Goodbye summer. Hello fall.

October 20, 2023 - High temperature - 70 degrees.

My begonias did not disappoint this year and these are the final photos of the flowers on the deck.  Everything has been trimmed and the begonia bulbs removed from their containers.  Even though we have had amazing fall weather, it's time to get ready for the first snowflakes.

The final tomatoes and peppers went into my 40 pints of salsa.  We still have a "eating" tomatoes, slowly ripening on a shelf in the basement.

There were grapes this year.  Since most of our fruit trees are gone, the bear and the raccoons did not show up.   They were really sweet and good enough for both grape jelly and grape juice.  

Twenty-eight jars of jelly and 6 quarts of juice.

We had a family vote for which of the three trees shown below would be the Burkhart Christmas tree this year.   Tree #2, was the winner.  My zoom photos are poor quality.  It may finally be time to give up my iPhone 7.

Jon is in his element now.  He had sixteen brush piles to burn and Friday, Oct. 20th was the first day open burning was allowed.  He is "on it"!  Over the past two days he's burned eight!  Wow!   It's lots and lots of work.

It's so warm this year that it was t-shirt weather.

My deck is now empty.

After lengthy discussions we decided to remove about half of the soil from this planter and then cover what's left for the winter.

We have lawn chairs in strategic spots both in the garden and out on the lawn.  It's a necessity for us old folks when we're working outside.  We need a place to sit down and rest.  In our younger years we thought nothing of going out and working for 6 hours straight.  Not now.

I have moved my houseplants from the front porch to the bay window.  My Christmas Cactus decided it was time to bloom and is spectacular!  The "white" in the middle of my photo is part of one of my ghosts.  

For my friend Judy Butler, the turtle is still hanging on.  He'll be in a warmer spot this winter.

My ghosts are pretty scary,  They have lights that are on a timer so they turn on at dark.

We caught Lady playing with one of the Sungold tomatoes and couldn't figure out where she got it.  (Anything that looks like a ball to her, is fair game).  We took the first one away from her and then she showed up with another one.  It turns out that five of them had fallen on the floor and were hidden by a pillow.  They were all in various stages of drying.

I took some photos of the last of the dahlias because Jon has cut them down and is getting ready to dig up the tubers this week.  This is a beautiful April Dawn.

    

This land is your land.

This song and video is worth watching just for the beautiful photos.  

Where does the time go?

As you know, I am an "off and on" blogger and when it gets really busy around here I just don't get around to a blog post.  I don't know how people who are retired get so busy, but it just happens.  Today I will need to drive up and down the "hill" 3 times.  Each trip a necessary one, beginning with going to Caribou Physical Therapy for my lower back.  

We try to limit our trips down the hill and to Sandpoint to save some $$ on the gas bill, but sometimes it doesn't work.

This morning I have photos taken by Julie, who is in Glasgow, Scotland, while David atends the 17th Vaccine Congress there.  He is representing both his company, Inimmune, and the University of Montana.  I think that Scotland is 8 or 9 hours ahead of us time wise so it must be about dinner time as I post this.

We are so happy that Julie was able to go with him on this trip and after the meetings are over they will get to explore and do some traveling around Scotland.  

 

Also, mom and dad are pretty proud of the work he does on vaccine research and immunology.  There are a lot of bright young people on his team.  This is a photo of his team in Missoula when they are not working.  A lunch at David and Julie's a few weeks ago.

Back here on the mountain I have been trying to finish up in the garden.  I have taken out all of my plants except the carrots, kale and beets in my raised beds.  I'm not sure how it happened but a deer actually got into the area where my raised beds are and ate the tops off of all my carrots.  There's no stopping them.

My final jars of salsa have been processed and are in the cellar.  This is the last picking of the peppers and tomatoes.

Jon has a new dahlia which looks like an April Dawn, but it has a cactus shape.  It's a beauty.

Today it is raining this morning and it's a welcome rain.  We've had a bit of rain but not enough to get things really wet, so I hope it rains all day long.

September is surgery month for Jon as two weeks ago he had dental surgery and last week he had his first cataract surgery.  The day after his doctor said his vision was 20/20 in that eye.  It's a miracle since he has had glasses since he was in the 6th grade.  He's scheduled for the next one in another week and right now his vision is a bit messed up since he doesn't need glasses for his right eye, but he does for his left.  It's all a big adjustment for someone whose worn glasses all his life, but what a good problem to have.

Today is his post-op appointment with his dentist and then we have a free afternoon.  That's a nice feeling, to have some time on our hands.   I'm happy it's raining here but I hope it isn't raining in Glasgow, Scotland.  

Fire, Rain and Earthquakes!

 It was a birthday weekend here and we celebrated even though the smoke from the fires was everywhere.  

On Friday afternoon David, Julie and Ben were on their way here from Missoula and as they drove through Paradise, Montana a forest fire had just broken out and was burning very close the Highway 200.  It would turn out to be the East River Road Fire which blew up from a few acres to 13,414 in 24 hours.

We were very happy to see them safe and sound, here in Hope.

Lady was very excited to see Ben.

The birthday cake that Julie baked and decorated for Jon. 

 It is an "Earthquake Cake".  

As we sang the birthday song, Julie and Dave pulled on the cake platter...

It turns out that there was a fault in the cake. There was a 7.8 earthquake!  Right here in Hope, Idaho!

The sedimentary layers were revealed. 

There were also some fossils in the layers, but I didn't get a photo of them.

The rocks and the boulders looked real, but they were actually different flavors of chocolate and some of them around the bottom of the cake were licorice flavor (a bit of the shock to the taste buds).

Later in the evening we played a lot of poker and we let the birthday boy win on his birthday, but Julie cleaned our clocks the next night.

While we were playing poker Ben was working on his own secret project in the basement.  There were a LOT of really tiny pieces.

He was creating a jazz band.  A bass player, trumpet player, pianist and drummer.

He was very good at his work!

It is very cool and now sits on my piano.  

Julie took some great photos of the flowers in the garden.

A photo in the grape arbor in the same spot where some of their wedding photos were taken sixteen years ago.

The corn is as high as an elephant's eye...

Julie's best photos were these...

It's a perfect sequence of the game played between the squirrel and Lady, which happens multiple times throughout the day.  The squirrel runs across the deck rail to the bird feeder to get some sunflower seeds.

SQUIRREL!

Lady tries her best to run and catch the sunflower seed thief.  

Finally, here's some photos of the East River Road Fire that Julie took on their way home to Missoula on Sunday.

Thompson Falls

The same area in the photos above from Friday.    Near Paradise.

 

The fire near Arlee, Montana.

We're all hoping for some rain from the remnants of Hurricane Hilary.