Category: Random issues

Water issues

We are experiencing a house-water situation. There is air in the system from a currently unidentified malfunctioning part. The symptoms include pressurized air blasting and sputtering from the faucets and sounds of an unknown drummer when toilet tanks are flushed. All the rocking and roiling in the lines and tanks is breaking loose many years of accumulated mineral content of a rusty orange color. For reference, see this document.

All of this is particularly galling insofar as we are having a perfectly gorgeous fall day – going for a high of 63, sunny, and only a slight wind (for our Valley “slight” is equivalent to none). But instead of being out and doing things we will be in. We can maybe (not likely) solve the problem. We can maybe (more likely) eliminate a few possible problems. We can (most likely) provide our plumber with a better idea of how much time he will have to allocate to this job.

We’ll likely post a blog late tonight – Saturday, but (more likely) Sunday. This is Nancy adding a note after John’s comment on posting Saturday. We are attending a Dutch oven cooked dinner tonight, and more on that later in the future completed blog.

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.

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.

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

Sunday, Sept 8
Today, started earlier than usual for me, so I could help John put a pork roast in the Crockpot. We cut up some freezer-chilled (to lower tear production) purple onions and some tomatoes. We put the Crockpot in the garage so the extra heat will not be in the house. Then as he was setting that up, I started working on his sandwich. I got it all layered, and he packed it and 4 plastic coke bottles ½ liter drinks in his backpack (one frozen). Any carbonated drinks have to be opened and “fizzed” here at home because at 4,000 feet the air pressure is sufficiently less that such bottles make a mess when opened. Traveling in a backpack doesn’t help either. WTA has been working between 3,000 – 4,000 feet elevation and if in shade they are about 15 degrees cooler than here at the house. Without clouds the sun gets a bit intense. They need to drink lots in either case – one of the many safety precautions covered every morning before they leave a trail head. Also, for additional liquid we packed a couple of the Pluots and a Bartlett pear. (The pear came home with him so we ate it before dinner tonight.)
After he left, I laid back down and slept in late, but I rationalized it was all right after a rough night with broken sleep and odd dreams. Must have eaten too late? I spent a lot of time on a bunch of projects, but have little to show for it. Well, the roast turned out tender and tasty so the early effort paid off.

Monday, Sept 9
We went to Costco after lunch, because John decided to go work at Mirror Lake on WTA trail again, tomorrow, negating a planned Tuesday trip. The Forester was almost out of gas so with Costco gas 20 cent per gallon cheaper than EBRG gas there is some small compensation for the extra miles. We were also going to be out of cat food in a day or so, so we bought needed animal food for the most part. Not counting the very berry sundae (frozen yogurt with generous strawberries. We did buy large packages of ground beef and pull-apart pastries to go into the freezer. We keep it quite full in case the power goes off and to prevent spur of the moment trips to a grocery store. Rural living has its little “gotchas.”

Tuesday, Sept 10
John left for a WTA work party at 6:30 a.m. I was up and then back to sleep until too late to get everything done in a timely manner. I was 15 min. late to my 9:30 a.m. meeting with emeriti geographers (only 3 others today) at Copper Kettle. I took a case of Roslyn beer for the hay-load-helper son of one of the fellows who comes to our meeting. I also dropped off some garden produce at 2 friends’ houses, yellow squash, scalloped and straight neck, red tomatoes, little sun gold cherry ones, and on to Mt. View Meadows, to see Jay Gorman, wish him a happy 86th b.d., and give him a gift of lyrics to songs we sang the last time our group visited there, (only the 5th Thursdays of the month)–not a lot of those in one year. Oh, good; just checked and October is one such month. He sang along on most of the songs, but his favorites are You Are My Sunshine and Red River Valley. I made a special edition for him with his name and a big sunshine clip art, and a total of 12 songs. He was totally thrilled. He calls me Nancy with the laughing eyes. This is another rewarding experience of playing music in nursing homes and retirement centers.
While there I had my eyeglasses adjusted (meeting the new MD at Boys-Smith), who had come over for a special event for anyone in town. I told him about my cataract surgery, and that someday I would need to have the little film removed but for now it is fine. He said that is a very easy and safe operation. We visited because no other people were there for the free clinic, and I found out he is from Brewster, WA. I think he was surprised that I knew of the town and had been there – it is not a big place but is in sunny eastern Washington
( 48.099670, -119.780907 ).
I also asked his optometrist assistant, who’d adjusted my glasses, what I could recommend to John to clean his. They had a table of cloth rags (soft), and little spray bottles of some blue liquid thing to use; they gave me two of each and said when I ran out I could come back by and they would refill for free. I only wear my glasses when I need extra good vision (if in the back of the room at a lecture, or in a strange town, needing to see little road signs, or for night driving because they correct a slight astigmatism, and make on-coming lights less aggravat-ing. With them on, I have 20/15 vision. Without them and with my intraocular lens replace-ments, I have 20/20 with both eyes, and close-up vision without glasses.
I must say I never liked Dr. Boys-Smith because he incorrectly diagnosed my eye problem (when it was really cataracts), and so I told Dr. Hanson the story and said, now that he’s dead, I can talk about him (not that I didn’t already, even while he was alive). I had been pret-ty upset at the way he treated me, especially when I found out the real cause and let him know he was wrong. He had sent me to his buddy in Yakima first and I spent > $100 on the “treatment” of a special fit contact lens for one eye. The procedure didn’t work.
It was still lunch time, and I had not had anything but a small piece of toast so I took myself to lunch at the new IHOP in town, using a special 50% off coupon. Had a fancy Chicken Fajita Omelet and 3 pancakes. I brought home half of it and 2 pancakes. I have to be back at Hearthstone at 6:30 to play music.

