We hiked the Two Turtles trail yesterday, a 5.5 mile "urban greenway" encircling one of the local lakes.

This trail was a complete surprise to me. I have lived here for almost 24 years now, and I had no idea that there was a 5.5 mile hiking trail tucked in between the mall and the highway.

Because of its urban location, this was the noisiest trail we've been on, and the one where we saw the most people. Including people we knew, of course, since this is a small town. However, no one asked me to do anything, so that was fine.

Most of this trail is just like all the other hiking trails I have shown you. After all, they have all been within a single county. You can't expect enormous amounts of variation among a bunch of trails surrounding lakes in a single county.

I started reading Bill Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything last night after we got home, and read in it about the days when people would stumble upon dinosaur bones while on walks.

I had always thought that Mary Anning was the first one to find dinosaur bones, but she was apparently just the first one to pay any attention. People in America had been finding dinosaur bones and casting them aside for years, it seems.

One of my favorite stories in this section of the book was not about dinosaur bones, but about extinct mammals.

Apparently, there was a guy in Europe who kept saying that America was a degenerate continent whose natives couldn't even grow chest hair, and all the animals were little and weak. The idea took hold, and soon folks all over Europe were saying uncomplimentary things about American virility. This got on Thomas Jefferson's wick. Jefferson was strongly opposed to the theory of evolution and to the idea of extinction, and he really didn't like the way the Europeans kept saying that all our giant animals were extinct, proving that we were a degenerate continent.

Jefferson was convinced that the interior of the nation was just full of giant sloths and mastodons and stuff. That was one of the main reasons he went along with Lewis and Clark on their whole expedition idea.

Lewis and Clark ran into -- and described -- a dinosaur bone or two. They just sort of went "Huh, fancy that" and moved on, though.

We found no dinosaur bones of any description.

The one difficulty that #2 son and I have when hiking is our difficulty in recognizing the trail.

I think this is because we are prepared for something rugged. #2 son in particular takes the position that any line without vegetation on it is the trail.

And I suppose it is a trail. But I figure it could just as well be a deer trail or something, and I always want to stay on The Trail.

During our hiking escapades this week, we have on several occasions found ourselves on a trail that had nothing to do with The Trail, and have had to retrace our steps when it ended.

The Two Turtles Trail has blue paint on the trees, for people like us who would otherwise be saying "Hmm, they've really allowed this trail to become overgrown" as we clambered through the forest in the wrong direction for a quarter mile.

We've done that.

The first surprise on the trail was when it came out into an open field.

We've come out into open fields on two previous occasions this week. Both times, it was because we had wandered off the proper trail, and we had to turn around. In this case, though, we were really still on the trail, as evidenced by a bit of blue paint on a pallet lying by the trail.

We kept going, enjoying the hedges of honeysuckle and wild roses and wondering where the heck we were going.

Imagine our surprise when, following the trail through the trees in the picture above, we found ourselves in the midst of a botanical gardens under construction by the side of the highway.

It was almost as surprising as dinosaur bones would have been.

We had known that there was an idea to make a botanical garden here. We have driven past it and thought what a silly place it was to put such a thing, right there by the highway on hardly any space at all.

There is a wonderful public garden in the next county over, and we have felt that a little bitty botanical garden by the side of the road would not be able to compete for visitors, not to mention the impracticality of trying to build such a thing with donations.

And yes, we have of course donated, because you can't dismiss an idea simply on the grounds that it seems impractical and foolish.

Look at Lewis and Clark.

So the folks in charge of the botanical gardens project have just been quietly building away over here, or maybe not so quietly and everyone else but us has known that all this was going on.

There was a little group of children with a couple of women, all eating lunch in the midst of the gardens.

 #2 son wanted to eat lunch there, too, but it was so distinctly a construction site that I hesitated.

We did walk around the gardens, waiting for someone to tell us to leave, but no one did.

Emboldened by this, we made our way into an unlocked door in the main building and asked to use the restrooms.

This is the one thing about long hikes. So often they begin in places without any sanitary facilities, and then they go on for hours. Most hikes would be improved by a spot of indoor plumbing along the way.

Anyway, having looked around the gardens a bit, and realizing that they are right in the middle of a nice hiking trail, I think that they are more likely to succeed than I had previously thought.

This trail has some other stuff along it, including a disk golf range, an environmental interpretive center for the lake, and some good fishing.

None of these other things is actually on the trail. You can just glimpse them through the trees, and walk over to them easily enough. The people we met along the way had mostly just wandered down from one or another of these destinations.

So tourists could come to the gardens and then wander around the forest a bit, do some fishing, have a round of disk golf...

Unless they had people meeting them with cars, though, there would definitely be some walking involved.

Apart from the gardens, the other things along the way just showed briefly from the trail. "There's the marina," #2 son would say.

"There's the lake," I'd say a bit later.

"Well, yeah," said #2 son. "We just saw the marina. If the lake hadn't been there, people would've said, 'Gee, this marina would be a lot more useful if there were some water here. What are we gonna do with these boats?'"

#2 son can be a bit sarcastic at times.

This is "The Sensory Garden." It is an odd name, given that gardens are always multisensory treats. The entire hike smelled fantastic. Maybe it will be a garden that visitors are allowed to touch.

I am also not quite sure what these giant bugs are all about.

There were also giant umbrella-like things.

I don't know what they are planning here, but it looks pretty cool.

We snuck away and went back into the trees. We sat down on a bridge after a bit and had our lunch and then carried on.

This bit of the hike was not as nice as the beginning.

It was a long, straight trail with no cover, so we got hot and bored after a while.

There were berries and flowers in plenty here, though. It was more of a meadow than a forest.

Every so often there would be a bridge made by Boy Scouts. We could tell they were made by Boy Scouts, because the troop number would be burnt into the wood. Sometimes the information that it was an Eagle scout project would be there, too. We debated whether it was better to have Boy Scouts doing the bridge-building, or city engineers.

It was not that this was a burning question or anything, just that we were on a boring section of the hike and would talk about anything.

There was also a point at which what we glimpsed through the trees was the reminder that we were on the Trail of Tears. Usually when we see these reminders we are driving. Somehow, it was more impressive when we were walking.

Anyway, after the dull section of the hike we came back to the lake and walked over the dam.

It is amazing what a bit of scenery, and especially water, will do for you. Just before this, we were hot and complaining that our feet hurt. Once we were at the lake again, we felt fine.

Then came this bridge. This is a wonderful bridge. It is pretty and well-designed, and has a couple of wings which are little observation platforms with benches on them where you can sit and enjoy the view of the weir.

I am not sure that it is a weir. I kind of think that the point at a dam where the water falls over it is called a weir, but I could be wrong.

In any case, that water is what I mean.

I had heard about this bridge, and was really looking forward to it. But once I was on it, for some reason I was seized with a desire to get off it, and I raced across. I don't know why. I mean, I know that it was a manifestation of my odd spacial phobia, but I was surprised. There seem to me to be enough vertical elements on this bridge that it wouldn't bother me.

But there I was, enjoying the bridge, looking forward to taking some time at the observation points, and all of a sudden it seemed that the law of gravity was about to be repealed and we would go sailing off into the air.

This happens to me sometimes.

So I got off that bridge as fast as I possibly could, and we finished up the hike.

We have no hikes planned today. I think it will be a PSD for me, with a bit of gardening and baking thrown in. Maybe I will make some soap. I am still on vacation, though, and determined to maintain that vacation feeling for a couple more days.

The carpet cleaners came, eventually, I took #2 son to his last final, I savored the last hours of solitude I can expect to have this summer, I picked the kid up again, we met #1 son on his lunch hour for a celebratory meal, and then we refurnished the house. I suggested that we could take the opportunity to put the furniture back in new and interesting places, but this suggestion was vetoed.

In honor of the last day of school, and in recognition of the approaching thunderstorms, we then chilled.

I am not sure that this is a felicitous use of that word. #2 son said, "Let's hike some more tomorrow. Today, let's just chill."

So we did.

I had read a couple of 1940s mysteries with plucky heroines. Nobody does plucky heroines like the 1940s mystery novelists, and Kelley Roos is particulary good. I think her books are not popular today because there are so many period references. Just as modern chick lit is filled with brand names and the names of current celebrities, Roos's books have all kinds of pop culture allusions that mean nothing to us today. And I perhaps she not say "her" and "she," since Kelley Roos is the nom de plum of a husband and wife writing team. I mused on these things a bit as I put the book away. Then I moved on to a modern plucky heroine, in a Laura Levine novel. Also good. And will readers of the future get her references to Jimmy Choos and Whoppers with cheese?

I blocked Cherry Bomb and left it to dry. When you start these worsted-weight cotton projects in the spring, they seem like a great idea, but they are too hot for summer, aren't they? Maybe in the air conditioning. Otherwise, it is time to turn to small knitting projects.

I had gotten a good beginning on those socks, but decided that they were too "sleazy," as the old knitting books put it, on size 1 needles, and frogged the whole thing and started again with size 0. I'm using Knitpicks Essentials and really loving it. The proof of socks is int he wearing and the washing, but this is a wonderful smooth yarn in the knitting at least. These are ordinary calculated traditional socks, and I'm doing a small lattice insertion down the side.

The insertion is no big deal -- a simple k2tog, yo pattern with only two active rows. However, I had to frog and redo it about three times. This was my husband's fault.

He has been following the story of General Vang Pao (you may also see his name in American style, Pao Vang) and his plot to overthrow the government of Laos. My mother passed it on to me, and my husband has been printing out the updates from the internet and studying them.

English is not his first language, so he sometimes needs assistance with unfamiliar terms in the news. So there I am, counting my k2tog yos, and he nudges me to ask what they mean when they say the insurgency was being paid for by human trafficking. I explained, and he responded thoughtfully that this could not be true, as all the Hmong people have chicken farms.

Sometimes, when these discussions become particularly surreal, the boys jump in to help with  the explanations. Their views on the precise difference between "munitions" and "ammunition" are just as accurate as mine, I am sure, but they are more humorous, so sometimes it gets hard to keep an accurate count and remember whether I am on a 3-yo row or a 2-yo row.

You can see in the picture how well this color goes with my sofa, so when I lie on the sofa and read, once it is cool enough to wear these socks, I can put my feet up on the cushions without fear of clashing.

This, for the Summer Reading Challenge, is the other place where I read yesterday.

I have finished What to Eat.  Nestle rounded it off with a suggestion that the various industries involved in food processing and delivery ought to consider changing their evil ways and being honest with consumers.

She says this to them directly, too, so she was able to share with us their answers. Sometimes they threaten to sue her, of course. In general, though, they say that it is not their fault if consumers eat the wrong stuff all the time. Nestle suggests that having thousands of people spending millions of dollars to convince you -- from the time you are a small child -- that Lucky Charms are part of a healthy breakfast and Baked Cheetos are practically a health food makes a bit of mockery of the idea that what you eat is all up to you.

I read bits of the conclusion out to #2 son, who informed me that he would love to eat Toaster Strudel. He had a longing sort of voice, the voice of a child who had never had the opportunity to eat Toaster Strudel and knew that he never would.

We woke this morning to a truly dramatic thunderstorm.  The plants were definitely enjoying it. Falstaff has produced a blossom at last. Joseph's Coat has not. That last hard freeze in April may just have been too much for him.

The zucchini are pretty chipper, and most of the others have baby vegetables.

The cucumbers are not climbing. My husband built them something to climb on, and still they do not choose to climb. He is going to have to be more firm with them, I can see.

If it stops raining, #2 son and I are planning to do the Two Turtles hiking trail today, a five mile bit around a lake.

If it keeps raining, we will have to keep chilling.

Or perhaps that should be chillin'.

Vacation Day 4 did not go exactly as planned.

The plan was to let the carpet cleaners in, and then to pick up #2 son from his finals, go to lunch and a couple of little downtown visits, and then go on the day's hike.

The carpet cleaners did not show when they said they would. I called and they said they were on their way. I left #1 son home to let them in and went to pick up #2 son. #1 son was to join us after the cleaners had been. #2 son, it turned out, needed an advocate at the school for a little matter of skipping afternoon classes -- enough that he was looking at being denied credit for those classes.

I always have trouble with this sort of thing. If the kid has broken school rules, I don't want to be the parent who is there trying to get him out of the punishment he deserves. On the other hand, I sure don't think he should have to retake classes he passed, for having skipped them four times. So we had our negotiation and headed over to the LYS, and then called #1 son.

Someone had come to restretch the carpets, but he was still waiting for the cleaners.

We went to the art gallery, and thence to the used book shop, waiting for #1 son to call and say the cleaners had been, and then at last we said we would go on to the restaurant and bring something home to #1 son.

I like this sign from the used book store. The outdoor sign, of course, is a snazzy retro sign and of course I like it. But I also like the funny little sign below. They have all their signage like this, but the juxtaposition of topics struck me funny.

We went on to the Greek restaurant for lunch, running into only a couple of people we knew, and enjoyed our gyros and a bit of conversation. We were still thinking that #1 son would be along any minute, but he did not arrive, so we had his lunch packed up and set off.

A call to the cleaners showed that they had not only not been on their way at all, but would not come until today, Thursday.

Grrr. They said they would clean all the carpets when they came, not just the wet bits, but I really was not mollified. At this point, I would prefer not to have the carpets cleaned at all.

We had stopped off at the old train station, now a coffee and ice cream place.

I am glad the building was saved. They even kept the ticket windows and all that.

We wandered in, tourist-like, and breathed in the wonderful scent of coffee. #2 son had a biscotti, and he and I shared a scoop of raspberry sorbet, and it was quite good.

As it happened, I had read Nestle's section on coffee and tea in What to Eat, and thus I knew that neither has reliably proved to be either particularly good for you or particularly bad for you, though there is weak evidence that tea may have some beneficial effects. The only thing that Nestle actually recommends drinking is water, and she reports that 40% of bottled waters are fortified tap water. They are a marketing miracle,  but you might as well just drink tap water. She is eloquent on the subject of sodas and juice and "juice drinks" and their marketing to children.

The coffee place has a wonderful little lounge. I would like this to be one of the places where I read for the summer reading challenge, and that may happen in the future, but it did not happen yesterday.

They also have outdoor tables and chairs right on the railroad tracks, which must be exciting when the trains come by.

We no longer have passenger trains coming through here -- thus the obsolescence of the station -- but a freight train came through while we were at the Greek restaurant a couple of doors down, and stopped all conversation with its piercing whistle.

We went home with #1 son's lunch, disheartened and cross and no longer in the mood for a hike. I repaired to the couch with my stack of vintage mysteries.

When my husband came home, he was even more disheartened and cross than I. He expressed this by making us remove all the furniture to the kitchen. We have our carpets cleaned every year, and have never moved the furniture at all. We had to move the boys' furniture to the living room because of the water and the blowers and stuff, but I think that moving things into the kitchen was just an outlet for my husband's outrage.

If having all the bedroom furniture in the living room was inconvenient, then having all the furniture in the kitchen is even more so.

We have a dining area in the kitchen as well, just an open room between the living room and the kitchen proper, and it is completely full of dressers and computer desks and chairs and such.

I am not making a plan for today, that's all.

Yesterday #2 son had a full day at school followed by gymnastics, so I just went on an urban walk without him.

I had planned to do the official Self-Guided Historic Walking Tour. It begins right where the farmers' market is and is supposed to last 90 minutes, so that seemed perfect. However, when I got over to the town center and picked up the self-guiding guide, it turned out to be only one mile.

How do you make a one-mile stroll through town last for 90 minutes? I guess that includes lots of time for contemplation of the facts in the brochure.

However, there is also a 3.7 mile "trail" downtown. Our city is working on a 129-mile system of trails, all of which are eventually supposed to be interconnected, so that a person could walk all over town on identified trails. Most of the trails are in parks or woods or something, which we are calling "greenways," but the city has also taken advantage of the few parts of the town with sidewalks, and is also calling those "trails."

And why not? An urban walk can be as nice as a rural one, in its own way.

 Mine began at the farmers' market, as I was in need of vegetables anyway.

The tomato seller told me that she needed some more slates for her vegetable price signs. A bit later, a woman at the head of a crocodile of preschoolers shouted out "Hey, Miss [insert name of my store here]!" But that wasn't too bad.

Here's the fountain at the town center.

The town center is just a nice public building. It has tourist information in it, which was why I was going there -- to get the Historic Walking Tour guide. Sometimes it has art exhibits, but not yesterday.

I did go to one of the galleries later on in the walk, though.

It was an exhibit of the work of Lee Littlefield, who does curious things like flowers or sea anemones out of wood, latex, and oil paints.

 #2 son and I are going to lunch downtown after his exams this morning. I think I may try to get him to go see this exhibit. He might like it, though it is reported that when Mr. Littlefield came here, someone greeted him with "Oh, you're the one who made those ugly flowers." Not very courteous. In fact, there was even vandalism of one of his outdoor installations. I hate it when this sort of thing happens. I have a certain amount of pride in my town, and things like that make us look bad.

You can have one of these spiky things in your house for about $2,200.

I am also going to go back here, to the LYS. I left my bag of vegetables sitting out on the table in the picture there and went in to pet some yarn.

I am not a good customer at this place. It is such a sweet little store, but the yarns are always very expensive, and most often they are novelty yarns, or bulky yarns, or variegated.

However, they did have some lovely mohair on sale, and I have had in the back of my mind a project requiring a couple of skeins of mohair.

 People who only go the the local shop to buy a couple of skeins of half-price yarn don't get to complain when they no longer have a local shop. And I agree with the knitting bloggers who remind us that, considering how long it takes to knit a sweater, none of us really ought to be mingy about yarn. If you invest $70 in yarn for your sweater, and you only make a couple of sweaters a year, which is the truth about most of us, then you are only talking about $140 a year, which is a very cheap hobby.

I just can't get myself to spend that $70 on yarn in the first place. Maybe some day. Until then, I go into this shop rather shamefaced, pet their yarn, and buy needles or a couple of skeins of sale yarn.

I also went into the used bookstore. It has been there for a very long time, having managed to survive the opening of the big box bookstore. It is one of those rabbit warren bookstores, where the aisles between the shelves are about 10 inches wide. I love it.

I bought a couple of out of print mysteries, and felt as though I had found treasures. I also saw a copy of Patrick Campbell's A Short Trot with a Cultured Mind and had to practice iron self-control to keep myself from buying it. I already have a copy, but it is out of print. What if something happened to the copy I own? This is how I end up with multiple copies of my favorite books.

One of our local controversies is the way this particular street has been gussied up. Lots of new buildings have been built, and they house law offices and relatively fancy restaurants and things like that.

Many of the places that were already here before the gussying up began were unable to afford the new buildings, and had to move elsewhere. Some had to go out of business entirely. There are still hard feelings about this.

I understand that. However, I am thankful that the new buildings are attractive and in keeping with the overall feel of the town. I am glad that the old buildings that were beautiful and in good condition were saved and restored. I figure it could have been much worse.

Even 3.7 miles, since I stopped to buy books and pet yarn and visit galleries and there were no Knarly dropins, was more a stroll than a hike, but I did enjoy it.

Following my urban stroll, I went home and cut out the second pattern I am auditioning.

Netflix had sent me "Charade" with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, so I put that on while I did the cutting and didn't actually get to the sewing.

I had vintage mysteries to read as well, after all.

I tore out the edging on Cherry Bomb and went with a knitted hem instead.

I think this will make it more substantial -- as would the edging the pattern recommends.

The LYS had on display a really pretty cotton tank with hems rather than ribbing or other edging, and it looked good and did not frill as badly as mine always do.

Of course, it was also hanging up, presumably after having been blocked severely, so that may not say much. Nonetheless, I am thinking about undoing the ribbing that I added at the bottom (the pattern says garter stitch) and doing a hem there as well.

This is another reason that I ought to buy yarn at the LYS instead of always using mail order because it is cheaper. I take advantage of their displays to get ideas.

Speaking of economics, retail, marketing, and so forth, I read the next section of What to Eat. The more I read this book, the more intrigued I am by the language issues.

It was the section on processed foods, and the first thing that arose was the fact that companies specializing in processed foods claim that pasteurization of milk is not different from Toaster Strudels: both, they say, should be considered processed.

Under that definition, I do have some processed foods in my house. Even under a normal definition, I have some: I buy bread, and dried pasta, and canned beans and tomato sauce. I buy jam when we run out of homemade, and we do not make our own mustard or soy sauce. At the moment, I even have a couple of cans of soup in my pantry.

But I think that the people in charge of lobbying for processed foods must approach it as a puzzle. It is clever to come up with phrases like "Made with whole grains!" or "Made with real fruit!" when they know full well that this is the equivalent of saying "Made from sunshine!" in that there were whole grains or fruit involved at some point in the past. It is really clever to say things like "No cholesterol!" on things made with hydrogenated vegetable shortening. There isn't any cholesterol in plants, and that isn't the point, but it gives a spurious air of healthfulness to the product.

Pepsi Co. made up their own health symbols to put on some of their foods which have no nutritional value at all. This implies that their baked Cheetos are in some way healthy. I think that is clever of them. There are many many examples of this cleverness in the book. I guess these guys simply don't think about what they are doing, but just focus in on the idea of coming up with clever ways to mislead their customers. Then, when they get caught, they move on to some other clever approach.

I did have to wince a little when I read the section on sugars. You may have noticed that I like sweets. There is no special occasion that doesn't get commemorated with a dessert chez fibermom.

I know that I am not supposed to eat simple carbohydrates, but I rationalize it like this: I don't sweeten anything (tea, coffee, cereal), I don't eat processed foods which are nearly always full of sugars, I eat refined grains almost only in the form of pastry, and my desserts are made from real foods.

Not as clever as the folks who are pushing processed foods, but still pretty good, right?

Today the carpet cleaners are supposed to come, and then we are having lunch at the Greek restaurant downtown and perhaps picking up some of that mohair, and then on to a hike around another of our lakes. Following that, we will come home and put all the furniture back in the bedrooms. Be still, my heart!

Yesterday's hike was in the woods, not the forest, and there was no lake.

There were a lot of trees, much the same sorts of trees as the previous day, and much the same little plants.

More of the little plants, actually, because it was a bit of woods, not a big deep dark forest, so more light gets through.

This is kinder to small plants.

The trail itself was also different.

Instead of a single trail, there was a maze of trails to choose from. They all start together, but then there are multiple points of choice.

What they had in common was that the first half went straight down and the second half came straight back up.

This is a little hollow in the middle of town with a couple of miles (well, it could be 5 miles if you followed all of them around and around and went on every bit, I guess, but it's a couple of miles if you just take one loop) of trail. You could hike this every day for a week without repeating yourself.

