There is nothing that makes me more joyful than watching and listening to my various grandchildren play in my back yard on a sunny summer day. And throw in a great-niece and a great-nephew, and my cup runneth over!

This past Thursday, Addie and Magnolia joined Kaiya and Mylee playing at our house. The splash pool was set up, the sand box was uncovered, and the games began. About noon, they were joined by visitors. My niece Maggie, who is visiting from Arizona, arrived with 3-year-old Austin and 5-month-old Lilly to join in the festivities.

The kids had a blast. Here are Magnolia, Mylee, and Austin playing in the fort….

My Saturday smile came, however, sometime mid-morning when I was putting sunscreen on all of them (And let me just say that I am reading now that spray-on sunscreen is supposedly unsafe; however, you will have to pry it out of my hands in order to get me to go back to the lotion. Hold your breath sweet ones as I spray!)

I wasn’t sure if Addie and Magnolia had sunscreen already on, so I asked Magnolia if she needed sunscreen.

She literally rolled her eyes, and in her best Valley Girl voice, she said, “Um, no? It’s a back yard…..”

I guess you are exempt from sunburn in a back yard. Who knew?

Have a good weekend.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Fourth of July always granted my mother the opportunity to pronounce that summer  WAS HALF OVER. Blah.

But since the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I too am starting to feel the need to reach for a brown paper bag in which to breathe so that I don’t hyperventilate as I consider fall looming ahead. Target did, after all, have their back-to-school items out. I thought it was a good time to consider what I like best about summer.

TOP TEN BEST THINGS ABOUT SUMMER (in no particular order)

I am a big fan of daylight savings time. I love the long days. It makes me happy that when I arise at 5:30 a.m., it is light outside. Even more, I love that at 8:30 or 9 o’clock, the sun is just starting to go down. I can see the length of the days diminishing, and I’m not happy about that.

Fresh fruits and vegetables  provide one of summertime’s greatest delights to me. Obviously there are fresh vegetables all year long, but I love the artichokes when they’re in season and the corn-on-the-cob coming to you fresh from the farmers’ fields. I love the big baskets of blueberries and strawberries at a cost that doesn’t make you scream and with an actual, well, flavor. I make cucumber salads and serve platters of fresh tomatoes sprinkled with salt and strips of basil, swimming in olive oil. Vegetables doused in flavored oil and grilled send me straight to heaven.

Another thing that sends me straight to heaven when it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables is canning. I love to “put up” the wonderful peaches that will come to me late this summer and the pickling cucumbers that should be showing up soon. I noticed from a Facebook picture that my daughter-in-law Lauren made what looks like strawberry jam. I’m hoping some gets into her suitcase to bring to Denver in a few weeks.

Summertime brings the obvious added benefit of having more time to hang out with my grandkids. Not only do I get to spend time with the ones who live near me, summer almost always brings a visit from – or to – the grandkids in Vermont. We are eagerly awaiting an upcoming August visit from our Vermont family. In the meantime, I enjoy watching the kids play in my backyard, taking them to the parks, setting out my big splash pool or turning on the sprinklers and letting them run around until their hearts are glad. So is mine.

I love to hike, and of course that doesn’t have to be limited to summertime. But I’m not a cold-weather hiker, so I like to either enjoy the mountains in the summer or the desert in the winter. We had many a happy Estes Park, Colorado, family vacation when I was growing up and Rocky Mountain National Park is still one of my favorite places to enjoy nature. I don’t get up often, but I love it when I do.

I love the flowers that bloom all summer long here in Denver. I enjoy all of the flowers in the neighborhood as I take my morning or evening walks. Every year I plant colorful petunias in my flower bed at the edge of my patio, and I am embarrassingly happy to sit there in the evening and enjoy them. Sometime mid-August, they start getting pretty leggy and less pretty, so I enjoy them while I have them.

And speaking of sitting out on my patio, I do enjoy sipping gin and tonics in the evening. Now there is absolutely nothing to forbid me from drinking gin and tonics all year round. But for some reason, nothing tastes better than the intermingling bitter flavors of the gin and the tonic when they are icy cold and you are done for the day. That’s when I can enjoy my flowers.

