Punkins and cement!

I don't think our pumpkins will be ready for Cinderella by October, but they were volunteer. And we learned that pumpkins have male and female flowers which don't always bloom at the same time. If it is too hot, just the males bloom and the females prefer a cooler temp. So, until about two weeks ago we had just one pumpkin (the orange one) and now we have maybe 4! Very fun!!! They are not very big, but they came up on their own, so we are not complaining!

And I have been playing with cement. I always wanted to make a concrete leaf and after reading many directions online, decided to try it. Mine used a pumpkin leaf and it was a learning experience. I just made several more today using a much bigger leaf of rhubarb and smaller ones of choke cherry and something else I can't remember it. The first photo is after it was dry (not totally cured, just dry) and the second is after I took some of the leaf off..which might be an uphill battle!

I also made some stepping stones using what is a cake frosting technique. You can see how the layers look on the rectangle stone. The first one was just trouble..which is why it is so funny looking! (it is the one with the plate pieces) The others are not bad at all. I particularly like Jon's camo one. They also need to cure and we will see how they hold up. Right now they are a tad crumbly on the edges. I don't know why, but we'll see how they look after curing.

Am reading a series that is not quite done yet. The last book comes out next month..of course! It is by Angie Sage. Fun author! I like her explanations at the end of the book.

Not everything is what it seems

Sunday was interesting. I did not have my glasses on when I spotted a bright reddish shape in my garden where no reddish shape should be. I slipped on my outside shoes and dashed out to the garden and found a poppy plant!!! I was puzzled and excited. Excited because I had planted an entire packet of the seeds earlier this year, but puzzled because only one came up. As I looked at the flower more closely, I realised what had happened! The blasted thing looks like a thistle! I have learned that anything that resembles a thistle over here...probably is. So, I had been weeding up my young poppies. In fact, as I looked the area over (I had not weeded that particular area in a week or so and this flower was under my Virginia Creeper plant), I did see at least two more plants that WERE thistles. So, I toddled off to church is a rather disgruntled mood.
See how thorny the leaves look?

At church I got to play with some of the kids and we were going over the story of Lazarus. This is a great story of a man Jesus raised from the dead after 4 days and it leads into a good discussion on friendship. As I told the story I asked questions. Things were going fairly well until I asked the kids the names of Jesus friends. The blurted answers were Mary...Martha....Stewart! And the worst part was, they kept saying the names! They knew that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, but insisted on Stewart being a friend. As I was discussing this with one of my very dear friends Monday morning, she started laughing and said....'Martha Stewart!' On further reflection we are positive that was where the snafu lay, but now I will never remember the story of Lazurus without thinking of the poor forgotten friend Stewart. He must have been in the kitchen.

Book list: a lot of different ones. The dragon ones I thought I had finished, but there are two more! Sent the first one to Tony. And on a different note, did everyone see that Jeremy from Zits finally got his DL???????

after camp

We dashed to the coast to pick up Jon from camp and now we are home. Registration is on Thursday and the nights are getting cooler. I like the cooler nights, but am not ready for school days.

Here are the crosses and a bird that, as we look closer is probably a vulture. It was in the trees near the crosses and last there is an overview of camp. Jon was kinda sad as they did not hike up to the crosses as a group this year. We drove up! It is a very long way!

Am reading some more of Patricia Briggs. I think she is a new one of my favorite authors!

The cats and the Toyota

Here is a photo by photo scene of Moses and the Toyota. Later, as you can see, Maxwell hops up. We are not sure exactly what they were doing in the Toyota, but it makes for an interesting montage. It may have been that Rusty cat likes to sleep in it.

They were on the roof and inside, too. Unfortunately, they had their backs to the camera and the pictures would not have been very flattering, even for a cat.

Jon is now at camp again. I will post more pictures of that later. There is a great blog on the missions building at Camp Wi-Ne-Ma over in my blog section. It has finally cooled off. Now it is only 80 degrees outside at noon!

Books I am reading: Black Powder War. This is the last in that series. Not as good as the Patricia Briggs books I just read, but not bad at all.

too hot

Just a couple of cat pictures. Unlike Kanga and Daddy Bird (Living the Travel Channel), we have barely stirred this last week or so. It is too hot. Today the temps have dropped and it is only 90 degrees at noon. Anyway, here are Max and Moses, late at night, waiting for all the lights to go out so they can play.

Camping pix...

These are some photos Jon took while camping. The first one is in May, it is of a bull snake he and the leader found. The rest are at Baldwin. Jon caught two fish (no, they were not red or blue...) and a crawdad. He ate them all.





