the squibix family blog

You might not know this about us, but Leah and I are not actually very good at making friends. Harvey comes by his crippling shyness naturally. And yet somehow we're now blessed with friends across the country and around the world, friends who are willing to come visit us from thousands of miles away—not to mention all the great folks we know here in our own metropolitan area. It's pretty awesome, and we're so grateful, even if we do have to retreat into our shells to recover from time to time.

I figure most of our friends will probably read this at some point, so let me say: thanks guys! You're all great! Stop by any time!

Besides removal there's another way to deal with weeds: reclassification! Where there was space I made sure to give the purslane a little time to grow and thrive; today I pulled some and served it up in a salad. It turns out that, while it'll grow just about everywhere, it also has all kinds of vitamins and omega-3s and who-knows-what, and is also pretty tasty, especially with tomatoes and garlic scapes and a little salt. Just the thing alongside pasta with the first home-grown pesto of the season. Summer is good eating.

There was also music.

And, new this year, hula hooping!

Leah did some pretty good work with the hoop as well, which might be presented in video form at a later date.

We also enjoyed hanging out with friends at the picnic, which was also new this year: it turned out that half of our Watertown-based church small group was there, some at our invitation and other by pure coincidence. Much fun, except when Harvey hit Timothy with a hula hoop, an accident which necessitated the application of ice.

Such is the fullness of our social calendar that we had to leave a little early in order to make it to our next engagement, a party at Grandma and Grandpa Archibald's to celebrate the 4th as well as Uncle Tom and cousin Nisia's birthday. The kids had a great time playing together, especially when Grandma brought out the water.

Of course, when Zion sees water you know what's coming next.

The other kids each had a turn in the tub too, but they weren't as enthused: neither Harvey nor Nisia even sat down. I think Zion must have stayed in there for an hour.

And since it was Independence Day, we finished the evening in the appropriate fashion.

The key to our survival has been that, unlike in the states hit by the heat wave, it's been getting cool at night. That means that while we start the night sweating on top of the sheets we end it fighting for the covers that we kicked to the foot of the bed earlier—and also that the fans can cool the whole house. We do have an air conditioner that we've been using occasionally to cut the humidity, or when we come in from a really hot walk or bike ride, but so far we haven't needed to run it all day just to survive.

And bicycling isn't always hot. In fact, I've found it to be wonderfully cooling under the right circumstances: that is, not pulling the fully loaded trailer up a hill greater than 5% grade. As long as we can keep a reasonable rate of speed up the breeze of our forward motion is just the thing on these humid days. Today Harvey and I did a nice 12-mile loop that took in the North Bridge at its furthest extent (putting our feet in the water was an added bonus!). He probably enjoyed it more: not only did he have the breeze without having to work for it, he also used the time on the bicycle to snatch a quick nap. Life isn't bad when you're three.

The latter was actually so delicious I want to record it here—not as a recipe I suppose, since I didn't bother to make a note of the proportions, but as a general idea. It was short-grain brown rice, black beans, cucumber, purslane, early onions, cilantro, lime juice, cumin, and salt.

As well as the cucumbers we're also getting as much basil as ever we could want, so pesto is involved in many dinners and most lunches. The only problem with pesto—and I could have sworn I had written this before but I can't find it in the archives, so you'll forgive me if this is an old complaint—is that, while the basil is cheap or free, the other ingredients are pretty pricy. Extra virgin olive oil? Parmesan? Pine nuts?! But now that I have a moderate handle on the recipe I can go heavier or lighter on those various things depending on how my wallet feels, and sometimes almonds or even walnuts will do just as well standing in for pignolias. Also, I confess that we buy the cheap grated parmesan in the jar—not the Kraft kind, true, but no parmagiano reggiano or whatever either. But that's alright: the rest of our ingredients are top notch, this time of year.

If you're interested in keeping track of our preserving efforts, I'm recording them online this year—or trying to at least. Just now I notice that, while I actually made two batches of strawberry-rhubarb jam this year, I only wrote down one. That will be corrected as soon as I can figure out when I made the second batch.

One problem with the canning this year is that, aside from the blueberry discussed above, we didn't finish any of last year's supplies. Strawberry jam, grape jelly, a couple kinds of pickles, relish, applesauce, pickled peppers: some examples of all those things, and more, remain from the 2011 preserving season. We have to do better at giving things away! Not only is last year's bounty clogging up all the room on the shelves, unless we empty out some of those jars we're going to have to go out and buy some more!

Harvey was pretty excited about the presentation, although he was less enthused when faced with the actual lobster meat. In his defense, though, he rarely eats much dinner, especially when he's enjoyed a peach and the best part of a piece of pizza at the farmers market barely two hours earlier. There were also steamers. I can't recall if the boy tried one of those but I know Leah ate a reasonable quantity: they're her favorite food, and one of the things that tempted her back from veganism lo these many years ago.

Me, I confess I could take or leave both steamers and lobster; I have very proletarian tastes. But they're tasty enough, and once every 15 years quite a treat, especially when accompanied by a fair volume of beer. I'm staying up a little while yet because it doesn't do to be still tipsy when you go to bed, especially in this heat.