Wednesday, Sept 11
Historically a bad day – 9/9/11 – 2,996 people died of terrorist attacks in the USA.
Hard to believe the coming of age generation will learn of this as history. If 5 then, and 17 now, what experience most defines your life?
Back from several events & sitting down resting. It’ s after 4:00 and I left home just after 11:00 a.m. First stop, to pay the rest of my dental bill that insurance wouldn’t cover because it was not a metal filling!! (Jeez). I had paid $102 already, and now $35.00 more. So much for dental insurance. It was a TINY repair, not a major deal. While going there, I carried along a box of corn, tomatoes, and yellow squash and invited the only two people there on staff today (secretary & hygienist) to come to my car and take what they wanted. They loaded up pretty well. While there a little old lady emerged from the back room, having just had her teeth cleaned. She looked at me and said, “You’re the singer !” I laughed and said, “Yes, we play various places around town.” She asked my name and the name of our group, and I told her. Then she thanked me again, and wanted us to come back soon. (She’s at the same place where I was visiting on Tuesday, and our performance there was 2 weeks ago). I asked her name and where she lived. She didn’t know, but the staff told me it was Mt. View Meadows, and her daughter brought her in. Well, the fact she remembered our music, was great.
On to the Food Bank to play music and deliver some of our homegrown blackberries to our banjo player. She is limited on her fruit intake because of chemicals (she’s allergic to) used in growing commercial ones. The food bank has much bread for Wednesday morning pick-up, and they like for us to load up on bread while there after the pick-up is done (nothing else though, but bread deteriorates or molds rapidly because they have no way of refrigerating it). The offerings weren’t so good last week, but today I got a loaf of 3 Cheese French bread, one of Rosemary Olive, and some Holland Dutch Coffee Cake (isn’t that redundant?). Then for lunch, we were fed a nice baked boneless chicken dish, with a casserole I didn’t think I would like so only got a small serving, but it was very good. It had egg plant, quinoa, and garbanzo beans with some nice spices. Next was a cucumber/purple onion salad in a sweet vinegary sauce; I don’t like cucumbers, so just had a few onions. Then a large green mixed salad, but the only thing I could eat in it were the tomatoes. For dessert I had a piece of dark thick chocolate cake with dark chocolate frosting. [John says, Life is good when veggies are taboo and double chocolate is a better alternative.]
From there, off to the Adult Activity Center, where I unloaded the rest of the vegetables. I pulled up in front of the door and gave the box to one of my exercise classmates. Then across the street to park under the shade of a big tree, because shade is sparse in the parking lot at the AAC. By the time I got in the building all but one piece of squash and two little corn-on-the-cob were left!! People descended on my friend as she walked in. I was setting up the CD music and saw a large sweet muffin and two pieces of cheese cake, so I wrapped them and put in my empty box to bring home for John and me. We’ll thaw some strawberries to have on it later. My left foot inside ankle has been bothering me so I didn’t do any exercises today that would stress it. From there on to the pharmacy to pick up some of my meds, and cokes for John, dog biscuits for the dogs because Costco had none yesterday. They expect a treat when they return from their exercise — it’s part of the deal, with them. Annie, the youngest, lets us know with a very interesting (funny) vocalization. So, we comply. They have us trained pretty well. Finally, home and it is 95 degrees, but John helped me unload the car. We are waiting for the temperatures to go down so that I can help John pick tomatoes. We picked Sun gold cherry tomatoes, other larger red ones from three different bushes, and some more blackberries. I’ll take some to town tomorrow and John will freeze the rest.

John decided tonight to go on Sept 14 to the Cascades Beckler Peak Trail to work for the 20th Anniversary celebration. He only got started with WTA 7 years after their first work party. Read about it all, here. He’ll go to the Beckler Peak trail.

Thursday, Sept 12
It is the PCT near Mirror Lake for John today, and hopefully will get some photos of the “after” of the work he helped with Tuesday. My day only has a play date for music at the Rehab center, but with stops at the bank and a couple of places with produce to share from our bountiful garden. I thought many people would be missing, and that was true, but also two came that I wasn’t expecting. We had 2 guitars, a banjo, timbrel, 2 fiddles, and a clarinet. It was hot outside, but we had a nice time with the folks there. I carried in some veggies to share with a couple of people. It is the 83rd birthday of one of our members, so we sung happy birthday and gave her a present and card. (When I was at the bank, I got her a nice gold-looking coin, $1, but failed to note which one) to put in her card, along with a bag of Sun Gold tomatoes. Now that I look for it on the web, I believe it was the George Washington one because I did see a silhouette of a man.
And, I found a pretty red blouse to share with her. Many of our group are out of town, and one couple will be gone until December, traveling (their comments) doing music across the continent and attending the largest Celtic celebration in the world in Cape Breton Island (“Celtic Colours”).
I started packing the produce which we had to move from the kitchen to the garage because of the high density of fruit flies that seem to appear as mysteriously as virtual particles. We reduced their number with the vacuum cleaner but new ones appear each time. Updated more pix on the web page from last Sunday (now I completed this just on Saturday). Widen your window to see three pictures on the third row, for best results.
John came home from the mountain work trail work. After a short nap and slightly lowering of the temperature he has just finished the feeding of horses and cats. He already ran the dogs, in the heat. Now the temps have gone from 96 to 88. I had a lot of work on the jobs list today, and never got back tonight to my web page on John’s trip last Sunday. Today he brought me photos of the finished rock ramp and a co-worker will (later) send a few of the stepping stones (for hikers) and and rock ‘ford’ (for horses and mules) crossing at Mirror Lake’s small out flow stream. So that’s also put off until a future blog.
Temps today were strange. Highest was 97, and then it dropped tonight from the 88 mentioned above to 77, and now has gone back up.

Friday, Sept 13
Tonight is our annual trek to the Chef Extravaganza at White Heron winery. I plan to take photos, and have one taken of me in my newest musical shirt, made by Ellen Fischer, she just brought me yesterday at our playing at the Rehab. She is our clarinet player, and a great seamstress.
Heat is up to 91 here at noon, and we leave in a few hours for the hour+ trip to White Heron vineyard. John picked tons of tomatoes, squash, and even blackberries this morning. We made a trip around the block to share produce on the way to town to get gasoline before leaving for the dinner. Stopped off at a new neighbor’s house and had a nice visit. Finally, we left for the evening – John drove and I had a long visit by phone with John’s sister, Peggy. She wished she could be going with us, and John says, considering the variety of places in the Universe, Parma, OH is not the arm pit thereof, but you can see it from there. The weather was warm and the food tasty and interesting (pictures to follow), but for now, here are ones of us. The right shot shows the location of the vineyard, but John is talking, so I cut him out of the picture. The left one shows the area where people eat and listen to music. We sit up on a grassy terrace, to enjoy the evening in our folding chairs not far from the food tables. It is in the shade just as we arrive about 6:00, the start of the meal serving.

The performer’s platform is in the background, over John’s shoulder. Nancy’s fancy colorful shirt contrasts with the green of the vineyard. Grapes are doing well as harvest nears.
We left early and got home at 10:00 – John will be up at 5 and gone by 6.
I’ll fix up a web page later of the goodies we experienced at our favorite commercial event at White Heron. Our favorite is a private party of the volunteer pruners. This year’s was held Jan. 5 and was an authentic Raclette using French cheese, complete with wines made there, but with grapes developed from regions in Italy and Switzerland. We did that story back then and expect something similar this coming winter.

Saturday, Sept 14
John left at 6:00 a.m.. I spent the day, wasting a lot of it, on computer problems. John’s not expected back until after 6:00 p.m. and it is now after that. This was John’s trip to a 20th anniversary of WTA work party mentioned earlier in this blog. He just arrived about 6:40 and brought each of us light blue commemorative tee shirts. I’m very excited. He always wears long sleeved shirts out and/or working so a shirt like this is wasted with him, but I wear such things all the time. He put it on for the group photo of 4 workers, on today’s crew. I guess I am entitled because of being a volunteer, putting up web pages of photos taken on WTA trips, for over a decade. I will put that photo below. It was just after lunch; they didn’t work in those shirts all day. The Blue-Hat crew leader took the picture because he claimed he wasn’t allowed to have one of the volunteer shirts. He also claims a picture taken of him captures part of his soul or essence and leaves him depleted. Did we mention that after safety, fun is goal #2 of all WTA trips? The real fun for this trip was that Jon N. (who is known for food surprises) brought a pan of popcorn and a small gas burner and lunch was augmented with freshly popped corn. Then later, back at the trail head, he retrieved a large Canon printer carton that contained a large red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. Sometimes that carton hides a small cooler with dry ice and containing the hardest frozen ice cream sandwiches you have ever had the pleasure of waiting for the softening. Also, this was Husain’s 5th work trip and so he got a shiny new green hat with is name/nickname one it. He chose ‘Who-sane’ but after digging and carrying 5 gallon buckets of rock for several hours he thinks he might change it to ‘Who-insane’. 20 more trips to go and he gets a black WTA vest.