If you decide to do this, I do not recommend doing it with an obtrusively fit fifteen year old, unless of course you are similarly fit yourself. If you are finishing up the first half of a century on earth, you will notice that you are doing the second mile just as fast as the first even though it is at a 60 degree angle.

There were many interesting geometric effects.

Tree trunks in interesting arrangements.

Rocks in odd juxtapositions.

Stuff like that.

I don't know why there were so many fallen trees. The rocks also looked as though they had fallen down in great cataclysmic chunks. We're not talking here about little round rocks, but about the big flat stones, granite or something. 

I feel as though I ought to know what they are, but I don't.

There is a ruin in the center of the hollow. You can see the foundation of the house, made of those same rocks, and a fallen section of roof.

You could imagine, looking at this place, that there was some avalanche or other catastrophe that caused it, all the trees and enormous rocks falling down into a gigantic hole in the ground that opened up when, um, the Witch of the West had the house fall on her.

Something like that.

It is cooler in the woods than out in the town. This woods is actually inside the town, so you can hear the occasional hum of traffic, but mostly you hear birds and small rustling animals.

I was surprised that we did not see any deer. We often see deer running across the roads near the wooded parts of the town, yet here we were in the actual woods, and nary a one.

Perhaps they did not want us to see them.

Or maybe these trails are too steep for the deer.

I really liked this little ladder going over the giant log. Was it easier than climbing over the log without it? I am not sure.

I asked #2 son for a hand going down, and he grabbed my hand and pulled, so I got down rather faster than I had intended.

"You survived, didn't you?" he asked in a QED sort of voice, prompting me to wonder how often I have said that sort of thing to him.

At the end of the trail, where the trees open out and the light is greater, there are all these dog roses.

Beautiful.

The whole place is beautiful.

It was grass-roots community action that saved this hollow from the developers, by the way. It is now part of the parks and greenways system.

I wanted to share its history with you, but I can't remember it accurately, and my desultory research only turned up a review of the trail, saying that it has "lots of Knarly dropins." That is true, though I think I would have spelled that "gnarly." However, we know that I am terminally unhip.

This was our post-hike dinner. Salmon croquettes with vegetables and coconut, stir-fry chicken and peppers, salad, and a couple of kinds of rice.

What to Eat moved on, in the section I read yesterday, to the main forms of protein. She was not as graphic about the practices of meat producers as some other writers. She was even kind and sympathetic. Think about all the offal slaughterhouses have left over, she said. Naturally, they want to sell it to someone, or feed it to their cattle, rather than having to figure out how to get rid of it.

It is hard for me to think of any way that turning herbivores into cannibals is natural, and I have some concerns about whatever sick puppy thought of that.

Still, it wasn't a surprise. Nor was it a surprise that the main health advice about meat is not to eat very much of it. I was surprised that the levels of toxins in fish are high enough to make eating fish a trade-off. I was surprised that one egg a day is the safe and healthy quantity.  An omelette is my standard no-time-to-think lunch, but maybe that should change. The industry fights over labeling and their brazen marketing in the form of "education" were the most interesting parts to me. Nestle points out that many of the serious problems associated with protein foods (like food poisoning) can be avoided by safe kitchen practices, and I was nodding my head to that. But she also points out that the only reason we have to be so vigilant in our kitchens is that the meat industry wants to be free to do perfectly disgusting things in their workplaces.

I did some sewing yesterday. I have a batik print cotton which I plan to use to make a tunic for my SWAP, so I am auditioning a couple of tunic patterns with fabric from the $1 bin. This is Simplicity 3786 in a tropical print rayon. It has interesting seaming and a really flattering neckline, not that you can see those things in this photo. I think it looks like scrubs in this photo, but that is misleading. It is the kind of garment that looks better on a person than on the hanger, but I did find that it showed more cleavage than the pattern picture suggests. Too big, too small, I sewed one of the pieces in upside down, who knows? In any case, I sewed a bit of elastic inside the seam allowance of the front facing, and tacked the overlapping bits together high enough that my bra won't show when I wear it, and I like it very well.

My daughter has told me that tropical prints are completely out of date and that prints this big only belong on sofas anyway, but you know, you can't mind your children all the time. Tropical prints make me think of walking on the boardwalk as the sun sets over the ocean, with handsome young men and Anchor Steam beer, and that is not a bad thing to think of occasionally.

I have another length of $1 fabric and another pattern to try, and I expect to do it today. Then I can decide which one gets to be in the SWAP. There is also another hike in the plans for the day, though #2 son says he is not sure he can keep this up all week.

I think -- I say I think -- I made an album of photos from our lake hike. I could be wrong, but if you are in the mood for further scenery, you could check it out. I think that you can click on "photos" up there on the left and see it.

 We headed out to our local National Forest first thing in the morning, stopping for ice along the way.

The original plan had been for the guys to pack up while I was at work on Saturday so we could leave as soon as I finished work, and camp out on Saturday night.

That did not happen.

By the time I got home from the fair (a nine-hour day), I was not in the mood to pack for camping, thus the movies and pizza night.

We missed the chance to wake up in the forest, which is one of the things I love about camping.

Sleeping in the forest isn't always that great, but waking up there is heaven.

Still, we had a good early start. We checked in with the forest rangers and set out on the trail.

Most of the trail looks like this: forest.

The trail is 16 miles long, circumnavigating the lake.

This kept us cool while we walked

This is a manmade lake. During the Depression, the valley was flooded as part of a WPA project. We are told that it was an enormous relief to the people who lost their homes, to get a bit of cash and an opportunity to go elsewhere.

I have never met one of those people, so I don't know.

The path goes right along the shore sometimes, and veers back into the woods at other times.

The National Forest is wonderful. We have been here every year since we moved to this state, I think. Some years we come a lot, swimming  and hiking and camping. There are several trails. We have always started this particular trail from the other end in the past, though, and never gone all the way along it, so we had some surprises.

There were a couple of structures in the lake.

There is another manmade lake in the county to our north which was made on top of a resort. The resort was a big deal in the 1920s, with the only nightclub in the country that was in a cave, and a complete wacko for an owner, and all kinds of interesting things.

There were a couple of luxury hotels built there, and later they disappeared under a beautiful new lake made by the Army Corps of Engineers.

When the lake is low, you can actually see the tops of the buildings. It's like Atlantis or something.

This lake is not like that. The structures that were covered were not the kind that would last this long. The stuff we saw must have some modern function, but we don't know what it is.

Sometimes there are steps, leading into the water or up to nowhere right at the water's edge. Mysteries, only because we don't know what they are.

About halfway along, we came upon this wonderful glen.

It had a small but lovely waterfall. We had no idea it was there until we stepped into the clearing and there it was.

The water splashed down the hill and over the rocks and ended up in a still pool at the bottom.

Someone had set some logs around a fire pit, so it was a perfect place to stop and rest for a bit and enjoy the sound of the rushing water. 

We decided to lunch there. Here is a picture of our lunch:.

We tried to continue along the trail after lunch. We walked up along the other side of the waterfall. The path grew smaller and smaller and ended altogether.

Not just petered out into the forest, either. We had been climbing along a rock wall, and found ourselves boxed in against a cliff.

#2 son climbed up onto the wall and suggested I do the same, but I turned back. Hiking does not, to my mind, involve rock climbing. That is a different sport altogether, and one that I know is probably not for me.

We walked back down and set out another way. That did seem to be a path, but it broke out of the woods into a broad meadow, and we decided to try again.

Third time's the charm, we supposed,and started off another way, but it wasn't any more clearly a path than the others, and after clambering over a couple of waist-high tree trunks, we decided to go back the way we came.  We figure we did about half the trail.

And then of course we went back. This trail does not loop. If you get to the end of it, you have to turn around and go back the way you came, unless you have a confederate waiting for you in a car at the other end. We have always started at the opposite end and have never before gotten as far as the waterfall.

We took a lot of pictures of the waterfall. As is so often the case, I wish had more skill with the camera. This new camera of mine doesn't even have a viewfinder, but just a screen on which for some reason I never feel that I can see anything properly. I just hold the camera out in the general direction of the sight and push the button and hope for the best.

You may be amazed to hear that we ran into a customer of mine as we hiked.

Fortunately, we had been speaking French at the time, and I was wearing sunglasses and a hat, with my hair bundled up underneath the hat, so I simply pretended to be someone else. Some Canadian tourist, perhaps.

I greeted her pleasantly. She had that look on her face, like "Don't I know you?" but I ignored it.

#2 son says she will go into the store tomorrow and tell everyone about this odd encounter, but I think I might have gotten away with it. We had been climbing straight uphill for a while, and my face was pretty red. And the sunglasses and all.

Some parts of the hike were challenging. Not for #2 son, who went scampering about like a mountain goat or something, but for me. I am a good, steady walker. I am never the one who gets winded when I walk with friends at the park, and I have to step the treadmill up pretty well to keep my heart rate up at the gym, but I have to admit that some of those 45 degree angles had me puffing like a grampus.

#2 son told #1 son that I complained every time it got above  20 degree angle,  but this was not true. It was only in comparison to his antics, like the aforementioned mountain goat, that I seemed less than plucky.

There were lots of actual woodland glades for our enjoyment. I joke about making a woodland glade in the shady flower garden in front of my house,  but there were real woodland glades on our hike, it being a forest and all.

There were small, shy woodland flowers.

There was also a heron. This was kind of amazing, since it flew down onto the path ahead of us in an open space, and then walked through a wooded bit on the path ahead of us, as if it had been just another hiker. We followed behind it but could not get a picture before it flew away again.

This log bridge was also a bit challenging for me. I used to run across them lightly, but this time I had #2 son hold my bag and walked across in a gingerly fashion, as though it were a tightrope, while he made fun of me.

Since it was only a few inches above the water and the water was only a few inches deep, it wouldn't have mattered much if I had fallen. I could even have simply walked across the creek bed if I had felt like it.

It just was another of those reminders of age.

There were a couple of benches along the way, one in a little stone gazebo and one a bit of log on unconvincing legs. "When I'm 90," I said, "I'll have to sit on those and rest when we do this hike."

After our hike, we went down to the swimming beach. The lodge and the bathhouse are WPA projects, and are on the National register of Historic Places. I really like the lodge. I could imagine living there.

Especially if I got to keep the lake and the forest.

#2 son swam, but the water was very cold and filled with seaweed and small, screaming children. Accordingly, I decided to sit under a tree and read.

Here, for the sake of the Summer Reading Challenge, is a picture of the place where I read.

Also for the Summer Reading Challenge, I will tell you the interesting thing I learned about soy products from Marion Nestle's What to Eat. In 1999, the soy industry got permission from the government to claim that soy lowers cholesterol. This was based on the fact that Asians eat lots of soy and have low cholesterol. Nestle points out the logical flaws there, and mentions that further research since then has been unable to support this claim. In fact, the government permission is only for the claim that the soy protein in 32 ounces a day of soy milk may reduce bad cholesterol levels, a fact which is irrelevant to most people. My husband is Asian, and all the soy we ever consume is soy sauce. He prefers fish sauce, actually. He does have terrific cholesterol, though.

The reason the soy industry did this is that soy products by and large don't taste good (this has been my experience, and I guess Nestle is relying here on some research, but I know that I have seen Kali Mama being pretty enthusiastic about soy smoothies, so she may be overgeneralizing here), so people will only buy them if they are convinced that there is some health magic going on with them. Apparently, there isn't any such magic.

Today I plan a PSD, which will require strength of character so that I can ignore all the things around the house that need doing, and all the work I could be doing on the computer, and all the things I might do for my family. Not to mention all the furniture piled up in the living room. I moved my sewing machine to the laundry room, though, and that might actually be a better place for it. If nothing else, it will make it easier to ignore things. After the boys get home, we might do our next hike, which is a short one.

The curriculum fair went quite well. We need some better display arrangements, that is clear, but it was profitable. And there were folks who went from the fair to the store to shop, and there will presumably be folks who go online to shop, since I pressed flyers about the website into their hands, and overall I felt as though I was being properly guerilla-esque in my marketing efforts.

Was it fun? In some ways, yes. It was nice to see old friends and there is a bit of a carnival atmosphere to these shows. The Empress came to spell me at lunch and I moseyed around the other booths and bought Yorkshire Tea from a woman who apparently travels about doing tea shows. She was not even from our state. I was sort of amazed. Books, sure, lots of people take those on the road, but tea?

I was pleased to get the tea.

There were not many booksellers there, actually. I usually enjoy the opportunity to check out offerings from small presses, but it wasn't like that yesterday. I was two booths down from the local music studio, so I had eight hours of listening to people play piano with various levels of skill but generally a high level of enthusiasm and a heavy foot on the forte pedal. The noise level was getting to me by the end of the day.

As you see, Montezuma has finally gotten around to blooming, several weeks later than normal. We have a couple dozen blooms now on Montezuma and New Dawn.

The other two roses are still getting their beauty sleep.

We do however have baby tomatoes. You can see them below.

Marion Nestle, in her book What to Eat, has completed the dairy products. I am convinced by her central claim: whatever you believe about dairy products, it is something people paid a lot of money to convince you of -- the milk cartel or their opponents. All the scientifically proven stuff about milk is normal information about protein, calcium, saturated fat, and sweeteners. If you like nonfat dairy products, eat and drink them. If not, get your protein and calcium from some other source. If you really like cheese -- and Nestle agrees that a good cheese is worth eating a little saturated fat for -- you should eat it in "slivers and shreds," which is to say in tiny quantities, not in chunks or pizzas. Sigh. We already know that, but the political machinations of the milk industry and their competition are quite fascinating to read about.

We called out for pizza last night when I got home, in spite of the health risks of doing so, and watched two movies in a veritable burst of laziness.

I began a crochet picot edging on Cherry Bomb.

It is still inclined to roll, and it is larger than I had envisioned it being. Well, I was obviously envisioning something made from crochet thread, not a worsted-weight cotton, so that is the fault of my envisioning process, not of the edging. I may see how a knitted picot edging compares, or I may just finish it up.

I am on vacation, so I can do whatever I want.

I was thinking about this yesterday. I think that my vacation image of going to a city by myself, or of going on a week-long hike, is not as much about seeing new museums or being in the wilderness as it is about anonymity, irresponsibility, and selfishness.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. My theory about vacations is that they should be a contrast to what you normally do. If you are usually outside, you should vacation indoors. If you live in the city, you should go to the country. I spend most of my time responding to people. Even when I am working alone -- and there are only a few hours in the day on a few days of the week when I am alone -- even then I am responding to people online. I don't think it does any harm for me to be irresponsible, selfish, and unresponsive (within reason) for a week out of the year. It allows me to get through Back to School with some modicum of grace. Or at least to get through it.

So I need some time of not responding to people. My fantasy of going to a city, staying in a hotel, and exploring the town all alone is mostly about not having to talk to people or take care of anyone or see to anything or even be nice. Even if someone spoke to me in such a situation, I could ignore them. Cities are like that.

On family vacations, while I am always still the mom, I don't have to do housework at the campsite or answer the phone at the hotel or be responsible for anything beyond the safety and comfort of the family. There are no appointments, and I am assured that I will not run into someone who wants me to get a book for them -- something which happens to me on walks in the park with some frequency.

We had great family vacations, but the time when the whole family could get time off together is in the past. The time when my family can cheerfully spare me to go off for a week on my own is in the future.

But I was thinking about residential workshops I've arranged in the past. I've done nature camps for kids, and weekends for teachers. Once The Nurse and I did a long weekend workshop on the Civil War. We had lectures and craft projects for the participants balanced with nature hikes, including evening hikes and one where we came upon paper corpses with presenting symptoms written on them and did charting and calculations. We arranged healthy meals for them, along with plenty of chocolate, and we all had a great time.

I think I'll skip the corpses. But I also think that the same skills that allow me to arrange these things for other people can allow me to do the same for myself.

So, although my vacation plans have been derailed, I think I will be able to achieve a sense of vacation, so long as I keep the right attitude. Today, as soon as the boys are up, we are heading out to one of our local lakes for a hike and perhaps swimming and paddleboating. I have frivolous books, and #2 son assisted me in spending an alarming amount of money on outdoor snacks, bug repellant, and such. For the rest of the week, we intend to do other local hikes after his exams each day. He is off on Friday, and though the other family members are not, he has agreed to go camping with me for that last weekend. What a good kid he is!

He did want to go whitewater canoeing, but I don't think I am up for that without more experienced people along. It is true that #2 son is one of the people I would choose first to be in an emergency with, because he has a can-do attitude that makes emergencies seem more fun. When he was little, his motto was "Stay calm, stay cool, and snap into action." He no longer says this, but the attitude is still there.

However, the other person I would like to have along is my husband, who is very like MacGyvor. A more emotionally volatile MacGyvor, to be sure, but still a handy guy to have with you in the wilderness. If he can come with us, we'll do some canoing.

We have a listing of good local hikes, and have not already done them all. In the mornings, I may do some in-town explorations or just loll about or make things. And of course my Wednesday morning is settled: waiting for the carpet guy.

I think the key to success here will be not letting anyone know that I am in town. Otherwise people will want me to do things. So I will not answer my door (except for the carpet guy on Wednesday) or the phone, and I will adopt disguises when I am doing very local explorations. If confronted, perhaps by some fellow visitor to the botanical gardens wanting a particular bulletin board set, I will deny my identity and pretend not to know what they are talking about.

