these apples, those apples, all the apples

This is called Apple Day at the Farmhouse.

It's a real thing.

These are the adorable mini caramel apple crumbles that Magdalena made without a recipe (she's brilliant at that sort of thing)

This is the most high-maintenance, but delicious, apple pie you've ever met in your life. I went to five liquor stores to find the apple brandy for the sauce.

Aprons are a must.

This is the apple jam that will change your life.

 And this is my distraction from the suddenly winter weather here in Minnesota.

xoxo

VOLUNTEER | a poem

Not a poem by me, no, I do not write poetry. This was written for me by a dear friend (and a real poet). It is so meaningful to me at this particular point in my life. For many reasons. I just had to share it with you.

And when Kelin was visiting last week, we took a walk around the neighborhood and high-fived the plants. /love/

VOLUNTEER 

            for lgm

            by Kelin Loe

What I want out of a vine is a safe place for insects. 

What I want out of a leaf is a high five.

I saw an ant carrying the still body of a smaller ant across my counter. 

What I want out of a flower is a cutlass. 

My friend has a house in Tuscan. 

She gave me a cactus when I picked her up from the airport.

My friend has a house in Fort Lauderdale. 

She has a plant in her yard with leaves so big we sat beneath one.

My friend has a house in Minneapolis. 

We reached through the cabinet doors for wine glasses.

My friend has a house in Cleveland. 

We stretched out on the new carpet while her dog huffed around us.

Bugs die so much that they must be used to it. 

It is my house, and I am not used to it. 

I do not want my friends to move. 

When the plants get their magic right, I will sleep through the night.

Prairie Home Summer

The last two summers have been full of weddings and travel -- California, Georgia, Texas, even Hawaii. All the trips made for some great vacations and reunions with friends.

But this, this is the summer of staying close to home. No far-off weddings, no big fancy vacations. Just a lot of camping, gardening and exploring the awesomeness that is summer in Minnesota. So I've declared it to be the Prairie Home Summer. Hey Garrison Keillor, if you're reading this ... thanks. I like your show a lot.

To start it off, we had an epic five-year reunion with my college graduating class at St. Olaf. The two-day extravaganza included karaoke at Froggy's, just like the old days, as well as dinner in the Caf, a reunion with my fellow a cappella group founders from Agnes, a brilliant lecture from a beloved prof, and a slideshow of embarrassing photos that someone pulled from Facebook (a reminder of exactly what we haven't taken down since we posted them 8 or 9 years ago...)

June looked like a road trip to Rice Lake, Wisconsin for a colleague's wedding, with a fun cheese shop stop on the way back ...

... another road trip to the same part of Wisconsin for a cabin weekend on Spooner Lake with college buddies ...

... and a four-day camping and canoeing expedition in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA), one of the most remote and beautiful wilderness parks left in the country.

No biggie. Just one of the most beautiful and peaceful places in the entire world.

Up next!

1. The obvious ... as many farmers market trips and lake walks as possible.
2. At least one pizza farm visit (Stockholm or Northfield ... choices this year, yo!)
3. Canning, jamming and pie-ing from the garden.
4. A visit to the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Walnut Grove, MN, where you can see the place where they made their sod house on the banks of Plum Creek (ever since I read about it a few weeks ago, I've been certifiably obsessed).
5. Significant landscaping and garden improvements (underway).
6. Reading in the hammock and the rocking chair, and not just a few times. A lot.
7. My first trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota, for a friend's wedding.
8. Mini-golf at the Walker Sculpture Garden.
9. At least two golf outings and two waterskiing days.
10. Biking around the Chain of Lakes -- Harriet, Calhoun and Isles (I've only biked two at a time, not all three at once).
11. Check out a few more local Mpls breweries and new restaurants.
12. Lots and lots of DQ Blizzards (have I mentioned there's a DQ three blocks from my house?)
13. The Minnesota State Fair! There are 46 new foods this year ... yes, really.
14. Camping in Detroit Lakes, MN (for a friend's wedding ... yes, really.)
15. My first trip to the Wisconsin Dells (for another friend's birthday).
16. A family reunion out at Lake Minnetonka, including waterskiing, speedboating, dock-sitting, fishing and a dinner cruise from Al & Alma's.
17. My first-ever concert at the famed First Avenue concert club in Mpls.

My parents are coming for a nice long visit this month, so they'll be helping me check a few items off this list :) And I'm taking about half of July off from work, which will be love-ly.

What's on your summer to-do list? And who's coming to MN to help me with mine?

coniglietti

Story of a Thursday evening:

1. I bought a new lawnmower (!) and tonight while I was mowing the backyard, I found this: http://instagram.com/p/azZ_eMSjrv/

If you're too lazy to click on the link (even though it's worth it...), I'll tell you: a den of baby rabbits, in the middle of the lawn. And yes I mowed right over the spot just moments earlier.

They're adorable. Don't even have their eyes open yet. I probably ensured their demise by getting my human smell all over the rabbit fur that was covering them up. We shall see. I don't love having rabbits in my garden, but I do have a serious soft spot for rabbits (ask my mom what happened to the rabbit I had as a kid, and ask BFF Alissa why she calls me "little rabbit.") So for now this is fun, but it could turn traumatic soon.

Oh, and here are the older siblings of these little guys, spotted a few weeks back:

2. Watching the Spurs-Miami game -- Go Spurs Go! -- on my TV. But not in the basement. Upstairs! Never got around to blogging about this change because it wasn't really intentional. I just brought the TV up to the living room back in January so that me and some girlfriends could watch Downton Abbey on Sunday nights, and I never took it back down. I kind of like having it in the corner of the living room, at least for now. I might do something different with it down the road, like hanging it on the wall or putting in a different entertainment center. And I don't have cable, so it's not like I use it very often (I still watch 95% of my shows on my iPad or Mac via Hulu, Netflix of Xfinity Player).

3. And then, I got this awesome picture from fellow-blogger-BFF Kelli and her new bird, Tiko:

And it made me happy to trade stories about bunnies and birds and watch the Spurs game "together" via text message (we grew up in San Antonio together).

4. I have new next-door neighbors, and we totally do the whole "yelling thru screen windows" thing, so I made a racket about the baby rabbits and they came over to take a peek. Gotta love fun neighbors.

And at the end of a really hard day and a really long week, I'm feeling less far away from loved ones. Thank you bunnies & lawnmowers & instagram & iPhones. 

*bonus life points if you know what coniglietti means and your name is not Alissa or Bethany.