Older....still waiting for that wisdom thing!

Yes well, as each birthday comes and goes I wait with bated breath to see if this is the year I will get the wisdom that is supposed to come with age and each year I am left disappointed, and, quite frankly wondering if I have been left off the list permanently!  This year I was certain that with turning 60 and all - now the wisdom would come and take over and ....you know!  I have recently entertained thoughts that there is no wisdom with age and this may have been a hoax perpetrated on me by my grandparents and parents!!  My hopes of achieving that "wise old woman" stage are dwindling, I think it is a good thing I'm doing so well on the "eccentric old woman" which had always sounded like the most fun anyway!  Sigh....wise just sounded nobler somehow....oh well!

On the bright side I had a lovely birthday and my biggest surprise was my son coming along to see me for a week.  My daughter-in-law had been planning on being here and driving home with Mom - I knew about that - seems every one but me knew that Son number one was coming along, a truly lovely surprise!! 

Mom's visit began on the 21st of September.  We did a couple of day trips.  This one was to an old silver mining town, now catering to mostly tourists, ranch hands and hunters.  Population 12 in the summer, 2 in the winter!  The road is narrow and rutted and dirt for 20 miles or so.  but the scenery is splendid!

When we got there we ate lunch in the hotel which was getting ready to close for the season.  I was glad we had eaten our very good meal, with excellent coffee before I saw this side of the building.  I might have hesitated to go inside and it really was a good meal and very cozy on a chilly day!

On another day we went to see the Idaho State Capitol building, the Boise Art Museum (BAM), and drove around downtown Boise some.  As cities go I have always thought Boise is a very pretty one!

For moms birthday (our birthdays are a week apart) I got tickets to see the Gaither Vocal Band at the Morrison Center.  They are renowned gospel artists and when I was a teen our family used to sing a lot of their songs in church.  Here she is with the guitar player Kevin Williams!  She looks pretty good for turning 82 doesn't she!?

We hit the thrift stores, went to some of our favorite restaurants, and we visited and shared some labors.  (Visiting being the most important!!)  The Strawberry jam we made out of a seasons worth of the leftover strawberries, turned out just a little less firm than we hoped but the flavor is awesome!  You just have to hold the peanut butter and jelly sandwich flat while you eat it or put it on vanilla ice cream - yum!!

We picked some of the apples off the tree and put up 6 quarts of "chunky" applesauce.  (On a side note, we have since thrown away 60 gallons of apples that were wormy or too bruised and picked another 10 gallons that are in the process of being canned, it will be awhile before I like apples again I fear!)  That tree has outdone itself this year, we hope it lives through the winter with all of the broken branches.





When Davy and Laura got here we went to Baker City Oregon and the 'National Oregon Trail Interpretive Center'.  This is an awesome place and Baker City is a fun town to explore.  We ate lunch at the Geyser Grand Hotel, where Theodore Roosevelt stayed (a few years earlier!), and we drove out to the 'ruts'.

 I have become something of a 'rut-nut' in recent years which is local jargon for those who become very interested in the Oregon Trail.  The center in Baker City is one of the places you can still see the ruts from 150 years ago!  Imagine how deep they were then.  In grade school These kids played a video game called "the Oregon Trail" and you planned flour and water etc. and you might die of dysentery!  They remembered and it made it more fun to take them.

Inside the center are dioramas and story areas, the stories are based on diaries from a couple of families that survived the trip.  It is a very fun place to visit.

All good things must come to an end and they all headed for home the 8th of October.  I hope these visits become an annual event!



Since that time I have worked nearly full time as the young agent I am working with currently and his wife have welcomed baby number 3 into their family and I gave him a few days off for the arrival!  Don't really like the full time thing any more!  Ah well, I will be happier about all the hours when I get that check!
Hmmm....after 2 months of silence there is more to share but I will save it for the next post!

I'm sure you were wondering how Miss Lily was doing, here is my newest favorite photo of her!...Oh  and her folks as well!

Olympics, fairs and gardening - no politics!

Even though it is very warm now, the air has that feel to it that says it's the end of summer and not the beginning.  That thing you can't explain but you notice it the first day you walk outside and it is there.  I will admit that summer has gone by very fast this year and I have spent much of it in an air conditioned office - so I will not complain about the heat!  Since my last post (and it looks like it has been awhile!) we have been busy with the garden, we went to the county fair, and I am currently doing my every 4 year TV fest watching more TV during the Olympics than I do during the other 4 years altogether!!  I justify it by crocheting in front of the TV so it looks like I'm being productive, but of course I have to stop during the gymnastics etc!  I grew up watching the Olympics and it is something I thoroughly enjoy.  I root for other countries when I hear a life story that tugs at my heartstrings.  Some people say the spirit of the games isn't there any more, but when you watch a runner stop and help another to cross the finish line - I think maybe it still is there, at least  a little!


