Creature Comforts

Now that the weather is summer-like, we can drive with the top down! One of our next big projects at work involves planting an educational vegetable and herb garden, which requires lots of riding around the property with two fluffy hitchhikers.

Back at the home front, I have been staying busy while Nick journeys around Chicago for the next six weeks.  I took my first trip to the Chicago Botanic Gardens on Sunday to attend a volunteer orientation and get a general feel for the place. Even though it was a rather gray day, it is one of the most peaceful and beautiful places I have visited since moving here.

Two of my very favorite spring pleasures: daffodils and weeping willows!

I think it would be an exciting challenge to attempt an espaliered orchard in our vegetable/herb garden, but that may be an adventure for next year. In the meantime, I was inspired by the beautiful espalier display at The Garden!

A 24-Hour Vacation

We took a quick trip to New Buffalo, MI this past weekend with a few dear friends and were surprised by a light dusting of snow during the night! I don't think I have ever seen the beach covered in snow before. As you can see, it is gorgeous and a little surreal.

We made a few friends as well:

We built our first snowman of the winter! Also probably our last..

Spring Fling

It is only March 3, but we have had a few beautiful days lately that have me thinking that spring will soon be here. Everyone has assured me that there are still several months of Chicago winter before true spring arrives but I can't help but feel some anticipation anyway.  I think I will begin with an herb garden!

An early morning in my kitchen:

We celebrated a four year milestone on March 1st at a Cuban BYOB restaurant called 90 Miles. It was just the right mixture of romance and fun - an apt reflection of our own experience together. Nick gave me some sparkly presents:

Something Sweet

On the first of February, I began my new job as a Conservation Education Assistant with the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation. Our first project is tapping about thirty sugar maple trees. In a few weeks, we will begin teaching school groups about the magic of maple syruping, but first we need to become experts!  Below is a little "how to make your own" for your viewing pleasure.

While looking for the perfect trees to tap, I found this an ancient oak.  Not good for tapping but an excellent hiding spot!

We used a hand drill to make the holes in our chosen trees and then hammered in spiles - similar to spouts - with mallets.

                                            

The buckets look so pretty in the woods, especially as it is a little bit bleak otherwise. We tapped thirty trees of varying ages and elevation. We are collecting data to see which trees produce the most sap and why.  Next year we will have a better idea of which trees we should tap.                                            

Behind me is the Evaporator. We bring gallons upon gallons of filtered sap and boil it down here. It takes about forty gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup-this is a pretty labor intensive business!  It took us six days of boiling before it was ready for the next step. In front of me is the Finisher. We boil the sap in here until it reaches the proper consistency, at which point it is ready for bottling!

 The finished product: Grade A Maple Syrup! 

The Winter that Wasn't

Here are a few highlights from our first winter in Chicago. Sadly, none of them include snow!

Early on in the winter, I decided to become an origami master.

I celebrated my 26th birthday on the 96th floor of the Hancock building with cocktails and some of my favorite people in Chicago. The view was spectacular!

                                 


Even though Nick forgot to bring his pretty menorah with him , we were still able to celebrate Hanukkah!

In January, we had a surprise visitor. We took her ice-skating, which was the only truly winter past time we enjoyed this year. No sledding or skiing yet, but fingers crossed for March!

In February, I went home to Virginia for a post-holiday visit and got to see my favorite little squishy person.

Also in February, I started my new job as a conservation education assistant at a wildlife foundation! More on that later...

September Ending

Yesterday I went downtown for a Chicago adventure. I began my day under this Tiffany dome:

It is a part of the largest Tiffany installation in the world. It lives in the Chicago Cultural Center, at the corner of Washington and Michigan. The CCC used to be the Chicago Public Library, until they built a bigger, fancier one (there are gargoyles on the new one). The Tiffany room is officially known as the Preston Bradley Hall, and it is now mainly used for concerts.  Yesterday's musicians were Rebecca Wascoe, vocalist, and Jeffrey Peterson, piano. I have never heard anyone sing with as much feeling and presence as this woman did yesterday. She was part queen, part madam, part teenage girl belting out Wagner's "Schmerzen" ("Anguish")  in perfect despair.

Sun, each evening you weep
Your pretty eyes red,
When, bathing in the mirror of the sea
You are seized by early death.

My God, I nearly wept.

After the concert, I dazedly wandered over to Millenium Park for lunch, then walked along the harbor of the Lake. It was a wonderfully gloomy sky, and the boats at the yacht club looked as though they were going to rebel at any moment.

I ended my walk in Lurie Park. It was built as a part of the "city in the park" plan that very clever and forward thinking architects and landscape architects devised in this city nearly a century ago. It felt strange to be moseying about a little prairie garden under the watchful eyes of the city.

Sofas and Scones

If anyone had asked me before how I felt about sofas, I don't think I would have had a whole lot to say. But now!  For the past two and a half weeks, I have been sitting either on the floor or on a hard wooden chair, which do not comfy reading spots make ! Oh squashy, loungey sofa you. We don't have to call it a sofa. Couch is nice too, I could go either way. The color--a soft sage gray. The feel--a perfect combination of soft and firm. The length is just right for sleeping--there is no need for bending ones legs in any funny positions or for draping one off the side.  And there is not just the one, lonely couch. Noooo lonely only-ies here! There is a lovely matching loveseat too!  That is all about the couch for now, but as we get better acquainted there may be more.

 

In other news, I went to the Garfield Park Conservatory earlier this week. It is one of the most beautiful places I have seen in Chicago so far (the Lake takes the cake).  A very sad thing happened to it in June --there was a giant Midwest style  hailstorm and almost all the glass shattered all over the place. So only a couple exhibits were open to the public when we were there, but that is ok because now we will go back very soon.  We brought watercolors and my intention was to find some brightly colored thing, of which there were many, and which are very nicely expressed with watercolors. Instead I became obsessed with this shiny metal spiral staircase that leads up to the roof of the conservatory.  It is hard to see in the picture, but Spanish moss is hanging down from the curving handrails all the way up to the top.  So instead of painting, I mostly just tried to sketch its looming awesomeness the whole time.

In most recent history, this morning I tried to bake scones. For some inexplicable reason, I have always had this mental image of myself standing in a sunny kitchen, in Chicago, baking fabulous scones. So this morning, Nick very obligingly went to the grocery store to buy baking powder. When he returned, I baked. Here is what I made:

These do not look like scones to me. To me, they bear an eerie resemblance to chocolate chip cookies.  But they taste delicious! Better luck next time. Notice the Ed Hardy juice glasses in the background. This is one classy image.

I'm just going to post one last picture.