monday's mulling: july gratitudes {july 31, 2023}

WOW...it's the last day of July. Half way through summer. For me this month flew by but the quick passage of time still lets me sit back and reflect upon the reasons to be grateful from this past month.

⁕The month started off with a trip to Cleveland to babysit little grandson for five days. One of the days we kept him in his daycare so we could visit Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio's only NP. We enjoyed hiking many trails through the heavily forested park. CVNP is short distance from Cleveland and Akron, but it seems worlds away. It's a refuge for native plants and wildlife, and we enjoyed hiking many trails through the heavily forested park. We walked along the Towpath Trail for a bit, which follows Ohio & Erie Canal route.

⁕We took little grandson on a couple field trips to show him some sites in downtown Cleveland and out to Shaker Heights to a cool indie bookstore.

⁕I've been reading a lot about brain health cooking and quite a few articles mentioned black lentils, legumes loaded with a lot of protein. Found some at Whole Foods and have tried a few recipes with them. Always on the search for new cooking ideas!

⁕After hot and dry weather messed with the sweet corn growing season, it finally arrived at the farm and customers have emptied the bins almost every day. It's a treasure of summer eating.

⁕Attending T's 75th Family Reunion. T's dad was one of eleven kids. Five of the seven boys served in WWII. After they all returned home, their mom and dad started the annual reunion. It's been happening every year except for 2020. 

⁕For a few hours, the stars aligned and all of my siblings were in town at the same time. The next time we'll be together will be at my daughter's wedding in September.

⁕Having all of my kids in town for a weekend! And I didn't get a group photo...ugh. Just treasured having a full and busy house.

⁕Strolling through Dayton's Celtic Fest. T's dad's family has Scottish descent and we enjoyed listening to Gaelic Storm, people watching...so many wearing kilts, and then walking over to the river to watch the fountain's last spray of the night.

⁕My daughter and son-in-law announced that they are having a baby, due mid-February! 

⁕On my breaks at the farm, I usually take some time to walk among the sunflowers. The five rows are filling  daily with more and more of these golden flowers that exude happiness and share their bounty with the bees, birds, butterflies, and other bugs. 

“July is hollyhocks and hammocks, fireworks and vacations, hot and steamy weather, cool and refreshing swims, beach picnics, and vegetables all out of the garden.” 

~ Jean Hersey

one step at a time {july 30, 2023}

Small Steps

My grandmother once gave me a tip:

In difficult times, you move forward in small steps.

Do what you have to do, but little by little.

Don’t think about the future, or what may happen tomorrow.

Wash the dishes.

Remove the dust.

Write a letter.

Make a soup.

You see?

You are advancing step by step.

Take a step and stop.

Rest a little.

Praise yourself.

Take another step.

Then another.

You won’t notice, but your steps will grow more and more.

And the time will come when you can think about the future without crying.

~ Elena Mikhalkova

This reminds me of Admiral William McRaven's commencement speech to the University of Texas Class of 2014. In his speech, Admiral McRaven reminded the students that "If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed."

Little things, repeated often, can make the most difference.

potty humor {july 29, 2023}

The things you see when you're on a dog walk.

The things you photograph while on a dog walk...

At my age, poop humor still makes me chuckle.

I'm always trying to figure out some fun things to put in the kids' Christmas stockings. A couple years ago, I stepped into a pile of ads, one being for Who Gives A Crap toilet paper. And I thought, "I have to get this." Would this make me a party pooper? Nah...the kids will give me crap and then just a phew poop jokes will come out. And they did and we laughed until our cheeks hurt.

This just goes to show that no matter your age, a good poop joke will always bring out the kid in you. For decades, poop jokes have reigned supreme as the funniest jokes to crack. 

Who Gives A Crap is a company that donates..."50% of (its) profits to ensure everyone has access to clean water and a toilet within our lifetime." Its goal is to help bring toilets and improve sanitation in the developing world.

the friday feed: fruit dip

Back in the day when recipes were published in newspapers and people cut them out to keep in their recipe box or tuck them into a cookbook, my mom found a recipe for fruit dip. It tastes like cheesecake. My kids loved and still love fruit and Grandma's fruit dip quickly elevated it to high class status.

Mom passed the recipe on to me. The kids' friends raved about the fruit dip at my  house; I passed it along to their moms. (How I wish I had that recipe she cut from the newspaper).