John Hultquist Kevin Crandall Jon Nishimura Husain Barbhaiwata
Photo by Alex Ray, WTA “blue hat” crew leader ~~ 9-14-13

Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

It is early Sunday. Blog is underway. Give me a couple of hours (dogs want to go for a morning run) and I will replace this with the real thing.

John

. . . responding to birthday wishes, and no nap, Nancy continues:

Also, while visiting Caitlin’s butterfly site, I found a photo of a Pacific Tree Frog that must be the kind of frog we photographed near the rusty-red of our house siding (color of the frog seems to reflect the environment) – or he did spend 2 days in the rust-colored water of the rain barrel. Schnebly Canyon (her site) is the next canyon east of us. We have seen “ours” again but we haven’t managed to get a photo.

I was right about many wishes for today. I finally turned off Facebook and responded to all email wishes, and now will turn off the computer and tackle other things to celebrate my birthday. Last night John fixed me my birthday dinner and we had half last night with the rest to come tonight. It was a stir-fry of chicken with a Mandarin sauce, pretty cut-up Golden Health winter squash (orange), cashews, and our onions. I don’t think I took a photo of any part of my birthday dinner to be able to share.

Yikes, this morning I heard from a former neighbor (same birthday as mine) that she is in Renton, ready to go in for open heart surgery. I didn’t know about this at all. Another friend’s companion dog died. Sad day. Good day too, however. Heard from a Brittany breeder in California, that a great grandson of a puppy from our breeding won the Open All Age event in the Oregon Brittany field trial. I don’t have the details. In the 1980s, we spent many Labor Day Weekends at that trial outside of Madras, OR.

John was late getting home, but I got a call from the trail head from Alan (WTA’s Field Programs Manager) wishing me a happy birthday, but then he handed the phone to John whose own phone failed to connect from the location. Once John was home, we delivered squash and tomatoes to 6 people around our 5-mile rural block, and received a birthday cake and Apricot Jam in return from our close neighbor. I had also taken her some plums (the last of this year) and some little orange Sun Gold cherry tomatoes. During the evening, I followed up on receiving a $30 credit code from forestertestdrive.com I was given after my test drive. It is “spendable” at SierraTradingPost.com. I found my birthday present and only had $1.50 left on my credit. I seriously doubt they have anything that cheap, so I’m happy with a pair of wool socks and a pair of fleece boot-type socks, nice for wearing to people’s houses in the winter to allow removing snowy boots outside the main house, in the mud room. I wish our house had a mud room. They are very nice. The first one I saw was at my Aunt Marise’s house in Guyton, GA.

Monday, Sept 2
This morning started out very slow for me, sleeping in until late, after being up for almost 18 hrs without a nap on my birthday yesterday. This morning I have responded to a few of the wishes on line and have a ton more to do. I don’t plan to have this computer on much today while going through more stuff in this house needing sorted, recycled, and tossed. I made very good progress yesterday and need to continue. Tomorrow we each have an annual physical that requires a trip to Cle Elum (30 miles up the road, or west toward Seattle).

Tuesday, Sept 3
Off early for the Dr.’s office; leaving before 9:00 a.m. My appt. was 10:00 but we both had to fill out incredible histories required once a year. So much for the digital age. That ALL should be in a database and shared between the hospital and the doctor’s office ALL of which are in the same system digitally. Now, it’s all part of Kittitas Valley Healthcare (KVH)– our doctor’s office is called the KVH Family Medicine – Cle Elum; the Hospital is now just KVH (used to be KVCH-Kittitas Valley Community Hospital). They merged all the doctors in both towns. WHY can’t they just ask if anything has changed in the system? Probably took us 15 minutes just for the paperwork. We both had good results. My weight and height was unchanged from last year. BP was only 110/62, and that’s after driving all the way there; pulse 60 (John’s is much lower–44 this time). Usually, my BP is up at the first reading in a doctor’s office (white-coat syndrome). Because it is an annual exam, they require us both to have fasting blood draws, and I had to have a Thyroid check. The dosage I’m on (none) is fine. Previoulsy, after my operation, my Thyroid required medication, but it has healed. My pill for cholesterol was ordered by my Cardiologist, and upped to 80 mg in May. I don’t need it for cholesterol (mine is okay), but somehow it is healthy for people with heart problems (maybe to prevent plaque build-up) ? My reading was less than ½ the recommended concern, so my family physician had me half my intake to 40 mg. I intend to report back to the nurse of my cardiologist, because I’m not due to see him until December.
They actually called me in at 9:55, and I was done in less than an hour, so John was able to go in early. We both received our flu shots, with no reaction. Our doctor doesn’t need to see us until next September. Then off to the Roslyn Brewery for a couple cases of beer — one to share with the son of the fellow we bought 82 bales of hay from this summer; the son has done most of the loading both times (for first cutting and for second). John has to unload it all on this end, into our barn, but he can take his time doing that working only in the cooler parts of the day. Then on to the Cottage Cafe for my birthday lunch with discount (it can be used any time of the year, but we don’t often get up there). They’d sent me two $10 coupons for my birthday, with one misspelled as Huffquist. I was honest and notified the manager on line, and took it to the waitress to return. She said, no problem, you can use them both, one for John and one for you. Well, that was a good deal and a big surprise. John chose the Black and Blue Salad; made with strip pieces of tender steak (cooked in Cajun Spice), tomatoes, black beans, roasted corn, and chunks of Bacon and Bleu Cheese crumbles on the top, all on a bed of fresh greens, tossed with a tomato-bacon dressing. I had my favorite, the Corned Beef Hash Skillet. It’s made of layers of well-browned hash browns (the best), corned beef hash, two eggs, over easy, all layered and covered with melted Cheddar cheese. With it came a large English muffin, which I split with John. The portions of everything there are so generous, that we only eat half there, and we bring the remainder home. Last night we had it for dinner. Occasionally, I will eat mine for breakfast the next morning.
Before eating and feeding the horses and cats, we picked a tomatoes, 3 ears of corn, a few squash, and a lot of blackberries (of which I don’t have a photo). John had one of the ears of corn with his leftover salad. We were both picking tomatoes, except I became the handler when he had to get on the ground to reach underneath. I could pick a few from a standing position. He picked all the squash and I took photos, and then I helped some from the top with blackberries. They are the thornless kind, but I reached down to cradle a bunch of berries, and screamed from a sharp pain on my left hand’s ring finger. It hurt really bad for the rest of the evening, but didn’t bring blood, yet turned red. John suggested I must have put my hand on a bee and got stung. Never saw it, but surely felt the pain most of the night.

