Well, this machine is still sick and it gets frustrating to try to post but I’ll give it another go. As soon as all this fire business is over I’m taking it to the guru and see what can be done. Meantime we battle along.

We’re clear and sunny today, first time in a couple of weeks. My solar lights are soaking up their charges and the garden is getting charged, too.  Nice to be able to breath deeply again for us mammals.

What’s happened…? Well, we went to Albany Oregon for the Black Sheep Gathering the first of July and back again the first of August for the Mother Earth Fair. Mostly we’re been working around here. Himself has jobs that he’s always behind on as well as looms, I have garden and looms I’m generally behind on. You get the idea. Dunno why, it just seems to work that way. I haven’t done much yarn stuff but I’ve found a lot of interesting recipes for using up zucchini. Canned peaches this week and it’ll be green beans tomorrow. Got a turkey in the oven. I had to get it out of the freezer to make room for incoming things. It’ll also get canned- or most of it will anyway.

Had some friends/neighbors up for a couple weeks. They live south of the fire but have the cabin next door. They came up to get away from the smoke but eventually had to go back and they said it was still smokey. Naturally, almost as soon as they arrived up here we had heavy smoke! Now that they’ve gone the smoke has cleared up. hummm…..

I bought some gadgets for fermenting veggies at the Mother Fair and have stuffed a quart jar with cabbage in hopes of ending with sauerkraut.  Don’t have a clue what I’m doing, just following  a ‘recipe’ from the internet.  Time will tell.

The garden has grown a bit since the last pictures I posted! The fence rails are 10′ and the sunflowers are just an inch or so over that.

I accidentally ended up with three zucchini plants. Last year I had two and got two squash, this year I have enough to feed the community. Unfortunately most of the rest of the gardeners here do too! lol But I’ve found some interesting recipes for it. The tomatoes are producing well, but aren’t the greatest I’ve ever raised. Peaches are luscious! I’ll be canning green beans tomorrow and I think we’ll have egg plant with our turkey for dinner. Is that a workable combo?

I forgot to mention that we had a visit from this pair last month. The one on the left was the first and the other the next day. On my porch! They may have been hunting mice, we do have a problem with those little varmints, but I’d really rather they hunt elsewhere. They are hunting somewhere up Ramshorn now, Randy dumped them both in the same spot so if they were friends, mates ,or siblings they can be together if they wish, but not here. The difference in the patterns and coloring is interesting, too, I thought. I assume they are the same kind of rattler. As far as I know we only have one kind here, I think it’s called a Western rattler, but I can’t remember for sure. Haven’t seen one since, which delights me.

I have neat picture of some balloons that took off from the airport across the fence from where we camped at the Linn County Fairground but it’s on my tablet and I dunno how to get it here except to email it to myself which seems complicated. It was early, first cuppa, when we heard them and they were still quite low with the moon behind. And I got a shot of two of them with a jet above!

Well, I printed out a recipe for chocolate zucchini muffins which I think wants to be made while the oven is hot.

So… See you next time!