I want to show you my new toy!  There are no links here, I got mine from Amazon.com but I am not an affiliate- I am sharing with you because I am having sooo much fun with this!

First I cut some chives....

then I get out my new toy - the 7 bladed scissors!!  I use the tool to cut the chives and it ends up like this.....

perfectly even for dehydrating and they will sprinkle out of my dispenser so nice, shook a few on an omelette the other day and it looked marvelous!  I realize that how the food looks is not the most important thing - but it doesn't taste any worse if it looks good!!  Think about how long it takes to chop a lot of chives, or rosemary, or oregano - yes it is a time saver.






The Lilys in the back of my garden that came up after being
rotor-tilled are just beautiful this year!  They
must be hardy - that old saying "that which does not kill you makes you strong"!  Love the fragrance too!












The apple tree was trimmed and just loaded with apples, then we had a real wind storm and several of the heavy branches are broken.  We will wait and hope they ripen still and then cut the branches after the harvest.  We were planning to 'top' the tree, guess it did it by itself!  Look at all those apples though!

I went outside to take some photos of the garden and found that the 'neighbors' had come over to visit and terrify the cats!  The peacock came along with his hens this time.

In the spring when the garden is just planted I always think I will have a lot of space and by the end of summer I am worried about one thing overrunning the other!  The cucumbers have produced 14 quarts of dill pickles and 7 pints of sweet pickles plus the eating in salads and snacks.

The beans are slower than usual this year and one row grew and the other row is not doing well at all.  (The vagaries of gardening.)  The 'neighbors' are getting ready to go home over the back fence.

The corn looks like it will all do well, the last bunch is popcorn, I have never tried it but daughter in law #1 sent me some seeds so we are giving it a whirl.

Bell peppers have done well this year too.  This big boy is one of many they have produced and they still have blooms!

Seems that the county fair is always during the hottest week of the year, and this year was no exception!  The most popular place for kids was the firefighters with the hook and ladder truck providing their own 'water feature'!  Wet happy kids running all over the place!






Think that about catches us up, football season is ready to start, Mom is coming to visit soon - life is good here!
We are keeping all of our firefighters in prayer, seems like the whole western US is on fire, these heroes are working very hard this summer!

This is so good!!

Once a month our church has a 'Food Fellowship'.  Everyone brings something and we all eat and visit.  I grew up calling them 'covered dish suppers' or 'pot lucks'.  I had not settled on a regular rotation of dishes yet.  In the winter we had taken chocolate chip cookies and ham slices (warm).  Summer seemed to require something different - as in I don't want to turn on the oven!  I had seen a post by daughter-in-love Amber on facebook that looked yummy and of course then I could never find it again!  I went trolling the internet looking for the recipe for this awesome looking salad and found at least a hundred versions, so I copied 3 or 4 of the best looking ones, and sort of experimented with amounts and came up with this recipe.  To find it on the internet you call it strawberry banana cheesecake salad, but I knew I wasn't going to leave bananas sitting in a salad overnight or even during church and expect them to look appetizing!  This is the recipe that I cobbled together from the collection - I have to tell you this was so good!  It was gone very quickly and 3 people asked for the recipe before I left, there were lots of compliments.  This will be my new 'summer dish' and I will take ham slices (cool)!!


(Any kind of fruit) Cheesecake Salad
 

Ingredients

• 1 package cream cheese, softened
• 16 oz of vanilla yogurt
• 1 (8 oz) tub of cool whip, Thawed
• 1 (3½ ounce) package cheesecake flavor instant pudding or pie filling mix
• ½ bag of miniature marshmallows
• 3 to 4 cups of rinsed drained frozen mixed berries - blueberries, blackberries and raspberries
• Graham Crackers (I bought a ready made graham crust and broke it up into crumbs)

Instructions

1. In a bowl, mix cream cheese, yogurt, pudding and cool whip until creamy.
   
2. Stir in marshmallows.
3. Fold in fruit.
4. Sprinkle graham crackers (or graham crust) over the bowl at the last minute

I forgot to take pictures of the finished product so this is a picture of the part I couldn't get into the bowl and left at home!  Rinsing and draining the berries kept them from coloring the mixture too much I think.

Graham cracker crust topping, this little bowl did not last long!!

This was seriously easy and yummy in the bargain - hard to beat!!

This was what I brought home!  An empty bowl!

And we have our first ripe tomato of the season!  Hubby says the first one is mine to eat, BLT here I come!









Today is an oh so rare cool and rainy day, apparently hasn't been this cool in July in twenty-some years with snow in the higher mountains!  I am loving it and trying not to remember that it will get hot again soon!