It was heavenly.

 Last night's thunderstorm and rain -  it was heavenly.   We were a bit worried about wind damage and the power went off for about a minute.  Luckily, no hail and not a lot of wind.  A lightning strike  may have started a fire on the Green Monarch's mountain - reported this morning.  

 Jon and I hiked that once with Neil and Ann Wimberley and John and Gail Underwood.  It wasn't an easy hike, but I remember that we had a lunch of wine and cheese when we got to the top and the view of the lake.  I have one photo from the trip that Neil took of Jon and I on the mountain - looking towards Hope.   It is lost in my collection of thousands of photos...

The dahlias and all of the other plants loved the rain.  No damage although my petunias look pretty sad this morning.  They will recover.

Happy Saturday and Labor Day weekend.  Enjoy the leftovers from the rain since we now have 100 degree temperatures to look forward to in September.  I'm sure it will be a record setting heat wave.

I almost forgot the birthdays!  Happy Birthday August peeps!  Linda, Chase, Ben, Malcom, Leslie,  and Brian Applebury.  

Here comes Labor Day!

 The final days of August are here and we're experiencing some really hot temperatures.  We are hoping for rain but it doesn't look like we will get rain in our forecast.  It's been raining all around us, which is what has happened most of the summer. 

We have lots of fallen leaves on our deck and on the lawn which makes it look like Fall, but it's not quite here yet.  When it is this hot, I delay mowing my lawn and it gets a bit high but I find it causes less stress on the grass.  I will wait to mow until our temperature drops - at least into the low 80's.  Maybe on Friday.

In the meantime I am picking green beans and putting them in the freezer for the winter meals.  Thankfully, they are almost done.  That will leave me with tomatoes and carrots to harvest along with a few more beets that I will pickle.  

My begonias are in their usual form, huge and blooming like crazy.  They almost look too perfect in photographs.  

My petunias continue to amaze me.  They are almost reaching the deck floor and although I can't get a good photo of it, they also cascade down on the other side of the deck rail.

Last nights sunset was a bit hazy, but still beautiful.  

Tomorrow is grandson Ben's birthday.   I don't know how the years go by so quickly.  How did this kid get so tall, so soon?  

Our oldest grandson with his little brother Ben, who is our youngest grandchild.

The miracle petunias.  

As I write this post I am watching the news of another mass shooting at a school.  This country is a mess.  When are we going to decide to protect our children?  Another horrible, tragic day, especially for those families.   My heart was broken with Sandy Hook - 13 years ago.  The list goes on and on...

We Are The World

Gardening delights!

 It's a garden day and why I like to play in the dirt.  My Early Girl tomatoes are getting ripe fast and the green beans are doing better than I thought they would.  Yesterday I picked the beans and cut them up and today I will process them for the freezer.

Jon's dahlias are starting to bloom and we're hoping the deer won't find them.  We do have our new fence around them but it's not high enough to keep the deer out.  

Our newest garden art from the Missoula Burkhart's.  We're still trying to decide where to display it.

The Red Robin's are also starting to ripen and soon it will be tomatoes everywhere.

My little herb garden of dill, basil and cilantro.  

Happy Wednesday.  It's going to be another hot one.  

Definitely a milestone - Jon's 80th birthday!

 We had a wonderful weekend and it was action packed which included some things that definitely didn't go as planned, but we worked it out.  Beginning with the Sunset Fire which fortunately for us only brought it a lot of smoke.     We had scheduled Saturday as the morning to go out on Seagull Charters to fish, but luckily for us, it was pouring rain that morning.  Wasn't the rain fantastic!  

Captain Tyler Long was flexible with the date and we were able to change the fishing day to Sunday morning.  They had the best time out on the Seagull and caught fish!

DIL Julie baked a Hummingbird Cake for Jon and created this hummingbird feeder  cake.  It was spectacular!  Jon loved all of it!  Julie missed the trip over here with a bad case of vertigo.  Vertigo and travel, along with going out on the boat, just don't go well together.  We missed her.

Ben's second fish catch!  

 

Both JP and Jon caught some nice Rainbow Trout.  It was a beautiful day to be on the lake.

I have never used Clipchamp before so the video is a little iffy, but it's a video.   Even the hummingbirds circling the cake were edible.  I thought they were too pretty to eat.