As well as my bird feeders. Another summer delight is that I put out one bird feeder that attracts small birds, mostly house finches. They mostly don’t mind coming to dine while we sit out and enjoy the end of the day. I must say I enjoy my birds at both houses – Denver and Arizona. I will enjoy them here until late August, when the mice start coming to enjoy the spillage in preparation for winter. Then the feeder might need to be put away.

Several years ago, we redid our patio so that it runs along the entire width of our back yard. Under the honey locust tree we have a table and chairs where I love dining al fresco during the summer months. This season has featured a lot of afternoon thunderstorms, but we still have managed some outdoor dining.

My circadian rhythm is such that I am happier and healthier when I am subject to a lot of sunshine. I mentioned the longer days earlier in this post, but in addition to the longer days, I love the extended period of sunshine and the warm weather. My body depends on it. My doctor has told me before that she can see the physical difference in me in the summer from the winter.

The good news is that, despite my mother’s dire warnings, there are still many days left in summer. We have some fun activities ahead (though a looming jury duty summons could possibly put a dent in those plans; I’ll know very soon) that will put the star on my summer.

And what’s more, I have to admit that Colorado does have some pretty autumns!

Well, in my world, it doesn’t say “Ringading ding ding.” It says, “Let’s go get us some kind of good grub at the McLain’s.”

In fact, I toyed with calling this post Eat, Prey, Love. But since the What Does the Fox Say song has been running through my mind for two weeks now, (and isn’t that a dubious substitute for, say, prayer?) I ran with it.

Our back yard hasn’t been Wild Kingdom for the entire 22 years we’ve lived in this house, but it has been quite active for the past 10 years or so. We regularly see hawks circling, raccoons have been known to prowl around at night, and there are coyote warning signs in every park within a 20 block radius. And we live in an established neighborhood right in Denver! Crazy. At least there are no rattlesnakes to be found as there are in newer outlying suburban neighborhoods.

But our major wildlife attraction is the group of foxes who think our back yard is their playground (and I have learned that a group of foxes is called a “skulk.”) Almost daily we find some sort of a doggy toy that they have swiped from a yard in which a dog lives (“Stop swiping Swiper.” Sorry, an unforgiveable Dora the Explorer reference – inevitable when you have young grandkids.)

As of late, however, it has morphed from playground to a Fox Buffet Restaurant, offering such delicious goodies as bunny rabbits, squirrels, mice, and crows. Nearly every morning when I arise at 5:30 or so, I look out my bathroom window into the back yard only to see one, two or (yesterday morning) three foxes with some sort of dead or nearly-dead animal in their mouth, shaking it vigorously back and forth. Pleasant start to a day.

And yet, interestingly, at the same time that the foxes are turning squirrels into smoothies in the back of our yard, there are squirrels trying to figure out how to access the bird seed in the feeder in the front of the yard. I try to remind myself of two things: 1) this is nature; and 2) squirrels’ brains are the size of a walnut so they aren’t exactly quantum physicists. Still, bunnies are smart enough to stay out of our yard. Just sayin’…..

I’m frankly happy to see the foxes again this year, as they have made themselves rather scarce the last couple of summers. Two summers ago, on a bright Sunday morning, I glanced out my bathroom window as I was getting ready for church. I saw something lying in the back corner of the yard.

“Bill, come look,” I said. He couldn’t figure out what it was, so as soon as he got dressed, he went to check it out. I watched from the window. I saw him walk back to the area, stop dead in his tracks, and turn around and head back.

“Well,” he told me when he returned to the bedroom. “That is a dead fox. In two pieces. A body and a head. What more could a homeowner ask for on a Sunday morning?.”

So we proceeded (and when I say we, I mean Bill) to scoop the carcass into a garbage bag, call the city for a pickup, and move it to the side of the house where the people who have jobs I wouldn’t want to have could pick it up.

We decided that was the summer that spoils went to the coyotes.

So while I could live forever without Eat, Prey, Love, at least the foxes are extraordinarily pretty. And at least they aren’t coyotes. And since I believe in the natural order of things, I’m going to presume that at this point in time at least, the coyotes are murdering foxes elsewhere. And, as Martha Stewart (who never saw a fox shake a bunny to its death in her life) would say, “That’s a good thing.”

