'Tis the Season!

Let me share a sweet thought with you:

"See that watermelon
Smiling through the fence?
I wish that watermelon it was mine.
Sometimes I think that old folks
Ain't got a little sense
When they leave that watermelon sittin' on the vine.

"Well apples are sweet and peaches are good,

Rabbits so very, very fine,
But give me oh give me,
Oh how I wish you would,
Some of that watermelon smiling on the vine.

"Oh, cornbread is sweet,

Pork chops are good,
Blackeyed peas are mighty, mighty fine.
But I ought to tell you,
I really think I should,
For lickin' good eatin',
Eat a watermelon hangin' on the vine!"

We are currently in the middle of watermelon season.  It is plentiful, inexpensive, and at the peak of quality.  And we love it at our house.  So we have it a lot.

Picking a good watermelon is an art.  It's a skill you have to develop.  You read and hear all kinds of stuff about the tricks to picking a good watermelon.  Some people look for places where bees stung the melon.  Some people say you should look for melons with just the right amount of coloring from where the sun didn't reach on the melon.  Some people thump them and listen for just the right sound, a sound you have to learn to recognize, trial and error kind of thing.  Some people prefer striped melons, others prefer solid green.  Everybody has their own method for picking a good melon.  That even includes just grabbing one, which I think is a very risky proposition.

What has worked best at our house is the thumping method and Brombeere has gotten very, very good at it.  It has gotten to the point that we can go a whole summer and have nearly every melon that comes through the house be a good one, with many being very good.  That is a very happy thing.

Once you get the melon home you have to decide how to prepare it, how to serve it.  There are a number of ways to serve watermelon.  At our house, our favorite is to cut it into bite-sized cubes.

So you cut it open and get started.  And here I feel I must make a confession.  Its  common knowledge that the center of the melon is the sweetest part.  My grandmother, who began her family in the midst of the Great Depression and raised ten kids, and who learned how to make a dollar stretch because she had to, had this thing about watermelons.  If there was any red left at the rind you're being wasteful, even though that is the farthest part from the sweet, sweet center of the melon.  My children all heard about this standard.  Personally I don't think its necessary to cut it quite that close.  Its okay to leave a little red because, frankly, the rind isn't very good at all.

And here is my confession.  When I'm chopping up the melon, a fair amount of the center, the heart of the melon, the sweetest, best part of the melon, never makes it into the serving bowl.

Its like I can't get all the way through the job without sampling it.  Well, you know, you need to make sure its good enough to set on the table, right?

Or maybe you can tell as you're cutting along, that its just not all going to fit in the bowl so you have to reduce the amount that needs to fit in the bowl, right?

Or maybe its simply too good to resist.  I mean, who can wait until all the foods ready, we sit down, and have the blessing?!  Is that even a reasonable expectation!?  Maybe I shouldn't have said anything, now they might not let me cut the watermelon anymore.

Anyway, this time we cut up half a good sized watermelon to have for lunch.  Nearly filled the bowl.

But when lunch was over the bowl was empty enough that it seemed more empty than full.  What a shame to put such a big bowl, which was now more than half empty, in the fridge, taking up all that space.

So, yeah, I moved it into a smaller bowl.  And there were only two of us eating at that meal.

Oh, watermelon is so good.  Its the favorite fruit at our house.  "For lickin' good eatin', eat a watermelon hangin' on the vine!"  Its such a glorious time when its in season and such a sad time when they go out of season each year.  But there's always next year!

Tunnel #3

Last summer my major bike ride was to go to New Glarus and ride through the Stewart Tunnel. At the time I was thinking that it was the longest tunnel of any of the "rails to trails" in the state, old railroad lines that have been converted to recreational trails.  I'm not sure where that thought came from.  I found out during this last winter that it wasn't the longest.  Maybe it was that it was the longest tunnel on the Badger State Trail.  At any rate, when I found out that Tunnel #3 on the Elroy-Sparta State Trail was the longest in the state  I had to go there.  Three quarters of a mile long, almost 4,000 feet.  So far you can't see the other end and the entrance from either direction.  Yep, I had to get there.  So Brommbeere and I talked, we picked a date, and waited for the date to arrive.

And finally it did.  I had done some reading about the tunnel.  4,000 feet is a long, long ways to go without a light so we had to get some really good strong and bright lights for our bikes to be able to make it through the tunnel. We had everything else we'd need but we were short a light.  So we got one. I also wanted to get some good pictures, including a movie.  So in the days just before the ride we needed to make sure everything was fully charged and ready to go.

And so it was lights! Camera! Action!  On the designated morning we loaded up the bikes and hit the road once again!

The Elroy-Sparta trail is over 40 miles long, which is a bit more than I have ever ridden in a single ride.  More than we wanted to do on this day as well.  But the nearest community to the tunnel is a little town called Norwalk.  Just over four miles from the tunnel.  After a bit of a drive we arrived.

First order of business was to get Brombeere a trail day pass.  I had gotten me an annual trail pass early on in the year but I hadn't gotten one for Brombeere because I wasn't sure she would be out riding very much.

So we stopped at a little shop right off the side of the trail and bought the pass and we were ready to go!.  And, yes.  As you can tell from the bike rack, this little shop caters to bike riders.

We took the trail west, out of town.  At first it was closed in with trees and bushes.  But within a real short distance it opened up and we got a good look at some real nice farming countryside.

The day had turned out to be just a little warmer than we had hoped so it was pretty warm when we were out of the trees in the sun.  We were pretty happy when the trees closed back in and the shade made it cool off a little.

So off through the trees we kept riding.  We had our apps going, clocking the ride, but there were also mile markers as we rode along.  I think they were counting down from Sparta.  The first one we saw was "eleven" and they went down from there, every mile.

After a while we came to the Tunnel Watchman's shed.  This was from when the trains were still running.

It was the tunnel watchman's job to open the tunnel doors whenever a train came.  That was as much as 50 times a day.  The tunnel watchman worked a 12 hour shift but only from November to April, when it was coldest.  The tunnel had doors to keep it warmer inside, in an effort to reduce the damage to the tunnel from water freezing.

For us, on this day, the nice thing about the tunnel watchman's shed was there was a working hand pump.

It took a bit of pumping but we finally coaxed water up out of the ground.  It was cold and tasted pretty good.  Quite refreshing on a warm day.

So we got a cool drink and looked around the area by the shed.

Across the trail from the shed and up a short walk was a flume, to drain water away from the tunnel.

There was a little bridge across the flume.  Made for some nice pictures.

The flume had been built along with the tunnel because there was a natural spring above the tunnel.  The flume was more of the effort to keep the water away from the tunnel.  Judging from the size of the flume it must been a lot of water.

We also figured that with the flume and the tunnel watchman's shed there we must be getting close to the tunnel so after spending a little while looking around we hit the trail again.

Sure enough, we had only gone a little farther when the walls began to rise on either side of the trail.

And then, around a corner, we could see the opening of the tunnel.  We were there!

This was far more recognizable than the entrance to the Stewart Tunnel.  I was practically at that entrance before I recognized it as the entrance.  This one had stone work all around it and, of course, the doors.

Of course, I had to do a picture.  I wanted both of us in it, and I had brought my tripod so I could set up my camera.

Standing there at the entrance to the tunnel, feeling the cool air flowing out, it felt good after the heat of the day as we rode the trail to the tunnel.

And then, we put the camera away, turned on our lights, and headed into the dark.  And it definitely was dark.  We were certainly glad we'd brought good lights.  It was dark.  As we went into the tunnel we could not see the other end, not at all.  So on we went.  It was cool.  Water was dripping all the way through the tunnel.  The center of the tunnel was raised up, a stream of water was running on both sides of the trail.  All the way through the tunnel water was dripping like rain from all over the ceiling but in some places it was running in streams down the walls.  It was like being out in the rain.

Then, suddenly, we were at the other end.  We hadn't realized we were close because it had gotten foggy.  The warm air coming in from the outside meeting with the cool, moist air inside had made it foggy.

The beam from my light, shinning through the mist.