Here’s the results of our harvest before getting injured in the thornless blackberries patch:

Back to another misspelled Hultquist story. John’s dad worked in the purchasing division for Owens-Illinois Glass Factory in Clarion, PA. His name was misspelled on many things arriving there and his secretary saved many such labels. One year at Christmas she gave him a small waste paper basket on which she had pasted all the odd spellings. The family’s favorite was Mr. Piecrust. Odd, but true. So Huffquist is tame – cross the T and get the L at the same time and you have ff rather than lt.

Wednesday, Sept 4
John left early for a place this side of Snoqualmie Pass for another WTA work party. It is on the Pacific Crest Trail, near Mirror Lake. In case he sees picturesque scenery I gave him my old camera that can ride in a case on his belt. This was our best choice, because my new one, while easily handheld, is too large to fit in the easy-to-carry case. And, it’s own case doesn’t have a large enough connector for his belt. His camera is big and he dislikes carrying it on work trips. Here is a view he liked.

An alpine lake has become a marsh-ringed pond on its way to becoming a meadow via the processes of natural eutrophication.

Today, I packed up veggies to take to the Food Bank and to the SR Center. Phew. It took me awhile to sort, pack, and carry out the two kinds of tomatoes and yellow squash, and I took a separate package for Drue Robinson, the daughter of my recently deceased 87-yr old friend (with macular degeneration), who went all over town with me to events over the past several years, since I met her in our exercise class. Drue met me toward the end of class at the AAC, and I was able to introduce her to all the people in the class, and she brought along her computer with photo memories back to her mom Lois’ childhood. About 12 people pulled up chairs or stood to watch the show. It was a special remembrance, and what she used at the memorial downtown. Several of us had not been able to attend the service.

Thursday, Sept 5
Played at Royal Vista today. Only a small faithful group there: 2 guitars, banjo, 2 fiddlers, timbrel, & another singer. We had an appreciative audience. They served us drinks and buttered zucchini nut bread afterwards, and in the parking lot at the end as we all were leaving, I delivered tomatoes (Sun Gold and Early Girl) and two kinds of yellow summer squash (we’re getting to the end of it). Then on downtown, to the grocery, to pick up a few items on the special Thursday 12-hr sale. Part was getting sandwich meat and cheese for John’s sandwiches for WTA work parties. Another special was $.68/bag of English Muffins (limit 2) and a dozen eggs $1.18 (limit 1). Found some good prices on Taco Sauce mix and large taco shells made from “whole” grains and also standard Corn taco shells — we’ll compare them.

We have had a lot of rain and thunder/lightning in the near distance tonight for the past hour. It is still coming down. At one point it was coming off the roof so rapidly, it was missing the 55 gallon barrels and the other 5 gallon ones, but now they are all full. The wind (32 mph gusts) was blowing rain back under our front porch onto the wheelbarrow load of veggies John picked this afternoon while I was gone to town.

We had had a half inch of rain in the past 4 hours and it is still coming down; most rain in awhile. Actually, it is slowing considerably, and we are headed for bed. John must rise early tomorrow and get on the road. We hope it is not raining on the trail workers but in the Cascades hope is not a plan. Actually rain or a recent rain gives them a good idea of where to place drainage dips and ditches or other trail structures. Anyway, this storm involved a massive low pressure system so part of the time the winds came from the east and southeast. We were intrigued by the results of the counter-clockwise circulation system because of the differences from our normal west-to-east air flow.

Friday, Sept 6
John left at 7:00 a.m. for the Pacific Crest Trail near Mirror Lake. On my way to the potluck, I stopped at a yard sale. Pretty cool find. John has been asking for small aluminum tongs and an additional grater. Didn’t find tongs yet, but found two antique graters that are metal in two different sizes. Good I didn’t have to pay an antique price :- ) Talked the lady into both for the price of one ($2) from her utensils box. Found a similar pair but not as nice on Etsy (vintage items) on line for $8.00 plus S&H. Here is a photo of what I got for us:

I went to the AAC potluck, 11:30 for BBQ pork ribs, rolls, & a bunch of side dishes including various kinds of potatoes, corn, salads, grapes, etc. I took a container of our cut-up red tomatoes (fresh this morning). Part of our entry fee to the free meal, besides a potluck item to share, is also to bring 4 cans of non-perishable good for the F.I.S.H. Food Bank. I took 4 things: Kidney Beans, low salt stewed tomatoes, corn, and some of the Taco Sauce mix I bought yesterday. Went by Super One for meds and Danish pastries from my rain check on last week’s prices. And speaking of rain — It now is raining hard here again at 2:30. I came home early and skipped the exercise because my left ankle was hurting. Started yesterday, and I have no clue what I did to it. No memory of turning it, stepping on it wrong, hitting it, or anything unusual.
John got home just before 5:00. They again lunched at Mirror Lake and visited with 2 of the PCT thru-hikers passing up-trail from Mexico to Canada.

Here is a poorly done composite photo of lunch there 2 days ago, with a different set of workers but the same Blue hat crew leader, Zach, on the left.

Once home we went over our day apart, while eating a Danish pastry (split lemon/raspberry), and decided they were too doughy for our likes; we prefer more Croissant type bases as from Costco. Tacos tonight for dinner. Pretty good. Going to bed without dessert, earlier than usual.

Saturday, Sept 7
Today, John left at 6:05 a.m. to go northwest over Stevens Pass and after trail work he will stop at one of the Wenatchee River Valley’s road-side orchard outlets. It’s been cool and overcast here all day and somewhat drizzly up and down the Cascade Mountains. He’s in big trees today and so will be somewhat protected. Two of his favorites are Cedar (it’s not really) and Noble Fir because of the big upright purple cones.
I have worked on the blog and a web page to attach about John’s Shaggy butterfly story. Go back to the previous entry (link at the top of the page) if you missed that.
Also, I managed to put together a great chef salad for my lunch. I am sure I’m the only one in the county, the state, and maybe anywhere in the USA to have had this combo. I thought to take a photo after I had eaten most of it.

It had lettuce, our red and gold tomatoes, ham, Muenster cheese, and the croutons were the crowning touch, little H. K. Anderson pretzels (nuggets) filled with peanut butter, originating in John’s home state of PA, however, coming to us via Costco and the Kirkland brand. The originating company no longer provides tours of the facility, but they are located in Lancaster County PA, in the town of Intercourse. I’m sure as a kid you heard all the sayings about the names of towns in that county, including Blue Ball, Bird in Hand, Climax, and Paradise… and probably others I have forgotten.
John’s fruit stop was not very fruitful. He was too late and had to pick out things without a guide and then pay via sliding bills through a small hole in the side of the building. Pears were 10# for $8 so he got 2 Bosc, 3 Scarlet, and 13 regular Barlette pears. Pluots were $1.50/lb. and he got 4 pounds. Unless he can get an exceptional deal on apples he doesn’t buy any because we have another source (more on that in a few weeks). So with no one there to provide info or to bargain with he spent very little time or money. Pluots are a cross and usually have red flesh but not a free-stone, that is, a pit from which the flesh is easily pulled away – so, pretty, tasty, and not so easy to eat.
I received an email request from Evonne, the crew leader for tomorrow at the Snow Lake Trail asking if John would please join them. This came in at 5:40 tonight, and John wasn’t yet home. Is there any way that you can talk John into a last minute sign-up with us tomorrow?? Big day out on the Snow Lake Trail! [By big she meant lots of volunteers sign up and they are short of assistant crew leaders.] He smiled when I told him but he’s been so busy with chores since, that we haven’t had a chance to talk or for him to respond to her, or to do the on-line sign-up. That got done. Evonne was not feeling very spiffy what with a bee sting and Benadryl so John gave her the camera and she took some photos of the work and the area. We’ll leave that for next week.

Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Sept 1 She started like this —
I spent a good amount of time yesterday finalizing the blog and posted it before retiring. Now, today I have been up since 5:30 a.m. and I need to take a nap for sure. (I never did). I hope John is okay working in the hills. It’s supposed to go to 90 here, but shouldn’t be as hot where he is at Denny Creek west of Snoqualmie Pass and north of I-90. It went to 96. My birthday was nice and I stayed in the a/c until the evening when John returned. Today was mostly rock moving for them, but he has a cool story of a butterfly he met. The photos below are not his (whose then?) so follow the link and learn of his encounter. Click on the photos for the larger view.

Read of the encounter with the Satyr Butterfly at Denny Creek.

. . . and that will have to do for the moment.

We, meaning a WTA crew, worked hard today (Sept. 7th) carving a short bit of totally new trail on a forested side hill of the ever wet Cascades. I was planning on early Sunday to get the totality of Nancy’s musings fixed up and posted. However, WTA has had a large sign-up for Sunday on my side of the Cascades and it promises to be a beautiful day. I’ll leave at 7 A. M.
We’ll get the full write up, links, and photos on-line late Sunday – that is the plan anyway – so look back on Monday.
Thanks, John

 

sunflowers fanciful, and cats mysterious

Sunday, Aug 25

Spent a good amount of time yesterday finalizing the blog to post for our few faithful readers.  Actually, it’s a good record for us when we have to check back on something.  John doesn’t allow comments on the blog ‘cause he won’t look and respond in a timely fashion.  Many acquaintances have moved their social media efforts to Facebook but we don’t do much there. We do check e-mail at nancyh@ellensburg.com on a regular basis.  Nothing was on tap for us today, so I will continue going through stacks of things piled around my recliner, doing emails, and John will work in the yard.  The temperature only went to 80 today, so he can work in the shade brushing.  I took some photos this morning when we harvested a large sunflower to fix seed-side up so the little birds can get to it.  On the smaller ones they can hang upside down to retrieve seeds.

The back of the seed head shows foraging by Grasshoppers. There are also Earwigs hiding along the inner sides by the seeds. John’s blue-fingered gloves appear by the butt-end of a male Earwig.

John’s gloved hand holds some of the disk-florets. Most of our Sunflowers grew from the “black-oil” seeds put out for birds. Usually the plants produce multiple flower heads only as wide as a softball. The one shown (note John’s shirt covered wrist) on the lower right seems to be a larger version and the plant grew only one other flower – about half this size.
Also took a cool photo of an onion gone to seed (aka bolting). Our supplier of Onion plants included many more than anticipated but some of the extras were smallish. These mostly got planted but were less than well cared for – a little short of water during some hot spells – and at our elevation the night temp can get chilly. Such things onions do not like. But are they not pretty?

Very slowly making progress, but stopped to do some other stuff in the kitchen. And, to eat a nice brunch of Pancake, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and a tiny bit of bacon.
Spent some time following the MODIS imagery for the fire near Lolo, MT, and happily it is calming down for our friends nearby.
As John left to go brushing, he mentioned I should eat the tomato he left on the counter. It fell this morning when he picked a bucket of them. I just ate the whole thing, except for the one ouch spot, and the stem. It was tasty–something about vine-ripened tomatoes from your own garden.
I managed to assemble reports from the meeting of the WOTFA (fiddlers) with the Kittitas School Board, and community members, plus supportive members (as I) of the summer fiddling workshops. I emailed it off late this afternoon, and have received 8 responses to share with the two WOTFA folks who came all the way from Port Townsend and Shelton to represent the Fiddlers.

Monday, Aug 26
Nothing on tap for today either, except we need to get some plums and yellow squash to a few people in Ellensburg, but that won’t likely happen until tomorrow. Wow.. busy morning on the computer. Now getting off later than desired, to work on receipt stacks. John’s out doing something in the yard. Oh–first I need to take off a picture of a “new” frog that was clinging on our back patio door, last night. John rescued him and put him under the raspberries. He was tiny and I think looks like a tree frog I found on the web. I haven’t managed yet to identify any of the frogs we have this year.

Wow–just got a phone call from Jason at the CWU Surplus. Our bid got the pallets, with tax will be $36.18 and they take Discover. This will be enough pallets for awhile. :- ) Have to take the horse trailer down to retrieve them. I worked on paper things and then walked down into the field where John was working on brush removal, to take photos, and took two dogs along for the walk, saying hi to the horses on the way by. I mainly went down to tell him the storm was coming in from the SW and headed north along the Cascade crest, so we were not expecting a direct hit — just noise of thunder. He had seen some sky lightning in the distant west so my news wasn’t. After having him show me around, we walked back up through the woods and more of his clearing work toward the road to pick up the mail.

Many of the trees need to come out. Likely they are all one large organism (or several) as the roots send up shoots that become little trees – and most die at 3-4 inches in diameter. The horses will strip the bark in the spring so any to be kept will have to be protected at horse-height with poultry wire.
Back in the house I decided to have him search for the Crockpot so we could make some peanut/chocolate candy. We had all the ingredients and just haven’t taken the time to do it. I have loaded it all (layers) of dry roasted peanuts, sweet cooking chocolate, chocolate chips, and almond bark into the pot. It awaits his return to plug it in the garage to cook for a couple hours. We started it before eating a pizza John made from a 4-meat base, adding beef from last night, bacon from this morning, onions, and tomatoes from our garden, and grated cheddar cheese. After the last such effort, I expressed a desire for more of the big white Ailsa Craig onion so he loaded it on top. Okay, the onion link is here.
With the pizza consumed we busied ourselves with computer things until John finally remembered the chocolate in the crock pot in the garage. We searched for muffin papers, and put 48 or 49 pieces of candy (about two tablespoons per cup), on trays to cool. If you’d like the recipe, find it here. Warning, don’t use a slow cooker, but an old fashioned crock pot. Read the comments on the linked-to site. Regardless, these things vary in their heat output so check for stir-ability and don’t let the bottom layer – the peanuts – get overdone. We used our 5 quart Rival (got as a wedding gift), and it was filled with the mixture. Here’s a picture of some of our creations.

