Sunday, Aug 4
Today we were late posting last week’s blog. John returned from a day of trail maintenance in the Cascades to garden & animal chores on the hot and dry Naneum Fan; harvest and watering, hay to horses, dogs to exercise, and kitties to feed. This morning I sorted many yellow squash picked last night into plastic bags to share, close to 14 pounds. I cleaned and fixed the strawberries (gallon ice cream bucket half full). We’ll have some on our dessert tonight.
Finished my volunteer hours of the month of July. It went to 95° today and finally got “down” to 82° right before 8:00 and we went out to the garden. I watched John harvest two shapes of purple onions, took pictures, and then we walked to the other garden to see some different yellow squash, corn, and tomatoes. We talked to the cats, and horses while there. Breeze (the youngest and most skittish when we got him 3 years ago), let me pet him and touch the top of his head and run my hand over his eyes. That’s an incredible improvement, and he doesn’t see me as often as he does John every day for feeding and working around the pasture. The new garden is in their pasture, and John has to protect the corn from their munching desires. Next year he’ll have to plant farther from the fence. The two types of purple onions are small flattish ones called Red Marble Cippolini [Italian for ‘little onions’] and Red Wing, the larger spherical ones. They share a nice purple/red color and a propensity to produce propanethiol S-oxide.
This afternoon I took care of things getting ready to meet my friend from South Lake Tahoe tomorrow in Ellensburg, on her way through to Spokane. It’s a long trip for her with two dogs (Brittanys). Kip is the Sire of the recent litter in CA, and the other is one of his pups. Her pup Tug is brother to my pup Tre’. Sonja has her camper so that she can stop and rest any time. Just driving time is probably 13 hours. Turned out to be 855 miles for them. We bought some onion bags, so John will dry the ones we picked today and yesterday to give her to take along for all the family she’s camping and kayaking with this next week. We will give her some yellow squash too. And speaking of colors, we had a nice sunset tonight looking off to the west where the sun had disappeared behind the Cascade Crest.
Monday, Aug 5
We heard from Sonja this morning that she would arrive around after 5:00 p.m. I was able to go to town for my SAIL class. She, with Kip & Tug, left yesterday afternoon about 4:00 p.m. from the south end of Lake Tahoe. She arrived in her camper, about 5:40 and we visited outside, exercising her dogs and letting them play in the irrigation ditch water. Kip laid down just like his dad Dan does, but the puppy was less interested in the running water and found an inviting puddle at the end of a siphon hose. We fixed and enjoyed dinner and visited until 10:00 pm. Nice evening under the walnut trees with no wind, for a change. John and I didn’t get to bed until 11:00. She expected her pup to awake her at 6:00 a.m., but actually, he waited until right before 7:00.
Tuesday, Aug 6
I got up, got dressed, and was out there by 7:00, but there were 1.5 hours in the middle of the night I couldn’t sleep–from 3 to 4:30. John took a nap this afternoon, but I had to stay awake waiting for calls from scheduling at the doctors next week. Wanted to move it to a later time but left it and will leave our 9:30 EBRG meeting at 10:45 to be there by 11:40. Phew. Other option was 3:40 and that was TOO late to wait for a 15-minute device check!
Back to our visitor: Sonja picked blueberries for her breakfast cereal and enough for 2 more days. While unplugging the electric cord, storing lawn chairs and so on the subject of dog crates came up – we have a bunch from the times we shipped dogs to owners around the country. Most folks did not want the crates and preferred to ship them back to us. We accumulated a few more than we needed even then, and now most have been stacked unused in the old motor home. (It is good for that, if nothing else.) We gave her a choice of sizes and then loaded 2, unassembled, onto the bed in her camper that sticks out over the cab of the truck. Back 25 years ago the airlines gave us a good price on these things (we recall about $75) but Sonja had checked a retail store and they were about double that. It is hard to compare using the internet because the models are not still the same and shipping doesn’t show unless you click through the whole ordering process. That helps defray her gasoline costs for a 2,000 mile trip. Wow, amazing the price change over time. We have many we need to find homes for and this was a great start. She and John took her dogs through the pasture. Then we took some goodbye shots, only one decent of the 4 of us.
We visited this morning until she left about 11:15. In the pictures below note there is a new huckleberry hound,
who cares?
Not Tug.
Tug, eating blueberries, as she was picking into her hat. His great great grandfather Choc was our huckleberry hound in Idaho. Now there’s Tug, and him tugging on the high picket line she was taking down after setting up between a walnut and a cherry tree.
This one is mine!
This photo is the best of the four of us.
to look at the camera.
While they were trekking the perimeter of the pasture (I’m still not up to that yet), I called and found details for lap swims at the community pool. We gave her excellent directions back to a place where she could find shaded parking for her 1/2 hr of swimming. She needed it for her back, which started hurting last night. We were afraid to mix running them with our dogs, so ours had to wait ’til she left, to go for their exercise.
Stayed home today to catch up on things, John mostly watering plants in the garden, and animal chores. We had BLTs for dinner.
Wednesday, Aug 7
As usual, I’m going to the Food Bank and SAIL class. Afterwards by the grocery for almond milk for me and colas for John, along with lettuce and brownie mix. When it’s on sale, we buy. It was hot today. My letter to the editor made it into the paper yesterday, and I had several comments today. It’s about losing the use of Kittitas Elementary School for our yearly July week’s workshop. A sad happening. If you want to read it, follow this link.
Thursday, Aug 8
Today the Fiddlers and Friends will play at the Rehab center where I once was 3.5 years ago. John is driving me in so he can fill up the truck with gas and buy some specially priced produce at the Thurs. 12-hour sale. We are getting tomatoes, broccoli and cauliflower crowns, grapes, and some cut meat for sandwiches for the next couple of days when John goes to the mountains to work on trails again. A few people showed today, including in the audience, my former roommate (now 91), from my stay there in 2010. I was the only violin again, but luckily our viola player was beside me. Several of this month’s songs I’m not used to doing the lead melody on, (normally doing the harmony), and it is difficult for me to switch after all these years. We also had 3 guitars and a banjo. Dinner was a fancy sandwich, turkey, ham, cheese, and lettuce.
Friday, Aug 9
John left at 7:00 for Snoqualmie Pass’ Gold Creek Trail work, with 18 adults and one younger participating. He took our “new” truck to be able to carpool several other workers farther up behind a locked gate via an old gravel road. Assistant crew leaders are aware this step is coming and usually drive a vehicle capable of the chore. The Subaru would do (it’s a favorite model for WTA types) but he just wants to try out the truck. We still haven’t figured out the radio. I’ve been doing multiple chores in 3 rooms today, and still have much more left to do. Predicted high today was 87, and finally got to 99° by 5:00. John made it back all right and had ferried 3 others and their day-packs. They had a full brushing day. He’ll not go back tomorrow, but instead will catch up on chores, and return on Sunday.
Tonight Washington had a huge lightning storm that went off about 9:45 near us. We got about ¼ inch of rain, no hail, and no real close lightening. We haven’t yet heard of all the new fires but one just north of the previous one east of us took off and now has a couple of thousand acres burning. The area is just south of Wenatchee and the radio station from there has been reporting. The Seattle TV station KOMO has pictures with the city buildings and Space Needle lit by the lightning, so this storm covered a big area.
Saturday, Aug 10
John stayed home to rest his hiking parts and to harvest and water the garden. He got two kinds of squash and a bunch of the fruits of his labor, pictured below in an ice cream bucket. Note, a few yellow (Anne) raspberries, more strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and a plum blown out of the tree. Now I have to fix them.
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan