Keeping track

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

Sunday, July 28
Fires again in the area. It has been named the Colockum Tarps fire. I have been collecting data from MODIS Imagery Hot Spots to share with people nearby. We are in touch since last night with our friends at the White Heron Cellars winery where John volunteers time in the spring pruning grapevines. They are downriver on the opposite side from the fire. It is being pushed by 30 mph winds uphill toward us, but well to the east, and we are downhill and 13 miles straight-line distance away, in the valley, and not in danger. I have been making maps as the satellite thermal imagery changes every 6 hours. Here’s an example, when the fire was still advancing southward. The yellow pin in the middle of the left side of the photo is our home.

[Click photos for larger image.]
This afternoon and evening, we took some photos of the plume. The other photo below is from MODIS imagery showing the plume from the nearby fire and a second one farther to the south, but still in WA. For more on that one see “Mile Marker 28” fire.

The MODIS image (above) – north smoke is from the “Colockum Tarps” fire; south smoke is from the “Mile Marker 28” fire near Satus Pass. The photo (above) with the orange Sun is from late afternoon on 7/27 from White Heron Vineyard – note the grape vines. The fire is on the opposite (Wenatchee or west side of the Columbia Valley) from the vineyard. The distant ridge line and slope is called “the Colockum” with a drainage and a “not-much-of-a-road” going up and over. The fire started near the intersection of the Colockum Pass Road and another close to the river called the Tarpiscan Road – a much better and well traveled route. The locals pronounce this name as beginning with “Tar” as the vigneron explained to John, with emphasis on the second syllable. John’s western Pennsylvania hills-English had it as “Tarp-i-scan” – but Tar it is and the fire’s name (according to John) ought to be the “Tar-Colockum.”

Here is one showing fire on Colockum Ridge with White Heron grapes in the foreground. Distance to the flames is approximately 8 miles due west.

Today for lunch, John made a fantastic Belgian waffle type pancake, with a side of bacon. The pancake had our own blueberries and strawberries sugared on top (John picked earlier and I fixed), covered with a couple small scoops of vanilla/raspberry swirl ice cream. Here’s a picture to make you drool.

Monday, July 29

Today we left about 9:15 and returned home at 4:15. The main reason for going was to an appointment with Dr. Pham, at the Yakima Heart Center. It was about my heart, specifically my implanted cardioverter defibrillator device, seeking advice from a nuclear cardiologist (officially an electrophysiologist). My regular cardiologist requested the other specialist evaluate me and my device (and condition). Reason — consideration of putting in a second wire into the other part of my heart (left side). I have one already in the right side. I was not happy with the prospects of having another surgery, when I have been doing so well. GOOD NEWS. I do not qualify, because I only am borderline on one of the four decision tools for having it done. Phew.
Meanwhile, we waited an hour to see him, spent an hour with him, had lunch, and went to Costco, for gasoline and groceries, and all that kept us gone a long time, especially with coming back through Ellensburg for a few items.
Regarding the wildfire NE of us. I made a newer map and see that our friends at White Heron winery & vineyard had quite a fireworks show last night looking across West Bar (location of ripples from the Glacial Ice Age Floods). There even was a fire on the east side of the Columbia below Babcock Bench.

Tuesday, July 30
Slept in and then spent the morning on the computer and cleaning the dishes piled in the kitchen.
John helped me take a neat photo of a small (1.5 inches) Praying Mantis today, by moving her to a grape leaf. Lighting and focus is not the best, sorry.

After lunch, I drove to CWU to the music building to meet a fellow from Issaquah, to exchange my violin bows. He had the oldest for re-hairing you’ve already heard about last week. It was glued shut at the frog and not worth the cost of repairing. I took him my newer bow, for re-hairing and he brought a loaner for me. After seeing the condition of the one I had and hearing it would cost $70 to re-hair it, and it was only a $25 bow, I decided to buy a new Revelle, carbon fiber bow. The action of the bow and the sound produced from my violin was amazing, comparing to my old (but best bow). A shot of my new Revelle bow with its Abalone frog.

And here is just the close-up; click for a better view.

Wednesday, July 31
Off today to Food Bank music, SAIL, and to the dentist, carrying yellow squash to share. We are getting fine ash from the fire (not embers). It is moving away from us and from our friends’ cabin in the hills east of us. I think I finally have an idea on the 6 hr lapse between MODIS flights. It seemed to change between 9:00 and 9:30 am PST — so I will check (over) 6 hrs later when I get home from town, and again at 10:30 tonight.

The fire has calmed down and never did threaten us, but scared the breath out of me today when I went into the AAC after the Food bank music and my teacher said it was in Coleman canyon. That’s 2 miles east of us, and while I really didn’t think it was, based on my looking at imagery in the morning, it was still alarming. When I went to the dentist and heard of an evacuation in the vicinity, I became concerned and called John. He grunted and said “relax” or “chill” – maybe both. Once home, I convinced myself the rumors were in error. As it turned out the evacuation was from Cooke Canyon farther over north and east (I had known about the fire’s approach to this high-up hillside).

Thursday, August 1
Today is the day for playing at Royal Vista. My new bow worked well yesterday at the food bank, and I much appreciated it today when I was the only violin in a much bigger room. I needed to be heard, and I am positive it is louder, and has a better bounce and grab of the strings. I spent the morning looking at the new hot spots imagery and sharing fire-info with people. We are not in danger, but the hot spots did reach the crest of “the Colockum” and thus technically into our valley at the north edge of Parke Creeke road, 15 miles east of us. The winds have changed this morning and our valley at the moment is not as threatened.

John is working trail near Snoqualmie Pass with a Washington Trails crew on Friday and, so, was searching tonight for his Northwest Forest Pass. This one has “volunteer” (= free) on it and was sent via WTA about 5 months ago. We can bury an elephant in clutter in that length of time. John ended up bringing in the whole contents of the glove compartment, which I proceeded to sort through and toss stuff no longer needed, about 95% of it. I also found some receipts I needed to file. I found the current registration, insurance, papers on the new tires on the car, and the motor club road insurance that both our Subarus have. A wad of paper napkins had found their way into the compartment too. The Forest Pass was on the hutch in the dining area.

We made a berry (blue & black) pie and a pecan pie to take to a dinner tomorrow night. Usually we would try to bake pies so they are still warm when we arrive at such an event but John will be going to Snoqualmie area to work on the Snow Lake trail and plans to change clothes there and come directly to the event.

Friday, August 2
John’s headed to the hills 7:00 a.m., and it started drizzling here within a 1/2 hour. I had planned to go to the AAC for a potluck and exercise afterwards. I decided I had scheduled too much for the day, and stayed home, but will go by for my INR in town on my way with the pies to dinner. The dinner tonight is with my former two students, the LaBars, along with another CWU Geography faculty member of the past, and the gals’ parents. I also loaded some crackers and canned smoked salmon, given to me by one of my Native American students in the Resource Management program at CWU.
My INR was 2.4, which is a good reading.
We visited and ate around 6:00. The roast (BBQ) beef was from their own pasture, with rice, salad, fresh veggies, cherry tomatoes, bread, and our pies. They also had peanut butter cookies, brownies, and ice cream. We had a lovely evening, and wished Bekah a safe trip to her next job in Wellington, New Zealand, as a meteorologist.

Saturday, August 3
Today, John took off early for WTA work – needing gas he left at about 6:40 A. M. – as the crew leaders (blue & orange hats) try to arrive about 8:15, ahead of the 8:30 scheduled arrival time for the green hat folks. They’ll finish for the day between 3:30 and 4, and he’ll be home about 5:00. I stayed home to work on chores and to work on the blog and on a letter to the editor about losing our spot in the Kittitas Elementary School for the annual WOTFA workshop. Meanwhile the weather has been helping with fire suppression and the expansion has stopped at about 125 square miles. The bit of rain and Mudjekeewis, our west wind coming over the Cascades from the Pacific Ocean, has cleaned our air of smoke. The week ended on a good note. Connection – new bow, good notes!

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

John just finished two days of trail work here

47.464991, -121.449890

These coordinates in Google Earth will take you to Snow Lake just north of the Snoqualmie Pass area of the central WA Cascade mountains. The thin white line is the trail between the lake and the Alpental Ski parking lot. He got home about 5:30 and we are a bit behind so the blog will get posted later tonight or Sunday morning.

A small photo and description of the trail and Snow Lake is here:
http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/snow-lake-1

This is WOTFA week in Kittitas, WA.  That’s Washington Old Time Fiddlers’ Association.  The summer camp brings several hundred fiddles, guitars, mandolins, and a few double basses. The town has a total population of less than 1,500. Many participants bring a couple of instruments and make a lot of music. It’s quite a show in a small town. John says the difference between a violin and a fiddle is that the first has ‘strings’ and the latter has ‘strangs’. I guess you have to hear that with a southern-mountain twang.

Sunday, July 21
Early morning, low sun, shade: — John plans to unload hay and maybe pick raspberries before it gets hot. He woke me because I wanted a photo of him with the ‘new’ truck with the horse trailer full of hay. His camera has a delay-timer but he got me up anyway claiming I could compose the shots better and then go back to sleep. Here’s my picture but do click for the larger image.

So with only 6 hours of sleep, that’s my plan — an afternoon nap. Meanwhile, I need to get clothes to wear and things ready for the week in Kittitas. Early evening we are going to deliver our keyboard to Katrina (the daughter of my teacher all week) for her to use in her classroom. My teacher is Roberta (Bobbie) Pearce from Nampa, ID, and her daughter is Katrina Nicolayeff, a grand champion, teaching the Hot Shots class. (This group’s Friday performance was stupendous!)
And, while we are in Kittitas, I’ll take care of picking up my registration papers, notification to put on my dashboard, and buy a commerative tee shirt for the week. Also, must drive back through EBRG to get some meat for sandwiches this week to save the $6-7/day for lunch, and to deliver music to one of our group to give out Thursday, when I’m not there. John just picked 2 pounds of raspberries. At the price they are selling them for 6 ounces, he just got us $18.00 worth. Hmmm–that sounds high. Think I will go have a handful of cherries with a piece of Rosemary Olive bread toast. Strange lunch. Maybe I will nap (I did for almost 2 hours), and follow with a salad.
Back from going to deliver the keyboard, the music in EBRG and we got some food from the grocery. Totally forgot the roast beef on sale, but we had some ham in the freezer, and I used it all week. Now dinner is over, and I’m dead tired, ready to retire. Tomorrow I have to be out the driveway at about the time I normally start thinking about getting up.

Monday, July 22
Did come early. I wasn’t ready to arise at 7:00 a.m., but I did. Was finally ready to leave at 8:20, with my ham sandwich, chips, cherries, and crystal light. Boy was I happy to have it. The price for a sandwich went up from $5 to $6, and the all you can eat salad bar is $7. I heard the offerings on the salad bar weren’t as extensive as last year’s. Today was the first day of classes; beginning with an overall meeting in the gym at the elementary school, at 9:00 a.m. That lasted long and we didn’t really get started until 9:40 or so. I’m assisting with a class I have been a member of for 21 years. While helping I will learn the 18 songs she teaches us. Broke for lunch at 11:30, until 1:00 p.m. Then class went until 3:30. I didn’t stay for any mini-workshops, because I needed to come home and rest and go back in for playing for the Kittitas community, at the Gazebo near the library & community center there. I planned to leave at 6:30 to be there by 7:00 to start.
Just after 6:00, I received a call from a lady in the WOTFA for very many years (she’s from Ellensburg), and someone had called her to ask her to bring a microphone setup and amplifier for the players to use. She could not find her microphone, and called me to see if I had one to bring out. She knows I go out to play every year. Luckily, I do have one. So, I found it and took it out. We will use it two more nights this week. Good turnout, and the weather, while hot, wasn’t unbearable. [John says: We first drove through Kittitas in 1988 when looking for a house after Nancy came to CWU. The town looked like the fictional town in the Clint Eastwood movie ‘High Plains Drifter’ called Lago before it was painted red. Kittitas has improved in the past quarter century.]

Tuesday, July 23
Gee — did nothing happen today? I never wrote anything in my notes for the blog. Played at the Gazebo tonight, and went to class during the day. Oh, I just remembered an interesting event. There is a new violin repair shop in town from the west side, run by a fellow who is a bass fiddle player & graduate of performance at CWU Music School. He only is in town on Tuesdays, by appointment, in a little place on Main Street in the B.F. Reed Building located between the old ReCycle Bicycle Shop and the Daily Record Print Shop, down from The Palace. I learned of him from a friend who teaches violin in town. My bow is in serious need of rehairing, and I called him before the beginning of the workshop, knowing I could not get such fast turnaround, but to tell him about my needs and the workshop, where he might consider coming in a future year. He came by and I introduced him to the people involved in the WA Old Time Fiddlers organization, so he could plan to be a part next year, and bring his family for the whole week. While here, today, he took my oldest bow over to one of his Luthiers (In this case the person also would be a ‘bow maker’ or in French, an archetier),but the frog had been severely glued which would require repair worth more than the bow. (I just found out that Sunday morning from Bryce Van Parys, who is the general manager for Hammond Ashley Violins, based in Issaquah.) So, next Tuesday I will take my bow I have been using mostly for the past few years, into him for rehairing. I’ll just use the old one as a backup.

Wednesday, July 24
The two people I normally play at the food bank with today will have to go it alone, and another friend with a guitar will join them. My schedule this week is much more intense than I am used to, but I’m managing to go from 9 to 3:30 with the lunch break, and am skipping the afternoon mini-workshops at 4:00 to come back and raise my feet to relax. Then I have turned around and gone back (10 miles) for evening gigs (Monday & Tuesday night, we played in the Gazebo in the park for the community, and will again on Thursday). I am off tonight, and not going to the dance to play either. Friday at 1:00 is our recital. There are 372 people in classes this year (including mandolin, guitar, fiddle, and banjo). Pretty cool. All the classes get a couple of songs to play with the total not exceeding 5 minutes, and the teacher plays one too. It is always the highlight of the week.

Thursday, July 25
The Fiddlers and Friends group I play with will have to go it alone today, too, because I’m in Kittitas all day, and the evening too. Normally we play at a different nursing home at 2:00 every Thursday of the year. They had a relatively good turnout, considering conflicts. I received a report from two members. My day was crazy, as usual. Off at 8:20 for Kittitas, and found a place to park on the road, away from other cars, and not too far to walk, as the day before, when I was a long block away. Day went all right, just very tiring. I drove back the 10 miles to the Gazebo to entertain the community with others from the workshop. Considering only two of us (the bass player and me), ever play together, it was a true jam session and went amazingly well. I came home to a lasagna dinner with homemade brownies for dessert. John takes good care of me.

Friday, July 26
Phew, I made it to the end of the week. The workshop is held at the Elementary School in Kittitas, WA (a very small burg east of Ellensburg 6 miles), with a bunch of musicians (banjo, mandolin, bass fiddle, guitar, and fiddle coming with their families from all over the state and some adjacent ones. This is my 21st or 22nd year. Yes, I am totally exhausted, so I came home to my recliner. From 1:00 to 3:30 today, was our full classes’ recital for the week (with most of the 372 students playing from 20 classes, as follows, playing, organized from beginning to advanced players:
11 fiddle classes (from very beginning, 4 years of age) to Advanced Hot Shots. Actually, ages of participants went to people in their 80s.
4 guitar classes
3 mandolin classes
2 banjo classes
John and I both laid down for a nap at 4:30 and were fast asleep an hour later when a neighbor called. I picked up the phone and said, “Good Morning! This is Nancy.” Laughter ensued on the other end with repeating the greeting time, “morning ?”. I did not have a clue it was still Friday evening/afternoon. Onward, John took the dogs late for their evening run, after it cooled off some, ending about 8:00 p.m. Dan disappeared during the trip. We worried all night, kept going out and calling, leaving the front gate open for him.

Saturday, Jul 27
Still no Dan, when we awoke. About 11:00 a.m., we got a call from our neighbor (Ben) that Dan was at his house (his property backs up to ours on the southeast side), that Dan had spent the night there. Finally, they checked his collar, and happily, he had one on with our name, address, and phone number. Not all our dogs do. John was in the process of making a large sign to post at the end of our driveway. He copied images of a quail and a Brittany from the web and was in the process of making them very large prints – he had the quail and one/quarter of the dog done when the phone rang. He took off and met the neighbor who came toward our pasture, with Dan, two of his dogs and two of his children. John asked him if one of his 5 or six dogs was in heat, and he had earlier, but she was out, and he thought she had brought his black lab into heat. Dan was still interested in her. Therefore, we cannot let him run free for another week or more. John is always with the dogs when he exercises them in the morning and the evening, so it’s not like they run free unattended but their normal path is separated from Ben’s place by only 75 feet of woods. We’ve seen Brittanys point birds from three times that distance. Still our local air mostly flows from our place toward theirs – not 100% of the time, apparently. So, I am finishing this blog up for John to add to and post late this afternoon. Meanwhile, he’s been cutting a few tree limbs encroaching on the driveway and watering squash and strawberries. I took this photo on the way back from the early morning trek mentioned for Sunday. [Click on the image.]

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

Sunday, Jul 14
Early morning start after late night working on the computer. Never took an afternoon nap, and I should have. John did. I worked on several projects today. I cleaned the kitchen, collected sweaters, packed them away, and still have more to do. John cleaned the raspberries and put away 4 packages, then went out and picked more for us for dessert tonight. He then tackled the kitchen counter between the “den” and kitchen. What a fantastic job. It’s not all done, but a huge start. I printed several things for friends in CA and in GA. Oh, and I printed off a letter to my podiatrist to take by tomorrow, with a copy of the one I wrote 6/25 and thought was being forwarded to him by his office assistant. This printed copy hand delivered on the day he is in the office in Ellensburg will be better than depending on someone else to forward him an email, and then to have him read it. I hope he will read this and act on it soon.
Oh, the most important thing I finally did today was cut John’s hair. We cannot wait as long next time, or I will have to buy another guard to thin out what’s there before “cutting it.” Going to bed now. I need more sleep than I got last night.

Monday, Jul 15
Just when we thought things had settled down, more excitement. I had my coffee and toast and John had headed out with the dogs for a morning run. Before he returned, I saw one of the Tobiano horses heading along the back fence as they often do, but then in awhile, I heard a loud noise of metal. I ran out the door and saw 4 horses still in the pasture near the gate where the others left from (it’s open for them all the time), and they were whinnying. I walked on out on the patio past the Nanking cherry trees, and saw 2 horses inside the backyard. They had pushed down the fence. I put my walking shoes on and went out the front of the house, screaming for John, but he was down in the woods/swamp with the dogs and didn’t hear me. My yelling brought the other 4 horses around to the front and the two horses in the yard to the side of the house, where they could see and talk with the others. That was good because otherwise all of them might have ended up in the yard and perhaps tangled in the downed 6′ fence. I eventually walked out to a shade tree and waited for John, after he finally heard me. He went to put up the fence, got the horses out, and shut off the access back behind. I went around and turned off the barn lights, which John usually does on his way back from his doggie walks.

John went this afternoon back to Buck Brannaman’s clinic, and I went to town. My back is still aching, and I don’t know why. I managed to get through the SAIL exercise class by leaving out things that made it hurt. Went to Goodwill for some new socks at a good price. Went by the US P. O. to be sure my mail got into a box to leave for Yakima, and not depend on my carrier to pick it up, and Super One to take advantage of a few special deals, for John (Pepsi) and both of us (cake, ice cream and old fashioned donuts). Ran by the podiatrist’s office to deliver the “Special Delivery” request.

Tuesday, Jul 16
Succeeded in getting the rest of On Top of Old Smoky into my computer, transposed it for the Bb Clarinet and Trumpet, and ran copies for everyone. Got teeth cleaned this afternoon, and unfortunately, I have to go back to have a cavity under a crown fixed. Wonder how that could happen. Nothing really else exciting today. Lots happened, but not worth bothering you with. Weather warmed again, and storms threatened in the afternoon, but never really came to us, although the 3-state region had lots of lightning (8,000 strikes; WA had ~2,500) and many small fires.

Wednesday, Jul 17
John went to the dump. I went to the food bank for playing music and by SAIL. I have to work up the playlist for August that I can give out before we play Aug 1. I’m sorry we don’t have a 5th Thursday this month so I have a little leeway. While in town, I stopped by the sale where we bought John’s ’09 Subaru right before I got sick and ended up in the hospital. They have a tent sale each year in Ellensburg (the Yakima dealer). I drove my Subaru by to claim my prize, hoping it would be one in 14,888, a 2014 Subaru, for John. I got a pair of pearl earrings (for pierced ears, which I don’t have), and a little 25 piece tool kit. While there I asked my favorite salesman, and he jokingly said, I know you don’t want to sell yours but I’d like to get John’s ’09. I told him that was not likely, and that we had to find a good used truck first, to replace our old falling apart Ford ’89. Last year he had lots of trucks and we drove in to see them – no deal, they were all short-box types. But this time he said, I do have just the truck for you, here on the lot, and another coming in that is newer. I told him I had an appointment for a haircut, so to check what he had, and call our home number with the details. We have to have a full size bed for hauling things not bought at the grocery store.
I received a call from him later about what he found. He had a 2003 Ford, 1 ton, with a full bed, and only 53,000 miles, for around $18,000. He said he would be getting another in a few days, a 2008 Chevy diesel, 1 ton. Price on it would be closer to $30,000. It was hot and he needed to drive back to Yakima and was going to return later. We told him to call us when he was heading back to EBRG. He did, and we drove to town in our old Ford truck, after cleaning it out, and John loaded the 5th wheel assembly into the bed (we let the old broken canopy go too). While on the dump run John filled one of the 2 tanks with $60 of gasoline – oops! Well, he didn’t know what I was doing until after he got home. We met “Mat in the Hat”
at the temporary EBRG lot about 8:00 pm and John drove the 2003 Ford around town. I squeezed into the rear seats of the super cab. Before driving, we had an all-around description. It is silver, pretty high up, but with nice running boards and a handle on both front seats to grab to get into the front seats. I seriously doubt I could have made it in this time last year, so I have improved a lot. For several months, John had to take a stool for me to get into the old truck, and it was much lower than the new one. Okay.. what else, it’s an F350, V10 Triton engine, and has a set of all four brand new tires. It won’t get great gas mileage but has power for towing, including the single overhead cam (SOHC). It is amazingly clean, even under the hood. Has flint colored seat upholstery, some fancy radio we haven’t learned how to use yet, and a CD. It’s a little rough riding for my tastes, but I’ll get used to it. It certainly will be great for pulling any trailer full of hay, or horses, or an RV trailer. The mileage for those vehicles is very poor, but that’s not what we bought it for. We got it for hauling.
Here’s what it looks like:

I intended to take a photo with it all hooked up to our gray horse trailer full of hay, but it’s been too hot to bother.

Thursday, Jul 18
Morning working on music and playlist to hand out today. To Dry Creek, with music list for Aug 1 and the rest of August. We had a small bunch there, but it went all right. Only 2 guitars, a mandolin, 3 fiddles, and a singer. Small but responsive audience. I came on home rapidly, by way of the US P.O., and the courthouse, where I dropped our ballots into a receptacle to save postage. WA uses a mail-out/mail-in ballot and for some reason a few local issues are decided (poorly timed) in summer. This was a single item: namely, shall we continue a 3/10ths of 1% sales tax for public safety. I wonder what the cost of the voting was? We voted “yes” but the official date is Aug. 6th so we have to wait to see if this tax is continued for a 2nd seven years. On to get gasoline for my car. Sadly, at a price 30 cents higher than the last time I filled it in Yakima. I was running on vapors I think. There was nothing showing on my gauge, no mark whatsoever. They are little squares, and the yellow warning light was on. I don’t know for how long it was on, because it is below my sight without leaning forward. It took 14.5 gallons. I haven’t checked but I assume it is a 15-gallon tank. The new truck has a 29 gallon tank. Sadly, we need to fill it. It only had 1/4 of a tank when we bought it.

Friday, Jul 19
Rested a little, worked some in the kitchen, and working on printing music from my Songwriter program into a .pdf (scanned image) that might work. I’m not sure it is as clear and large as the original, but it saves me having to print and hand to a person directly (for example), if I’m not there or they’re not there and need the music. I would go broke mailing copies to people. I already have to mail things to our player from Yakima, because she only comes once a week, and if I don’t have it done by Thursday, I have no choice. She doesn’t have email. John made the trailer wiring work with the lights, so he came in and said we could go today for hay. I canceled my trip to town, and we waited for Ken’s son to come help with the loading after he got off from work, meeting him there at 3:00 ish. That was nice. I sat in a wooden chair with a towel bath mat and was comfortable for the duration. They loaded 4 bales into the back of the pickup and 36 bales into the trailer. Ken gave us a pint or more of blueberries as a bonus. Nice. We’ll have them later on ice cream.
Once home we both had a bunch of fresh cherries (from our frig). I think we have 6 packages left – cherry story is in last week’s blog. I started the dishwasher, and John is taking a nap. I will join him when the washer finishes its cycle, so I can turn it off before the dryer comes on. It’s way too hot outside to do anything there until the sun goes down and things cool off. It is 99 now at the airport. It’s only 95 on our front porch, but that’ s plenty hot enough. I finished the music for Fraulein, finally, this morning, having to run a copy of the music, and get out my violin to play and sing along to get the melody correct. It was not written properly in the “score” of the music I had, and I had it in a couple of keys. I finally changed it to a key I thought I could sing in, and that our group could play (key of G usually works). I had my pen and as I played it I changed the notes on the copy, and then entered it into the computer, and played the midi tune back. It was much better. I also played a video of two people singing it from the fifties to check against my memory as I was rewriting the notation. Guess I’m having fun with this software, even though it is a PITA for taking my time from needed sorting and clean-up. Next I’m going to do the same with Jamaica Farewell (Harry Belafonte’s special calypso music). Not sure which key it will end up in for us. Now I have two versions, one in C and another in D. It’s taking a long time to enter everything. Now the temperatures have cooled down to 80 right before 9:00 p.m. and the wind is still blowing in the 20s.
While eating a late dinner, a message came in from Nampa, ID (from my music teacher for next week). She needs a keyboard for her daughter Katrina to use in her class. I imagine she’s doing the Hot Shots class again this year. We have one, so we will need to get it out to her teaching room, probably Sunday evening.
Finally, I checked everything, all lyrics, chords, notes and printed out in 3 keys: C, D, and G. I had started with F and a different timing. Now I have to get my violin and my singing voice out and decide which key is best for the majority of the singers to sing. Most of the women are altos. Once I decide on one of the three, I have to run it off in a key 2 sharps higher for our clarinet and trumpet players. It’s a rapid transpose, using the software.

