22 Aug 2012 - The Sweet Spot

Everybody needs a sweet spot in their life. I am very lucky to have quite a few, but that has its own problems. Mainly which one do you want to be in? Fortunately we have spots that are perfect for morning coffee, others that better for the afternoon root beer float, and even more that are the perfect place to eat tomatoes--just picked and still hot from the sun. Life is good!

As Jack and I beat this yard into submission, sweet spots are emerging. This is one of my favorites. The fountain is burbling, a wonderful refreshing sound on hot days. I love sitting where I can see my garden angel on duty and the flowers are a bonus.

Then there are secluded sitting spots. 

These little nooks are great for a quick stop to relax in the shade with iced tea, or a book, or just to sink down and enjoy the view. 

It is also a good spot to contemplate what needs to be planted next year. 

What colors? Annuals?  Shrubs?
Perennials? Trees?

It's a gardener's dreaming spot.



 

There are too many places to choose from. This is our favorite breakfast and lunch spot. It is on the shady side of the house until the afternoon. 

 Dinner is usually on the porch, which is shaded in the evening. 


Other sweet spots include what I consider my charming vignettes. 

There's a prize if you can count how many baby quail are in this picture. And this little gargoyle is another delight tucked into a perfect place.

 This planter in the breezeway between the house and garage is filled with treasures from my rockhound grandparents. In here you'll find dinosaur bones, septurian nodules, petrified wood, snowflake obsidian and other wonders, all watched over by my beneficent Pan. The petroglyph was created by my Pop.

  I also have little surprises tucked into crannies. These elements don't always jump out at you. They quietly sit back and wait for you to notice. 

Sometimes this glass globe sparkles like sun on raindrops after the storm. Other times it almost disappears into the tree trunks and myrtle. So much depends on where the sun is, what the clouds are doing--different every day.

 


I am really happy about how the plants on the front porch turned out. 


Now to consider where to add a sitting spot out front where I can admire them properly.

19 August 2012 - Ruthless Robin Rides Again

Today Robin went back home to foggy, cool San Francisco after spending two weeks in a fairly warm and dry Salt Lake City. Her first week was spent visiting friends, then showing Dena and the boys around the valley while I attended the National Sales Meeting. The second week she spent with David, Jack and me. Mostly me.

Robin and I spent the majority of our time unpacking boxes, examining the contents and putting stuff away. Sounds easy? No way. 

We tackled the room where all of Jack's weaving yarns and supplies plus all my fabrics and quilting accessories were stored. 

Before...

The pictures do not do justice to the piles and piles of boxes, although you can see in the picture above that some piles are almost to the ceiling. There was a tiny little path around the edges of the room surrounding piles of boxes. Robin and I unpacked 53 boxes and put away the contents.

Robin, in her alternative identity of Ruthless Robin, was in her glory. "You have three of these. Why? How many do you really need? Can we give two away?"  Or in total confusion..."You have an entire box of pieces of fabric too small to use?" Hmm. Too small to use is subjective. 

A month ago, I cleaned out a small closet in the hallway that was filled with chemicals from David's past experiments. I had started unpacking some of Jack's cones of yarn into that closet and quickly discovered that it wasn't even close to big enough.  Robin and I continued  unpacking many more boxes of yarn. All his chenille cones are now arranged by color. Others are arranged by content (wool, cotton, linen etc) and size.

We emptied out the area under the stairs and repacked it, which gave us more room to store things. We were the bin queens. Two trips to Smith's for clear bins in a wide variety of sizes. Stuff that we wouldn't need very often went into bins under the stairs.

Loom supplies were corralled in bins. Specialty, metallic and novelty yarns were   were all packed together in smaller bins. 

The results are amazing. In addition to the unpacking, pitching and putting away, there was lots of cleaning.  Look at this! 

