Pond visitors, Douglas, and Rhubarb cake

Yesterday we had some really beautiful visitors to our pond. I went outside to water my plants on the deck and saw two giant white things floating around. I realized they were swans, since we were lucky enough to also have them stop by last year. I ran inside to get the binoculars and these two Swans were taking a nap! 

The small dogs had their annual check up and shots on Thursday. For some reason, this time, Douglas had a very serious allergic reaction. He started vomiting, diarrhea, his face swelled , and he was very listless. We rushed him back to the Vet where they injected him with antihistamines and put an IV in him. In this case, just benadryl would not have been enough. 

Thankfully he perked up and we brought him home with us. He's on a steroid/allergy med for about 6 days now. Yesterday we saw quite a bit of improvement in him and today he's 100% normal Douglas thank heavens. Nearly scared the life out of us to see him sick like that.

Yesterday I went out to look for flowers and I found that our big arm tree had finally split and fallen. A few tears have been shed over the end of the life of this tree...  It seems like just yesterday it split, I thought maybe the old guy would hold up a little longer, but sadly he couldn't. This tree is very important to our entire farm. The big arm part is still up, but the tree doesn't have long now.

After chores and dinner I was out with the dogs and noticed how big and red my rhubarb had become, so I picked some to make a quick late night cake. I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com
The recipe calls for a vanilla glaze which I didn't use and have left out. You can find the original recipe above. We just had our cake with whipped cream. It was so yummy! The rhubarb is perfect.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup buttermilk (I just used milk since I had no buttermilk and it came out fine)
• 2 cups chopped fresh or frozen rhubarb
• STREUSEL TOPPING:
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted 

 Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk, beating just until moistened. Fold in the rhubarb. Pour into a greased 9-in. square baking dish.
2. Combine topping ingredients; sprinkle over batter. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

It's a quick and easy way to make a tasty rhubarb cake. We have rain in the forecast for several days which is not good for our fencing jobs.

However we lucked out and our feed store managed to find us some wine grapes and some amazing ones at that! We can't wait to get the fence up and start planting.