Last week I went to Graue Mill near my home in Elmhurst, IL and took a tour. Ended up with a 5lb. bag of stone-ground cornmeal. If you've never tried stone ground cornmeal, you are in for a treat. At the advice of the man who was grinding the corn, I removed from the burlap bag and put in a ziplock bag in the freezer. He said it will last a couple years there where moisture can't penetrate it. In the basement are the gear wheels from the waterwheel. Here is a checkerboard using corncob game pieces. I used my sourdough started to make some New England Anadama Bread. I got the recipe from my King Arthur Flour...
I made sweet rolls with the sourdough starter I have going. They turned out great except that the brown sugar didn't caramelize. It stayed course and if anything, got more crunchy. Not sure why. But anyway, they were still delicious.
I also painted the cut peonies you may have seen my previous post. I love these peonies because of the tinge of pink on the white petals. SO pretty. Also, it's hard to capture the fuscia pinks in oil paint. They have a transparent quality that glows and is really hard. I worked with effort to get that punch of color without overpowering the whole painting.
I found some mountain bluebirds! They were sitting on and near a new wheel line that's about to go in a pasture. Male and female. I snapped this picture before they flew away.
Can you find the bird on the tree? It's right below the knot on the left aspen. The knot looks a bit like an eye. It's a woodpecker. At first its head was in a hole.
I was looking for a mountain bluebird, but they eluded my camera today. I thought I saw a couple of them in flight.
Here is a crow in the horse pasture. And below is a robin.
