Picnic at Hanging Rock.

So, you know that ultra-creepy movie from the mid-1970's called Picnic at Hanging Rock?

... There's an ultra-creepy movie from the mid-1970's called Picnic at Hanging Rock. It's Australian. It's directed by Peter Weir, who later went on to direct stuff like Witness and The Truman Show. But first he did weird, creepy, disturbing stuff in Australia.

Picnic is about a group of school girls who went on an outing and wound up getting... something. They disappeared or got killed or raped or sucked into a temporal displacement or something. One of their teachers disappeared, too.

Told you.
Creepy.

So when we found out there was a place titled Hanging Rock National Natural Landmark within two-hours' driving distance of our house, naturally my first instinct was:

Let's go on a picnic!!!

We loaded up our picnic basket with stuff to make ham & swiss sandwiches on sweet brioche with whole-grain mustard and those little individual bottles of wine that you don't have to bother resealing. Two flat stones provided natural benches on the banks of the Wabash River.

I really don't have much to add beyond that, except --

 It's pretty.

 Pretty.

  PRETTY.

Mmmm..... petroleum-based dessert at the summit of Hanging Rock....

 Next stop -- Blair Woods!!
 Who's with me?!?!


...Yeah; okay. That's understandable.

 

Peaches!!!

Peaches 25 - 36

We have a peach tree in our yard. 

Usually we manage to get about a dozen peaches in a year, if we're lucky.

And then, there's this year.

We haven't done a thing different.

Seriously. Not a thing.

This winter, a big wind storm blew a third of the thing down. The poor tree's been struggling since we bought this place, and we'd pretty much given the thing up for dead.  We've even considered cutting it down.

But...

This is the third dozen peaches we've harvested in three weeks. Not counting the ones stolen by birds and squirrels over the last month, or the dozens rotting on the ground. 

We've had parfaits and crumbles and just... sliced peaches, and I'm happily running out of ideas.

 Definitely pickling some of these babies.

Happy end of summer, peoples!