Now I'm passing the recipe along to those kids who played at my house and who are now parents.

At my daughter's bridal shower last Saturday, little Vivienne asked me if I brought any fruit dip. (I had given some to her mom a little while ago and Viv just loved it). I told her, "Not today," but knew that her birthday was Wednesday and she would get her very own special dish. 

Happy 7th Birthday, sweet girl. May this day be as beautiful as you are. Maybe one of these days your mom will make it when your friends are playing at your house. 💜

Fruit Dip

1 block of cream cheese

1-7 oz. container of marshmallow cream

1/2 t. milk

1/4 t. vanilla or almond extract

(For this special batch I used Fiori di Sicilia. Two drops was plenty)

ohio cities {july 27, 2023}

A recent NYT Mini Crossword clue: State with cities/towns named Lisbon, Milan, London, Moscow and Athens. 

For this Buckeye girl, easy peasy. Answer: Ohio.

Ohio holds a rich history, infused with various cultures from all over the world. From France to Russia to Peru, settlers from across the globe have made an impact on the towns Ohioans live in today — specifically, their names. While the names may seem easy to pronounce, they're frequently said incorrectly.

Here's a few for your entertainment:

Versailles (ver SALES) The town was founded in 1819 with the original name of Jacksonville. It was later changed to Versailles in 1837 due to the large amount of French members in the community.

Lima (LYE-muh) Named after Lima, Peru.

Milan from the crossword clue is pronounced MY-len.

We also have Berlin (BER-lin), Vienna Townshop (vie-EH-nuh), Mount Orab (Mount OAR-uhb), Cadiz (KA-dis), Medina (meh-DYE-nuh)

Gallipolis (gal ih POLICE)

The city’s name is derived from the Latin “Galli” for Gaul or France and the Greek “polis” meaning city. The city is commonly known as “The City of the Gauls” from the first 500 settlers who were French.

There's a town named after a country, Russia, but is pronounced ROO-she.

Welcome to Ohio, where you can "Find It Here," in "The Heart of It All." (We're in the midst of changing our tourism slogan).

wordy wednesday: what a week! {july 26, 2023}

A week to remember and to hold close in my heart.

It started off with the old, and I do mean old as in 20+ years, kitchen refrigerator dying. (We were hoping it would make it a couple more years until the kitchen renovation). Anyway, panic sets in...a house full of people coming and all the food is jammed into the other old refrigerator in the garage. Thanks to Rent-A-Center, the anxiety got crossed off the list.

Last Monday, my sister came in for a visit. It's been over a year since we've seen each other. We drank Aperol spritzes, enjoyed face-to-face conversations to catch up on each other's lives, went to the farmer's market and bought all sorts of veggies (ever try an Armenian cucumber? Soooo good!), walked to the cemetery to visit Mom and Dad, exchanged what we've been cooking, and found shrimp bushes. Hummingbirds love those.

Playing with the veggies before they go into the salad: Punjabi Tinda, hot banana pepper, yellow grape tomato, Armenian cucumber.

One by one the kids' cars fill the driveway. What a happy sight! It's those little things in life that make big memories.

Little grandson comes to visit Didi at the farm. He found the tractor horn in no time!

Seeing the joys of a bubble machine, a wooden spoon, and a colorful ball through the eyes of a one-year old. (I want a bubble machine!)

More family celebrations: an announcement that a baby is on the way and a beautiful bridal shower to celebrate an upcoming wedding. A precious moment with my girls, the bride-to-be and the mama-to be. 

And lastly, the very full blender of the green smoothie. My kids are healthy eaters (alongside the Bill's Donuts). A houseful of people fills the blender to the tip top  💚

💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜

This sums up this past week

𝘎𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳.⁣

⁣

It just means older.⁣

⁣

Because our children will always be our babies.⁣

⁣

They just will.⁣

⁣

We’ll always look at them and see the little squishy baby who would just want to be cradled in our arms for hours sleeping,⁣ or that vulnerable little toddler gazing up at us with wide eyes and chubby cheeks.⁣

⁣

Grown doesn’t mean anything to a mother.⁣

⁣

It doesn’t mean she won’t do everything possible to make their lives easier or to make them smile,⁣ whether it’s making her college-aged child’s favorite chocolate cookies,⁣

or going to the store and buying groceries for her child with small children so she doesn’t have to take everyone out.⁣

