Mid-June to early July is Lily Time in New Jersey. Not only do I have a proliferation of these beautiful flowers in my own yard, but they line the roadsides everywhere you go. You can’t drive down a road without seeing their orangey splashes of color. I call them daylilies, but people around here call them tiger lilies (not to be confused with the oriental variety of tiger lily).

I just love how they seem to throw themselves open with wild abandon, seemingly taking in everything they can get from the world around them.

They seem to love the somewhat rocky, sunny flower bed next to the pool. They share the space with lush ferns.

Along our driveway at the edge of a patch of woods this lily grows. It never opens further than this and has different leaves than the other lilies. I don’t know if it’s a hybrid, a mistake, or just its own kind.

Soon their flowering season will be over. I’ll miss them but know that they will return again next year to brighten up my yard and the highways and byways of New Jersey.

On Saturday we went to the Farmer’s Market. We really went for fresh beets and goat cheese, but somehow managed to make it home with locally grown rhubarb and strawberries. Those two ingredients spell T-A-R-T; as in Strawberry-Rhubarb Tart.

Take your favorite pie plate

make the tart dough and cut up the rhubarb and strawberries and toss with sugar, strawberry preserves, cinnamon, and cornstarch

bake

and eat!

The recipe can be found here.

I can’t seem to get back in the swing of things here. We’ve spent days getting our “new” kitchen back into some semblance of order. It’s amazing how much thought goes into what goes where. Our cabinet configuration is just different enough to warrant changing things around from what they were. Our new ovens need a little calibration and the cooktop takes some getting used to. Our old ovens had a noisy timer that just kept ringing until you turned it off. More like an alarm than a timer. Now our new oven timer makes a very quiet pinging noise, almost like it doesn’t want to disturb anyone. Oh, excuse me, so sorry to bother you but I believe your food is cooked.

We’ve managed to do a few other things over the long holiday weekend as well. Here are just a few.

Although the weather has not been great—cloudy with spotty rain—we have managed to spend some time outside on our newly refurbished deck and down by the pool in our poolside gazebo.

The gazebo is a not only a nice retreat during the day, but also at night.

And what could be more American on the 4th of July than delicious grilled hamburgers, macaroni salad and sweet corn? And yes, it tasted every bit as good as it looks.

Today finds us moving out of our bedroom and into one of the smaller rooms as tomorrow our master bath undergoes a complete rip out and remodel. It’s going to be so awesome when it’s finished, but until then it’s going to be noisy, dusty, and inconvenient for the next two weeks. Photos to follow, both before and through the process.

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend!

One of our rituals at the cabin is taking a just-before-sunset drive in hopes of seeing wildlife. Sometimes we see something, other times we don’t. Over the ten days we were there we saw elk, antelope, plenty of deer and a marmot, but no moose.

On the evening before we left we went out for one last drive and saw a cow moose with twins at the edge of a clearing. She heard the car and ran into the dense cluster of aspens. We waited. When she started to move we tracked her and realized she was about to come out into the open. What we weren’t prepared for was happened next. Take a look at the slide show that follows. (By the way I have a new camera that is really fast!)

So many moose get tangled in barbed wire fencing every year. Some can’t free themselves and end up dying a horrible death. I wish they would use fencing that would allow animals to free themselves more easily. Fencing off the high country is not a good thing as far as I am concerned. If you need to fence; do it right. Thankfully, this little family is still intact. It was wonderful to see them, don’t you agree?

Yesterday after another long day on the road, we finally pulled into our driveway. Home. The Suburban still bore the traces of Colorado/Wyoming red dirt roads. Even the torrential downpours we passed through in the Chicago area, the rain in Ohio yesterday, and brief showers on and off through Pennsylvania could not erase where we’ve been.

We took a circuitous route home, one that took us to to St. Paul, Minnesota to visit friends who also happen to be Hailey’s breeders. I promised them I would bring her back to visit. Since four years have passed and I’ve never made good on my promise, we decided it was time. Even though it added a day to our journey it was worth it to see them again. The dogs loved being in a real home with other dogs instead of a motel room and felt right at home under their hospitality.

The poor dogs and cats were certain that we were now homeless gypsies roaming the highways and byways of this vast land. They took it all in stride, and I’m so proud of what good travelers they all were. Much better I’m thinking than taking children on a long car trip. No “are we there yets” from them (maybe Rick heard a couple of those from me), no whining or crying. Well, maybe a few mews out of Sam on the very first day, but after that he resigned himself to sleep in his crate. Each new motel room was fully explored. The kitties liked the motel in Council Bluffs, Iowa the best—it was slightly below ground level with a great window sill for sitting on and watching the world go by.

Our time at the cabin was wonderful and everybody enjoyed it. It’s like living in another world; one where time is suspended for awhile. Since coming home I feel disoriented. The house seems so big after our one room cabin. I wander from room to room trying to remember my daily patterns before they were changed. It’s a very odd feeling. I need to get over it fast because we have a kitchen to put back together! It looks lovely, but as yet all its cabinets and drawers are empty of all the “stuff” (a word I borrowed from Letty) that lies waiting in the room downstairs where it was carried about a month ago. Next week they start gutting our master bedroom. Oh, the fun of it all!

I am working on the moose photos and post, so stay tuned for more cabin before we really get back to life in New Jersey again. Thank you all for staying with me and commenting on my vacation posts. It was great to see you all there even if I had limited time and internet access to reply. I wasn’t ignoring you, really I wasn’t.

It’s good to be home again. At least I think it is ... until we need to move out of our bedroom next week ...