Saturday, Jul 20
To Briarwood today. Only a few of us came — our bass player, a couple (he on mandolin, she on guitar), me on fiddle, and another on timbrel and her husband on guitar. Small but lively group with a great audience. We did our patriotic and US songs because it’s still July and also we have all the lyrics typed up for 12 songs. They fed us well as usual, macaroni & cheese with Kielbasa, green salad with almonds and mandarin oranges, various kinds of bread, banana nut, zucchini & pineapple, two kinds of cookies, watermelon, and garlic bread with paprika (very good)–and I’m not usually a garlic bread fan.
It was hot again today, up to 95 or higher, and now wind starting and it has cooled to 85, but it is 7:00 p.m. Right before 8:00 it went to 81. We’ve opened the house and will start cooling down over night. We only have to run the a/c about 6 hours/day to stay comfy.
Full moon is Monday. We will have clear skies so will have a nice look. Daylight minutes are decreasing now as the Sun’s vertical intense rays move toward the Equator. Northern latitude onion growers will soon see their onions “bulb” and prepare for harvest. Thus far, we have harvested about 4 of our onions, for example the purple ones four photos down on the ‘Onion Patch’ page, on the link above. John’s still harvesting raspberries and day-neutral strawberries are just starting. June strawberries are done. We have fewer yellow squash than last year, but plenty for us. Winter squash have nice vines and little baby fruits. More to come.
Hope your week was great.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

The week of our wedding — 44 years ago.

Sunday, July 7
Started off with no wind, but the temperatures keep climbing, and now before 2:00 they’re up to 93, and the winds just started this hour with 22 mph gusts. We accomplished a lot this morning. I slept in, while John went and watered, moved water, even to the sunflowers up by the road. He has to bucket them because they are uphill from the irrigation ditch. I cleaned the kitchen, and he came in, and put the pork loin roast on to cook at 11:00 a.m.; then he made us a yummy brunch–small cheese omelet, bacon, grapes, and strawberries. We’ve been working on our respective computers, but need to get to some household paperwork clean-up, before we take off for the party 6 miles down the road, that starts at 5:00 p.m. (Food needs to be on the table for eating).
It’s tough typing right now. Rascal cat joined me in my lap (on my chest) because I’m sitting in a recliner with my laptop on my legs. He had been earlier for several hours in the middle of the love seat, where two of the dogs like to rest. Now that he’s gone, they can return. Occasionally, one will share with him, but there’s not usually room for more. Taking off for the potluck jam session soon. Checked the roast and poured off the grease (John did), and then I helped cut up some apples to add to the chunks of pineapple and raspberries, with brown sugar, he’s cooking for a side dish, to go with the roast, rather like a sauce. Everything was great. Lots of food — afraid to start listing because I know I will leave out something. Our roast, a large container (hot) of potatoes, cheese, with ground meat, spaghetti with mushrooms, beans, a bunch of different salads, slaw, green, congealed with fruit, and rolls. A couple of cakes. Then we played after dinner until leaving at 8:30 (John needed to get home before dark to feed the horses and the feral cats). We are ready for bed, and have had some ice cream and nuts with chocolate for dessert.

Monday, Jul 8
Need to get INR reading today. Went to Cle Elum for it and had lunch at the Cottage Cafe, where we got $10 off our bill for our anniversary. I also used my gift card from my donation last year to the Brittany Specialty (I won the raffle), which gave me $250 to spend anywhere. Also delivered raspberries for a fellow from there, to the clinic for pickup. We met him at the Big Pines area on the Yakima River at a bluegrass jam the week before Mother’s Day. He loves raspberries better than anything around, so we promised to give him some of ours. They are not as beautiful and big as usual because of not watering them enough, but they are all right–they taste yummy. Also stopped in town for thyroid pills for Shay. Lots of family medications to worry with.
Report on a great lunch. I had my favorite, Corned Beef Hash Skillet (stacked on top of a layer of hash browns, and a layer of corned beef hash and two eggs on top of those stacks, finally ending with a thick covering of melted cheddar cheese. The best cook must have been there today. This was the best I have had there over several occasions. John picked a Black & Blue Salad. On lettuce, it had Cajun steak pieces, black beans, corn, some sort of spicy sauce, and blue cheese lumps all over the top. He enjoyed it more than anything he’s had at that restaurant. Good. And, we got our $10 off, plus a happy anniversary wish from a neat waitress. We actually went in the back door after parking under the shade of a tree, and ended up in the Fireside Lounge. Comfy chairs, and tables, because it is a “bar”. We will always go there in the future, not out front on the barstools or the booths. We also brought home half of our lunch for another time.

Tuesday, Jul 9
Started out with meeting with other Emeriti geography professors. All but one was there. Got a nice report from Jim Huckabay about his recent trip across the trans-Siberian railroad and on down from Irkutsk on another train to Beijing. John and I went to our favorite grocery store on the way home, and also I picked up almost $90 worth of medications. Considering one is for a 3-month supply at $20/mo makes it sound not as bad to be getting 3 different meds. My bad INR yesterday made my Dr. suggest to me this morning to eat some green veggies each day to try to lower it, so we bought some broccoli and lettuce for salads.
Now John is napping, but I already slept in this morning. The temps keep getting hotter. Supposed to be a high of 81 but already has topped it at 93, and we are not to the warmest part of the day yet. I must go back to town tonight to play music, at 6:30. Salad for dinner: pork, bacon, lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, yellow squash (small, our own), croutons we made; hope it helps adjust my INR down. Also, there should be a nice green salad tomorrow at the Food Bank that I do not have to refuse as usual.

