Saturday, Sept 21
You caught some of the start of today earlier. We stayed home today to work on the blog. Called Peggy at the end of the day after the blog was posted; then off to the garden to pick blackberries, tomatoes, and squash.
Ended up seeing our orange garden spider in her web, and I went back to grab both cameras to record the event with hopes of identifying her. We both spent a lot of time after I took the pictures from my cameras. As of now, we don’t know, but have sent to a few folks. (Latest update 9/26: it must have gotten too cold for her and she disappeared). We expect she was an orbweaver, perhaps an Araneus diadematus.
behind a tomato leaf.
I didn’t get to bed until 12:30 a.m. and so I slept in until almost 10:00 after getting up at 7:00 and seeing beautiful skies and colorful clouds on a deep teal back drop to the east. Sheez… it was completely different a couple hours later, sprinkled some, and clouded over. Now the sun is out and beautiful again. I almost put on my shoes to go take a picture of the pink and blue clouds and bluer sky just above the ridge to our east but didn’t. Probably missed my chance for this year.
We just finished a LUPPER (lunch + supper): started eating at 3:40. I know “brunch” is the meal combining breakfast and lunch, but what is the name of the one between lunch and dinner (or supper). I like Lupper better than Linner. Ha ha. Omelet had broccoli, tomato, onions, sausage, cheese, and eggs, of course. We only had a 1/4 of it because it was so big & thick. Then, 1 1/2 pancakes w/ maple syrup, and bacon. We’ll have our pears and plums later.
Rascal, whom we didn’t see for 36 hours stretched across the couch to the dismay of the dogs. He stayed there until the middle of the night, left, but showed up this morning about noon, ate, and went back to bed in a box next to the Jade Plant in the back guestroom. He just awoke, meowed, and probably went outside. He didn’t come into the den, where earlier I had taken his picture.
More trying to complete things needing completed. Been trying to identify the spider today and yesterday who has weaved a 10 inch across well-designed web. We’ve determined she is an orbweaver, but as of yet, we haven’t determined the species. She is bright orange, and nestled in one of our largest Early Girl tomato plants. So, many of the pictures we take of her have green or red tomatoes for scale, along with plant leaves.
Monday, Sept 23
Nothing much going on, but a lot accomplished, nonetheless. Rain and Sun have prompted many thousands of seeds to sprout so John sprayed in an anticipated long break without rain. One of our many weeds is commonly called Cheeseweed because its seedpod looks like a miniature wheel of cheese. See the photo here (about the size of an eraser on a #2 pencil).
They like the disrupted soil of a new strawberry bed or freshly leveled ground for a new round pen. A local company is scheduled to bring “10 yards” (That’s 10 cubic yards and about 32,000 pounds) each of re-processed concrete and sand. The former is to top off and smooth the road to the barn and the latter is to go into the round pen area. There John was ‘popping’ rocks out of the surface, using the small ones in a walkway, and stockpiling the larger ones. He set the delivery up for dawn on Tuesday – just when we are supposed to be heading for Yakima. I called the dispatcher and rescheduled for Thursday, one of many little projects for me today. I took care of soaking my feet and cutting my toenails that I could, to get ready to go to the podiatrist for my laser surgery (on all 5 toes). My big toe on the right foot, with the fungus, seems to be growing out, and coming in fresh. Go figure. Maybe the laser will remove what’s left and I will be cured. What a great concept. Hope springs . . . and all that.
Tuesday, Sept 24
We left after 8:15 to drive to the podiatrist for an appointment at 9:30 a.m.!! (in Yakima), and afterwards to take my new car by for its 3,000 mile check-up. I carried along my computer in case of wait times. Only 15 minutes wait at the first stop, but then the work wasn’t finished until an hour later. On to the Subaru dealer for my Forester’s check up. It only took them 45 min. and all was well. Using synthetic oil the next date is 7,000 off. My father would roll over in his grave to hear that, because he always changed oil every 1,000 miles. Wonder if the fact he was a salesman for Quaker State Oil Company for many years had an influence on him. From there, to Jack In The Box for a special coupon for two spicy chicken sandwiches and two free tacos. We carried our own drinks and ate in the car under the shade of a nice tree. The temperature there was 59 but the sun warmed the interior. Our dessert came later — a Very Berry Sundae (the berries are strawberries), at Costco, as we left.
The toe thing is a fungus on 5 toes on my right foot. Not a clue where I obtained it. Earlier in the blog, I described my frustration with finding the solution. I go back to Yakima in a month for a redo of the same thing as todays. Then, I wait 6 months before going back. Expectations are that the laser pulses kill the fungus (not any other part of my foot or nail), and new nail will grow in to replace the weird looking toenails (rather like the material of an animal’s horn–hard, rough, misshapen, and thick).
The procedure and the prep took the better part of an hour. First, the main doctor clipped and Drexeled my nails to make them ready for the laser treatment. Then another Dr. did the laser pulsing part. It heats up and he only does a pattern on the nail of about 20 pulses, before moving to the next toenail.
It went all right and then today is a little sore from the trimming of the toenails, but the actual pulsing wasn’t that bad. Try this link — it gives a good description of the process.
Wednesday, Sept 25
I slept in this morning and went to the food bank, and then to my SAIL exercise class (not feeling like doing all of it, and then went for a haircut. When I got home, I went out to the round pen to see all the work John’s been doing getting rid of rocks and scraping it. I took a couple of photos of the activity. It is threatening rain, and the temps went down.
for the round pen panels.
Thursday, Sept 26
This morning at 7:45 we got a load of gravel for the drive delivered, and he then returned to EBRG and brought a load of “off grade” (cheap) sand for the round pen base. The one originally ordered was a coarser grained sand used for construction / road projects, and they figured this other was preferable. John, in consultation with the lady at the counter, chose the larger grit size thinking it would stay better in our winds. We’ll see. What was delivered is a dollar a yard less. I played music at Hearthstone Assisted Living and John went to the grocery to get a few things. At home, the mail had arrived and, finally over a week later, I got the results of my mammogram. Thankfully, there is no cancer.
Friday, Sept 27
Scholarship luncheon at noon. We are providing the main dish for the first meeting of this school year. Nice, because I won’t have to fix any more dishes for the rest of the year, except we will make our normal two expected pecan pies for the Christmas potluck. All the $5/plate goes to Ruth Harrington’s Scholarship fund for needy students, so we each put in $50 for the year. My group usually meets on the 4th Friday of the month. We expected 13 (including John) but there were 2 no-shows. He’s going to help me carry everything in. We’re fixing a special chicken alfredo, starting with one from Costco, and adding cashews, peelings from a bright yellow squash, slices of our purple skinned onion, cut up fresh mushrooms, some of our sun gold cherry tomatoes, and on top: thin strands of Havarti cheese and fine tiny flowers of broccoli. The top ended up speckled green and golden and got great reviews. It tasted good too. We hurried home to prepare for a potluck for my music group that starts in town at 5:00 pm. For that, we baked Honeycrisp apples (in halves) with brown sugar, cinnamon, and a little nutmeg. Ham and turkey were served and much else, including country potato salad, veggie plates, salad, beans, homemade rolls, apple/raisin Dutch apple pie and homemade chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies (homemade from Otis Spunkmeyer frozen gourmet cookie dough. The company began in 1977 as a California chain of retail cookie stores. Drinks included lemonade, Crystal Light (we took), coffee, and hot cider. We drove separate cars so John could eat and get home to feed horses and ferals before complete darkness.
We took 13 half-apples and brought 3 halves home. Later I brought some cookies and part of a pie – all left by others. John fixed some of the things he will need for trail work and then worked on the parts of the blog that I had started.
Saturday, Sept 28
John left at 7:00 a.m. this morning to just west of Snoqualmie Pass for trail work. A major storm is headed WA’s way but may impact more to the north and west of where he will be. If not they may be washed out and have a short day. We’ll know before this is posted, and is added below. [From John: we were wet but the wind missed us. 14 miles west had rain and wind sufficient to blow over trees. The plus of the rain is that we can see what the water is doing on the trail and know that our drains and structures are working – or not!] While he was getting wet and dirty, I went to play music at Briarwood (warm and dry) and they feed us neat things afterwards. “Us” is going to be very few as there is much running hither and yon for the members. I believe we will have one guitar, a timbrel, a fiddle, a viola, and an extra singer. It will be fine. (And, it was). We had a good responsive and appreciative crowd. For food, they had split pea soup with ham and carrots, rolls, crackers with salami, mango pieces, two kinds of cookies, a pasta salad, and a Jello/fruit salad.
I had a long afternoon, but it was all right, and John had a much longer day. He made it back safely from the trail work. It was accomplished with a bunch of boy scouts. It rained on them most of the time, but the wind didn’t start blowing and not very hard until near the end. They stopped early, at 12:30, skipping lunch on the trail. They still had the usual end of the day drinks and treats (todays were Pepperidge Farm cookies) provided by the leaders of the WTA trail work crew for the day. John ate his lunch in the car on the way home, getting here at 2:30. I didn’t leave where I was until almost 4:00. Then went by the Palace Café to pick up my birthday dinner (can get one of two things or take $10 off anything on the menu), but it has to be used sometime during the month of your birthday. I was running out of time. My free choices were Chicken Alfredo or a Chicken fried steak dinner. I decided to have the free Chicken Alfredo to mix with the small amount of leftovers from our scholarship luncheon one yesterday. The regular price on the menu is $18.99 !!! Wow. It comes with French bread. We paid $15.95 for the Costco one (about 4 pounds) that doctored up yesterday by added all the stuff to– but we fed 11 or 12 people. This was a generous serving for one, including a different pasta from the Costco one, which was Penne Rigate. This was a more truly small diameter and long fettuccine pasta (a little more like spaghetti).
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan