Squash!

So I ate the squash pictured a few posts down...and guess what!  It was totally spaghetti squash! 

Good Old Midwest Vacation.

The land of cheese and bratwurst.  People rag on Wisconsinites for eating too much of these, but the stereotype is true.  Just ask my insides.

Anyways...

The trip began as we drove to Minnesota for my Aunt and Uncle's 25th wedding anniversary, which they held on a boat cruising Lake Minnetonka...beautiful!

 
Then we headed to the Dells. We went to the deer park again (I have video from last year's visit which I will put up in a subsequent post) Boyfriend's favorite dells thing from childhood.

They had Guinea hens!  I think I will have some one day, as they keep garden pests at bay and would provide some entertainment for Jack.  Here is a website if you would like to learn how you too, can be an owner of Guinea hens. 

Well, I got off on a little tangent here looking at Guinea fowl websites...and found this website where I can order Guinea hens, PEACOCKS, and LLAMAS!

Anyways...

We walked around downtown and over by the riverwalk, and got old timey photographs taken...picture to follow. We also went into little shop on the main drag that sold these lovely leggings:

That's all.

Learn about Frogs - Watch this Episode of Nature

Tonight I saw an excellent episode of PBS's Nature entitled Frogs: The Thin Green Line.  It touched on how frogs, despite being on this planet for more than 250 million years (!) are now in decline - their adaptations failing them in the face of global warming and modern day chemicals infiltrating their habitat.  Here is a link to the PBS website for the episode, which has a really informative written introduction of the episode.  You can also watch it online.

Edit:

Also, there are some interesting links posted therein about how chemicals from industrial agriculture affect the food chain, and ultimately us.  In the episode several populations of frogs were mentioned that are becoming feminized from the chemicals in the water.  One particular chemical used commonly in agriculture was found in concentrations three times LESS than what is allowed in drinking water and was still strong enough to cause male frogs to grow eggs in their testes. 

Scary stuff.

Did I mention I have a garden?

 In my friend's sunny backyard, we have a garden. 

This is what it looked like about a month after we planted it:

You may ask, is that a boat?  Well yes it is!  Pamela found it in an alley somewhere and it makes a perfect raised garden bed.  In the boat are squash, peppers, eggplant, chard, and cucumbers...  We also have tomatoes and herbs in pots and dahlias and mint planted around the boat. 

Here is what it looks like now:

It has really taken over the backyard... There were foot and a half tall grasses surrounding the boat so I went in a pulled them until I got to tired of doing that, so I literally took a pair of scissors and started cutting the grass down to make a path to the boat and around the sides of the boat. 

You can see in the picture above that we have two little beds surrounded by upturned glass bottles where we have the dahlias planted.  I had never heard of this before, but apparently they do it a lot in the south.

Chard!

Squash!

It is really great to take home fresh herbs you grew yourself (and mint for mojitos).  Our whole garden is organic, and it is also nice to know I'm not eating any chemicals...