July – outdoors, birthdays and pickleball

We spent a day and night in the Dunes with Mike and Andrea and their dog Monty. Monty is normally my swim buddy but the lake was really choppy and Monty wasn’t feeling well, so no beach photos this time.

I’ve been swimming with Jeanne, Geoff and Sarah at Tobey Prinz. We watched the Harvest Moon rise over the lake after a lovely swim in July. Sarah brought delicious goat cheese tomato tarts from an Ottolenghi recipe, really could not have been a more perfect moonrise! The moon looked much larger in real life than in this photo (as always!) but what was pretty interesting is that the moon didn’t show up right over the water, it had to get through the dark purple band of color first, then suddenly popped into view in the pink band. Bottom photo shows the Carpe club (our swim club name) coming out of the water a different night. I’ve started taking the Metra and my bike to the beach, so I was out first to get going back to the train!

John has been on lakefront rides recently, and he stopped at Calumet Fisheries to get us some salmon and shrimp. The smokers were opened up and he got this very cool glimpse into how they smoke the fish!

It’s been a bit “superbloom” around here too! Due to a lifeguard shortage, the swimming beach at Humboldt Park has not been filled with water this year, creating a dry moat like look around the park district building. Elsewhere in the park, there is a really nice combination of yellow coneflowers and blue bergamot / aka bee balm, in bloom in Humboldt Park. Our Western Suburbs correspondent reported that these flowers are in bloom in Naperville too!

We had a cool and cloudy weekend and I was able to clear a LOT of weeds out of our front garden patch. The whole thing was really taken over by milkweed this summer, probably when I was out enjoying myself in Dublin and France… and I don’t mind so much since milkweed is really important for monarch butterflies. I have some doubts about these particular milkweed plants being of help to any creature other than aphids, but I’m leaving them there just in case.

And at the end of July we had the July birthdays to celebrate! First, Debbie then Kathleen and Liam 2 days later. Debbie’s birthday was on a weekend so we went out to Naperville to celebrate with some pizza, Greek salad, watermelon, and cake!

Then we went outside to play pickleball on their driveway. If you haven’t heard of pickleball yet, I bet you will soon! It’s like tennis but with a shorter court, uses a hard plastic ball with holes (called a whiffleball here but not sure if that’s a US term!), paddles rather than rackets, and a scoring system that we disregarded. It was great fun! Happy birthday, Debbie, Liam and Kathleen! Thanks for having us over, Debbie, Jeff and Maddie!