Six Arrows Farm Update

“How doth the little busy bee

Improve each shining hour?”  - Isaac Watts

Ben “suited up” and cleaned our bee hives with Charlie yesterday in preparation for the two new swarms we just picked up.  I attended the operation with camera in tow to capture the process of establishing the hives.

A few dead bees from last year still clung rigidly to the frames and some leftover honey dripped lazily from a crack in a corner.  Last year’s leaves and dirt, the workers and the yield, mingled and languished in sordid decay around the base of both hives.  The whole picture would have cut a terribly melancholy figure if the steady punctuated hum the of the waiting swarms hadn’t added a distinct element of urgency.  Thousands of bees caught up together in a teeming net can make a respectable quantity of buzz.  A few solitary workers had escaped the general trap and were settled along the lid and around the outside of the net droning on a slightly different note than their kin and already sporting tell-tale bulging pockets at the knees. Charlie and I made a timely retreat to a safe distance just before Ben released the bees, since we aren’t sure how “bee-immune” we are and weren’t inclined to find out with a confused and over-crowded swarm.

Amazing to me is the passionate desire of the bee to work.  They do it to survive, but there is no “bare minimum” of labor for the intense little reapers.  They all work as one with rapidity, skill, and voracity.  Bees not only do what they must, they love to do it, eating up the space between flower and hive with a high-pitched song.  The glory of God is made evident in the bee.  But someone else said it better than I in the words of a child; which is what one tends to feel like after hearing the first thing about bees.  I will let her tell you:

“Now, here’s something to remember about a bee itself – say a worker bee, because it would be the one that would carry the pollen.  …a worker bee has got two stomachs, a little one more inside for itself, and a way bigger one more on the outside for the hive.  Back on its abdomen every worker bee has got four pockets to secrete wax, and every worker has got baskets on its legs to gather pollen in, besides the nectar that they carry in their stomach for the hive.  …  Every one of them is covered with hair that is long for a bee and it is soft and fine and when the workers go down into Mr. Male Iris to get nectar for their two stomachs and to fill their pollen baskets, the hair all over them fills with the pollen, too, and it is the law, because of God, that when any bee starts out to gather nectar and pollen, it never mixes one flower with another.  You can see it now, can’t you?  When  the worker bee gets the pollen from Mr. Iris all over his hair and then goes on to get pollen from Miss Iris, the hair is going to scatter the pollen for her, that’s going to make the good seed come, ‘cause the bees do the flower’s courting for them.  That’s a reason besides honey as to why bees are so useful.”

“One time I asked the Bee Master if I couldn’t see God and if I couldn’t touch Him, how was I going to know that He was here.  And he said, ‘Because of the hair on a bee.’   So that’s one of the ways you can know.

Then there are a lot of ways you find out about God on account of how He made Queen bees.”

“The way a Queen comes to be a Queen, is this way: In a little cell all fixed up for it, the Queen bee of a hive puts an egg and she tells the workers, ‘I want this egg to be a Queen.’  The workers get busy and make the royal jelly.  That’s another thing the people who write the bee books haven’t figured out.  They don’t know just what royal jelly is or how it is made.  But the workers know.  God showed ‘em how when He made ‘em.”

“…the new Queen goes to the door and she walks out of it backward.  She goes away a little piece and she comes back to it three or four times.  God told her to do that so she would be mighty sure when she came home from the first long flight she has ever made she would know her own door.”

“[The Bee Master] says the only name for that Master Mind is God.  He doesn’t see any use in trying to dodge God and side-step Him and call Him ‘The Spirit of the Hive’ and Instink and Nature and things like that.  He says a great scientist, one of the best, almost went crazy trying to do that very thing.  His name was Charles Darwin, and the Bee Master says C.D. would have been a heap better…if he’d been willing to put God in where He belongs.  He says when God does anything ‘with such care, and puts so much thought in it, and deals out such splendid justice’ as there is in a beehive, that a wise man will just take off his hat and lift his eyes to the sky and very politely he will say, ‘Just God.’”

~from The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter

I concur with the “Bee Master” more ever day. 

The bunches of onions are banked in rows, sleeping until warmth and light and rain pour coax them to life.  Herb pots in the greenhouse are supplied with sturdy little plants reaching eagerly for the sun, beautiful in form and casting savory aromas.  If you want to hear a good sermon on the nature of God on the farm, all you have to do is step outside the door into His world and listen.

