GRATEFULNESS

And here I begin. At the beginning. A road yet travelled, an adventure yet lived...

I am grateful for:

1. My best friend at my side every day
2. A living room that is neat, organized, orderly and clean
3. A wall built, sheetrocked and finished at the stairs
4. Garden ready for the next successive planting
5. Cherries
6. Home made fish sticks- so yummy! http://www.elanaspantry.com/fish-sticks/
7. Friends coming to town
8. Friends safe at home again on the other side of the world
9. Winning this pattern in a drawing http://www.hedgehoglane.com/small-dolls/
10. Happy music

CALICO PIE

One of the things my mother made sure of was that my brother & I learned to read & enjoy poetry. Probably one of my all-time favorites, out of the huge volume of 1,001 Poems You Must Read (or something to that effect) was The Owl & the Pussycat by Edward Lear. You have not lived if you have not read that poem. Another favorite by him was Calico Pie. I've only just recently discovered that he not only wrote nonsensical poems for children, but illustrated them as well. Check out this link for the illustrations.
Calico Pie- http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/calico.html
The Owl & the Pussy-cat- http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/pussy.html

DAILY THINGS

This is an idea that I got from http://walkslowlylivewildly.com/. I thought it was nice, so I'm copying her. :) This list was geared for someone at home, but since I'm at work I figured I'd do it from here.

Outside my window…there is no window here in my jobsite office, but I can hear the city noises, and ocassionally the children from the local YMCA on a field trip to the movies
I am thinking…about how to set up an office space/area using furniture/items that I already have around the house- this weekend's "official" project.
From the kitchen…for lunch today- tortellini with home-made pesto. I'm so excited about that!
I am wearing…tan carhartts, grey t-shirt w/ a navy blue monkey embroidered hoody
I am creating…operation & maintenance manuals for this job that we're wrapping up
I am going…to the office to make copies, and then home!
I am reading…(in the evenings) "Mossflower", book two in the Redwall series
I am hearing…a city bus, the refrigerator, my computer's brain thinking, squeeky brakes on a passing car, the plumber doing paperwork in his office.
Around the house…Hubby framed the wall on the stairwell this week, and has also been getting the front yard ready to plant grass. The next hatch of quail is about the pop out of their shell. This morning (after I let him out & left for work) the dog got ahold of a bag of wood chips for smoking meat on the bar-b-q & played with/destroyed the whole thing (did I ever mention that D & the Dog don't like each other? this is part of the reason why!).
One of my favorite things…is a clean kitchen & all the animals fed
A few plans for the rest of the week…move the new rabbit cage frame to its final resting place, weed the garden, fold the laundry

GORGEOUS

~ Serengeti~

SMITTEN

OK, so I'm smitten. I have a love affair with frogs, salamanders & mushrooms. They're just cool.

MY CAREER

I think that this could be called my career, or something... I'm great at starting quilts (I love to pick out the fabrics!) but once they hit about half-way they stall out and take months (or years) to get any further! But they're pretty, and they inspire me...so I keep doing it. :)

This is my red (obviously) quilt. It will be twin-sized when/if it's ever done. The back is going to be black w/ white dots (same as the red w/ white that you see in the top).

This is the Hubby quilt. It will replace the one his mother made for him years ago. She told me that when she made that one, he specifically requested fabrics w/ flowers...so I've tried to find non-girly flower prints to incorporate in this quilt. It will be X-large twin-sized.
I have no idea what the pattern is, I saw something like it, and then added the sorta log cabin twist of red in the center.

This is my Happy Quilt. It will probably be a full size when it's done...right now there's just alot of it! And I'm not even entirely sure what I'm going to do with it, as the pieces aren't long enough to make the quilt wide enough, so it will be pieced somehow.

But it'll be happy when I do get it figured out! :)

PIGEON GUILLAMOT

Betcha' can't pronounce that name... Don't ask me, I'll just make it up.

Hubby came home the other day telling me that he got "hit in the head by a puffin on the beach" that day. Turns out that this was not an entirely literal description of the event, but kinda' close.

We've known for years that some sort of sea birds nest in these holes




We were told that they were puffins

But it was strange that we've never seen puffins...

Until Saturday when I saw a Guillamot just off shore with a fish...and then it flew into one of the holes! "Ah-hah!" I said to myself "they're not puffin holes, they're Guillamot holes!" Well, I didn't say exactly that, but that resembles how it went.

And then...

I looked again and saw a Guillamot egg. My day was complete- no, my WEEK was complete! Isn't it the most beautiful water-colored egg you've ever seen? I think so. I bet the Guillamot Parents agree with me.

The egg is slightly larger, and slightly more eliptical, than a large chicken egg.

THE CANINE OBSESSION

It starts innocently enough...

...this obsession of boy & dog

Find a stick

Chuck a stick

Chase a stick

Catch a stick

And drag it home for dinner

Hail the conquering hero

Pretend to ignore it

Until the bigger, better mousetrap is invented

And then you begin again.

The obsession perpetrates itself.

AROUND THE YARD

Some random recent pictures...

Whimsy

Lakenvelder hen

Red

Rhode Island Red hen


*has no name yet*

Black chicken (black sexlink?) hen

Muffy

Ameracauna hen (she's smart, too)

Little Hen

Ameracauna hen (this year's baby)

Goldie

Buff Orpington hen

(dumb blond chicken award goes to this bird!)

Nan & my basket

Boo & Toby

Sweet Bluebell

Baby quail

The dish is only 1 1/2" across...

SUMMER GARDEN TOUR

Come on in and tour my garden with me. Please excuse the weeds, they get a little crazy up here in our fertile valley. After this past weekend, they're mostly gone anyway. (I'm winning)

Strawberry, on the OUTSIDE of the garden fence, gazing wishfully at the abundance just beyond her reach!

Baby tomatoes

Evening Stock- this is what heaven will smell like. If you've never grown it, your life is not complete. Grow it.

Walla Walla Sweet onions, beginning to bulb up.

The crop that I WISH I wasn't growing. Our yard must have been the town nail dump for the past 200 years...I collect, and pick, and remove, and toss out, and throw away & rake up nails until I'm blue in the face...and still they grow. This is most certainly & regretably not a bare-foot garden!

Zucchini. I think that I planted too many plants! Anyone want some?

Lettuce

Green beans- searching in vane for something to climb (finally got the trellis up this weekend)

FRANKENspinach...that is my foot, and that is the leaf, and it really is that big!

Cucumbers (in the middle), marigolds (on the two sides), radishes (bottom & top), volunteer tomato (bottom, center)

Carrots

Blueberries coming on

Mega-radishes. They were about 3' tall here- not edible, but impressively huge