Summer Fun

It was a weekend full of summertime activities, not the least of which was dealing with the annual miller moth migration we all love to hate. It's annoying enough to see them perched (do insects perch?) on the walls, windows and ceilings, but when they flit around my book light at bedtime it's a call to war. I've tried several methods of ridding our home of the pesky moth. When I'm feeling really magnanimous I will scoop it up in my hand and let go outside, but mostly I grab it, flush the toilet and throw the moth down into the swirling water for a burial at "sea." However, Friday night as I was staring up at the 15 or so &!*#$ little things resting peacefully all over my windows, I happened to notice the vacuum I'd never gotten around to putting away, put two and two together and came upon the best miller moth disposal method ever. I grabbed the vacuum, hooked the extension tubes (or whatever they're called) onto the end of the hose and went after them. It was easy to sneak up on the grey little body and hear pffffffft as the vacuum sucked up the little bugger before he/she even realized they were in jeopardy. It was such a rewarding activity that Dean got in on the action.

Abby was home for the weekend and weakly lobbied for a catch-and-release approach but quickly realized that was a hopeless cause and even though it went against all her entomologist instincts, searched out all the yet-to-be vacuumed moths.

A word of caution for any of you who feel you may like to attempt this at home. Placing the vacuum on your dining room chair so you can stretch that hose even further may very well result in this...and no, it wasn't me.

I think I see some newly upholstered chairs in my future.

The rest of the weekend we spent at the local NicFest viewing arts and crafts, listening to music, drinking beer, eating food we didn't have to cook, watching performances by a group out of Seattle, soaking up the sun and just generally enjoying ourselves.

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Summer Fun

Gettin' Serious

When I started blogging I picked a template with a black background and white writing and that was it. No fancy photos, links or anything the least bit visually interesting. When I complained about not really liking it but not knowing what to do about it, number one daughter (who is very talented in the blog setting-up department) not only fixed it but regularly improved it for me. She changed the colors, she added graphics and just generally made it look better. The other day I decided if I was going to continue this blogging thing maybe I should figure out things for myself. So I started looking at other people's blogs to see what everybody else is doing out there. One thing led to another and next thing you know I was reading lots and lots of blogs. I felt like I was making a whole new group of friends by reading snippets of their lives from around the world---well, the English-writing world anyway

After a bit of reading I started wondering how people find the time to do all this blogging. Almost everybody seems to post more often than I do. Some people post something every day. Really. Every day. And these posts aren't just two sentences with maybe one photo. They're long, newsy and full of pictures. Not only that, they still seem to have a life outside of blogging. I saw photos of crafted items, quilted items, baked items, trips, celebrations and lots of other things that require time to accomplish in addition to the time it takes to sit at a computer and blog about them.

Every day as I sit at my computer at work, I think of all the things I will do when I get home and all the things I will blog about. I make a list on a post-it note, carry that post-it home with me, stick it on the wall and that's usually as far as it goes. All I can conclude is that people who actually have a life and blog do not sleep. I saw blogs with posts from the wee hours of the morning. People must get up early or stay up half the night. I'd like to think that going without eight hours of sleep is in the realm of possibility for me but that's a big N----O. I have on occasion gone with fewer than eight hours of sleep (it rarely was by choice) and even though I try oh, so hard, it is impossible for me to fake being alert and happy when I am a cranky zombie. Just ask my husband.

I finally did quit reading blogs and began revising mine so if I don't change my mind later or screw things up by trying to get too fancy for my limited html knowledge, this new look is it..........for now anyway.

I hafta go hike the mountain now..............this is why I never get any blogging done.

Okay, I'm back. Dean and I have decided to hike the bridal trail once/week as long as the weather's good. No, we do not see any brides nor do we see any horses...only old fogies like us. The young ones never make it past the short walk to the waterfall. We're hoping this hike will prepare our legs to hike Laramie Peak later this summer. We said that last summer too but this time we really mean it.

It's nearing the end of June and it's still this green. Amazing!

Another view from the trail.

This doesn't look very steep but it's a workout if you start at this end of the trail and coming down after a two-hour hike on tired and wobbly legs is a challenge too. There are several curves so I couldn't get the whole steep part in one photo.....just so you understand that this portion is STEEP.
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Gettin' Serious

And then there were none

A couple of days ago there were only two birdies left in the nest.

Last night I found one of those two perched on the ladder under our deck ...



and then later in the top of a pine tree in our neighbor's yard.



One was left in the nest



but soon after he'd also moved outside the nest.



And this morning.....

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And then there were none

Bushes, Birthdays and Birdies

During a break in the ice age we've been experiencing we planted two cherry and a current bush in the as-yet-to-be-completed side yard. Weeks ago we dug up the grass and purchased stepping stones and brick for a pathway which are still neatly stacked and waiting. I am anticipating cherry pie, cherry muffins, and and hoping drying currents will be more successful than the cranberries we dried a few years ago that exploded into powder if you pressed them.

We now have a minimum of seven projects in various stages of completion. For
whatever reason, when it became too cold, muddy and miserable to work on the stone path, instead completing one of those unfinished projects, Dean decided he'd rather begin another one and pulled up the landscaping timbers in front of our raspberries. Apparently he's finally gotten tired of digging up raspberry shoots from the lawn and thinks lawn edging will work better. Two weeks later he got around to digging a narrow trench for the edging. A couple of hours after that he came inside moping and sighing because he found roots deeper than his eight-inch edging. So now comes the "thinking" stage, and one more unfinished project.