Tuesday, Aug 27
My former student, hearing-impaired, is over in Montana (Clancy) helping his mom with sorting out years of belongings. I made a call for him to the Forest Service headquarters in Superior, MT, about a campground where he wants to stop overnight. He will be coming through after Labor Day. I wanted to be sure he could pull in for the night, put up his tent, and stay, without the campground open (the host leaves on Labor Day). The ladies I got on the phone were very nice, helpful, and said he was welcome, & that it was a very nice campground. It will be free now, but it is open, just without running water. Otherwise would be $6. I and others are able to communicate with him by email on his Iphone, so these things most of us take for granted get accomplished without too much difficulty for him.
John got the trailer all hooked up and I got the squash, onions, and plums all set to take to people in town when we go pick up the pallets. That took awhile, but was well worth the effort. I think I made 6 trips down out of the truck, delivering, and back up the long step into the high truck. Good exercise for the day. I didn’t do any of the labor of loading the pallets, but John had some help from one of the guys who runs the place, with a front-end loader doing most of the lifting, as well as some manual help.

A few are longer than average. Some have full plywood, and two very light ones are made of cedar. Perhaps, if we have 70, the price will be 52 cents each. Either way, it’s not bad considering the cost of wood. I just went and helped him back the trailer between trees for unloading. I just got back from a count. He removed 26 from the trailer that I counted. He counted another 32 left inside the trailer, and 4 in the back of the pickup bed. So, that’s a total of 66, meaning they each cost us 55 cents.

There are 7 full plywood (43″ square sheets) and several with 2x4s. Last month we under-bid and this month we were way higher than needed. Life’s that way. [No kidding! Man with the hay wants a few pallets so after taking them all out we put 9 back in the next day.]

Wednesday, Aug 28
John finished taking all the pallets from the trailer, so we are ready to go fill it with hay tomorrow. For me, today was Food Bank Soup Kitchen, where we were fed a great (and) huge baked boneless chicken breast dish and two salads. I guess there was not a dessert today. I gave some of our tomatoes to a couple of our music participants and went on to SAIL class with the rest of the squash, yellow cherry tomatoes, and red ones. From there I went to a retirement party at the CWU SURC (Student Union & Recreation Center) to attend a friend’s (Teresa Youngren) retirement party. Hard to believe she has worked there for 28 years. She was surprised and happy to see me. They had a nice cake and fruit tray. Not a ton of people, but was fun to see a few old friends, and her! I had to park at the far end of the parking lot to have shade because of my violin and some food being in the car.

Thursday, Aug 29
Started off with a 12 hr fasting blood draw. My INR for Coumadin was also run. The first test was 2.7, so we’ll see what the second is (it was 3.5). John and I both went in for our tests in advance of our annual physical next week. We were both starved, so went by Carl’s Jr for a special Monster Biscuit, using a special half-priced coupon. (It has two eggs, two kinds of cheese, sausage, Canadian bacon (we substituted for bacon strips for no extra cost), and all stacked between a huge sliced biscuit homemade there. They take all the calories out. A nice breakfast which acted as a brunch for us. On to the grocery to load up on things we needed. Today is the 5th Thursday of the month, so I played music at Mt. View Meadows. We had a good turnout and a bunch of admiring residents. They would like for us to come more often, but there aren’t enough Thursdays to go around. Afterwards, I drove to Super One to park my car, and meet John in the parking lot where there is room to pull through with the truck and trailer. We drove across the valley to get 42 bales of hay.
Funny / sad story tonight about an attempted stolen truck and trailer from a friend. The funny part is related to learning the skills of long ago. The friend emailed a photo and told us of someone trying to steal her truck. Our connection is via the horse trail riders group. She lives about 14 miles away, south and east. Her truck was connected to her horse trailer and the “foot” (part that goes to the ground when you want to disconnect) was down. This is frequently done when parked as it takes the load off of the vehicle and makes the trailer more stable for loading or unloading horses. Also, being in the country and miles from town she had left the keys in it.

Those trying to make off with it did not realize the situation. This next bit is from her email:
—-
“The trailer was jammed into the corner railroad tie fence post. That is what ultimately saved my rigs from being gone. Most of the damage was to the trailer, it had the jack completely broke off and the side scraped up and door handle broken off. Truck had no damage, but did have the culprit’s new San Fran baseball cap on the seat. Had Sheriff out, and it seems they had an incident at the detention school up the road.”
—-
The local news report follows:
KITTITAS COUNTY, Wash. – Kittitas County Sheriff Deputies say two boys, last names Potter and Adams, escaped from the Parke Creek Group Home, a juvenile rehabilitation center, late Wednesday night after they attacked the night watchmen.
During nightly checks, deputies say the boys struck 72-year-old Duane Bangs from behind, knocked him unconscious, tied him up and stole his wallet, personal key, and a key to the facility.

Bangs was able to free himself and called 9-1-1. Paramedics took him to Kittitas Valley Hospital, and later to Harborview.

Deputies say the boys also loaded bags with their clothing into Bang’s car, but couldn’t drive a stick shift, so they ran off (not having the skill of driving a stick shift was the funny part of the story we mentioned at the start).

Deputies say early Thursday morning, Adams stole a car from Parke Creek Road, but a Washington State Patrol trooper stopped him just east of Kittitas and booked him into the Yakima Juvenile Detention Center.

A few hours later, deputies found and arrested Potter near the Hemmingston and Parke Creek Junction, just south of the group home. Deputies were able to recover and return Bangs’ stolen wallet.
—–
The reporter missed the part about the truck and horse trailer and that the two boys were 17 years old. When did you learn to drive and what sort of transmission was used?
John wrote the above report to send to his sister and cousin back east.
Nancy’s answer: I knew how to use a stick shift to drive up and down the driveway when I was under 10. My Dad taught me. It was the old ’35 Ford I drove during my high school and college days, and we eventually took to Idaho, in 1974. I have many stories about that. To further answer John’s question, I took a Driver’s Training class in high school, in a stick shift car, and Atlanta, GA has many hills. The original gear-shift one was on the floor, and the driver training one was on the steering wheel, because I remember the practice issue of stopping at a red light on the downhill side, and having to learn how to release the clutch without stalling the car or drifting back.

Friday, Aug 30
John left at 6:48 for the hills, and I slept in another 1.5 hrs. Saw a smaller version of the little green frog in the same location on the plastic bag as the white one, which I haven’t been able to photograph. The grapevine is now climbing higher and onto our weather vane.
First the little (new) green frog.

Made a little progress on the table and boxes stacked to my left. Some things go back to June, and at least one back to April. Jeez. Still sorting, but took a break when the vacuum cleaner shut off. It does that about every 10 minutes (or so) of use.

