground up, husking sweet corn, and eating my fill of fresh veggies
for the last couple weeks. Ellen put together a batch of
basil, brie, and tomatoes on Sunday too. Along with the first
sweet corn of the season, this is my most favorite meal of summer.
She will make some hot pasta tonight, put it on a platter, and then
pour the basil, brie, and tomatoes (with garlic and olive oil)
mixture that has been sitting out at room temp all afternoon on to
it. The pasta warmth melts the cheese and heats up the rest.
Ellen serves it with garlic bread and red wine. It don’t git
no better.
Vince
and I fished south of Goose Island last week on Thursday morning.
We caught some small bass, a few perch and one dandy bluegill.
I think we agreed that it was the finest weather we had in ages on
the water. The river is clear enough, at least in the
backwaters, that we could see down five or six feet or more, even
picking out fish that were checking out our baits. The wild
rice is tall and filled out where we were, at least. We solved
the problems of the world and went into La Crosse for breakfast at
the Waterfront. We were a tad under dressed for such a fancy
establishment, but this was Vince’s daughter, Amanda‘s last week
to wait on us before getting ready to head back to Madison and her
second year of college. As it turned out, we missed the
breakfast and lunch crowd, so we had the place to ourselves, no big
deal dress code wise.
El
and I went out the next morning. The fog was thick in the river
valley and it was hard to navigate at first, but the sun started to
clear things up by the time we got through the narrow cut into Shady
Maple. It was cooler this morning, as was the fishing. We
ended up with only two keeper bluegills in the livewell, but we had a
beautiful morning on the river. I offered to spring for lunch,
but we ended up eating at home, settling for homemade peach crisp
with ice cream for lunch, darn, what a trade-off. I fried fish
that night served with sweet corn and tomatoes and peaches. It
don’t git no better either.
Until
next time, get out - lately, I have been asked a few times, what my
thoughts are about the hoopla over the killing of a lion by a
Minnesota dentist in Namibia. That is water I’d like to keep
my toes out of here I think, but what the heck, here goes. Let
me explain, no matter who you are and what you think, this is most
likely a no-win situation for me and a whole lot of people.
I’ll be honest, I think I’d like to go on an old-school African
safari, and poof, anti-hunters and animal rightists go ballistic. If
I opine, it’s too bad that 13-year-old (nearly dead by wild lion
standards by the way) Cecil, which some describe as basically a
collared tourist attraction lion in a preserve, is dead. Now my
fellow hunters get all narrow-eyed on me and want to take back my
camo and blaze orange colors. To be honest, like most of us, I
fall somewhere between the teary-eyed late night talk show host
spouting silliness and the always hyper Ted Nugent rants about how
people who are upset about this are stupid. That said, if the
animal was protected and killed, people should be held accountable.
I don’t think I would have done it, but I do know I wish I could
afford it, because I’d take my Nikon and a long lens - enough
said. Finally, it is football season - Go Pack! Go Pirates! Go
Blackhawks! Go Red Raiders! Go Comets! Go Badgers! Go Eagles!
Thank goodness. Enjoy.
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