I didn't realize it right away, when we came out, but the lenses on our cameras had condensation on them.  I had been struggling with my glasses fogging over the last little way through the tunnel.

A lot of our photos had a misty haze over them.

The cargo rack on my bike looked like it had been rained on.

Standing there, in the west entrance of the tunnel, we were still feeling the cool air coming out of the tunnel.

There was a "selfie station" there at the west entrance of the tunnel so we took another one.  Good times.

Then it was back through the tunnel and on our way home.  As we came out the east end of the tunnel I occurred to me that I had brought my movie camera and not yet made a movie.  I had fully intended to make a movie as we returned back through the tunnel but here I was back outside and no movie.  So I stopped and turned it on and made a movie of the ride to catch up with Brombeere, who hadn't realized I had stopped and had ridden on ahead.

And so we have a catch up movie.  And, no, we did not collide.  It just looks like we were about to because of the wide angle lens on the camera.

The really nice thing about the ride back was that it was pretty much all down hill.

The Elroy-Sparta trail has three tunnels along it and each one is at the crest of a rise that goes up for miles to each tunnel and then falls back down over the miles from each tunnel. A gentle rise but one that goes on for miles.

So while the ride to the tunnel had been a bit of hot, sweaty work, getting back was a breeze.

And, of course, we had to go back to the same little shop for some lunch.  The perfect way to end a very nice visit to a really cool place (quite literally) and very fun ride!

His Holy Place

The House of the Lord

Holiness to the Lord

Not so Pretty

The other day the missionaries were coming to dinner and it was a  little over an hour before they were to arrive.  Then Brombeere said that we probably ought to make a cake or something for dessert.  So she started talking about how there was a cake mix in the pantry and we could throw that together quick and all.  Only for the last several weeks I had been thinking that we needed an excuse to make this scratch cake recipe I have that I like pretty much.  So I got up and started making it.

You know me, get everything out first.  This recipe is a real simple one, just a few ingredients and throw them together without a lot of fuss.  My kind of recipe.

So I started with the butter and sugar, mixed it all up nice and smooth.

Then I added the eggs and the rest of the liquids and beat it some more.

It was looking pretty good so it went in the pan and into the oven.  We used to have two regular sized cake pans for making normal layer cakes but they wore out a while back so right now we don't.  The only pans we have are the ones Brombeere acquired back when she was learning how to decorate cakes.  They're a little bigger and more sturdy.  One pan was big enough for all the batter so that's how it went in the oven.

Then, while the cake was cooking, I started on the frosting.  I've gotten braver about making frosting.  Normally I have trouble getting the consistency right and seemed to always end up with way more frosting than I wanted.  But the last couple of times its gone better, got the right consistency and the right amount.  That, plus I really like the flavor of home made frosting lots more than the store bought stuff.  So once again, get everything out ...

And, once again, success!  I was pretty pleased with this part.

Then the timer on the cake went off.  We opened the oven door and slid the rack out and the middle of the cake jiggled, like jello.  Nope, not done.  So back in the oven it went.  Two more tries, more than double the time the recipe called for and finally it looked done and ready so out it came.

Unfortunately, when we tried to take it out of the pan we discovered it still wasn't done all the way through.  Not even close.  Well, the missionaries were waiting for dessert.  So we explained the situation to the missionaries. Brombeere suggested that the cake around the edges was probably done and we could serve that part.  We explained this to the missionaries, that we could do that.  Just that the cake wasn't as pretty as normal.  They were okay with that.  One of them even said he really liked gooey cake and was just fine with it.   So that's how we served it.

Then, once we finished cutting pieces for everyone, the rest went back into the oven and cooked for another 20 minutes.  I think the total cooking time ended up being almost triple what the recipe called for when cooking in two pans.  We'll know better next time.

The frosting?  Well, we just served that on the side like whipped cream and let everyone put what they wanted on.  It would have been pretty hard to frost this particular cake like normal.  But in the end, even though it wasn't the prettiest cake you've ever seen, it still tasted just fine.  And it satisfied the craving I'd been having.  Success in failure, right?