With Midsummer's Eve well past, I figured it was time to get a few pictures and stories up. My apologies to Facebookers who have already seen these pictures.
Since my dad was coming out, Ellis and I hurried the boat into action to have it prepared for fishing with Grandpa. We live near a fairly large reservoir and the boat launch is only 10 minutes from home so we have decided that Arrowhead Mountain Lake will be our "home lake". What this means is we are going to try to learn its quirks and tricks and hopefully catch more fish for having focused most of our energy in one place.
We wanted to work out the kinks so the Sunday before Grandpa's arrival we decided to take her out for a spin. Ellis really wanted to keep his two perch. I cleaned them for him figuring that with Grandpa coming we would probably get enough together for a meal by the end of his visit. Ellis seems to embrace a larger concept of what it means to fish which includes a lot of snacking and loudly saying things that end with a question mark.
In other summer news, the wildflower areas that we had declared a failure came to life and now change nearly everyday. Next year the variety should be greater yet with substantial perennials coming to the party.
These are some of my favorites. We have also had a huge number of poppies. Unfortunately all of the sun flowers in the mix must have gotten eaten by birds before they could germinate.
The garden is also doing really well. The heat wave and mixed in storms have given it quite a boost. The beets remain weak, but we have had tremendous broccoli and lettuce. We have recently had our first kale and chard as well. The grape tomatoes are rapidly ripening and barring anything crazy weatherwise we should have a pile of tomatoes, zucchini, crook necks and bell peppers. The experimental hard squashes are setting fruit and we are hopeful we will at least see a few of those this year too.
My dad bought a three-day VT fishing license and we made the most of it. Our first night out, Ellis had a lot of fun and we completed what we needed for a fish fry. Saturday's fishing was less exciting. Ellis stayed home due to exhaustion and we threw back everything we caught.
Sunday we got up and headed out to the middle of the state where we used to live with the intention of seeing Moss Glen Falls. In the pic above we are standing in the river bottom below the falls while Ellis gets the lay of the land.
First, though we visited the reservoir out there and stopped in to say hello to our former landlords who now live in the place we lived in. They have grand plans including a new barn, an expansion of the living space, solar cells, thermal solar hot water and a reconfiguration of the roof of the house, so it is interesting to see what is going down out there.
Inexplicably, they have adopted a rescue mule to save it from becoming dog food. This involved driving out to PA to pick it up from what in the horse community is known as a "kill buyer" and now they have a completely useless animal burning hay. I wanted to point out that somewhere upstream from the grocery store, every piece of meat they consume was at some point purchased by a "kill buyer", but that seemed like it would be a little rude. I almost asked what percentage horse and animal would need to be before a horse person wouldn't feel compelled to rescue it, but again, it seemed a little rude.
After that visit we headed for the falls, but stopped on the way for cider doughnuts and cider popsicles. I only got 6 doughnuts for the 3 of us (since we had just had breakfast) and Ellis was extremely concerned that he wouldn't get his two allotted doughnuts, going so far as to demand that he be issued both of his doughnuts at the same time, I guess so he could monitor there safety, although they were gone in no time at all.
The falls were much less powerful than usual due to recent lack of rain and that allowed us the chance to get much closer although it did involve me getting very wet. Grandpa was the photographer for the adventure. We could have gone even farther up, but I slipped on the rocks and scared Ellis who demanded we go no further. I barely calmed him down enough to get this picture.
After placing Ellis on a comfy rock, I did go a little further to get a little bit better picture of me and the falls.
This may be my favorite picture of my Dad's entire visit. We had just climbed up the cliff by the falls and I wanted to get a picture of the two of them with the falls in the background, but Ellis was obstinate. You can tell from the look on my dad's face and the tilt to Ellis's head that they are locked in a battle of wills. Finally, my dad pointed out that we wouldn't be having any lunch until we had a picture and that got the job done, but none of those pictures were nearly so good as this one.
After the falls we stopped at a roadside shack called "The Shack" for lunch. Ellis and I had our typical corndogs, while my dad went for chili dogs whose chili included kidney beans and chunks of cubed meat rather than ground. The special was hand cut vidalia onion rings, which were the size of those cider doughnuts we had eaten a couple of hours earlier. They were good but three of them was all I could manage. Lunch conversation included my dad telling me about his recent discovery: funnel cake. How a man from the Midwest got to be 65 without knowing the joys of funnel cake is beyond me. We finished the outing by returning home through
Smuggler's Notch, but didn't stop to take pictures.
Sunday we went fishing one last time. The perch and pumpkin' seeds just weren't hitting like earlier in the weekend. The highlight was when I caught this bass on a 4-weight fly rod. The bass had struck Ellis's bobber and I cast my bass fly into the hole where the fish seemed to have come from and I think it hit the fly before the fly hit the water. Either way it was a great fight on light tackle.
Ellis used his birthday present from Grandpa to expand his lego collection with an
airliner and a
sea plane.
He now has a good base collection in the Lego City line with a fire rescue ladder truck and a tow truck, in addition to his latest additions.
Tonight we had our fish fry. The perch and bluegills were delicious along with sweet corn and coleslaw (and green beans but those were optional).
Getting my Dad and Ellis out fishing together was definitely the highlight of the trip and really of the summer. I have many fond memories of blue gills and fish fries with Aunt Vi and Uncle Merle, and my dad has his own with his Aunt Pearl and Uncle Forest. Hopefully this was the first of many for Ellis.
We are two time losers on the spinach. Planting one was a crazy variety that produced very little, which is maybe convenient since it looked like a vine and no one wanted to eat it. Planting two broke the land speed record going almost directly from sprouting to bolting. I've really never seen anything like it:
Tomatoes are going to be a battle of the will right to the bitter end. I've been so careful to prune them back and continuing tying them up every weekend. Then a week and a half ago we had a hail storm which knocked over every stinkin' plant. So it's typical end of summer tug of war to keep the tomatoes off the ground as the fruit ripens. Arg..tomatoes don't play fair!
As a final insult to my patience, my four year old grew this from a seed!
But the most important is what makes it to the table, yes? So tonight we have our first big tomato on BLTs with a side of yellow squash, courtesy of Ellis:
