Our last day of July is here and it's going to be a hot one! Our temperatures have been in the 90's so our mini-split is keeping us cool. The flowers and vegetables are all doing well. My bush beans are blooming and soon we'll have some green beans for dinner.
My clematis has lots of blossoms thanks to Jon's work adding some Miracle Gro to them.
Our Early Girl tomatoes are doing great in spite of the fact that we planted them so late.
I love growing dill in a pot on my deck. It's one of my favorite herbs. I also have some cilantro and basil in a pot. With the addition of some lettuce, cucumbers and my patio tomatoes I have a fresh salad that I can pick by just walking out on my deck.
My monster cucumber plants. There are 3 of them in the pot.
We had a really nice rainstorm here last night with our rain gauge showing 1.4 inches as of 4 p.m. today. We might even get a little bit more before it's over.
Today, Jon was really surprised to find one of these popping out of the ground near the driveway, a Lobster mushroom. They usually do not show up until mid August or September, depending on the rain. This one is a month early. It will make a nice breakfast tomorrow.
I managed to get several hours of working in my garden before the rain started and then we had a visit from our friends, Bob and Ellie Lizotte. Bob had been out fishing on the lake and brought Jon some Kokanee to smoke along with some that Bob had already smoked. Let me just say that Smoked Kokanee are a real treat.
We haven't smoked any fish for several years so we had to hunt for the recipe that Jon has used for many years. There was quite a bit of discussion about where the recipe was. We found it written on the back of the manual for our Cajun Injector Smoker. (Jon's handwriting)
He mixed up his brine and today he started up the smoker.
There aren't many recipes hand-written by Jon so I decided to include it on this post for that reason and also so that we can find it again. There's a good chance neither one of us will remember where the recipe is the next time we need it.
Fourth of July weekend was a time for reminiscing since we attended Jen's and Alex's wedding. The little ones in this collage have all grown up now and we're so happy to celebrate their weddings. So far we've had two weddings, Lyndsie's, a few years ago, and Jen's on July 5th. Grandson Collin is engaged so we think he's next to walk down the aisle, but one never knows.
David and Ben drove over for the wedding and to celebrate the 4th. Julie stayed home to take care of the kittens, Ernest and London. They both still had their cones on and were not happy kittens. They did celebrate the 4th though.
I'm not sure how David's first duck hunting trip came up in one of our conversations , but it did. The year was 1980 and Jon and his cousin Marty had built a duck blind at Pack River. Jamie had a 20 gauge shotgun and David was only 6 years old but he was very excited to get to go on the trip. To get to the blind so that they were set up by daylight they had to get up at 4:00 a.m., drive to Pack River, which was about a 20 minute drive, unload the canoe and paddle in the dark to the blind. It was quite the adventure.
It was a successful hunt as they got their limit of ducks and also a goose. The best part of the story is when a teal flew above them, Jon stood up and fired three times and missed, but then Jamie shot with his 20 gauge and got the teal, exclaiming, "I got him!" His first duck.
David says since he couldn't hunt that he spent his time eating all the donuts and drinking the hot chocolate in the thermos. He claims it was cold that morning and I'm sure it was.
We couldn't find this photo among my digital copies, so David spent quite a bit of time looking through all of our photo albums and finally found it on Sunday.
We are enjoying watching all the birds at the feeders this year and we've been happy to see Robins, Violet-green Tree Swallows, Red-breasted Nuthatches, Chickadees, Dark-eyed Juncos, Pine Siskins, House Finches, Oregon Juncos and Evening Grosbeaks. Last year we had very few birds. This year they're back. All of these successfully nested on our place this year.
Our Evening Grosbeaks at the feeder. They're busy feeding their babies and they look really big compared to the hummingbirds at the other feeders. The male is on the feeder and the female on the handrail. We can't wait to see the babies at the feeder.
Jon received a Birdbuddy hummingbird feeder and camera for his birthday last year. We had stored it away to use this year and forgot all about it until the kids asked us if we had set it up. Oops! What fun we've had with it. We have multiple videos of the birds and they're going crazy right now since all of the babies have fledged from the nests.
At the end of the video, Lady runs through on the deck and chases them away.
All the bird activity reminded me of one strange bird sighting we had in 2016, a California Quail. Quail standing in the exact spot where we took a picture of a grizzly bear a few years later.
We celebrated multiple birthdays this past month, with one of them for Linda Heisel. This is a photo of a wonderful group of women, taken at her house in 2017. Happy Birthday, Linda! Our photographer was Judy Butler.
We also celebrated great-grandson Jason's 8th birthday! They sure do grow up fast! We couldn't be there but it looks like they had a great time.
David and Julie had this baby show up on their front porch one day, a few weeks ago. They were worried that he was an orphan, but later saw him with his mother. She still parks him on their front porch every day.
The kids call him their "dog". He's definitely growing. Evidently, the mama figures this is a safe spot for her baby.
Grandson Ben shared this photo he took of a scary looking creature.
This photo was taken in Madras, India in 1900. It is of my great-grandpa George Mitchell and his family, before my grandmother was born. We do not know why they were there, except that it must have been some type of Foreign Service.
This photo came up in our conversation after talking about recipes of Indian Cuisine. My grandmother was famous for making an Indian Curry dish, which must have been passed on to her from Bertha.
The photo caption reads, from left to right, their oldest son, Walter (holding the racket), my Great-grandfather George (head torn off), my Great-grandmother Bertha, son Robert, her sister, Lizzie and her husband holding grandma's sister Mable. Mable immigrated to the U.S. with my grandmother, Ella around 1917, via Nova Scotia, Canada and then to Nebraska. The baby in front is another sister, Merlin. My grandmother was born 5 years later, in 1905, Gillingham, England and she was the youngest of seven children.
It was a very nice relaxing 4th of July weekend. David cooked Baby-back ribs on the grill and I made the sides. The ribs were delicious and I now have a copy of the recipe. After dinner we played quite a few games of Liar's Dice and it was fun.
We certainly welcomed the cooler temperatures and the rain over the 4th. That was a nice surprise.
Now we're back to sunny skies and hot afternoons. Welcome to July!
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