Summer in Newberg

This weekend was one of work and play. The tomatoes are starting to ripen just enough every few days to make a batch of sauce. Friday I stayed home and made and canned one big batch - 7 jars I think half liters. I also pickled and canned the rest of the beets. 12 jars. That was a lot of work!

Saturday I made 3 hypertufa pots and had a birthday party, drank piña coladas and ate salmon. And Rich is making my arbor off the back patio for my birthday present. Pictures to follow when it is done.

Today I made 2 more pots, and another batch of sauce. We picked some corn and beans from the wild and crazy 3 Sisters Garden, and froze them.

We saw this blurry little frog while we were trying to find the beans...

Also picked some wild blackberries to freeze.

The cat loves Baba's chair, except there are some books in her way. Cats always love that chair.

New Residents in the Neighborhood

When we got home from wine tasting today with Hope and Sue, I was working on our new Three Sisters garden. Rich was wandering around the yard, thinking about where to put a new sheep/goat/chicken house, and noticed a new little home behind the big storage tent.


When we had our garage sale a couple weeks ago, a beekeeper guy came by and asked if it would be okay if he put a hive on our property. He and Rich walked around and figured out a good location, and he said he would bring it by some day soon. So he must have come while we were out. Very exciting! He is going to give us some of the honey, and teach Rich how to manage a hive. So someday we'll get our own bees.

Also, while I was working in the garden, the blue jays were flying around and making lots of noise, so Rich got Daryl's BB gun again, and this time, he got one. Shot it right out of a tree!

A Contest

What I didn't tell you with the blue jay story, because I think I already told someone in an email, and it was a lot to write, was that after he knocked the nest down, he put the 3 babies in one of the live traps and put it over by the blueberries, thinking maybe he could catch the parents by using the babies as bait. But instead, the babies wandered out of the trap and wandered off. Then all the other stuff happened with the BB gun and all, and he forgot about the trap sitting over by the blueberries.

Meanwhile, something has been living under the sheep/goat house, and digging out underneath. We didn't think it was skunks this time, because there was not even a faint odor.

So when I got home from my weight training class tuesday evening, this conversation occurred:
Rich: I have to tell you something, but I don't want to because I'm afraid you'll put it in your blog
Me: Tell me! I won't put it in my blog.
Rich: I don't want those Washington liberal elites to make fun of me.
Me: Just tell me, I won't put it in my blog.

And so I didn't. But I have given you a few clues. So you guess. Make up a story.

Something You Don't See at Our House Very Often

Rich is hunting bluejays. With Darryl's BB gun. He tried getting rid of them by knocking their nest out of the camelia bush and turning the babies loose to fend for themselves, hoping the neighbor cats would eat them. (Our cat is afraid to come out of the house because they have been dive-bombing her and even trying to follow her into the house.) But at least one of the babies survived and now the parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents are all flying around and squawking. He missed. Made them nervous though.

It is STILL cold here. Yesterday we had a garage/plant sale. We sat outside all day and froze. It was cloudy and windy and below 60 degrees. Every once in awhile the sun would come out and we would warm up for like 2 seconds, and then it would disappear again. Sold a lot of plants though. Not too much other stuff.

Today I planted 14 tomato plants and a tomatillo. Still have at least 2 tomatoes to plant. Going to make much more of that wonderful sauce that we have been eating all winter. Four varieties of paste/sauce tomatoes. So I'm going to try some different recipes to have some variety in sauces. Mmmm.

Forget-Me-Not --- In Memory of Baba

Every year, about this time, the forget-me-nots start blooming in my garden. They provide a beautiful blanket of color until I get things cleaned up and the later plants start blooming.

My mother, Dorothy Decima Barclay Zimmerman, (better known by her family as Baba) passed away on March 14. She died peacefully in her sleep. She was 89 years old, and she lived a long and happy life. She got to live long enough to get to know 4 great grandchildren.

My mother had lots of hobbies and interests. She loved collecting stuff, and her house was full of interesting things that she collected from all over the world, as traveling was another love. I think the fun for her was as much in the adventure of hunting for bargains as it was in having the stuff. Everything she had held some sort of fun memory for her - either a trip to some place at the far ends of the earth, such as Antarctica or Mongolia, or just a fun afternoon "junquing" with her friends. (She liked to call her stuff "junque" instead of "junk".)

She also loved decorative painting, and has left behind many beautiful pieces of painted furniture and smaller items. I think she started paint class when I was in high school 40 years ago, and she has been doing it ever since. She was an incredibly talented woman.

And finally, she loved gardening, and she was very very good at it. Many of the plants my siblings and I have growing in our yards came from Baba, as she always had plenty of things to share from cuttings and dividing. But almost everything that came from Baba came with some forget-me-nots, hidden away in the soil, waiting for the middle of March to appear again.

Every year I love seeing them come up and start blooming. Even though they are profuse, they are not invasive, and after they are done blooming they are easy to pull out. And even though I pull most of them out, they always come back the next year.

What a gift! So now, truly, they have meaning. They will always say to me, from Baba, "forget me not!" How could I?

Seedlings!

Baby asparagus, baby tomatoes, and a cat who discovered the heating cable in the greenhouse!
Finally things are warming up and coming up and the weather is maybe clearing up!

Complaining

A little lesson from the comics:




For me. I was lecturing my mother on a similar topic yesterday. She should not be driving and she has the means to hire a town car every time she needs to go somewhere, and to sit back and relax and let them do the driving. And yet she complains because it is hard to make the phone call to order the town car. Life should be so hard for everyone in the world. I've been whining a lot lately too.