⁣

𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥,⁣

⁣

𝘪𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘢𝘨𝘦,⁣

If they are 5, 12, 32, or 60,⁣

⁣

𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵⁣

how much taller they are than us,⁣

⁣

𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘧𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦,⁣

if they live in our house, neighborhood, or across the world,⁣

⁣

𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦⁣

0 to 6,⁣

⁣

𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺’𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯.⁣

⁣

And we’ll always want to know every detail of their day,⁣

and to hear they’re home safe from dinner, a trip, or back from the store.⁣

⁣

And we’ll only continue to love them more with each passing year,⁣

𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘥𝘰.

: @livingfullaftered

whatever {july 25, 2023}

Everyone has accomplishments they are proud of and this guy obviously loves his Pittsburgh Steelers. The AFC's Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots have the most Super Bowl titles at six each.

Very admirable but for my Cleveland Browns family and every other Browns fan, this doesn't matter. The Steelers are good but they still suck.
 

monday's mulling: hug your mom! {july 24, 2023}

So, so true. All my kids were home last week and I'm so thankful for all their hugs and for little grandson reaching up for me to hold him.

 

slow down {july 23, 2023}

A month into summer and the flower gardens are in full glorious bloom, vegetable gardens are producing a bounty of produce, herb gardens are flourishing, the flowering hydrangea trees are bursting with white pompom flowers and a busy spot for bees, and leaves are changing color? Already? 

After a little research, this is not a harbinger of fall. This is a Bradford Pear leaf and due to the dry summer the leaves can turn color and drop. It could also be fire blight, a bacteria which causes discoloration and early defoliation of leaves. 

Whew. The summer is going by quickly and as much as I enjoy fall, I want summer to have its time to shine.

🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻

A Bird Song

It’s a year almost that I have not seen her:

Oh, last summer green things were greener,

Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer.

It’s surely summer, for there’s a swallow:

Come one swallow, his mate will follow,

The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken.

Oh happy swallow whose mate will follow

O’er height, o’er hollow! I’d be a swallow,

To build this weather one nest together.

~ Christina Rossetti  1830 – 1894

jackpot! {july 22, 2023}

All the kids are in town. 

Last night my daughter and son-in-law said they bought a bunch of scratch-offs and one of them just might be worth $1 million. We all gathered around the table with our cards and coins to see if any of us won the prize. 

Well, we hit the jackpot. 

Grandbaby/niece/nephew #2 arriving in February!

the friday feed: a covid memory {july 21, 2023}

Working on the farm isn't always about handling vegetables and dealing with customers. 

When your boss asks you to clean out the fridge in the party barn for the family reunion, that's what you do. She asked me to give it quick wipe down and not to spend too much time on it. It was raining that day, not many customers, so I had time to make that refrigerator sparkle.

When I got to the freezer, it was full of frozen whole tomatoes, eggplant casseroles in individual servings, roasted red peppers, diced green peppers...all from 2020. 

Memories of the supply chain shortages came flooding back: toilet paper and paper towels, hand sanitizer, Clorox Wipes, all those ships loaded with whatever sitting in ports waiting to be unloaded, and food.

And so much more.

People canned (Ball canning jars were nowhere to be found) and people froze food just to make sure there was food in the house just in case. Food prices soared and people figure out ways to use every last bit of food. It reminded me of back in the day when my grandma canned and kept those jars in her musty basement and my mom froze food to put in our big freezer to take us through the winter.

Survival mode is all about getting through uncertain times. 2020 sure was an uncertain time. You do what you can to survive and to keep sane.

It was tough to throw all that food away but it became a cleansing moment to say good bye to all the uncertainty of that time. It was a reminder that we made it, that we are resilient, that we are strong, and a note to self to appreciate where we are today.

family {july 20, 2023}

We are fam-i-ly...I got all my siblings with me!

It's been a while since the four of us have been together. Reunited and it feels so good.

wordy wednesday: fibonacci

Many years ago, in a high school math class in a midwestern town, Dr. Neff taught a group of students about the Fibonacci sequence. Some got it, some didn't. 

I didn't. I knew what it was when he showed examples but to calculate the formula went a little bit beyond my non-mathematical mind.