A number of years ago, when I was still getting a paycheck to write, my company featured me in a little series they had in their employee newsletter as part of an effort to get to know just who is sitting in the cubicle next to you. One of the questions they asked everyone was, “What is one thing about you that most people would be surprised to learn?”

Hmmm. That’s kind of a hard one since I didn’t want to mention I eat food that I’ve dropped on the floor even if it’s been more than five seconds or that the back seat of my car is shamefully dirty with everything from crumbs dropped by grandkids eating Fruit Loops to papers that I tossed in the back seat of my car sometime during the Carter administration.

And then it hit me. I will tell them that I like NASCAR. No one would guess that. Particularly since it’s not actually, well, wholly factual. It’s partially factual. I can tolerate Bill (who truly LOVES NASCAR) watching it on television, and even try to engage a bit. I love listening to the announcers, all of whom sound like they just got in from hauling hay or are getting ready to do so. They’re so darn happy about the sport. And I find it interesting to see the drivers crash into a wall, spin around 60 or 70 times, hit two or three other drivers, roll to a stop, and hop out of the car like they were making a quick run into Target.

But here’s why I felt like I could say that I liked NASCAR and not get struck by a bolt of lightening for lying. I grew up watching stock car races with my family.

There was a dirt oval racetrack just east of our town that ran stock cars every Sunday. It was called Skylark Raceway. Dad and Mom took the family to the stock car races many Sunday nights to watch the races and root on our very favorite driver who drove the Number 1 car – a purple car with Mighty Mouse painted on its side. The driver, whose name was Willie Hecke, was either loved or hated, depending on your perspective. Our family universally loved him, both because he usually won, but also because of that doggone Mighty Mouse on the side of his car. Who couldn’t root for Mighty Mouse (“Here I come to save the daaaaaaay!” MM would sing as he saved Pearl Pureheart who was seemingly endlessly being tied to a board that was going through a sawmill.)

Anyhoo, back to Skylark Raceway. We were an odd lot, certainly not your typical race fans. But we all loved those stock car races, and apparently so did our parents. On the Sunday nights that we stayed at home, we could still hear the faint sound of the cars racing as we sat on our front porch wishing we were there.

The seats were benches, the concessions were rudimentary (though I’m sure beer was among the offerings), and oh-my-heavens, was it ever dusty. Remember the dirt track? As darkness approached and the lights went on, you could see the dirt in the air and imagine it going into our lungs. We didn’t care. Our  beloved Mighty Mouse was winning the modified jalopy race once again. Go Mighty Mouse! We would just take a bath when we got home.

Dirt Track

Not a dirt track.

It’s quite a leap to go from Skylark Raceway to the fancy race tracks on which NASCAR races today. Still, I must admit that, while I couldn’t tell you Jeff Gordon’s standings (Bill could), I still get goosebumps when I hear those engines fire up.

By the way, I recently read that Willie Hecke died suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1985 sitting in a racecar waiting for the green flag to wave. An awesome way for our beloved Mighty Mouse to go to that great race track in the sky.

Every so often, my grandmother would invite some of her friends over to her apartment. All of them were Swiss and spoke Swiss. The women would sit in Grammie’s front room, each with their own handicraft project. The sounds of talking and laughing and gossiping – all in a language we couldn’t understand – along with the clickity click of knitting needles filled the air.

Grammie’s front room had two sofas. They each leaned up against one of the walls. Because the backs were slanted, a tunnel of sorts would naturally present itself. My sister Jen and I simply couldn’t resist. So while these women were talking, sipping coffee, and clickity-clicking their knitting needles, Jen and I would secretly slip behind one of the sofas to eavesdrop.

Now, as I said, they were speaking entirely in Swiss, so eavesdrop is a funny way to put it since we couldn’t understand a word they said. And yet, that’s exactly what we would do. Listen in to their conversations. Funny.

Later on, after they had all left, Jen and I would open up the drawers of the big cabinet in which Grammie kept all of her paraphernalia for her handicrafts. We would each carefully select a pair of knitting needles and take them over to one of the couches. We would sit there, clicking the needles against each other (no yarn) and speak back and forth to each other using our own gobbledegook, pretending all the while that we were speaking Swiss. As I write this, I simply can’t think why we thought that was fun. However, we certainly did.