 Then we started unpacking fabric. I was rather stunned to find out just how much fabric I have accumulated over the past years. (Almost as much as Jack's yarn collection.) Then of course there are all the new notions, thread, gadgets, books, patterns, cutting boards, different sizes and shapes of rulers. I need a bigger room. 

We went back to Smith's and bought more bins. Now unfinished projects are together. Silks are all together. Fabrics that are a set are together. 

The majority of my fabric is arranged by color, continuing a tradition started by my friend Amy, who despaired of my multicolor piles. She couldn't believe I could ever find anything. I could, but it took longer, and now I am quite enamored of my palette. 

 After all these years of quilting, I now have all my thread sorted by kind and nicely stowed away instead of having a bag here, a basket there, more in a box...somewhere...where was that box anyway? 

In addition to her job as Ruthless Robin, she is a great organizer. Makes me wish she had another week here. Who knows what might get done. 




Meanwhile, when she wasn't working she was cooking. We had some wonderful meals. My favorite was roasted tomatoes with fried feta and steamed greens. Not a combination I would ever have tried, but it was really good.  

Even better, Robin wrote out the recipe for me. Some of the largess received from her efforts included plum crisp and plum bread. David's plum tree is flush with ripe plums. A trip to the farmers market resulted in gooseberry crisp. Then there was the beet and blue cheese salad.  I could go on, but you get the idea.

18 August 2012 - Hanging with the Hawks

For years, this area has had breeding pairs of Cooper's Hawks.  Several years ago we were lucky enough to have a nest in the yard. It was such a thrill to watch the process: parents feeding the babies then the babies fledging and leaving the nest. 

We currently have babies learning to fend for themselves. Two weeks ago I heard the Cooper's call and looked up in time to see a parent with prey in his/her talons flying overhead. Behind the parent was a baby. The parent dropped its catch and the baby swooped in and caught it, then landed in our big pine and proceeded to eat. Who knew they taught babies to hunt?

Ever since then we have been hearing the babies calling. It varies from a plaintive mew mew to a harsh sounding kak kak kak. Today I was out watering when I heard KAK kak kak kak repeated over and over. 

It finally dawned on me I was hearing a our hawk. There he was sitting on my fence and lucky me!  My camera was in my pocket. 

Normally when a hawk flies overhead the world gets very still, very quiet. All the little birds dive for cover and no one makes a peep. But not today. A blue jay was giving this youngster a very hard time. I believe the hawk was trying to catch the blue jay and the blue jay was either acting as a decoy to keep its own kids safe, or maybe it was just taunting the predator. 

The blue jay would circle around the hawk while squawking madly. When the hawk tried to grab it, the blue jay would dive into a thicket of pyracantha. This went on for about 20 minutes before the rather frustrated hawk gave up. 

But in the process, I was able to get some nice shots of him. 

 

Here he is launching off the roof of my neighbor's shed. Blue jay is right over my head. 

The blue jay flew off, but now the hawk is almost directly over my head. Wow. According to Sibley's, this is first year coloration. 

I don't have enough words to tell you how fabulous an experience this was, but it is the kind that makes you so happy to be alive and so lucky to be in the right spot at the right time.

15 August 2012 - My Lazy Day

I woke up this morning and realized it is the middle of August. Kids will be back in school in two weeks. Since I haven't been clued in to the back-to-school or end-of-summer sales it hit me like a sucker punch. 

I haven't had a single lazy summer day. Although thanks to my brother, we were able to dig a hole through all the rocks and get a hammock pole set in concrete. So I do have a very inviting shady nook to laze about in, but I haven't had or perhaps haven't allowed myself that pleasure.

My company recently changed its fiscal year end to June 30. Since I'm in sales, that means April, May and June is like being in a pressure cooker and vacation in those months varies from strongly discouraged to downright prohibited. July begins a new  year of planning and gearing up for the week long national sales meeting. I feel as though I have been unable to slow down and catch a breath. 

Add in moving to a new house (hundreds of boxes still unpacked), a huge overgrown yard, drought conditions and yes, I am watering. Unconscionable, I know, but I do want to keep some things alive.  So I work my day job, then dive into yard work and organizing my new living space until I drop into bed. 

Coming up on a weekend I have big plans. Let's do something different, go see, go do, go hike. But then the weekend comes and it seems it is better spent with a chain saw, a hose or a can of paint. I only have myself to blame.  This is a really long rant just to say what the heck happened to summer?


So, after this rant, I realize--wait, I do have lazy days, but my conception of a lazy day is quite different than most people's. Wandering around the yard with a hose in my hand makes me happy.  Losing the shoes, rolling my pants up to my knees and wading in the lower pool to strain the leaves, floating insects and other debris makes me happy too. And they are soothing ways to spend down time. It's just that my down time, involves doing something.

I don't have the gene that lets me sit for too long. A quick break on the porch with a tall glass of iced tea is plenty enough to say, hey I did have a lazy day.  

So today, I had a lazy day. 

First, I went down to David's where Robin and I helped him chink a section of the log cabin. He thought he'd be able to mix a batch of grout, give it to us, then mix another batch for himself that he could use on the outside of where we were working. 

By the time he had the second batch made up, Robin and I were ready for it. We kept him busy mixing grout until he ran out.  

 
 










I'll bet you are thinking that chinking is in no way a lazy day. Well, you are right about that. 

It is what happened afterwards that turned into my wonderful lazy day. 

A couple of weeks ago,  David's pond turned green with algae. Between the warm water and hot weather, all the water coming down the irrigation ditch from Utah Lake was green. Pretty, but kind of odd. You couldn't see through it at all. 

Robin has been staying with David and she mentioned she saw a new kind of snail that was floating at the top of the pond, upside down eating algae.  

After we were through chinking, I moseyed on over to the pond to look for the snails. There were hundreds of them, and the pond didn't even have a hint of green--it was back to the normal gray mud color of Utah Lake. The snails were still munching away at the surface. It was great!  

For the next hour I crawled around the pond spending lots of time on my hands and knees watching the snails. Here you can see his little munchy mouth is wide open. The dark tiny spots near the bottom of his shell are remnants of the algae. Hope there is enough algae left to keep this population alive.  It was really interesting watching them move upside down under the water's surface. The snail's foot was using the surface tension of the water. The snail would stretch the foot out long and narrow,  then pull the shell forward. 

Occasionally several snails would meet up. They would twist around until they could push off each others' shells and separate. 

I was fascinated by this. So were the water striders. They would come and poke at the snails, perhaps wondering if they were edible. 

Now that is a perfect way to have a lazy day.


Are you perchance hearing Willie sing?



Well I might have gone fishin' I got to thinkin' it over
The road to the river is a mighty long way
Well it must be the reason and no rhyme or no reason
I'm takin' it easy it's my lazy day
____________________________________________


Two weeks later, I'm back at David's checking out the pond. Hardly any snails in sight and the green algae is starting to come back. There are still snails eating, but nothing like before. 

 Here are three snails--trying to get the best position to eat.

 

11 August 1012 - Saturday's Waffles -- A New Delight

What a fun world we live in! I'm talking about food trucks today, in this case Saturday's Waffle. This food truck only operates on Saturday and only makes Liege Waffles. Since my sister is in town helping me celebrate a week of vacation and is also working hard at both my house and my brother's house, I thought we should all meet for breakfast. David and Robin were hesitant but showed up. 

The food truck is a 1955 restored Shasta trailer. Very cool!

Get this. The owner is our insurance agent, a young man who has a wonderful time on Saturdays. 

Colin and his friend make all the waffles on site. They wear black pants, white shirts and black bow ties, which adds to the fun and ambiance. They broadcast wonderful big band music as well. 

  And here is my entire family eating a fabulous breakfast. David chose a waffle with mango raspberry topping, I had lemon curd with raspberries, Robin had mango and coconut, and Jack had a Benny which had an over easy egg, bacon and hollandaise sauce. All were delicious!