The center of a sunflower shows the Fibonacci sequence. Flowers, pinecones, shells, fruits, hurricanes and even spiral galaxies, all exhibit the Fibonacci sequence.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21… The Fibonacci sequence. Every number in the sequence is generated by adding together the two previous numbers.

They are nature’s favorite numbers. You find them all over the natural world. Count the number of petals on a flower and often it’s a Fibonacci number. (If it isn’t, that means a petal has fallen off your flower, which is how mathematicians get around exceptions).

Cut open a fruit, and often you’ll find a star shape with a Fibonacci number of arms. A banana has a three-pointed star, an apple a five-pointed star, a persimmon an eight-pointed star. Count the cells on a pineapple, and you’ll find several Fibonacci numbers. The seeds in a sunflower also exploit Fibonacci numbers to pack efficiently.

Twelfth-century monk and mathematician Leonardo de Pisa (later branded as Fibonacci) uncovered a logical sequence of numbers that appears throughout nature and in great works of art.

Last night at the dinner table, a conversation was going the wrong way and it was time to change the subject. Let's talk about Fibonacci! I was ready to talk about sunflowers. T looked at me like how do you know about Fibonacci? He's used the sequence calculating market trends. Come to find out these Fibonacci numbers fit perfectly into our modern financial markets because they describe—with great accuracy—complex relationships between individual waves within trends, as well as how far markets will pull back when they return to levels previously traded. 

Oy.

I'll stick to sunflowers. 

ice cream! {july 18, 2023}

It's mid-July and here's a scoop for you...It's National Ice Cream Month!

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed July as National Ice Cream Month and established National Ice Cream Day as the third Sunday in July. (NICD was yesterday).

My dad loved ice cream and that love passed along to his kids. Sherer's Ice Cream was on his drive to work and he would stop on his way home to bring home a couple half gallons. Sherer's had the good ole basic flavors - chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry - but they served 36 flavors of ice cream. Move over Baskin-Robbins! Flavors like root beer float, strawberry cheesecake, butter praline, peppermint, fudgy chocolate filled our freezer.

When my kids were little, they loved going over to Grandma and Grandpa's for Sunday dinner. Ice cream was always for dessert. With four sets of ice cream loving eyes, Dad filled a shelf with flavor after flavor of ice cream cartons, an ice cream smorgasbord! 

When he died, Mom mentioned his love of Sherer's ice cream in his obituary. The family sent a very nice note to us.

Since July is the national month to honor ice cream, get out there and celebrate this sweet treat! There's no guilt and no calories in celebrating a national holiday. 

monday's mulling: deep breaths {july 17, 2023}

Kitchen refrigerator died.

Guests starting tonight and full house by Thursday.

Have to carefully plan food shopping and meal prep.

We got this.

connections {july 16, 2023}

Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. Through electronic social media you see how your friends share friends who share friends, and so on. It's fun to trace those connections.

That pink shopping bag was a delightful connection, and it didn't happen through a computer screen. A few weeks ago my friend and I went to the Findlay Street Market in Cincinnati and I forgot to bring a shopping bag. We went into a store where the proprietor sold these handmade bags which she crafts from fabric that is 100% biodegradable. Her fabric awareness focuses on preventing plastic shopping bags from being tossed in landfills and waterways.

Anyway, she asked me where I was from. 

"Dayton."

"I used to live Kettering."

"That's where I live."

(Eyes get wide and smiles grow big). 

"My dad was the music director at Fairmont East a long time ago."

"I went to Fairmont West and played in the orchestra. Who was your dad?

"His last name is Holesovsky."

"I knew your dad!"

(We could hear the amazement and excitement in each other's voices).

Mr. Holesovsky also was my sister's music teacher in middle school. He was emphatic on pronouncing his last name correctly: hole - shove - ski.

We talked about our Kettering connections, the fact that we both played the viola, and she shared stories about her career playing in Broadway productions, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and working as a music librarian for the Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center. After all those years in music, she has stepped away from performance and now runs her own shop, The Beautiful Bags Lady, in the Findlay Market, selling her bio-tote bags and Cincinnati themed items. 

Small world stories are the best and stumbling across an unexpected face-to-face connection and purchasing a cute shopping bag was such a pleasant and fun way to start a day at the market.