I would venture to guess that when any of my siblings and my Gloor cousins think about Grammie, she is knitting or crocheting. I have a cedar chest full of baby clothes she knitted for me – sweaters, caps, booties, and hats. I’m sorry to say Court never wore a single one of the items. For one thing, (God bless her sweet and tender heart) they were always kind of oddly shaped. Very long sleeves, for example. And the booties were enormous – big enough to fit a 5-year-old. But I love every single one of the items and haven’t – even after all of these years – been able to throw a single one away. I’ll leave that for my kids and grandkids.

When I was in high school, Grammie made me a beautiful afghan in a pale yellow. It was too pretty to keep out, I thought. So I put it in my cedar chest. I have tried bringing it out throughout the years, but I always put it back because I’m afraid it will get dirty or torn. Isn’t that silly? I need to get a grip and proudly display it.

All this is to say that I inherited my love for crocheting from Grammie. I have made afghans for my grandkids, my friends, my family, and anyone else I can

Afghan in Jen’s living room.

think of. I really have simply run out of recipients for my afghans.

I recently made an afghan for my 5-year-old grandson Joseph for his birthday. Joseph and his family live in Vermont, and we frequently communicate via Facetime. One of Joseph’s favorite things is to eat Oreo cookies with his papa on Facetime. They will each dip an Oreo in a beverage (milk for Joseph, coffee for Papa) and enjoy its chocolaty taste together. So when I spotted the instructions for this Oreo afghan, it was immediately a must-do.

The afghan took considerable time, but I enjoyed every minute of it. When the work became tedious, I would picture Joseph’s face when he opened up the package and saw all of those Oreos!

As an aside, despite the fact that Grammie was a voracious knitter and crocheter, I never learned to knit, and she was not the one who taught me to crochet. I was taught by my Aunt Myrta – my dad’s sister – who patiently worked with me as I learned to make a crochet stitch. My first projects were potholders made out of granny squares.

I used to wonder why Myrta taught me to crochet instead of Grammie, but now that I’m a grandmother, I know the reason. As my granddaughters have gotten old enough to crochet, I find I simply don’t know how to teach them. I have to get over that as I would love to pass along the skill to them.

By the way, I have a vague recollection that at one point in his youth, I taught Court how to crochet. He made a scarf. I wonder if he remembers.

My mom, who, despite how much I loved her, I would have to describe as a glass-half-empty kind of gal, used to use the Fourth of July as her opportunity to remind us, “Well kids, it’s the July 4th; the summer is half over.”

Thanks Mom.

So, though Mom’s words are weighing in the back of my mind, I enjoyed my July 4th holiday, and even the week leading up to it.

For example, last week, I invited my grandson Alastair to go geocaching with me, and he accepted with enthusiasm. Geocaching, remember, is the sort of treasure hunt where you find hidden containers using a GPS device. He had first learned about it in Cub Scounts. He is a good geocaching companion.

We were at a nearby park looking for a geocache in which the description includes a warning that “you really need to be a spider monkey to retrieve this one.” Well, our spider monkey Dagny was in Montana, but nevertheless, we forded on in our effort to spot this geocache.

And we did. Our GPS took us to the base of a very tall tree. I looked up. And up. And up. At the very tippy top of the tree I spotted something blue hanging there.

“There is is, Alastair,” I shouted. “Darn, I wish Dagny was here. She could climb up and retrieve it.”

“I can do it, Nana,’ Alastair assured me. And he started up. In his flip flops. Soon he was pretty much a speck in the tree, but he indeed did retrieve the cache. Since I didn’t want him trying to open it up while dangling from high in a tree, I told him, “Just touch it, and that’ll be good enough for us.” He did.

We celebrated the Fourth of July in pretty good fashion. Bill and Bec and I got a good, early start to Jen’s house in Fort Collins where she was hosting a burger cook-off later in the day. We stopped at Johnson’s Corner, a locally-famous truck stop whose owners purportedly threw the key into the cement when they began building the place early last century, and the doors have not been locked since. We enjoyed a big breakfast, which included one of their “world-famous” cinnamon rolls. Yesterday’s roll was a feast for the senses….

I hope you all had a good holiday, and have a great weekend.

Have a happy and safe 4th of July!

By Bob B.