With Gene Stratton Porter “I say, ‘Just God!’”

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

Six Arrows Farm Update

Well, here is spring, and no spring flood to dabble in.  The spongy mud around the house cracks open like a mouth begging for water.  Yet, though this year’s spring ground is thirsty, moisture still hangs in the air.  I can taste it in that breath of tang that flavors the sharp, stale winter wind. It clings to the trees in a ghost of dew and turns the old moss livid green.  Hold your breath, and you can eave’s drop on the

haziest shadow of an eave’s drip echoing off dead boughs.  It is always misting the world, so one cannot go out of doors without coming in dry and yet feel inexplicably wet.  March is here, when the wind will toss everything about in a gale of spring cleaning. 

Already the dominion of growing things is trickling out of the house.  Aubrey is gutting the greenhouse today and setting up heaters to warm  it for the first of the “babies”.  Honestly, someone needs to make a scented candle called “Greenhouse”.  It beats Vanilla by a mile.  I forget how much I miss that heavy draft of living breath until it hits me the first time I open the greenhouse door every year.  For now flats of delicate green march along the top shelf while lonely stacks of pots and tipsy mountains of empty trays tumble over every superfluous inch of space below.

Talk is all about what we will do in the garden, how big it will be.  There is yet a month until we can safely plant anything out of doors; but let the sun come out for just a week and pour liquid life onto the earth and we will pounce on the fallow ground with the voracious hum of tillers and puttering of tractors. 

An update this late is perforce short.  Signing off for now!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

Six Arrows Farm Update

Morning fires start quickly in this dry weather.  A winter drought is not always felt and bemoaned as a summer one is.  Most people I speak with are rather glad to escape the treacherously harsh Minnesota winter.  While we can find relief in the mild climate, there is a general uneasiness for those of us who rely on precipitation for the success of crops.  Some farmers are saying that it is better to have our drought now than in summer.  All the same we hope the dry winter will give way before spring planting.

Just now, bare fingers of trees are sifting a frail dusting from the sky in a thin haze that drifts over the bare ground and settles into drab dead grass like a film of milk in the bottom of the jug.  There stands a tower of some winter books, here a steaming mug of tea.  The jumble of violin and viola notes “wood-shedding” at the top of the house mumbles over the lowering hum and tap of the stove fan diffusing heat over the lower regions.

In faith we are laying out plans for the garden.  Most of the seeds are here.  Now  we have the next matter to attend to…shuffling flats of germinating seedlings into bright patches of sunlight or under grow lights in the living room. 

Discussions concerning the garden are often so crossed and re-crossed with rabbit trails that it is a wonder we come to have any coherent plots or live plants when we are through.  Somehow it comes out that so and so thinks we should move the tomatoes “there” this year and someone else chimes in that “that other plot” should be tilled under, which doesn’t seem to relate at all to the first subject until someone else remembers that “something else” was where the tomatoes are proposed to be; which being the case “something else” must necessarily be moved to “that other plot.”  A third, silently envisioning the new order of things under above proposed plan observes that the hoop-houses should be moved; is nearly extinguished under a sea of shocked exclamations at this extreme proposition, and only reemerges through his qualifying reminder to his generally aghast audience of the growing number of miscellaneous plots in the general vicinity of fore-mentioned hoop-houses and the lack of order which the first-proposed shift will produce.

By this time, everyone has lost sight of whether or not said shift should happen at all behind a looming prospect of moving the hoop-houses, and various plans are brought forward for accomplishing such a venture, while the fate of the tomatoes hangs in the balance.  Out of this dialogue emerges a firm conviction that all of us are more or less confused as to the original topic and each takes a sip of his coffee in an attempt to appear earnestly reflective.  Daddy steps in to right the conversational ship while Aubrey makes notes to address the issue at a later date.

Simple observations of such exchanges lead one to recognize that the human mind is gifted with incredible capacity to imagine and formulate ideas and yet very rarely begins to utilize a fraction of the divine inheritance with anything like consistence or facility.  Nevertheless our intellect serves us every day to good or bad ends.  With infinite variety is the organizational and artistic capacity of the imagination mixed by the finger of God in each individual.  It is often best to laugh at ourselves when we realize how much pride we find in our intellectual endeavors and how much offence we can take in the criticism of these plans by others, while finding no fault in ourselves for considering our ideas superior.  This concept of teamwork: the mixing and molding of ideas for the purpose of establishing sound plans, is a constant exercise of self-government and self-examination.  Daily we find Solomon’s proverb, “In a multitude of counselors there is safety,” to be true.  Around here, personal preference and general feasibility, careful forethought and last-minute improvisation, heaped up, beaten down, and woven together eventually form the modus operandi that drives our venture forward…always, of course, at the break-neck speed of time.

While I type, here is the snow powdering the ground like sugar on a cake and painting thick white webs across the shadows in the woods.  So much for my prelude of concern for drought.

“So do not worry about tomorrow…”

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

Six Arrows Farm Update

Remember farm dinners?  Some of you may…the kind where good real food is abundant, jell-o with fruit and whipped cream is a prerequisite and coffee and bread pudding follow in abundance.  The ponderous farm table where you can talk for hours companionably on every topic, profound or mundane.  Aubrey added strawberry jell-o with bananas and whipped cream to our hospitality menu last night.  Dressed up in a pretty bowl and garnished with citrus zest, it reigned like a sovereign over 

every other viand on the table and completed a tradition that has grown through generations of family meals.  Farm dinners are wonderful not because they are remarkably extraordinary, but comfortable.  Like afghans and hot buttered toast and frost in the corner of the window and sun warming the floor in the morning and gloves drying by the stove.  Like that splash of summer on our toast when plumb jam glows like gems on golden bread, or the way my heart leaps with Cappy every morning that she hurtles bright-eyed out of her kennel and eats up snow with her pattering paws.  These are little “gratefulness-es” that grow out of great joy in small blessings.

People often notice the aroma of the fire when they step through our door.  We added another smell last night and Daddy knew it when he came home, farmer-man that he is.  Soil.  Not to be confused with dirt, its spent and lifeless counterpart, soil is pungent with life.  The scent is full and rich and tangy with a vitality that grows into the air and makes you sit up straight for a better sniff.  Aubrey and I buried our hands in it and shook it into flats last night.  Pressed down and running over we filled the cells and hollowed beds for those plain brown time capsules of rosemary and thyme, sage and chives.  

The skills that arise from planting seeds are like any other seemingly simple proficiencies.  They grow from simple lists of factual knowledge into real understanding.  When you know how much to tamp the soil in a flat so that roots will go deep and strong without suffocating; when the arrangement of seeds in each cell is precise; when you can’t bear to wear gloves because you prefer to test the consistency of the earth with your finger tips; when you 

can measure how many black grains of thyme are between your thumb and finger; this is when you begin to understand and really love sowing seed.

Huge flakes whirled all afternoon yesterday and flashed in the sun from the ground this morning in a velvety blanket.  My favorite part of winter mornings are those snow-shadows of baby-est blue that scatter over every dip and rise, cling to the rims of drifts, sink into the caverns of boot-tracks and strike out from the foot of every tree.  Having firmly established my love of winter, I now feel free to admit that I am guilty of putting very green and glowing summer pictures on my desktop.  The bubbling water-falls and rolling pastures smile at me a bit mockingly, I’m afraid.  Not to worry, though.  If I can put up shots of icicles and white-capped mountains this summer, I may be able to redeem myself.  In the meantime, Aubrey and I have schemes of all kinds to cultivated that living green color we are pining for indoors.  By eating up every inch of space with terrariums and over-abundant flats of flowers and herbs, we will manage to drive Garrison (of the very tidy sort and a veritable cleaning machine) batty...until the greenhouse opens.

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

"Even a child…"

Because culture is by definition an identifier, identity is a culture's greatest strength...and weakness.  In a time when identity in our society has become anything but identifiable, understanding who we are is often difficult to say the least.  I have noted that many of the young people of my generation have a case of identity failure.  In many ways, they are the natural victims of a crumbling society.  Often, they no longer know who they are, or what they are supposed to become.  Why this talk of culture?

Observing plants grow up from tiny seeds to full-blown vegetation is a unique privilege and gives cause for thought.  If one is responsible for the care and nurture of something that is growing, one learns to be attentive and proactive.  After all, if you can’t recognize the beginning stages of distress in a young plant, it often fails beyond full repair; if it doesn’t die completely before you can effect a change. 

As home-educated/self-educated young people, my siblings and I are questioned often about the level of social interaction we experience…many would call the method our parents chose to raise us “brain-washing.”  Yet all education is just that…a forming of the mind into a certain pattern of thought.  Naturally, the world-view into which we are trained uniquely defines the way we grow.  You can probably see the parallels (albeit imperfect ones at times) in the language of vegetation and philosophy of life.  Children grow up to be what we purposefully or passively train them to be.  So also, young plants, are “brain-washed” from youth.  True, a basil seed has all the created potential to flourish into a savory smelling, vibrant green plant.  From the moment of planting, however, the gardener begins to train it.  Soil temperature, the amount of light, moisture and air are all tools that must be properly administered in order to encourage life.  A plant that receives too little light gets etiolation, a disorder that causes it to grow tall and spindly without casting down roots and the plant almost never fully recovers because it is forced to spend good growing time later compensating for early weakness.

From the moment true leaves appear, and even before, there are defining traits that mark a plant.  We learn the seedlings by name...when they are young, because our “babies” from the earliest age have an identity.  They look and smell and taste and feel and grow the way their full-grown counterparts do.  Oregano buds and branches out into a bush, thyme trails and creeps in vines, setting down new roots as it grows.  If at any time, the plant stopped growing the way it was supposed to, we would call it a mutation or ill-health.  The loss of DNA…or identity…seminally divides a good plant from a bad one.  By their fruits we know them and understand how to help them grow.

“Even a child is known by his deeds, whether what he does is pure and right.”

~Proverbs 20:11

Aside from lessons on life, the greenhouse is also bursting at the seams with pots.  Aubrey’s famous Kitchen Herb Gardens are flourishing and nearly complete!  Cracking the door every day after the bright “percolating” morning hours releases aromas that are just a step away from the draft of a window opening into heaven.  Maybe I’m biased.  After all, when most people tally their favorite smells, sodden dirt, ripe vegetation, and damp heavy air don’t usually make the “Top 10” with Grandma’s Hot Apple Pie and Coffee.  Even so, I can’t resist a good greenhouse scent.

 

Half of this year’s 3000 onion’s were the first thing in the “fallow ground” this past week.  We planted in trepidation and watched with no small measure of concern as snow drifted over the tender plants.  But onions are hardy in cold, and we found on Thursday that they had brightened from the slightly distressed condition they arrive in when shipped; in spite of this rugged Minnesota spring!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

A Six Arrows Farm Update

"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

 There is a sort of battle that rankles in a young soul when they begin to see the child in themselves. Unconscious childhood is precious then, because it is unreachable. No longer can the lighthearted thoughts fly free of convention and reality. It is the blessed one who can treasure the childlike innocence and beauty of youth and carry it tenderly in their hearts into the wisdom and maturity that comes with age. In the irresistible draw of nature, I think the Creator leaves a door to childlike conviction open that we must choose to go through or shut. I didn’t particularly wish to drag myself through the mud and spent snow to poke about in the snow-melt, but I’m glad Sam prodded me away from the realities and conventions of my habitually grown life long enough to revel in the timelessness of it. By God’s grace, there will always be a sunshiny carefree girl dancing away in the heart of me that wants to go out and dabble in a puddle.

No, you can’t drink any of it (something I thankfully learned before I understood why), but there is plenty of water to go around. I put my foot through an innocent looking drift and found it running knee-deep and strong beneath me, chattering and merrily unconcerned about being exposed to the light. Of course the last gasp of a Minnesota winter happens long after it is thought probable, so I’m not declaring Spring yet; even though technically the calendar says it’s here. I sincerely believe the weather is just daring us to get comfortable with the idea before dumping on us.

Half of me is willing May to come with all my might. The other half is frozen in dread…no, not really.

But the truth is, as Aubrey mentioned driving home one day, one hardly knows what to think. With May comes the tasks of garden and farm. I have to admit, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” My spirit rises up to the challenge of fallow ground, ripe and ready for gardens to till and plant, animals to grow and life to thrive. The flesh…well let’s just say “it” doesn’t relish the idea of sweat. Frankly, though, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into a warm ripe strawberry or crunch through a gushingly crisp snow-pea.