Wednesday, Jul 10
Going to pick up 20 pounds of Sweetheart cherries 6 miles down the road this morning at 10:00 a.m., already boxed. * report below on disappointment*. Then off for Food Bank Soup Kitchen music (where I was presented with a nice mixed greens salad, green squash, scalloped potatoes, and ham (rather overcooked dry sadly), and a nice dessert of fruit cocktail in a raspberry cool whip kind of mixture. SAIL exercise went all right, but I was low on energy. Wind is blowing consistently all day above 30 mph, mostly above 35. Now last hour it was 37 at the airport, and it sounds worse out here.
Cherries disappointment: I know when a person buys bulk cherries they have to expect some bad ones, but we think the seller, in the future, should perhaps add a couple pounds to the box to make up for the bad ones. We also understand the problem of obtaining quality pickers, and we appreciated the time and money to deliver them from Wenatchee. However, we came directly home with our box and sorted. We put the best in a flat box with newspaper and laid them out to dry. Some were at room temperature and dry and some were chilled and damp. We had 14.5 pounds of good (not great) ones. We had sorted out another set with injuries or ones off the stem, for eating now. We had 2.5 pounds of those. We had a 1/2 pound of ones that were so bad, we couldn’t do anything except compost them. The other too-bad-to-eat fresh ones (2.5 pounds), we can probably make into a sauce after the bad spots are cut out. (Turns out we had to dispose of 1 and 1/4 pounds of those too, after I wrote that first statement). The quality of the good ones didn’t anywhere match the photo in their ad. I took a photo of our box when we got home. They look all right in the box, except for not being the same ripeness; they are very tasty. Perhaps we are spoiled by having and picking our own cherries, but this year ours were frozen out, all but the pie cherries, which John plans to pick in the cool of the morning. We have no Bings, Rainier, or Queen Anne–so, we decided to try some locally obtained Sweetheart cherries. We did receive the 20 pounds we paid for, but we’re not sure paying $1.75/pound for the less than nice ones was a wise decision (especially the 3 pounds).

local news brief (Associated Press) in our paper: Man started wildfire with luminaria
—
Selah police said a man started a 500-acre wildfire by launching a floating luminaria. The bag heated by a candle drifted into a hillside Friday and started a brush fire that took 100 firefighters to extinguish.

The Yakima Herald-Republic reported police are recommending a reckless burning charge against 36-year-old Alejandro B. Olivarez.

He spoke to firefighters at the scene and said he intended for the luminaria to rise into the sky.
—
Thursday, Jul 11
Today was a lunch with a friend who is moving completely out of state, to Borrego Springs, CA.
The couple does like lonesome, so it’s okay.
It was very nice to see her, and I don’t plan to go to CA any time soon, especially with the hot weather there. Last weekend it was 120° at their moving-into house and the a/c couldn’t keep up, so they installed a swamp cooler. We had a very nice visit and lunch at a new Mexican place in town, called Fidelitos. Great food without a lot of grease, plus a huge tree on the back of the property to park my car in the shade, so I could leave my violin there and not cart it in. On to the lab, where my first lab test indicated 1.4 for my reading. Later, after 5:00 my Dr.’s nurse called to say the actual blood test on the withdrawn blood showed 1.5. That’s a ton better than the discrepancy between the different measurement devices the past two times. My dosage was readjusted, and I go for a reading again July 20 th. They wanted me to go the 22nd, but that is the start of my week of the WA Old Time Fiddlers’ Workshop. They’ve decided to have me eat a little green each day, and they will adjust the dosage appropriately. Suits me as salad season is here. From the hospital, I went on to play music at the Rehab. We were moved to a different room, with less space for our bunch and the audience, but it worked all right. We had 2 violins, viola, trumpet, clarinet, 3 guitars and a timbrel for part of the time. My first roommate there when I was in the Rehab came with her daughter (with whom she now lives). Mae is now 91 and loves our music. She was quite an inspiration to me when I first arrived hardly able to move myself. I wasn’t holding food down either, which she reminded me today. I thanked her for encouraging me by telling me when she arrived there she couldn’t walk either and by the time I met her, she was motoring around the place, and doing things for me. We became fast friends. I fixed Tacos again for dinner (with the leftovers from yesterday, plus new salad stuff). Tonight John went to a trail riding meeting. While he was gone, I cleaned strawberries, and the kitchen. Now that he’s back, we will put up the raspberries, have dessert, and go to bed. I spent time today constructing an animated Happy Anniversary wish for John for tomorrow. I added some photos of us back in the sixties, and was allowed only 3. The 3 I picked I had gotten on my camera from close-ups I took at the family reunion last summer of my aunt’ scrapbook. You may enjoy seeing the old photos. This might be our 44th, but we have been friends since 1965. If you wish to see the card, you can follow this link.

Friday, Jul 12 Our 44th Anniversary!
John’s off to the Washington Horse Park, 40 miles west toward Seattle, to watch the first day of a horse riding clinic with Buck Brannaman. John and horse Teak were participants 17 years ago and the clinics are now at year 31. Buck was an adviser to Robert Redford for his 1998 movie, “The Horse Whisperer”, and there was a movie about Buck’s life recently, called Buck. Watch the video on the right at this site. John took this photo on Friday of Buck listening to a question from one of the young riders. (Click on photo for large image.)

I stayed home because of the long walk to the arena from parking, and the long day… gonna try to surprise John with a couple of cleaned up flat spaces in the house. Well, the cleanup is going slowly, but I have succeeded in fixing me a cool salad for lunch (added some pieces of fresh cherries), and need to cut up more for future salads. I have had grapes in salads before, but never pitted cherries. Got the house insurance straightened out (they had taken my check for $53.00, and kept it in their files, but debited it electronically from my bank account). I requested my original check back and that they should have told me what they did. “Well, we wrote “posted” on it,” but I worried that someone later could have cashed it. The original request was from them to write a check and bring it by, so why didn’t they use it? I guess I have been in a mood recently to complain about business practices. The medical stuff is bad enough. More sorting is happening. I just took a break to print off a copy of music for 3 people in the group, in a different key. And, now, I’m going to use the new printer to copy another one for 2 people that is not in my computer to print the music.
That’s the reason this process is slow. As I go through the stacks, I take time to take care of it so as not to create yet another stack. Yippee, that chore just was completed. John thinks the goal ought to be to handle a piece of paper only once.
Speaking of music, I received a very nice thank you from the Adult Activity Center today, for our Patriotic music performance at the BBQ last Friday. In the process, while I was arranging things in my music to make copies to get in the mail to a player who drives up from Yakima, I came across a copy of the lyrics the center had printed out for people to sing along with us. Interestingly, I looked at the back page and saw it ended with page 6. I knew I had sent them 9 pages to assemble. On those 3 pages are 5 songs . . . and we will be using those lyrics for the audiences at the nursing and retirement homes for the rest of July. There are patriotic ones, and also songs of America, such as This Land Is Your Land. I need to print the 3 pages back to back and add to the booklet (of which I have 47 copies). Well, this will be a way to use up the ink on our old printer. I didn’t accomplish that until Saturday morning. Have only printed; not yet assembled. (Now have while John was working on posting this). Rest of the afternoon — lost track.. one thing after another, and not a clear place in sight yet! I did make the stacks lower, and filled more boxes. One bin now has almost been filled with sweaters and sweatshirts for winter.

Saturday, Jul 13
John picked 2.5 pounds of raspberries in a cool morning shade, and I worked on finishing some information I needed to accumulate to get in the mail before it was picked up. We have yet to do the raspberries. John also spent a couple of hours watering gardens, trees, and sunflowers, up by the end of our driveway. On my way back from the mailbox, he had me come over to the new garden to see the empty space where the horses ate some of the growing corn. He had a fence, like this on the left, with other fence (right) tied to the rails

and the horse(s) managed to push and pull it loose. 10 plants were eaten by them turning their head sidewise and reaching through. He replaced the small pieces with a 5 X 20 ft section and used the small pieces to protect a tree trunk from either horses or deer.
Supposed to be the day to finish the blog, but we visited on the phone with John’s sister Peggy, and nephew Rod and his wife Gail, who were visiting with her in Parma, OH. We had a good time reminiscing about their childhood (and even mine). They were talking about the height they used to dive or jump from (the remains of a long gone bridge) into a river. Rod thought it was 25′, and John doesn’t remember. John says people who claim to remember the ‘60s weren’t actually there. Anyway, that got us on the issue of size of things seen as a kid. Right after our wedding, we drove north through GA to PA and I wanted to go by two things I remembered as a kid. On was a “huge” apple in Cornelia, GA. Below is a current day picture of the Apple Sculpture, and another comparing it in the distance to a motorcycle. As I child I thought it was much, much larger. John was not impressed.

The other memory looming larger in my memory was Bridal Veil falls in Highlands, NC, which I remembered as a falls going all the way across the highway. Turns out when I took John by, the road past was new and the falls was coming over the old road, which wasn’t that large, nor were the falls as large as I remembered. Here’s an interesting comment from the web: “Bridal Veil Falls is one of the most unusual and most popular falls in the South by virtue of its location along scenic mountain highway US 64. The old road, in fact, passes underneath the 60-foot high falls.” Some photos below will resemble my memory and then what we saw in 1969 on our way north. Oh well.

Two thoughts from our telephone conversation. I had surmised the reason for the spelling of Raspberries to be because your hands get rasped by picking the berries. Gail checked on line and found the real meaning, which none of us knew. Here is the explanation from the etymology online site: [1620s, earlier raspis berry (1540s), possibly from raspise “a sweet rose-colored wine” (mid-15c.), from Anglo-Latin vinum raspeys, origin uncertain, as is the connection between this and Old French raspe, Medieval Latin raspecia, raspeium, also meaning “raspberry.” One suggestion is via Old Walloon [Nancy’s insert, Walloon is a French dialect once common in Belgium, and detested by the French] raspoie “thicket,” of Germanic origin. Klein suggests it is via the French word, from a Germanic source akin to English rasp (v.), with an original sense of “rough berry,” based on appearance.

Next comes a term (seen by the relatives) that may go back to the Latin toga but the origin seems a bit uncertain. “Toggery” seems to be a used in the sense of school apparel or a collection of clothes somewhat “uniform” or as an approved selection. When John was in about 9th grade the boys were to wear ties and trousers (not jeans). The specifications were not specific and this led to outlandish outfits with ties a foot wide, down to the knees, and garish colors. The rest of the story is very fuzzy and maybe didn’t last too long. Over many years and many schools there may have been a tightening up of such ideas to thwart the innovativeness of young teenagers.

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