"Knee High by the Fourth of July"

That's what the farmers say, anyway. In honor of the Fourth of July, Annie, Ian, and I drove over to Lake City to spend the day with Ali, Mal, and Chris. A splendid overnight was had by all: golfing/golf cart driving in the afternoon, grilling splendid steak for supper (I continue to be mystified as to how boys somehow manage to know how to grill meat without necessarily possessing any other culinary skills), watching the fireworks shoot out over Lake Pepin (Tom and Dan made it to town just in time for the show). The houseguests departed the next morning after breakfast at the clubhouse; Ian, Tom, and Dan were bound for Mankato on a shopping excursion (they're going mountain hiking next weekend, and needed gear), while Annie and I intended to travel straight home. Took a slight detour, though... through St. Paul... about forty-five minutes out of the way to the north. Uh... oops?

But that's not where the farmers come in. No, they - well, more specifically, their saying - grabbed my attention within the first fifteen minutes of our drive. The route we take to travel the two-and-a-half hour stretch between Sleepy Eye and Lake City is a rural one, skirting around cities and curving between farm fields. Most of the time, you can see forever, at least on the highway that runs from Sleepy Eye to New Ulm and beyond. Every other year for the summer and fall months, though, walls of green and yellow creep slowly up, obscuring that long view at the curves in the road. "The corn looks pretty low this year," Annie remarked as we rounded a corner on the way to New Ulm.

"Knee high by the Fourth of July," Ian countered. "That looks about knee high to me."

It's nice when progress can be clearly measured, quantified by the height of midsummer cornstalks.

On Thursday, Ali celebrated the twenty-first anniversary of her birth. The festivities started at half past ten with a rousing set of tennis (doubles, wherein the birthday girl and her sister were victorious). Annie and Caitlin planned a scavenger hunt to occupy some of the day, so the four of us traipsed from the tennis courts to various locations about town. (The benefits of living in Sleepy Eye include being able to post huge birthday signs on the tennis court fences without fuss, hide clue envelopes in grocery store aisles and between library books and on the sides of buildings without fear of losing them, and leave gifts with hardware store clerks without alarming security [not that there is security in the hardware store, but you know].) Once two of Ali’s wrapped presents were found in a flowerbed under the Chief Sleepy Eye statue by the Post Office, it was time for lunch and a thrilling round of ecology-minded mini golf at the Putting Green in New Ulm (which prompted me, with my occasional child-of-hippies-in-denial sensibilities, to take this quiz).

The evening wound down with the opening of more gifts and the devouring of a fresh strawberry pie bedecked, for a time (pre-devouring, of course), with candles. It takes a long time to light twenty-one candles, but Ian did it with only two matches, managing to avoid singeing his fingers despite the pressure of numerous outcries: "You're gonna burn your hand off!" The flames brightened the room without the aid of the overhead light, and as the wax started to drip we gathered around the table to sing a spirited and oh-so-harmonious birthday chorus.

"She’s smoking us out here!" I joked, oh so funnily, as Ali exhaled over her pie, extinguishing the light with a single breath.

It's nice when progress can be clearly measured, illuminated by the glow of ever-increasing candles.

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