10 August 2012 - Vacation!

My vacation officially started today after work! Not only that, but my sister is in town for a week. So, what does one do to celebrate?  One goes to the fair. In this case it was the county fair. It is a very small fair, so small that in the animal exhibits, there was only one small building full of cows, pigs, goats and sheep, while another smaller building was filled with poultry, pigeons and rabbits.

No matter, Jack, Robin and I had a great time. We checked out all the jams, jellies and canned goods. We drooled over the cakes, cookies, pies and breads. We picked out our favorites in the quilts, clothes, and crafts entered by 4-H-ers and other exhibitors. 

The kids' stuff was great, especially in the vegetable exhibits where ordinary vegetables became really funny creatures. 

We watched the 4-H kids wash, dry, fluff and buff their Angus calves, and show them in the ring. After the cattle had been blow dried and raked they were so fluffy you wanted to hug them.

This little girl, about 10 years old, won with her very large calf. Beyond her is a young man with a red angus who came in third.  These calves weighed between 600 and 800 pounds. Those are some big babies.

Another calf that was in the grooming stall had really interesting coloring. I especially loved the white tail. I hadn't seen one like this before and thought it was very striking. 

 The goats were interested in all the people. I think they were looking for treats. Whenever someone walked close to their pens they would stick their heads out between the bars and bleat. Head rubs seemed to be just as acceptable as a treat. 


Who could resist these soft little heads and wistful expressions?

Because we had the time, we dipped in and out of different shows. We watched a group called the New Fiddlers play some old-time, country and bluegrass music. The new fiddlers were two little girls about 6 and 10 years old who were incredibly good. 

We watched a reptile show that featured snakes from the 18 inch long rosy boa to the 16 foot reticulated python.

It was educational and entertaining. 

We stopped briefly to see what was going on with the Wild Wings program. They had a falcon in jesses and were explaining how they hunt, live, and fly. 

My favorite part?  The poultry barn. I am always awed and amazed by the colors, sizes, shapes of chickens. So much variety is here in just the colors alone, much less the sizes and kinds of feathers. They are really beautiful.  I was telling my sister how much I like chickens, when a man walking behind us said, "They're noisy and they stink." Made me laugh.

This pigeon reminded me of Lando from Babylon 5. Don't you think they have the same hair style?  The eyes on this pigeon are huge.    

A new-to-me variety was the frill back pigeon. According to one of the volunteers in the poultry house it is an ancient breed. In person, it looks very lacy. Pretty. 



These are Sebastopol geese. They have really curly feathers that are often four times as long as feathers on normal geese. They were gorgeous.

We voted to eat fair food, roamed the food booths picked our fare and we all ate -- and ate well, but not wisely, but it was fun. 

I was having a ball watching the little kids. Check out the size of the belt buckle on this little boy. It was so big it was practically pulling his pants down.  

I was also tickled by his big sister who was telling him what to do. She even has her hand in a fist and is shaking her finger at him. Who knew this behavior started so early?

Another two little boys were with their families who were riding in the rodeo. (It ain't a fair if there isn't a rodeo.) The boys had huge hats, cowboy boots, western shirts with pearl snaps, and even pocket knife holders hanging on their belts. They were tiny kids, but already were starting to swagger as they walked. 

Possibly the funniest moment was in the ladies' bathroom. Mom was changing the baby's diaper and was unaware her next youngest was wandering through down the aisle looking for her. She turned around, saw him, gasped and hurried him into a stall.

The restroom was fairly crowded but only a few people noticed the show. I was giggling behind my camera.

And if this wasn't enough, as we were leaving we walked through a car show.  Jack was smitten by a Shelby Mustang. Not me. Who needs a muscle car when there are fins! 

The bigger the fin and the more chrome there is, you know I'm going to love it. 



So yes, I worked all day then kick-started my vacation with a fabulous evening at the fair.