Listening To The Rhythm Of The Falling Rain

Rain At 6:38

8:19

It's 6:44, and I paid attention to the weatherman who predicted rain in ten minutes, so I didn't venture out on the lake. I was up at 6:20, made my coffee, and sat out on the front porch — and it just thundered. Not sure how long the rain will last. It's 6:56, and the rain has let up. I just watched a couple of great blue herons chase each other off the docks, a rarity to see two of them going at each other like that.

It's 7:10, and the rain has stopped for a bit, so I may try to paddle. Well, it was a good choice — I was out kayaking for an hour, and just as I was returning to shore, it started to rain again. I had good luck, shooting an osprey and a couple of herons, as well as kibitzing with our neighbor skiers, Jeff and Nancy, and with fellow kayaker Jim, who attended the Jerry Seinfeld show last night in Jamestown, sponsored by the National Comedy Center.

Kayak Morning

Osprey

Heron

Fishing

In A Tree

Same Guy

Friday was a strange day because I didn't really have anything planned other than a good long paddle to start the morning. Once Evie woke, we finished the blog, had breakfast, and I didn't feel like riding my bike. So I took our friends Tom and Julie up on their offer of a basket of red potatoes from their garden. Around 10:30 I drove to their house, grabbed the potatoes, and then, at their suggestion, picked blueberries for a half hour. On the way home, I stopped at Tops to pick up a few things we needed for dinner, and was home by noon.

Yum

Evie had a hair appointment with Jaret at 1:00 and left around 12:40, so I made lunch — a ham and cheese sandwich — and finished off a bag of potato chips while watching a new Swedish crime series called The Truth Will Come Out. Not sure I'll stick with it, though I did watch two episodes. After lunch I read for a bit, then napped and waited for Evie to get back. After stops at TJ Maxx and Wegmans, she returned around 3:30, and I got busy making a pot of kuru fasulye, a Turkish white bean stew. I put the beans in the pressure cooker for 28 minutes while frying up pancetta, onions, butter, tomato paste, and Aleppo pepper. Once the beans were done, I added them to the pan with the tomato paste, poured in chicken stock, and let it simmer for half an hour — and voilà, kuru fasulye. Good plain or over rice, for lunch or dinner. In Istanbul, there are restaurants devoted to kuru fasulye.

Missy And John

Around 5:30 we had some appetizers and a couple glasses of wine as the day waned. Our neighbors John and Missy stopped by to say hi, and we talked for fifteen minutes — it was Missy's birthday, and they were taking their boat over to Bemus to celebrate. We had dinner around 7:30, leftovers from Thursday's dinner plus the kuru fasulye. We watched a couple of HGTV shows until Evie went up to bed, and I finished the evening with an episode of the Swedish crime thriller and an episode of Dark Winds before heading up myself to read and sleep.