Well, I guess I've always considered myself a city girl. The fact that I hail from a "small" town on the coast of Brazil of about 900,000 people, is only understood correctly (the "small" part that is) if you put it in context to the fact that I went to college in Sao Paulo, only an hour away, which is considered to be the fourth largest city in the world. Still, a city girl I've always been. Living in Dallas for the past 15 years only reinforced that belief.
However, as I find myself picking strawberries and raspberries from my backyard, rescuing a lost fawn, almost running over a deer a block away from my house, fighting hornets with my very own copy of National Geographic and baking my own bread (which turned out pretty darn good), I'm beginning to rethink this old label of mine.
All in all, though, whatever the label may be, the fact is, that I find myself very happy at this stage. Wisconsin is beautiful all year round. We're all still in awe of the snow and loving every minute of it. Fall is just absolutely beautiful (did you see the pic at the end of the blog?) and Spring just very colorful. The summer is considerably short which I just realized as I was shopping for an umbrella and umbrella base for our outdoor table this last week. Lo and behold I found an excellent deal at 50% off for both. It was only when I got home that I started to puzzle as to why they'd be having a 50% off sale in the middle of July??! Well, as the locals explained to me, this is the beginning of the end of the summer around here.
Definitely not what I want to hear when I have workers digging a big hole in my backyard where our brand new pool will sit in, hopefully, by the end of next week. I know, I know, we've spent all these years in the scorching state of Texas and never had a pool, and now that we move up north, we go ahead and decide to get one. Well, that's just the way it happens sometimes. Back in Texas, although we had a nicely sized backyard, putting a pool in, would take most of it, and not something DH was crazy about. You see, farm boy was raised amidst acres of land, and that would just go against his grain, having no grass to roam about . Now, we do have space for both, so, the next best thing is to just bite the bullet and install a water heater for aforementioned pool so that we do get a little more use out of it than we would otherwise. Trust me, we will be swimming this summer. Besides, we'll just be all ready for next year.
Now, back to my garden, what to do with all those strawberries and raspberries you ask? Well, I haven't gone totally country that I would want to bake a pie every single day of the week, so I had this brilliant idea of making strawberry daiquiris! Turned out fabulous! Sadly, I only thought of it towards the end of the strawberry picking season. I still get a few every day, but not enough to justify using the blender. But wait - raspberries are still in full swing. So, out the blender comes, and although we drank it all, raspberry daiquiris are just not as tasty as strawberry ones. Still good though... Oh, yes, I've added them to chocolate cakes and muffins but my kids are not too crazy about that (the picky eaters that they are). Send me your ideas for raspberries if you have any. Bear in mind, though, that I do not want to mess with flash freezing them for later.
Still, if you decide to get your own patch of raspberries going, remember that, 1.) since they have very thorny branches, it's never a good idea to try to pick them on a windy day - keep band-aids handy; 2.) wearing long sleeve shirts is highly recommended for the same reason, and 3.) do not wear white clothing while collecting them because you will get smeared with it and their juice is very red and stubborn to get rid of.
Time to jazz! Catch you later.