HAPPY NEWS.. tonight Big Sue returned for dinner. John said she looked fine, and came along the ouside of the fence — right by the dogs — as if nothing had changed. Wish they could talk so that we could understand. She is the large female who has been around our place for several years, and has had 3 litters (we know of) in our barn or under the brush pile next to it. We managed to capture her last year after the birth and rearing of the five little orange cats in our barn, which John found early enough to tame. Once captured, we also got two other of her offspring from the year before. All of them got spayed or neutered, and we have been taking care of them daily. We hadn’t seen her in a week. I’m glad she wasn’t picked off by a cougar or a coyote. She’s too big (I had hoped) to have been taken by an owl.

That happened right at dark, before we had dinner, and we just finished. Our own corn (clearly the best thus far, from a different patch of corn John claims is called Bodacious, but I think it should be called Princess — because it was delicate and sweet); tomatoes, left-over salmon & chicken, and a little piece of the roast beef deli kind (bought for John’s sandwiches this weekend on trail work and for my lunch salad today). Tomorrow, he stays home to put up the hay, from the trailer, and then Sunday, off to the hills again. The head WTA trails leader is on the crew and John only gets to see him once or twice each year. I, on the other hand, exchange e-mails quite frequently.

Both of us are very tired, but happy all the animal family is back together.
Our grape vine we showed you last week is climbing toward the soffit, and adhered itself to our weather forecaster (Vermont Maple Weather Stick). I tried to find the “science” behind the weather stick, and found only one mention of the results of an experiment in which a weather stick was placed beneath an overhang to protect it from direct precipitation (where ours is situated), while allowing it to be affected by all other atmospheric conditions. Measurements of the amount of light, the air temperature, and the relative humidity were taken over a two-week period, and the only significant factor in the bending of the stick appeared to be relative humidity. It points up during fair weather and down during foul weather. Our grape vine is covering it like Kudzu – wonder how that will affect it?

Saturday, Aug 21
Late getting to bed last night because I was responding to a friend about Laser therapy for toenail fungus. Turns out since I decided to tell a few people, I have found many others with the same condition. Now I’m supposed to get this in order for John to post when he comes in from watering the gardens and packing away the hay from the trailer to the barn. Tomorrow, he goes back to Denny Creek for WTA work. This morning, I took the other photo, on the right above, of the very small green frog on the plastic at the front door beneath the grapevine and of very small sunflowers planted by birds dropping them off the feeder in the backyard – I guess they finally got enough moisture under the drip-line of the feeder.

For contrast, I have to show the front yard sunflowers, and especially want you to look at the difference in color between two of the plants.

Sunday morning, Sept 1, my 70th birthday! I’m happy I don’t feel it. Thanks for all the wishes I have been receiving for a week, on Facebook, for the cards in the postal mail, and I’m sure I will have some more in my email on the actual day!

Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

. . . but it was only the grape vine.

Okay, that’s not going to get by anyone’s BS detector, but years ago, we had a cat that learned to stand on a block by the front door, stretch, and ring the bell. An accident the first time, for sure. But he learned and continued to get let in by doing so. That was in Idaho, and one evening when we were sitting with guests at the dining room table having dinner, he came to the door and rang the bell. Knowing all our guests had all arrived, John said, “It’s just Skeeter.” So I got up and let him in, surprising every one there. We still get a good laugh remembering that.
About the grape vine climbing our front door here — it’s coming from about 20 feet, and that has become the bed for a little frog (or toad?). We’re not sure of his pedigree, and while we can find a White tree frog, it doesn’t look the same as ours, which is more tan, with brown spots and a line on his head. John rescued him from the inside of a 55 gallon barrel, we use for capturing roof water which otherwise would spash into our front door entrance (poor house design). He moved him under the grapevine. Soon, he was back again to sit on a plastic container under the doorbell, probably grabbing the numerous grasshoppers this year. John moved him again. He returned, and the morning we were taking photos of the grapevine, he was up on top of a white plastic bag, where I took his picture.

Large image will be rotated — Why? — Who Knows?

Sunday, Aug 18
Just about spent the whole day working on the blog and related issues. We didn’t get it posted until after most readers in the eastern US were asleep. The next morning we had a call from John’s sister, happy to see it was posted, because she was worried when it still wasn’t there Sunday night when she went to bed. Of course, we are 3 hours earlier. The wind blew hard all day. Also researched the pictures of the vegetation where John worked yesterday and we posted, not knowing what it was. We’ll add it here, about the plant called, Pinedrops.
John heard someone on the trail mention a name that had coral in it. When he started looking on the web nothing seemed to fit. We sent the photo off to a friend with an interest in butterflies that involves knowing plants and so on. Here is her response:
~~~
I don’t know the mushrooms, but I do know this one, and by funny coincidence, I just saw a beautiful 3-stalk cluster of it yesterday about 3 feet tall, when I was out huckleberry picking in the Gifford Pinchot!
It is called “pinedrops” and is a saprophyte, which is why it’s not included in most general plant books.
The person in the trail crew probably was thinking of coralroot, which is a type of orchid that is similar in growth and color, but the flowers are more “orchid-like” for lack of better description, rather than the round ball-like flowers of this.

Cait
~~~
I’ve reduced her photo but it has red huckleberries in the background.
So then, I looked for both:
So “coralroot” here:
http://www.wanativeorchids.com/Corallorhiza/index.html

And “pinedrops” (with a slide show) here:
http://sagebud.com/woodland-pinedrops-pterospora-andromedea/

With “saprophyte” described here:
http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/lifeforms/saprophyticplants/index.html

Both of the above named plants are mentioned on the last webpage above.

Monday, Aug 19
Again, I’m staying home to see what I can accomplish. John just picked a full large box of squash, which won’t be delivered until Wednesday. He’s been picking up plums blown off the tree with our 31 mph winds. I’m in the process of eating two because John was ahead of me with three thus far today. Surely are yummy, but they do not last, so we will share some with the neighbors later today, when it cools down. Gosh, we have a lot and probably still a bushel on the tree. I don’t have time to want to do drying when we still have some in the freezer from last year. Winds have been high all day, and just climbed to avg 30 mph, with 38 mph gusts. Some appear to be greater, guess that’s what an average means. Now as fast as they started and went all day, they have stopped. Interesting. We delivered plums to 3 neighbors and picked up two more once home. Had salad and our own corn tonight, and John had a bunch of panko breaded shrimp. I have decided I don’t like them anymore, after eating a lot once back from the hospital.
We cleaned new strawberries John picked tonight, and will have them on ice cream.
Tuesday, Aug 20
Staying home to tackle things. Most of time spent getting stuff together for a Kittitas School Board meeting tomorrow night about the WOTFA summer fiddle workshop. Also, dealing with people about leftover CWU issues regarding former students. I’m attempting to get some music into my software program. Have to tackle another bunch of chores, was supposed to cut John’s hair, and never did. Not enough time in the day. At least I got a good night’s sleep last night. John picked up more plums. I spent awhile on the phone with two different people, the most exciting was hearing about our friend Sonja’s “rest of the story” after leaving here. She traveled over 3000 miles with her two Brittanys. She had cool stories to share.

Wednesday, Aug 21
I was busy on many things this morning, and forgot to set up my Crystal Light for the day. So, ran to the kitchen to get it done, and looked out the window to see a Goldfinch upside down eating seeds from the Sunflower (you saw 2 weeks ago in this blog).

John had seen him earlier and had cleaned off the window from the kitchen in case I was able to use my camera. I ran for it, and took a few seconds of video from the kitchen window. The mark is timed at 11:17, so I was really running late needing normally to leave by 11:20. Was in such a rush I forgot to turn off my computer and it wasn’t plugged in, but John heard it chirp (grouch?), and soothed it. Once I got home, I took the video from my camera, and even though it’s a little shaky (no time to set up a tripod, and no place to put one anyway–I was holding the camera over the kitchen sink). After it was processed, I uploaded it to YouTube. So have a look at one smart Goldfinch.
Not only the birds like our several patches of sunflowers, but also several varieties of bees. Here is a bumblebee out near our front “house” gate.

Interestingly, this photo was taken with my old Casio camera, not the new Nikon, but it did pretty well. Other honeybees were also involved in the flowers.
We have more sunflowers up the driveway near the road, about 300′ from the house. I noticed yesterday they were leaning over and drying out, and will feed more birds up there.

Went to the Food Bank (interesting meal today, Reuben Sandwiches, and I had them withhold the sauerkraut on mine, had 1/2 a Gherkin pickle, grated carrots w/raisins salad, another salad with lentils, cucumbers, onions and parsley, none of which I wanted but a nice fruit salad minus the redi whip topping. We had an appreciative audience today; always nice. On to SAIL class where I distributed a lot of yellow squash, and then home to rest for going to the Kittitas School Board meeting. I wore my purple old time fiddler workshop shirt to show my support for 21 years there, every summer. Purple and white are the local Kittitas High School colors, but the shirts each year at the workshop are different colors from the years before. Also took a 3.5# box of John’s handpicked plums to the workshop chair (from Shelton, WA) to compensate a little for her trip over. I spent some time during the afternoon following the Lolo fire and reporting maps of MODIS hot spots to our friends who are on an evacuation notice.

Thursday, Aug 22
Today for a fast lunch, we had sliced turkey breast, melted cheddar, & tomato sandwich. Spent time at Hearthstone today. I worked again on MODIS fire imagery stuff, went to play music, and came directly home. On the way I delivered plums and squash to my colleague who wrote the hay paper with me last year, then delivered more plums in the parking lot to our 12-string guitar player, some onions and plums to our banjo player (for her birthday), and went on in. Once we were done, I had a cooler with 3 yellow straight neck squash left, so I gave one to another player (fiddler) and two to the volunteer ladies who provide coffee, tea, and cookies to us and to the residents at the end of our playing at Hearthstone Cottages. John just picked fresh corn for tonight, several tiny orangish tomatoes (Sun Gold), some red Early Girl ones, and more yellow squash. Boy, we could feed the whole county. Friends in Lolo, MT are still safe and removing brush from near their house, and watering buildings and land.

Friday, Aug 23
John had picked a bunch of yellow squash last night, and this morning picked strawberries and blackberries that I have started cleaning and fixing. While I was doing that, he picked a large box (probably 7 pounds) of plums. We needed to go to town, and I’ve given most of our friends and neighbors and folks at the Adult Activity Center stuff all week, so he said, we’ll just take them by the Food Bank on our way to the store, bank, and CWU surplus sale. I laughed and said, well yesterday we were invited to come today to the food bank by our friends (two sisters who look like twins, named Marilyn & Carolyn) from the trail riders club, who volunteer fixing meals every Friday. I had not told John, because I know he doesn’t usually want to eat there, even when I play the fiddle every Wednesday. However, he surprised me and said, let’s go; I’ll go shave. So, we did, taking a large box of squash and the large box of plums. I handed some out to my acquaintances there and offered some to the folks waiting in the front room to come in for the meal. Many of them know me as the fiddler; in fact, several said, what are you doing here today, it’s not Wednesday! The folks managing the food bank were happy to receive the fresh fruit and vegetables. We had a nice visit with two others who occasionally play music with us (a singer and a harmonica player). It was a good meal, more of a brunch than lunch. A ham/cheese omelet, hash browns, sausage, and a fruit salad, but we were at the end of the line and missed out on the fruit (– like we don’t have enough at home!). It surely looked good from watching early folks who sat at our table: fresh black-skinned plums (not like ours), peaches, pears, and maybe something else). We had plenty. From there to Super 1 for a few necessities (lettuce, cola, meds for me, and cat food — on sale for 1/2 price!). Then by the other grocery in town, Safeway, for a special on Pepsi, and while there John found blueberries at a good price (ours, being young only had a few ounces on each plant), plus he bought some little dessert items (strudel, they called it) with cheese and strawberry filling. We priced all the produce we are growing in our yard and gardens, and were pleased, with not only not having to pay the price, but also comparing the quality of ours with those. Stores carry the yellow straight-neck but it usually looks like it ought to be thrown out rather than sold – it wants very gentle handling. Our tomatoes are starting to come on and are beautiful. The little orange Sun Golds, now are producing more than just 2 or 3. The grocery had something similar at $4 for 10.5 ounces. Ouch! And their expensive plums were rock hard. Double ouch! From there to the bank, to cash two small checks, and get their Friday afternoon offering of donut holes. On by the CWU Surplus sale to bid on wood pallets, probably didn’t bid high enough to get them, but it’s worth a try. They have them availalbe in every sale. Used to be a fixed price item of 50¢ each, but recently they have put them on bid to clear out all they have. Over 60 were stacked up in this week’s sale. Also, while there, John bought 4 yellow 5-gallon ex-paint buckets (50¢ each). These are separated. Last time two pairs (4 total) were stuck together, not having been sloshed out. They are in the irrigation ditch and eventually will come apart. Once home, I finished fixing the strawberries & blackberries I had been working on when he went to pick the plums. Then checked the digital version of the local paper and found an article on the meeting in Kittitas I went to Wednesday night. I captured it, made some comments, and got it back to the representatives of the WA Old Time Fiddlers, who came over for the meeting. One is from Shelton and the other from PortTownsend — both early small towns in the western part of the State near water (for transport) before railroads, big trucks, and airplanes.
Friends in Lolo, MT are feeling a little more secure. Their closest fires this afternoon are 6 miles away. About 40% of the fire is under control. Locally our fire got a bit of rain and cool on it last night – it is in the remote western part of our county about 30 miles away. Officials think this one will not grow into a big deal. That’s good.

Saturday, Aug 24
Good reports early from our Lolo, MT friends. They sent a nice video about using helicopters to aid in wildfire suppression. Here’s a great link to follow for the MT FIRE story.
We’re happily doing our best to get this posted today, for a surprise to our readers, and also so we can tackle other things during the daylight hours. As I send this final copy to John at the computer in the back of the house, he just came in to start bacon for our BLTs for lunch. I’m in charge of that.

Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

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

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,

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 photo is the best of the four of us.

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