8:45 - Come back for some things we forgot, leave again.

We'd spent the last two days packing up, and it was a good thing; it's tricky to fit us all in the car. But we did much better than usual this time. Not only was the full complement of food moderately accessible at stops (being able to reach chilled apple juice was essential), but I could even see over the load in the rear view mirror! I don't know how I managed it. Beach toys were also easily reachable, which was handy for our second stop, in Linconville.

We spent quite a while there, playing in the sand and water. Zion and I stayed mostly dry, but Mama and Harvey got the full ocean experience despite not being prepared with swimming suits.

Rascal, of course, never misses a chance for complete immersion.

Leaving the beach was hard—much crying and screaming was involved—but eventually we were on our way, and with Harvey sleeping while Zion watched the iPad we were able to get all the way up to Bar Harbor with but one further stop, in Bucksport, for gas and nursing.

I think that we made three or more stops for Rascal back before we had kids and we certainly needed more than that the last two years, so even with over an hour at the beach we still made record time up to the campground; and, more importantly, we got there before our friends so we were able to grab the best tenting spot!

No, not really, we actually waited until they got there—just about half an hour after us—to set everything up. Then Mama and Harvey went swimming in the pool (I sense a theme here) while Kyle and Margaret cooked us chicken and corn for dinner. (I was... probably doing something very important too. Watching Zion? And collecting firewood?) The boys were super-excited about the tent, and we went to bed ready for the next day's adventures.

Sure, Zion was a little fussy at having to wait for his food, but that was generally survivable. Mountain climbing, on the other hand, gets harder every year. Harvey weighs around 40 pounds now, so with all the other things I had to carry—plus the weight of the backpack itself—I figure my load was close to 55 pounds. Leah carried Zion in a backpack we found at a consignment sale, which wasn't entirely comfortable for either of them. Still and all, we made up a couple of hills—North Bubble and Connors Nubble—and then back along the shore of Eagle Lake.

It wasn't a really long hike, but parts of it were pretty tough. Up to Connors Nubble was a steep climb, and the Eagle Lake path had moments of tricky scrambling over boulders. It was well worth it though, because even though neither peak was very high both of them had some great views.

Harvey would have nothing to do with walking at the start of the expedition, but on the way down from North Bubble we convinced him to try a little bit and he did quite well, even bouncing up from a big fall. After some jostling on the descent he was even more enthusiastic about moving under his own power, and I had to work pretty hard to convince him to get back in the backpack from time to time, in the interest of finishing the hike before it got dark (and I really appreciate our friends' willingness to adapt to our radically changing pace).

Most impressive was the fact that Harvey did it all barefoot. It was a lot like having a hobbit in the party, what with the short stature and the curly hair and all (not to mention the constant desire for another meal). He definitely earned his stops to dip his feet in the water.

He walked close to a mile in total, and was doing great until he tripped over a root and bashed his big toenail pretty good; the third time he'd been bloodied on that hike alone. He was done with the backpack by that point too, so the last three-quarter miles or so I was just carrying him. The hike marked the end of Harvey's time riding up mountains in the big backpack: it was so painful we didn't try in again. Next year the pack'll hold Zion, and where Harvey can't walk he won't go.

We ended the day back at the campsite with peanut noodles and lawn bowling, both of which Harvey approved of wholly (Zion was a fan of the balls more than the noodles).

As for Harvey, he just appreciates the opportunity to watch unlimited tv. Never mind being able to tell what's going on, though he did enjoy it when the horsies went through the water.

Well, I say unencumbered, but I did have Rascal to contend with. At least I didn't have to carry him very much, but he was a bit of a trial at the beginning of the hike. Before we could go up we had to go down a long way, and since it was early in the walk he was raring to go and pulled constantly at the leash. It's pretty good exercise hopping down boulders down a 45° slope! When we got down to the foot of Jordan pond, we had about 1100 feet of climbing in front of us, some of it quite steep; that's when I had to lift Rascal over one particularly high step. He's good at jumps up to about three feet or so, but anything higher than that—or a consistent rock slope of more than about 60°—and he starts looking for another way around. But sometimes there isn't one! Eventually we made it to the top, and he was ready.

It was terrible hot and humid climbing up but then cold, gray, and windy on the top, so when we passed by Sargent Pond on the way down we were less inclined to want to swim than we'd been in anticipation. Still, all the boys—in fact, the males of all species in the party—went in, because how often do you have a chance to swim in a mountain pond?

Sargent Mountain is probably the most remote peak on the east side of Acadia (keeping in mind that remoteness in this case is entirely relative!), so there aren't any reasonable loops that take in the summit. On the way back, though, we did decide to take a different route to bypass the boulder slope pictured above—coming down it was bad enough!—and on the way around Jordan Pond towards the cars we came upon someone's half-finished project.

Then I got dropped off back downtown where I met up with the rest of my family, and marveled at Harvey's happy independence as he ran all over the Bar Harbor village green.

Then we did some other things, but I can't recall them because I was too tired and hungry. Luckily we eat well on these trips.