We ate great food and even managed a few hands of poker in the evening.  Jon is looking forward to whatever the 80th year brings!  

Seagull Charters, a few years ago!

Happy Birthday!

Hot August Days

Our hot August days are back, at least for three or four more days.   It's a productive time around here as my green beans are finally producing and there are still a few blueberries to pick.  We had two-tenths of an inch of rain a few days ago which resulted in a few Red Lobster Mushrooms to pop out of the ground. 

We also have a forest fire just over the top of these mountains in the Lightning Creek drainage.  It turns out that the fire is burning in the old burn from the Cougar Fire in 2018.  We had several mornings of smoke, but most days the wind cleared out the smoke by mid-afternoon.  The bit of rain did help with the fire fighting efforts as well as several days of cool temperatures.  I don't think any of it is contained yet but it is tamped down, which is a good thing.

I can't take any credit for this photo as it came from Mary Franzel's FB page the first day the fire blew up.  She took an incredible photo of the fire from her place.  It has to be a bit scary to be so close it, but I am hoping it is moving away from her place.  

These beets became beet pickles and I forgot to take a photo of the jars before I stored them away in my root cellar.  I ended up with 10 pints, which is a nice amount for next winter.  Making beet pickles is a long process and also kind of messy, but worth it.  I still use my cousin Jan Bicha's recipe and think of her every time I make them, even though she is no longer with us.  I love having her hand-written recipe card.  

First green beans, 2025

There is always a bit of trimming with Lobster mushrooms, but they're so big that there's always plenty of the mushroom left to eat or dry.  There were too many for us to eat so I dried some of them yesterday.

Last night while I was looking for something to watch on TV I ran across our local PBS station and they were running Simon and Garfunkel's concert in Central Park, 1981.  I love all of their music and their songs always bring back a lot of good memories.  

The Boxer

Does time fly?

 My grass on the lawn is getting really high but I don't mow it when it gets this hot.  There's no reason to since we have no events planned or house guests arriving.  There's less stress on the grass and it stays green without so much watering.  That said, today and for most of this week, it looks like the temperatures will be slightly cooler and that means tomorrow I will start mowing.  It will probably take me two days of mowing to finish, but that's okay.  

We have been lucky to have clear blue skies for the past several weeks, but now we have a fire in the lightning creek drainage, which is just on the other side of these mountains.   We have had smoke the last couple of mornings, although it did clear out yesterday, it remains to be seen if it will clear out today.  

The fire was small, but apparently exploded on Saturday and now covers at least 1600 acres.  Bummer.  Nothing is going to put it out now except some really good rain. 

Today is Julie and David's anniversary.  Eighteen years!  I have hundreds of photos of the wedding.  Some from the official photographer and a few from our friend, Glen Rolofson.  I'm posting some today and most of them are the ones that Glen took.  I thoroughly enjoyed looking through the photos, especially of the friends and family who were there and what our placed looked like that day.  A very happy time. 

August 4th, 2007.

Almost all of these photos are the ones that Glen took.  

Kermit and Susan.

I remember this moment very well.  As we were walking towards our seats, I said to David and Jon that I thought I was going to cry.  David looked at me and kind of chuckled and said, "Oh yeah?"  I was okay after that.  

What a beautiful gathering of family members although I will say that the ring bearer and the flower girls were very tired of the photo taking.

We bought a greenhouse the spring before the wedding so that I could start all of the flowers for the wedding.  The flower bed behind the arch was created just for the wedding.  It did last for several years, but now it has been turned back to grass. 

 

Many of these are from the official photographer.

The happy couple last summer at City Beach in Sandpoint.

Along with the happy news we did receive some sad news yesterday.  Another of our dear friends and colleagues, Kent Schultz, has passed away.  We have many years of memories with both Kent and his wife, Julie as we worked together at the middle school and also were involved with a lot of the politics that went with supporting education in Idaho.  

Julie and I worked in the same office and we both retired the same year.  Shortly after that they sold their house and moved back to Grand Junction, CO, where they were from.  Two years later, Julie passed away.  It just doesn't seem possible, but it is.   We are sending our condolences to his family.  

As they say, "time marches on".  Yes, indeed.  The ringbearer, Collin, is now engaged and soon we will have his wedding to look forward to.

Our place did look pretty green for August 4th, 2007.  Here's to hoping for some rain in the upcoming week!