Sunday, Aug 11
Last night we got the edges (northwest & east north — weird wrap around) of a storm. Only a sprinkle here, but much lightning and thunder farther away than the previous last night (so the dogs did not get upset). I was up at five, and then again while John was up getting ready to leave between 6:00 and 7:00. I checked the weather report for where he was to be, at Gold Creek Trail today near Hyak and Snoqualmie Pass, and storms were in the forecast. That’s exactly what happened, after their morning work, lunch, and another hour of work – clouds obscured the nearby ridges and distant thunder began. In a drizzle, a quick hike down the hill got them to the cars and then as John entered I-90 to head home heavy rain began and lasted for the next 20 miles. It was a good call.
Tonight, John started with a cheap (but called deluxe) frozen pizza with 5 things (pepperoni, olives, sausage, mushrooms, & green/red peppers). He created a special homemade edition with top additions — some from our garden (except cheese, bacon, salsa). It had those plus sliced tomato, and an Ailsa Craig onion (just harvested) from our garden (well, not all of it). [Scroll to see the comments.]. ‘Twas a fine creation (the pizza and the onion :- )).
Monday, Aug 12
I stayed home all day to work on chores. Cleaned berries, sorted squash, watched John harvest them, and took some photos. Delivered some to neighbors later when it cooled down.
Tuesday, Aug 13
I dropped some squash and onions off at a friend’s house on our way to meet a Navajo woman (Delphine, my former student) with her “new” husband and his parents from New York State. They (the couple) live in Logan, UT, and the parents in Buffalo, NY. They all piled into the car to drive to Seaside, OR and yesterday to Mt. Rainier, Paradise. Then here to EBRG. They got to bed late last night at the Best Western, but Delphine had called me over the weekend to see if John and I could have breakfast with them this morning. I chose the Copper Kettle at 9:00 and we got there earlier and ordered, because we wanted to visit with them, and be ready to meet our normal 9:30 a.m. faculty meeting of the Emeriti Geography Profs. I had to leave at 10:45, to make it to the Yakima Heart Center for a routine device check. After that we went by Stewart Subaru to retrieve stuff they extracted from our old truck (battery tender, +). Then we were off to Costco for gas (~9 gal. in the new Subaru). I was doing the driving so I didn’t have time to make any long distance calls, as I usually do that trip. We ate our lunch at Costco, and after that, we went shopping. We had a list of things to get for our neighbor who has MS, and our own stuff, plus cat food for another neighbor. While there, we checked out cameras to replace my broken Canon. Ended up getting a new Nikon Coolpix S9500 – in a package deal with leather case, 16GB card, and $50 off the MSRP.
[Under the photo of the high-rise buildings, use the yellow bar slider to see the 22x zoom results.]
I don’t like John’s Nikon (large, heavy, no video, aging [2007]). I have never had a Nikon. My previous ones were Kodak, Casio, Canon, and now this. We have 90 days to check it out and be sure it’s what we want. Apparently, Costco has that return policy. Rather amazing, I think. We didn’t get home until almost 4:00. Been playing catch-up all night. So much to do.
Wednesday, Aug 14
Not going to town today–my buddy banjo player is busy out of town at a conference.
I have been doing chores, mostly on the computer, but am ready to tackle some cleaning. I also spent a bunch of time getting to know my new camera, and have opened all the packages, and read the manual, but not yet put in the battery and the flash card to charge the battery (that will take 3 hours). I was getting overload on knowledge and had to stop.
Thursday, Aug 15
Finally got on my computer completely this morning. It was a long delay late last night when I was trying to go to bed and it was downloading updates and wouldn’t let me turn it off. Took about 15 LONG minutes at 12:30 a.m. to download and install before turning off. I wasn’t sure it would turn off on its own, so I had to remain up. Then when I turned it on this morning, after waiting until I got my camera battery charging after assembled with the card for storing photos, I had to wait again for at least 10 minutes while it reconfigured them all. Yeah, I should have hit the start button upon rising for the day. Live and learn. John’s already run the dogs, going out in cooler weather (up to 69 now), to pick produce. I will take some squash and onions to town today to a few folks. I need to clean strawberries and put up them and the blackberries. I continue to spend time on health insurance issues, today on the phone with Group Health.
Today the Fiddlers and Friends play at Dry Creek. Several people are unable to come, and I will likely be the only violin. Not! Mary came. Yea… a first violin; thanks Mary. In addition, we had a mandolin, 3 guitars, a bass fiddle, and two singers, one with a timbrel. It went all right, with an appreciative audience as well. Had to shop on the way home, and get home in time to call my foot doctor in Yakima to schedule the appointment. More to come about that, but not until after September 17.
Other excitement of the day was walking back from the orchard and hearing the Douglas Squirrel in a Ponderosa Pine along our driveway across from the black walnut trees. John and I had just been examining the spent cones under another tree closer to the cherry trees, and the shed where I park my car. I walked over, saw he was not too far away, and so went into the house to get my new camera, on which I had not yet taken a video/movie. It took me awhile to zoom and locate him in the tree, and I had no way of using a tripod, as would have been ideal. I was holding my camera (it’s small) over my head, trying to stay steady, but having a tough time. Yet, I succeeded, and if I haven’t already sent you the link, here it is, on YouTube. It’s only 42 seconds long, but is a large file (77 Mb). I have to learn how to make my movies less large, so I can share more easily.
What’s amazing about this is we had just examined the cone mentioned above, on the ground beneath another tree, and we saw all the little things that hold the seeds that had flown to the ground. You can see them in the video flipping off after he extracts the seed. The cones parts were NOT easy for us to enter, but he has no problem. We tried Saturday night to find a good cone, but didn’t succeed; the squirrel has gotten the ones with developed seeds. He may be cute, but he is a real pest. It’s okay for him to work on the pine cones, but not packing away stuff in our shed’s insulation for his winter cache. He likes to use the engine of the old Chevy truck as a picnic table – much detritus from the walnut trees have ended up there. Why there? Isn’t it dark in there?
Friday, Aug 16
John will go to the hills again. This time past Snoqualmie Pass south of I-90, at the Upper McClellan Butte Trail (middle to high part of trail) — where they mostly did drainage clearing/cleaning and some brushing out. Try this web-site for a trail review. I got up at 5:00 and couldn’t get back to sleep, so stayed up. Then at 8:40, I grabbed an hour+ nap. I needed it. The temperature has stayed cool here and is cooler where John is – part of the reason for going there instead of trying to work here – often hot mid-August. Also that’s one of the reasons for doing the WTA thing in Aug/Sept. I have to deliver stuff to the neighbors and take care of dirty dishes and doing berries. Finally, I got the black and strawberries cleaned, cut, and sugared, with only one phone interruption. John picked some of our own ears of corn from the smaller plants (4’ high) for dinner.
Saturday, Aug 17
John went again today for WTA trail work at the Upper McClellan Butte Trail, west of Snoqualmie pass. He took a box of plums to share. (Another volunteer brought donuts.) I’ve been working on things and will continue until I leave for Briarwood for music in the afternoon, and we’ll be fed after we play. I’m delivering a large box of squash to a few people and then will take them inside to give away to those who wish. At 10:00 a.m., here the temperature is 79, sunny and breezy; where John is working on trail, the temperature is 59 and I have no idea of anything else, except a 30% chance of showers. Turns out it was a nice day for him. That side of the Cascades gets more influence from the cool Pacific Ocean than we do here as our air comes downslope, warming, drying, and mostly cloud free. The crew leader posted this link of photos of the day for John to share with me! One of my favorites is him standing in a drainage ditch holding a McLeod (aka rake) – he has pulled forest litter down the ditch to a colleague shoveling it out and dispersing it (lower left, see the shovel).
Another photo of part of the crew walking down a rocky trail on their way back to the trail head.
Note John’s orange (assistant crew leader hat), and his green hatted (thinner-) cohorts. Most of the trail was “soft” as in the first photo but in this one it is all rock crossing a scree slope below and unseen cliff.
Another thing along the trail, was interesting vegetation, actually fungi, if one of the volunteers is to be believed, calling the one on the right a “coral” something. Time is short, so that will have to wait.
Once home, we took a walk through the garden and pasture, barns, took a hay bale count, and talked to the horses and outside kitties. We’ll share a couple of the pix I took of John’s new garden. Oh, before that we picked some more plums.
Here’s a glance at the garden which produced ingredients for tonight’s late stir-fry dinner, which included our potato, onion, tomato (fresh on the side), green beans from a friend, traded yesterday for our yellow squash, and store bought, broccoli, cauliflower, with teriyaki chicken.
We have 7 or 8 of these orange winter squash but not all have turned from their original yellow color. When to harvest?
The next photo shows an Oops! John was digging a couple of potatoes and one jumped in front of the descending shovel and almost got cut in half. The crop is from about 6 spuds from a bag that sat around too long (over wintered) and began to sprout. We stuck them in moist ground and covered with a foot of straw. They are still a bit “new” (thin skinned), but we microwaved that one and then chopped it into a stir-fry.
Sunday, Aug 18
We’re running late again because of too much activity (so what’s new). He went out running the dogs, to water garden plants, and we will have a late pancake breakfast covered with our own berries that I fixed. We had a mixture of blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries. Very yummy. Today is another catch-up day. It began with a good night’s rest for both of us. I was running on low fuel yesterday, so the good night’s sleep was much needed and enjoyed, and John has continued to expend a lot of energy on the trail and in our yard.
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan