A walk in the prairie

What a glorious day! Jane and I took a road trip to the Chiwaukee Prairie just over the Wisconsin border on Lake Michigan. She had been there before and remembered fields of shooting stars, one of my favorite flowers. We guessed when they would be blooming by the progress of my few specimens, thinking that it might be a little slower by the lake, where the temperatures are cooler well into the summer.

When we got to the prairie, Jane was initially disappointed. We didn’t see many shooting stars from the road. There were some by the entrance, but not as clearly visible as she remembered. We postulated that they had not burned the prairie this year, and the dead stems of the taller plants obscured the view. Jane pulled the car to the side of the road—there was no real parking lot to speak of—and we got out to walk the loop trail.

One of the first flowers we saw was wood-betony, which I did not know at the time.

Wood-betony

There was also lots of hoary puccoon, which is a pretty little orange flower with a funny name.

Hoary puccoon

And there were shooting stars. The farther we walked, the more we saw. Thousands of shooting stars! Jane felt better about driving all that way.

Shooting stars....

By the thousands!

We also saw birdfoot violets.

Birdfoot violets

Blue-eyed grass

Blue-eyed grass

Silverweed, which I thought at first was a buttercup (Ranunculaceae) but was actually a cinquefoil relative (Potentilla).

Silverweed

We had a nice walk. Jane is doing so much better since she has lost weight and started exercising. We were almost back to the car when she said, “You have a tick on your leg.”

Well. When there’s one, there must be others. Before we got in the car, we checked as well as we could, picking several more off our jeans where they were trying to burrow into the seams. If we’d thought of the possibility of ticks we could have tucked our pants in our socks before we started out.

We drove north to Kenosha, periodically checking our hair and various spots where we were sure we felt something crawling. We stopped at Culver’s for lunch where I got a FREE kid’s meal with my 10 coupons from previous kids’ meals. Thanks Pat S. for teaching me about Scoopie meals at Culvers! (Actually, when I did the math, that “free” meal cost me about $56 in previous meals).

As we waited for our burgers, I felt something crawling on my neck, and this time it was not imagined. So here I was at a table in Culvers with a live tick between thumb and forefinger. If I’d had my little knife, I could have cut it in half with the tiny scissors. But my keychain was in the car. “Go to the bathroom and flush it down the toilet,” Jane suggested.

As long as I was in a stall, I checked my legs and peered under my shirt. Nothing.

Back at the table, the food had arrived. While we were eating, I looked over to see a tick crawling over the front of Jane’s hair. I picked it off and held it in my left hand while holding my cheeseburger in my right. Jane got one of the empty bags and put the tick in there. As she was rolling it up tight, a tick appeared on her hand. Same or different? She unrolled the bag to verify that the original tick was still in there, and added the second tick.

That was about the end of it until after a stop at the mushroom farm in Slades Corners, when Jane found a tick crawling on the window of the car.

The previous day Jane had discovered that Hershey Almond Fudge was going to be the flavor of the day at the Culvers in Lake Geneva! It seemed like fate that we should cash in our Scoopie meal coupons there since it could be construed as being on the way home. We got there just in time for every Little League, softball, and baseball team to finish their games and go to Culvers for custard. We were able to escape the noise by snagging a table outside.

All in all, it was a most excellent day. Except for the ticks.

Early in the week, the charging station for my car arrived. I got the charger that plugged into a dryer outlet. Perhaps someday down the line, Jane could put a dryer outlet in her garage, and I could bring the charger with me when I visited. No real rush there, however. It only takes 0.7 gallons of gas to complete the round trip, a great deal better than the 3 gallons it used to take.

I was eager to get the charger installed because a full charge on the 120 outlet took 16 hours or more. Also, there was the issue of having the cord across the garage floor where someone might trip on it, not mentioning any names. The charger came with a quick start guide and what appeared to be a key fob.

Mystery object that came with the charging station

Far from being the useless item I assumed it was, an illustration in the quick start guide informed me that it was the owner’s manual. How’s that for green? Why send out 33 pages of paper when a little flash drive will do?

Which was really the owner's manual in disguise!

Terry, bless his heart, started right in on the project. I had hoped he could easily run the wires from the box to the corner of the garage near the front of my car. But no. The box is under the stairs. Going straight up was “too much drywall work.” Instead, he ran the wires all the way around the stairs to the opposite corner of the garage and then up the wall, along the ceiling, and down the wall next to my car. Whew! Lotta wire.

Two days later, I was in business. I set the car for a 7:00 a.m. departure. It automatically back calculated when the charge needed to start, turning on in the wee hours. This feature allows the car to charge when we aren’t using much electricity, alleviating Terry’s concern that the system would be overloaded.

Charging station installed and powered up

We finally started in on the garden. We are late, late, late with the potatoes and onions this year, but dang, it’s been cold! Hilda started on the onions Wednesday when I was at a meeting. I finished up Thursday morning while she was at the doctor’s. My part included digging the trench for the leeks. Once they grow some, we fill the trench in so the leeks will have a nice long white part.

Garlic (planted last fall) on left, onions in the middle, leeks in the trench, right

We were all available Thursday afternoon for potato planting, which is a team sport. Terry digs the holes. Hilda cuts the potatoes, being sure each piece has an eye. I started by putting the potatoes in the holes, covering them, and placing a marker. You might not think that markers are necessary, but you would be wrong. First we need them for when we put down weed barrier on either side of the row. Secondly, we need them when we dig the potatoes in the fall, long after the plants have died and withered.

When all the potatoes were cut, Hilda took over putting the potatoes in the holes.

Terry digs holes; Hilda puts in potato

Filling in the holes was knee work, and since Hilda just had her knee replaced, I thought I’d better do it. I’d just like to mention that the clods of dirt around the holes were hard as rocks. Our soil has a lot of clay in it.  

Seed potato with little sprouts in the hole

I felt like one of those pilgrims who crawls to the sacred temple on his/her knees. When I inspected my knees before my shower, I discovered that they were not, in fact, bleeding, even though they felt like they should be. They are still sore today, but no longer red. I’ve had a day of rest. I’ll be ready to get back in the garden tomorrow.

Knee selfie after potato planting