The past few weeks since my last entry have had me driving a little bit of everywhere we go, from North Dakota to Kansas and southwest Minnesota to northeast Colorado. Although there have been some tremendous storms with tornados, including the virtual wipeout of Pilger, NE, I have continued to be extremely fortunate in being able to avoid the real bad stuff. I keep telling those that have been praying for my safety to keep it up. The prayers are working, thank God.

I have been along the edges of several storm fronts which have produced some spectacular views. Tremendous lightning displays off in the distance across the open prairie, and up close…real close, provide magnificent entertainment. Rains falling in the distance can look like isolated pillars of gray stretching down to the ground from a single dark cloud. Catching up to a storm front on the back side of it looks like an approach to a wall of water, and then smashing into it. And of course, there is your basic, all-encompassing down pour complete with lightning bolts and sheet lightning. All of them are cool in their own way, as long as you maintain safe driving habits. I cannot believe the number of people that enter a storm situation and refuse to turn on their headlights so others can see them.

Turtles of all kinds are wrapping up their migrations. Box turtles, painted turtles, tortoises, and snapping turtles by the gazillions have been trying to cross highways and interstates throughout the Midwest. Seems like most make it, but lots don’t. Then there are the kind-hearted souls that pull off the road and park to get out and carry the reptile to safety. One such elderly man (older than me) made me wonder. I was passing him just as he was getting out of his car to provide assistance to a snapping turtle. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill snapper. This one was about the diameter of a garbage can lid. It must have weighed 40-50 pounds. It had a head about the size of a fist and a neck about as long as your forearm. In my side view mirror I saw the man bending over, arms outstretched as if to grab either side of the snapper’s shell to pick it up. As I drove over the crest of a hill and the sight disappeared from my view, I wondered how many fingers did that man lose.

Another big snapping turtle was in the road as I approached and was right in the middle of my lane. He wasn’t moving, just sitting there within his shell, either dead or sleeping. I could not move to the left or right to avoid the critter so I centered it between my wheels as I blew over the top of him at 62 mph. It must have woke him because when I looked back in my side mirror, he was already off the road shoulder entering the weeds. That turtle must have broken into a full speed sprint!

Last week I was driving I-90 going east out of Rapid City, SD. It was a warm, sunny afternoon – a beautiful day in ranch country. Along side the road to my right down a hill was a farm pond about the size of a football field. Anchored in the middle of the pond was a red and white (Husker fan?), about 20 foot, inboard engine Four Winns type speedboat, complete with bikini babe catching rays on the aft deck. It was a surrealistic sight. I almost stopped to see if I could apply more suntan lotion. Almost.

Things have been good on the road. I am home almost 2 full days most weeks, although the days are usually not the same each week. Home long enough to get the lawn mowed, stretch out, and not get into too much trouble.

That’s about it for now. Be safe, maintain a safe distance between you and the next guy, and by all means use those turn signals. Till next time….

The 4^th of July is the celebration of our country’s independence from Great Britain. I’m only telling you this so that you know that I was never one of the ditzy people interviewed by Jay Leno who claimed that the reason we celebrate the 4^th of July is it’s the anniversary of the day Keith Richards snorted his father’s cremated remains. I know my history and I’m a patriot.

I also know that the 4^th of July is the most popular U.S. holiday for barbecues. Seventy-one percent of us will be firing up the grill on Friday and cooking some sort of meat product in honor of our forefathers signing the Declaration of Independence. Never mind that it was actually signed somewhere around August 2. Does the 2^nd of August sound like any kind of meat-cooking, firework-shooting celebratory day? Nope.

To enhance your barbecuing pleasure, I am offering two quick picks that will make your 4^th of July celebration even better.

First, the other day when I talked about grilling, I mentioned Chicago-style Montreal seasoning. I spoke somewhat in error. What I currently love throwing on my chops is Weber’s Chicago Steak Seasoning. It resembles Montreal seasoning, but with the kick of red pepper flakes as part of the seasoning. In fact, the ingredients list includes simply sea salt, garlic, spices, onion, red bell pepper and red pepper. It has a zip to it that works great on grilled meat. Yum.

See? Almost empty.