One project we have managed to complete from start to finish is a new strawberry bed. We happened to be visiting Leslie and Ryan one day when Ryan was digging up ground to make a sandbox for the kids. I couldn't resist the black rich-looking dirt he'd dug out and since Ryan had no plans for it we went home with buckets of awesome dirt in our trunk. If I would have thought things through clearly I would have remembered I live with a crazy man and thought twice about asking for it. When we first moved to this house Dean made us dig up all the rocks under our gigantic deck, dump them bucketful by bucketful into a sieve he'd made with a 1/4-inch grated bottom and then wash them before they could be put back under the deck. It wasn't a day project or even a week project. It was a summer project which only Dean seemed to enjoy.

This dirt not only had to be sifted through the same homemade grate but had to be sorted. Dirt fell below, rocks went in one bucket and and grass, leaves, etc. into another for compost. Those strawberries better be happy.

Pierce celebrated his second birthday at the cabin Ryan's parents have on the mountain. Leslie made an awesome race car birthday cake which was much more impressive than the birthday cake I made one year when she told me, "it's not very good, Mom, but I know you tried".



We roasted hotdogs over a fire,

Pierce learned to shoot an arrow,

Emerson collected flowers for her hair,

and Myra made sand soup.

We saw some interesting plant life while we were up there too.




We have been watching as one industrious young couple built a house under our deck and then proceeded to successfully raise their young.






At least somebody is able to finish a project!

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Bushes, Birthdays and Birdies

New life

I'm sitting at the computer shivering now because I refuse to turn on the heat when it's almost mid-June even though it's 63 degrees in the house. We keep getting showers or mist or thunderstorms and when I look up all I see is grey and clouds, and clouds and more clouds. I'm feeling as gloomy as the weather and I think webs are beginning to grow between my toes.

Everything is staying green much longer than normal because of all this abnormal moisture although the plants in the garden are growing at a snails pace and the seeds Dean planted are refusing to show their heads. However, not everything is waiting for warmer weather. In between rain showers the other night I was dragging up the lawn mower from the back yard to the front yard, cursing the extension cord which always get caught on something and yanks me back (yes, we have the only electric mower in the whole city and probably the whole state) when I thought I saw a dead mouse in the grass.

When I looked closer I saw this. A baby bird hiding in the grass was an excellent reason to postpone mowing the rest of the yard.

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New life

Winning The Bid

In early May the local art museum held its annual "postcards of the west" event. This is a fundraiser where several rooms of postcard-sized art donated by local artists are auctioned. Each bidder writes their bid on a sheet posted by the artwork. Rooms close for bidding at posted times so as the end of bidding in each room nears, people tend to hover around the piece they've bid on so they can place a last-minute bid if they discover someone has bid above them.

This year Dean created and entered a postcard for the auction using traditional paints instead of beer cans.

Leslie brought Emerson and Myra to the event and they had their first experience hob-nobbing with local "artistes" and partaking of the refreshments. Myra, who usually seems to survive on air, spent a large portion of her evening filling her plate with handfuls of pretzels or chips, carefully carrying her plate back to the table, devouring the whole plateful and then going back for more.

Once the food lost its attraction (as in was taken away) we wandered from room to room writing our bids on the art work we hoped to win. Emerson learned the hard way the fine art of sneaky, last-minute bidding. She had bid (okay, I did it for her) on a painting of cowgirls in brightly painted pink shirts. We stood watching as the time was counted down ... 30 seconds, 15 seconds...when a teenage girl rushed over, increased the bid by $5.00 and won the painting. Having learned our lesson, in the next room we covered our bases by bidding on two paintings Emerson liked and a painting of cowboy boots that Myra really loved. Leslie and Emerson stood guard in front of Emerson's chosen artwork (which she won) while Myra and I watched the boots. Once again came the countdown, but this time when a woman bid above us on Myra's boots with 30 seconds left we were prepared. I immediately stepped up and increased the bid, writing so slowly there would be no time left for anyone else. Myra was really excited she'd won. I was excited she'd won because Myra wears cowboy boots with everything, not the least of which have been her swimming suit and snowsuit. I'm sure the only reason she wasn't wearing them with her Sunday finest at the art auction was because Leslie wouldn't let her.

As in the previous rooms, once the bid closed, women in white gloves swooped in and carried away all the art on the walls. I looked over at Myra, who 20 seconds earlier had been so excited she had won the boots, and she was standing in complete silence with wide, confused eyes watching a lady take her boots and carry them away. Pretty soon her face crumpled and big tears started falling. I told her that she would get to keep the boots and those ladies were just taking the picture so Papa could pay for it but by then the big tears had progressed to deep sobbing. So I got down on my knees, nose to nose, held her wet, snotty face in my hands and told her again that she really would get to keep the boots picture. She would stop sobbing long enough to say "okay" and then start up again. Fortunately it was the last room we had any bids on so shortly after we were able to collect our artwork and Emerson and Myra headed for home clutching their artwork in their laps.

I took the following photo at Leslie and Ryan's as Leslie was trying to get Pierce ready for a bath. The little skinny legs behind the door are his. Once he discovered we were outside taking a picture he would run up to the door buck naked, jump around, squeal, run away and then immediately run back and do the same thing again. If the photo seems a bit blurred or off-center or just not very good it's because I saw nothing but a blur in the view-finder since I had no reading glasses with me and just as I was ready to take the picture (I tried 3 or 4 of them) a naked boy would pop up at the door. It's hard to take a good picture when you're blind and laughing.

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Winning The Bid