You all have persuaded me to take the socks. This is Knitpicks Essentials in burgundy, and I am just making an ordinary do-the-math sock on size 1 dpns.

I am of course hoping that I will be swamped with customers all the time. Guerilla Marketing says to go to shows with the idea of selling.

You may be thinking this is obvious, but this has not really been my approach at homeschool curriculum fairs in the past. It isn't my approach at the store, even. I behave as though you are a friend of mine who dropped by to visit, and if you mention some problem or need in your life, I will sure help you fix it. In the store, naturally, the problems and needs are often things that can be fixed with math manipulatives and library pockets, but the principle is the same as if it were a bit of advice or a cutting from my plants.

At homeschool curriculum fairs, my message is "We are your local store. Go on and buy your A Beka and Bob Jones here with the money you set aside for the purpose, but come back to us later in the year. We know you love us."

Guerilla Marketing says that going to shows in order to network, build customer loyalty and awareness,etc. is all very well, but if you go there planning to sell, then you will end up making more money. So we need I suppose to go more with a "Look, honey, we've been your store for fifteen years, so don't flirt with those guys -- step up here with your money!"

Therefore, instead of taking an artful selection of books to indicate that we are worth visiting, I packed up seven boxes of books and a rack, and That Man and I loaded up the truck and took it all over to the Convention Center. Instead of arranging charming little vignettes of medieval history here and chemistry there, I am going to set it all out as thought the stuff is for sale. I actually took a cash box.

We'll see what happens.

Janalisa came by yesterday. We had a pleasant visit, making a break in my workday and in hers, discussing landscaping and summer camp and teenagers. To an observer, though, the interaction might have looked odd.

"This is for M," she said, handing me a box.
"Great," said I, handing a bag to her,"and this is for L, but I haven't run into her yet. Will you see her?"
"I will. And G lives on my road," she continued, taking another bag.
"Okay. And this is from Partygirl for you. She gave it to me when we were out walking last night," and I gave her a box.

It was another example of the underground economy of women.

Janalisa sells Pampered Chef and runs a flea market booth. Partygirl does Southern Living. Chanthaboune does Beauticontrol. Mrs. C sells scarves that she makes. M hooks us up with fair trade coffee. Others bake cakes or sell excess produce or honey. There are always packages and parcels being traded and deliveries being done.

It is the underground economy of women. I think it is the equivalent of "egg money" -- if a woman had a few chickens, back in the day, she could sell the eggs and the money was hers to spend on things that might not have fit into the overall household budget. Girls used to go pick strawberries for a day in order to have enough money for a new hat, a frivolous expenditure their parents wouldn't have sprung for.

It's not really a job (well, Janalisa is a real Pampered Chef consultant) but it allows us to have a little extra cash for luxuries or free cookware or to support a cause.

There is a barter element, too. When I go to work today, I will be taking books to give to Blessing. (I will also be taking a message about her cookware party that Janalisa is doing, and since she signed up at my party I get something for that.) She brings me books, too. The Empress and I bring each other food. Moms pass clothes around for our kids.

I think the online swaps belong in there, too. Frugalreader might, but there may be men involved in that, too.

Now, I don't see this among men. The men at church don't scurry around trading packages. Men never come into the store with a sack of something for That Man. My husband never gets mysterious parcels in the mail. They borrow tools and help each other and work on things together, but I don't think guys have a fellow they depend on for all their guitar strings or anything.

It's underground because it's informal, untaxed, unregulated. The lady on the corner just puts out a sign if she has extra vegetables sometimes, and we can stop by and get our carrots as simply as if it were a kids' lemonade stand.

And that reminds me that today is the beginning of the Summer Reading Challenge, the challenge in my case being to read and report on two books a week. I'm still reading What to Eat. Nestle is now talking about the milk cartel, which is probably why the underground economy of women stayed in my mind after what was not, after all, an unusual scene.

The dairy industry is so powerful (they got nearly every state in the union to declare milk their state beverage in the '80s, and just recently they persuaded the government to increase their dairy product recommendations from two servings a day to three -- did you notice? That's half again as much) because they are united. Unlike the rest of the agricultural world, the dairy farmers of America present a united front in the great milk marketing machine, and they have been able to increase America's consumption of dairy products.

Mostly in the form of premium ice cream and full-fat cheese, actually, and certainly at the expense of the small dairy farmer.

I can tell that Nestle is just about to leave the interesting details of how the milk cartel did their feats of marketing and begin to share the horrors of factory farming. I don't look forward to that. There are some things I'd rather not know. The cattle I pass in several fields on my way to work seem pretty happy, lolling about under the trees, chatting and laughing (I made that part up), and I would prefer to think that all the dairy products I use come from them and their sisters.

If I knew a local mikmaid who would slip me some cheese in exchange for handknitted socks, I'd do that.

And speaking of socks (which I probably shouldn't, since this post has become way too long for anyone actually to read to the end), I am nearly finished with Cherry Bomb and will need something new to knit at my conference tomorrow. It may be socks. Will I be able to finish Cherry Bomb and swatch tonight, in order to be prepared for tomorrow? Should I set Cherry Bomb aside in order to swatch for the socks, and then actually have enough knitting to do on Cherry Bomb that I could in fact have taken it to the conference?

Should I go ahead and begin the handbag instead, since it won't require swatching? It has a pattern stitch, and I might be prone to errors since I will be having to put it down and pick it up all the time. Socks require nothing but the initial swatching followed by calculation -- and there I am back to the same question.

I certainly must have enough knitting to last me. I will be at the Convention Center from 7:30 to 5:00 tomorrow, and there is always some time with no customers.

I will mull this over while I tidy shelves today.