Second, I don’t purport to be an expert on margaritas. That honor would go to Jen in our family. She is a connoisseur on margaritas of all sorts. But once in a while, I’m in the mood for a margarita, especially when I’m dining Mexican or eating spicy barbecue. A friend recently told me about Coyote Gold Margarita Mix, and it’s a winner. The ingredients are all natural, so the sweet and sour isn’t that cloyingly sweet artificial flavor. It’s premixed, so you just salt the rim of a glass, fill it up with ice, pour the mix and garnish with a lime. It’s 37 proof, so drink with care! Salud.

And Kids? Don’t snort your dad….

Keith Richards

 “Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.” – L.M. Montgomery

It’s funny how our senses can trigger memories.

Now is the time of year that linden trees are in bloom. The flowers are very fragrant, and there are many linden trees in our neighborhood. Yesterday morning, as Bill and I did our power walk outside instead of the gym, we walked under a blooming linden tree and the smell wafted down to my nostrals. Suddenly I was 7 again.

We had linden trees at our house when I was growing up – a pretty one in the front yard and a less pretty, kind of scrawny one in the back yard. I always thought – and still do today – that linden trees are one of the prettiest trees created by God. To me, they are the perfect shape – a bit like the shape of a tree that a child would draw (except my trees were always round and had apples). We talk now and again about planting a linden tree, and perhaps will if our honey locust ever betrays us and dies. (God forbid, because that’s the tree on which hangs the highly-popular swing enjoyed by every single one of our grandchildren at some point (except for Baby Cole; his day will come).

Every year about this time, my Grammie would come over to our house and gather linden tree blossoms. She would take those blossoms home to the apartment above the bakery where she and Gramps lived. The apartment had two bedrooms – the one they shared and a spare in which there was a double bed with a metal frame that was the squeakiest bed ever. Even now, I can hear the squeak of the bed as we sat on it. Bill said old box springs had fewer springs than today’s version, and that’s why our grandmothers’ beds squeaked. That’s the bed where any and all of the grandkids slept if they spent the night.

Grammie would lay out a big sheet of plastic on that bed and lay the blossoms all over the plastic. The smell enveloped the room. Over the next few weeks, the blossoms would dry out. Eventually, they were ready to be used to make the only non-alcoholic beverage my grandmother ever had in her house – her iced linden tea. I don’t recall where she stored the tea leaves, but she kept the tea in her refrigerator in a big jar.

Opinions were mixed about the tea. Bec and I didn’t like it; Jen and Dave did. I can’t recall what Bec and I drank instead as Grammie seriously had nothing else to offer. Water, I guess, or choked down the tea. She served it ice cold and unsweetened. It was probably very good for us – well, for Jen and Dave since Bec and I eschewed it.

I wonder if she had learned to make linden tea back in Switzerland, or if it was something she only started doing after moving to the United States. I wish I had asked her.

Thinking about the tea led me to recall that Gramps used to go out to the country each year late in the summer and gather wild grapes to make his wine. He died at a very young age and I was never able to taste his wine, but I asked my dad one time if the wine was any good. Sometimes yes; sometimes no, according to Dad. I remember that there were big wooden wine barrels in the basement (the enormously SCARY basement) of the bakery in which he would store his wine. Dad sold the wine barrels when he sold the bakery, I would imagine. Probably full of vinegary wine no doubt. He also threw all of the monsters that lived in that basement into the deal.

And while I was walking down memory lane, I was recalling more about Grammie’s spare bedroom. There was a closet in that room in which she probably kept her off-season clothes, etc. But in that closet there was also the four bridesmaid dresses from the wedding of my Aunt Venie to my Uncle Dale. The dresses were tea length with a sweetheart neckline. I think they also included a short jacket. They were each a different pastel color. I can’t remember what colors they all were, except that my mother – who had been a bridesmaid – wore a really pretty shade of olive green. The dresses had a shirt waist with a very full satin skirt with a matching tulle overlay. The dresses were lined up together in that closet (I wonder how Grammie ended up with them?). My sisters and I were not allowed to put them on, but we were allowed to look at them and touch them. I would run my fingers over the tulle skirts and bury my face in the rough material. I seriously can remember how they felt to this day. I can even smell the musty odor.

Okay Friends. I’m back and 60 years old again. But I sure did enjoy that trip down Memory Lane. What would we do without our memories? I hope I am creating some of the same kind of grand memories for my grandkids.

What are some smells or sights that trigger memories in your life?