This year we have the added anticipation of Garrison’s graduation. As you may already know, our family strives to excel, and at the very least revels in the making of celebrations on the slightest (or greatest) provocation. This one will be no exception. I am unofficially planning the flower gardens with the help of our green-house expert, Aubrey, who is doing the preliminary planting for our Market garden as well. Mama is planning stupendous quantities of delectable viands, for the preparation of which every one of us lends two hands. Daddy is Master of Ceremonies and Advisor in technical difficulties. The boys are responsible to primarily direct the order of the farm for guests. And we all clean…a lot. :o)
Along with the responsibilities that this home presents, the boys are finishing off a season of orchestra and the wedding season for our quartet is looming up in the future. After all, how can we maintain the (in?)sanity more effectively than with the help of good music!? (Incidentally, don’t you think the boys are remarkably dashing in their tuxes? I just had to include a picture. :0) )

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

Six Arrows Farm

(507) 356-8223

sixarrowsfarm@pitel.net

http://sixarrowsfarm.blogspot.com/

http://sixarrowshome.blogspot.com/’

P.S. It may interest the readers to know that I never write an update without the influence and atmosphere of good music…most often classical. I often wish I could include the lovely sounds with the updates, since it often communicates expressly what I am thinking without the weight of American English. At the moment, I am harkening to the rich, refined splendor and delicate exuberance of early Beethoven as used in a relatively modern soundtrack. Follow these links if you want the full experience!...Here for the inspiration (really the whole septet was inspiration) and Here and Here for the way Andrew Davies used it in BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice Soundtrack. :0) I never lose and opportunity to defend my position on good soundtracks: namely, they are, nearly without exception, always inspired by an original classical piece, if not an almost direct plagiarization. Try comparing the West Wing track from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to Camille Saint Saen’s Aquarium from the Carnival of the Animals if you are intrigued!

A Six Arrows Farm Update

Much as I love poetry, I am no poet. There are times when I hear the words falling as distant lilting music on my mind's ear, but putting them down on paper with clarity is a discipline of the English language I have yet to master. I have resorted often to the garbled or "un-translated" verse in spite of the lack of rhyme since poetry often makes very nice prose. A true poet would probably accuse me of a negligent approach to communication...and they would be correct in their assessment. There are in fact enough instances when I feel the need for skill in poetry that I now believe the time is not far distant when I will buckle down and learn the theory.

This is a time when I wish poetry were at my finger tips. How do you write about the germination and emergence of seedlings with common everyday prose? The growth that results in the birth of a new plant is nothing short of miraculous. It simply gets swallowed up and overwhelmed by the crushingly profound terms...germination...emergence. Perhaps my quandary is a language issue. These words are rich in meaning, they just don’t sound that way. Take French for example. Even a conversation about a common fence post in French sounds gracious and refined...unless, perhaps, you speak French? In any case, the world of small plants has crept quickly and silently right into our living-room, so I felt I should attempt to address it.

There is something very brave and vulnerable about a new seedling. Small forests of thyme and oregano, sage and chives are thriving in a world of warmth and light not removed from the blustering cold by more than a few inches of air and glass. Twisting and cracking the humble dingy husks that were their only safety, in haste these germs of flourishing growth reach up and delve down in all sorts of fantastic shapes. No one tells them what to do or how to do it; but when moisture softens their shell, they reach blindly but un-erringly for that life-giving and yet deadly light penetrating their darkness. Without proper moisture light is death to a sprout. Yet a plant will never cease from its earliest moments to lift up its face and arms to the light. In awe-inspiring variety, each plant flourishes best in its own unique habitat of light and wet. And there is no plant which receives life and health from the sun and rain that will ever cease to bear good fruit as long as it lives because it is the joy of a healthy plant to grow and flourish and ripen. The only way a plant with light and water will not bear fruit is if the earth no longer yields nutrients…dead earth.

One of the changes a new seedling effects in the first weeks of growth is the loss of the first leaves, “cotyledons,” as it pours all its life into the “true leaves.” The “seed leaves” wither away and die, but the plant neither stunts nor wilts in growth, but drops the things of the past by the wayside to reach new heights.

I know of no more profound work in a creation filled with wonders. The wisest man in the world directed us:

“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” ~Proverbs 6:6-8

Solomon, the wisest of men, understood the simple yet weighty significance of every creation. Nature shouts praise to the Creator in the quiet diligence of the ant and the silent audacity of a plant, daring heat and flood, cold and wind, death and time to stop it from doing what it was created to do.

“…And buds of rarest green began to peer,
As if impatient for a warmer sun…”

~Hartley Coleridge

“Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place; …Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war? What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth? "Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?"

~God in Job 38:12 & 22-27

By the way, the most mindful and tender of greenhouse-keepers, among many other things, just turned 21!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows

Two worlds are at work on the farm this week.

