Tastes of Spring

Cinnamon Rhubarb Muffins

Andy's mom gifted us with some rhubarb from her patch on Tuesday and it ended up being the exact right amount for a batch of muffins. (Yes, I'm kitchen nerd who whipped out her food scale and weighed it.) I whipped up the muffins on Wednesday and oh yum, did they ever taste of springtime. It just isn't springtime until you've gotten a mouthful of tangy, sweet/tart rhubarb.

I used the cinnamon-rhubarb muffin recipe from Fine Cooking. I didn't have any sour cream on hand, so I substituted yogurt. The substitution didn't make the muffins any less luscious, but then I'm not really sure a muffin recipe that makes 12 muffins and calls for an entire stick of butter can be anything but luscious. If you're interested, you can find the recipe here.

I'm hoping to scare up some more rhubarb before the season's done. I'd like to make a batch or two of rhubarb sauce, which is the best served warm over vanilla ice cream, but is also not half bad over yogurt or oatmeal if you're feeling particularly wholesome. I wouldn't turn down a rhubarb custard pie either. . .

Our rhubarb plants have been experiencing growth spurts this week, so there may be hope yet that we'll be producing some of our rhubarb supply this year.

While I got my taste of spring, someone else was in the backyard, scrounging up their own taste of spring. There's been a bear about for the last couple weeks, but while he/she (okay, I've decided it's a "him") has made visits at most of the neighbors' places and have left numerous piles of scat in the road, our place has been ignored. That is, until last night when Mr. Bear decided to have a tumble with our compost pile.

Andy surveys the damage

Andy spent a good portion of the weekend raking up leaves from the perennial beds, so the bin was pretty filled with brown material, while green material, like kitchen scraps, was buried. Mr. Bear must not have liked what he found because he appears to have simply tipped over the bin and gone on his merry way. After righting the bin, Andy got the spilled compost back in the bin in just three handfuls.

I don't want to gloat, but I have a feeling my taste of spring was much tastier than Mr. Bear's.

 

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Wordless Wednesday: Bear 1; Ada 2

Remember me moaning when a bear took off with our compost bucket back in August? We found it! A little bitten, but still functional.

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Bears . . . and what the heck was up with the pots and pans?

If you're wondering what was up with my pots and pans comment to Andy in yesterday's post when he was fending off the black bear and I was groggily dispensing advice, let me explain.

We live less than a mile from the border of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. In addition to our general proximity to the Boundary Waters, I also spent three seasons as a federal employee issuing permits to Boundary Waters visitors. Throw in another summer working at a canoe outfitters and basically, I spent four summers of my life listening to the user education video that each Boundary Water party must watch before embarking on an overnight camping trip.

And that sage advice about how to deal with bears, well, you'll have to get to about 7:55 mark into the flick to see where that came from.



In other notes, holy schnikes it's September 1st today! Hard to believe the majority of summer's behind us already, but there's plenty to do before we're ready to hole up for winter around here. There's pie social and sidewalk sale at work on Sunday, a Saturday night cookout and plenty of garden chores to keep me on my toes through Labor Day weekend. Safe travels to anyone taking an extended weekend!

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Honey, Come Help With the Bear

Earlier this summer, I told a concerned visitor at work that I don't worry too much about bears.

The visitor's eyes grew wide. "Why not?" she gasped.

"Well," I said. "I've run into bears when I walk to work before. And really, all you do is make a little noise and they move on."

Really, the only time I feel mildly concerned about my safety during my mile and a half wilderness wander to work is in October, when the moose are in rut.

But my blasé attitude towards Bruno got me in trouble with my beloved earlier this week.

We've had a bear around all summer. It's probably a two-year-old: a small bear, kind of lost without Mom, looking to make his mark on the world. Mostly Mr. Bear likes to leave his mark in the form of big seedy blobs all over the road. He's also fond of getting into our neighbor's bird feeders and he's been known to crash into our compost pile, although he doesn't often find much to his liking in there. Early this spring, when we were putting together the raised bed, he bit into one of our bags of peat moss, rolled it around, and moved on.

But in the last couple days, he's grown nervier. On Sunday, another neighbor's dog came back to the house with a bear bite in the rump. And on Sunday night, the bear decided to pay us a noctornal visit.

It was my fault, really.

We always get fruit flies this time of year. But I just can't bear putting the fresh tomatoes and peaches in the fridge to save us from a fruit-fly-pocolypse because frankly, putting tomatoes and peaches in the fridge makes them taste of cardboard. So in an attempt to rid the small house of fruit flies, I put the compost bucket out on the porch when I got home on Sunday. Then I sat down during the couch and during the 3 hours that is American Gangster, I forgot about the compost bucket.

I forgot about the compost until I woke up in the middle of the night to find Andy peering out the window with the porch light on.

"What are you doing?" I asked, when I padded out to the kitchen.

"There's a bear out there," Andy hissed.

"The compost bucket," I mumbled.

We both looked at the porch railing where I'd left the compost bucket. The rail was empty. The bear however was standing right at the base of the terrace garden, about 12 feet away from our front door.

"Get me something to throw at the bear," Andy whispered.

"Bang some pots and pans," I yawned. Then I went back to bed. Having imparted that stellar advice, I felt my work was done.

Meanwhile Andy stayed up for the next hour. The bear returned after Andy scared him off once. Now there's shotgun sitting by kitchen counter. I guess sometimes you have to do more than just "make a little noise" for the bears to move on.

On Monday morning, both Andy and I searched for the compost bucket. Nothing. No bent branches where the bear took off in the woods, no spilled compost, no nothing. The only thing Andy found was the little filter that sits in the bucket's lid. I suspect the bear had a lovely compost picnic, probably complete with napkins and a tablecloth, somewhere out back.

If you find a green compost bucket out there missing its filter top, please return it. I use that bucket all the time. And after my lackluster assistance with Bruno, getting the bucket back is the least I could do. Seriously, anyone seen that bucket?!

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Nature is Not Always Nice

When you live in the woods, it grows easy to assume the wild animals are part of our extended family. Just take Al the pine marten for example. He (or she, for all I know) was nothing more than a nuisance who spent the winter days getting into the bird seed, garbage, and compost. Despite his mostly destructive nature, we gave him a name, imposed a personality on him, and acted like he was a friend. Although we never (intentionally) feed him, our relationship with him smacked of faux familiarity, pretending he was the wildest of pets.

When you live in a place where your path commonly crosses with that of bears, moose, foxes, and other critters it's easy to forget that we're the ones tangled in their webs of existence, not the other way around. We're the ones imposing on their world and we're meant to be casual observers.  

The first week of May, a nesting platform for loons was set up in the bay outside of work. A week ago Thursday, a loon climbed up on nest and stayed. Within the first two days, it became clear a loon couple had laid two eggs in the nest.  "Hot damn," we thought. "We're going to have a loon chick sometime during the last week of Jue." 

But on Sunday, as I sat at my desk, I heard a terrible scream. At first I thought the loon was bothered by the moose I'd just seen swimming in the bay, but there was something about the heart-wrenching nature of the scream that made me think the loon was in true trouble. When I made it out on to the porch to get a view of the nest, I saw an eagle sitting in a gnarly jack pine about twenty feet from the nest. In the distance, another eagle soared in the sky. The loon, probably driven off the nest by the pesky black flies, was swimming near the nest, calling out in distress.

The eagle in the tree swooped down towards the nest and the loon raised up on its back quarters to protest until the eagle returned to his perch. But the second time the eagle swooped down, he seemed to catch something in his talon which fell in a spray into the lake.

I hoped I hadn't seen what I suspected I had, but yesterday morning when I arrived at work and saw no loon on the nest I knew it was true; the eagle had destroyed both of the loons' eggs.

Although the loons no longer had eggs to incubate, they visited the nest a couple times yesterday. They swam around the nest, climbing on top of the floating platform and softly cooing in some sort of heartbreaking loon conversation. It's early in the season and loons will likely use the nest to lay another egg. But it's still no fun to watch and it's easy to feel angry at the eagle who didn't even get a tasty snack out of his raid.

It all goes to show that we can't assume wild animals live some Disney-fied cartoon existence. Every animal is fighting hard for its survival. It's not all wildflowers and butterflies and happy little fawns with Bambi eyes. The critters of the forest play by a whole different rulebook than us humans, one that can horrify us and that can be difficult to justify. But, whether we like it or not, it's a dog-eat-dog (or eagle-eat-loon egg) world out there and nature is not always nice and we're in no position to interfere with the laws of Mother Nature.

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Encounters with Bruno and the Quest for Wild Strawberry Jam

You’d think with the days reaching their longest lengths of the year, it would seem like the days laze slowly passed this time of year. But it doesn’t feel like that at all. The days of June have gone by as though they were pages in a flipbook.

As we all run around like chickens’ with our heads cut off, there’s plenty to take pause over. The night before last, a couple of loons set to caterwauling in the bay. Yesterday morning, we discovered the reason behind the ruckus. They had a baby! It’s the first loon chick that’s been spot in the bay for a couple years and everyone’s pretty tickled by the little guy.

I helped a turtle across the road on my walk home yesterday. I know it’s probably not my place to interrupt the natural way things are done, but I’d hate to have turtle roadkill if I could have done something to prevent it. The turtle wasn’t thrilled with the helpful hand I leant (there were a couple twitches of his limbs), but he seemed all right once I set him down quietly on the far side of the road.

A little farther along on my walk, I ran into a black bear. The bear was pretty oblivious to my presence and at one point I thought the bear had wandered off in the woods, only to see him come meandering across the road headed the other way. When it became apparent that Mr. Bear had no intention of ceding the road over to me, I clapped my hands and yelled at him. He took off running, the pads of his feet smacking the pavement before he crashed into the woods. I definitely gave him a bigger scare than he gave me. It was a fairly large bear with a glossy full coat: looks as though our neighbors’ bird seed is treating him well!

This spring I read a cookbook that mentioned making a batch of wild strawberry jam. Last year I made wild blueberry and raspberry jam, but because wild strawberries are not particularly abundant and usually too small to justify the effort of picking them and certainly not worth the trouble of turning them into jam. But this year the wild strawberries are out in full force along the roadside and I thought, well, maybe I could gather enough for a batch of jam if I just go out for a little while each evening. Yes, berry season is officially upon us.

Are there better ways I could be spending my evening hours other than being crouched down in a berry patch? Probably. But, all the other ways I can think to spend that time don’t have nearly as delicious results.

I already have a cup and a 1/3 of wild strawberries in the freezer, right next to the container of rhubarb sauce. The summer harvest is starting to amass.

The three articles are written. Huzzah!

(P.S. I left my camera at work last night, but will post pictures when I get home today.)

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Bears, Berries, and Busy-ness

After a couple weeks of unseasonably warm weather in May, things took a turn for the chilly this June. A turn for the chilly and rainy. Considering the high fire danger we all worried ourselves sick about in May, we’re not about to wish away our current lot of somewhat gloomy weather. Still it can make things a little uncomfortable when you work in a stone building --I always wanted to know what it would be like to live in a castle! --and you try to walk to work everyday.

On Tuesday, I walked to work. About 1 in the afternoon, the rain started to really come down. I figured I’d wait it out: I had plenty of work to keep me busy before I had to make the 25 minute walk home. About 4 in the afternoon, I was wrapping the day’s projects. Outside, the rain still came down: cats and dogs. So I called Andy when he got home from work and had him pick me up.

Yesterday, a bit of drizzle fell down, but not so much rain to deter me walking home. So I was a little confused when Andy drove up as I was starting out towards home.

“Did want you to have to walk past the bear,” he said.

Just down the road, a bear had gotten in some garbage or bird feeder on a neighbor’s porch and the rest of the neighbors were scrambling to get their garbage tucked away before the bear could make a mess of it. This morning, when Andy drove to work, he say two full grown bears were on the same neighbor’s porch. I have yet to lay eyes on the bears, but other neighbors say there’s a cub in the area as well.

You’d think the bears would be forsaking their garbage smorgasbord for the berries that are starting to ripen in the woods. I’ve been meaning to head out with a little cup to gather some of the strawberries that peeping their red faces out from foliage along the roadside. But things like installing the gift shop at work have taken precedent.

As we get closer and closer the museum grand opening, an increasing sense of urgency has infused everything. But there’s something satisfying about getting everything in order, even if installing a gift shop means a lot of data entry and learning a new computer system. (Yesterday Andy and I had so much fun playing around with the museum’s point of sale system in practice mode that I fear he’ll eventually talk me into the small business owner’s life that I am so steadfastly against) Today, we got about halfway through pricing and entering the items, tomorrow I will get some work done by myself, and on Sunday we will make the final push to get everything in order.

It’s times like this when days off just are opportunities to get other work done when you most appreciate a cup of herbal tea (is it bad that I now paw manically through the tea selection looking for the tea labeled “meditative time”?) and a good book. I’ve about 2/3s of the way through Olive Kitterage and really enjoying it, although my mother warns me it “doesn’t all come together like you think it should.”

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You hear that?!? BEARS!!

The other night, the neighboring dog treed a bear. It was just a little bear, only about two years old and probably the same one Andy and I spotted wandering around near the road about a month ago. Last night when I went for a walk after supper, I carefully picked my way around two fairly fresh piles of bear poo. It seems everyone's seen a bear this season.

“I think it’s going to be a bad night,” Andy whispered, just as I was about to fall asleep last night. “I think the bear’s going to get into something tonight.”

"Don't be so creepy," I grumbled.

But I knew he was right to worry. There was garbage in the back of his truck and it seems inevitable that a bear will find its way to the grill on the porch before too long. We've been lackadaisical when it comes to keeping our backyard free of bear smorgasbord.

Still, we found an undisturbed backyard and porch this morning. But we did find a message waiting on the local community website though:

The unseasonable weather may have something to do with the abundance of bears in people territory this spring. Our early, early spring roused the bears at an ungodly hour and with the decided lack of rain, the forest probably hasn’t been offering bears the best eating. I know I get a little bolder when I’ve gotten up too early and can’t find anything decent to eat!

Now, when the dogs around the bay start to bark, I start wondering if there’s a bear afoot. I don’t have a fear of bears, but I’m not exactly seeking out encounters with them either. When it comes to mammals on my porch, I’d rather have something like chipmunks scampering around. But if I expect bears to “stay in the woods” and then I go right ahead and move into the woods, well, it’s not the bears’ fault if my place is the first place they come knocking when food’s scarce.

The bears may be less than thrilled with our spring, but the garden’s so pleased with the warm weather that you can almost watch it grow before your very eyes. In no time at all, there'll be lettuce and arugula to eat.

I’d been worried about putting the little seedlings I’d started inside, thinking they might need a little more coddling before I placed them out in the volatile outdoors. As the plants in the garden have grown and grown this week, the seedlings inside did next to nothing. It seemed apparent that it was time to get the majority of plants into the ground.

Currently, it’s 78 degrees and muggy, making it at least the seventh day in a row with a high in the 70s, if not 80s. It’s hard to feel terribly bothered with “frosts” when the highs are so very high.

Still, if frost isn’t a worry, drought is, for both me and the bears. Another good soaking rain is probably the best way to get the bears back to playing in their gardens and me playing in mine. In a perfect world,

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