In the outdoor world, we Minnesotans were just liberally dowsed with over a foot of our winter diet, snow, topped with a icing of freezing rain…what the weather-man feebly dubs “a wintery mix” with that amiable and yet non-descript expression we have all learned to expect from someone blandly exaggerating the next “foreseeable” meteorological event. Daddy says this alias for predicted precipitation sounds like something off a restaurant menu, “And what drink would you like with that Ma’am; a dose of cold north wind?”

 

I know I’m a little hard on the weather forecasters, but you have to admit they often take things far too seriously.  I often wonder if excessive enthusiasm for their work adequately accounts for the zeal of the catastrophists at large on the weather channel. 

Indoors, a world of life is brewing.  New herbs are already unwinding their first leaves and bending towards the light.  We can stare out on a glaring frigid waste and turn back to peep at the garden flourishing under our noses.  I love the way chives grow in particular.  If you look carefully at the image on the right, you will see that each shoot is doubled, and one in the background just out of focus is unbending…they “cheat” a bit and grow ahead of the other herbs that way. Aubrey and I are itching to delve into last year’s “pot-hills” and piles of rubbish in the greenhouse and reorganize the “nursery” for the soon-coming “babies.”  But then we’re all a little fidgety.  The planting bug tingles through our finger-tips and we can’t stop ordering seeds.  Ordering seeds about now is truly a risky business not unlike grocery shopping when you are hungry.

Speaking of hungry, we attached a recipe to the bottom of this post for a favorite cake of ours that is unbelievably easy and remarkably delicious…not to mention beautiful.  The cake bears the name of the person making it, so this is what we call Lenz Cake.  Substitute your name in the title and treat your guests to a delicious dessert next time you open the doors to your corner of culture.

If you’re in the “great recipe” mood go to: http://tammymaltby.typepad.com/tammyhansonmaltby/  (That’s where we learned about the Lenz Cake)

Winter is finally beginning to wind down.  I could feel it even in the intense gusts of blistering chill that heralded the last blizzard.  Very soon the last great dying gasp will give space to spring.  Now we trudge up the lane off winter’s last toilsome road.  Here a tree, there a bush shakes off its gossomer blanket as if anxious to have done with the sad songs they have creaked all the long cold months.  And then, through the last of the falling flakes, we’ll spot it in a quivering of wonderment.  The bright warm glow of Spring shining on the edge of time.  The next step will be heavier and softer and everywhere the white shrouds will melt and flood away.  Soon there will be mud underfoot and buds overhead.  Laughing and shouting the gush of life will burst the bonds and carry us away with it until the soft glow is dancing all around in the 

warmth.  Somwhere between here and there it will come: Summer.  And we, all unconcious of the wall we have passed  and the gate that was shut behind, will rove in freedom through another world.  Last Winter, still a-shimmery and glorious will peep from this young Spring’s walls o’er which it can never pass and watch us gambole away.  We may look back at it like children all grown up and wonder with a deep yet fading sense of loss at what we had and knew and never can have or know the same way again.  A season gone, a chapter finished.  You may glance to me and read the history …last year’s joys… that will be shining like tears in your eyes refleced in my own; and wonder why we don’t turn and return to the dear old familiar.  And yet neither of us can…or does.

So my take on all the snow?…learn to enjoy it while you can!

Craig, Karen and The Six Arrows


Lenz Cake

1 box white cake mix (don’t get mix with double the pudding)

1 box vanilla instant pudding

1 box chocolate instant pudding

4 eggs

½ cup oil

1 ½ cup water

1 cup chocolate chips

Grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans.  Mix all ingredients except choc chips according to directions on the cake mix box.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Pour cake pans and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until done.  (When testing cake with a toothpick, the trick is that the cake continues to “bake” until it cools, so take it out when there are a few moist crumbs (not gobs of batter) on the toothpick rather than waiting until it comes out “clean.”  This will yield a more tender and moist cake.)

Remove from pans after 5-10 min.  Cool cake completely.

Topping

2-3 pints fresh strawberries

½-1 pint fresh blueberries

1 pint whipping cream

Powdered Sugar

Vanilla

1 cup chocolate chips

1 Tbsp butter

Melt chocolate chips with butter and dip half to ¾ of the strawberries.  Refrigerate until set.  Whip cream with powdered sugar to taste (3-5 Tbsp) and vanilla (usually a generous tsp.)

Layer and frost the cakes with the whipped cream. Garnish with chocolate strawberries and remaining strawberries and blueberries.  (Can also use raspberries) You can also drizzle the cake with leftover chocolate from the strawberries.

Lightly sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Enjoy!