This photo disk was an odd one to work with and get pictures from. But, there you have it. Summer camp with the boys!

Reading a Mercedes Lackey Valedmar book. I don't care for the main character, though.

He's back, birds, and Romeo Flies Free...

Well, Jon is back from Scout camp. It appears they had a very good time. I don't have his photos yet, but here are ones that I took from before and after!

Many of the kids were worn out and I was impressed that Jon seemed to look just the same..a bit dirtier and without his scarf, but pretty much the same!

This last week, I took lots of bird photos. Some of them were fuzzy, but some were not.

The finches are beautiful (especially the males)! The Ring Necked Dove (Romeo, who is mum's ring necked dove) was hiding in the trees and this smaller dove was outside looking for seeds while we were having an outside dinner. Earlier, while I was bird watching (not during dinner), Maxwell was sitting on the table looking regal.

And with that, I will close for today. Reading some 'new' Mercedes Lackey books.

an assortment!

Well, we have babies all over the place. Baby birds that is. However, they do not photograph very well as I am so far away and they move so very fast. I will not post the birds, but we have baby robins and flycatchers. (those latter ones are really small and fast!) I am hoping to take more pix later.

I also have seen some very cool sunflowers around here. One of the mutants did not turn out well..it was very dusky and my camera batteries were dying..I will take more of that later, also. It was a sunflower that had two heads back to back. Very odd. This flower is one in my yard..I have decided to not plant seeds next year. At least ones from packets. I have much better luck with bird seed. Not sure why they heads are so tiny, but they are rather cute! There is a bunch of mint behind the flowers and under the feeder.

We also got to go and see an outdoor production of Grease. It was lots of fun, HOT, but fun. It is very hard to put a cooling system in an outdoor theatre! We could not take photos of anything inside..which was sad, because it was such a neat stage. However, they did have a few cars outside that could be photographed. The white one is a Galaxy 500 convertible, the blue one is a Ford Fairlane, and the yellow one is Ford with a chevy engine in it. Steve rather liked the white one. He was not impressed with the flashy yellow one at all.

I have not been able to get a photograph of the skunk hanging about up at Grandma's, but I will keep trying. I did find some very cool moths in the house. Usually a moth is a bad thing, but the two I found were very amazing. Here is one of them.

Is it not very cool? The other one was distressed and not as easy to shoot..of course, I would be stressed, too, if Moses was trying to catch me! I managed to let it out of the house. The brown one was too high on the wall for me to get, I do not know where it went.

Reading Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory's books on the Obsidian Triology. (Again.) It is very hot here. Most of these books take place in winter, which is nice to read when it is hot.

tree limbs and more birthdays!

We had some friends over, I did not know it was the day after Donna's Bday, but we had dinner and ice cream. And. while she and Ashleigh did the dishes (wonderful fronds!!!), Steve and Leon and Jon removed a tree limb or two! In spite of the gashes..it did end well and the tree looks great! Jon really was there..he was just keeping out of the danger zone!

When the branch fell (see second photo) Steve was dubbed by the fall.

This week, Steve had a birthday. I made a cake and took it to the shop, but the cake was warm and the m&m's stating his age slid off..so, it read 4-something. It was pretty tasty anyway! We had a thunderstorm on Sunday night and on Monday it was really windy. So windy, we lost another tree limb! Jon moved that without cutting it up. At dinner (and after dinner) we had more visitors and this birthday for Steve cake had brighter numbers. We used up a bunch of stray candles and made a 45..we did have 54 candles, but as they were assorted sizes, we decided to just make the shapes of the numbers. It was fun!

This blogging thing is being a bear. The photos are harder to put on, so this will be all for a bit. Am reading Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Gotta love Cimorene and Kazul!

the end of leave

Well, he is gone again. We miss him and miss him and miss him. However, we know that where he is he is doing something worthwhile. On the 4th we took some family kind of photos and then went to Hood River and watched their firework show. Before the show we had Domino's pizza in our hotel room and watched Arnold..How much more American can you get? (OK, I suppose watching Stallone would have been more American.) I also learned that I need a tripod for Christmas. (One like TJ has that is a walking stick and tripod mix would be fun.) On Sunday we took Tony to the airport and watched him leave. I did notice later that he had pretty much the exact same stuff on when he left as he did when he arrived. And he really wasn't traveling that light! Later we had lunch with Kanga and Pauli.

The boys and Grandpa and then all of them and Grandma.

Here are the boys waiting for fireworks and then a sign I found on the wall at an Embarq building. I took a picture because Kanga does so often and she is right, sometimes they are very amusing! I understood the wheeled things, but CAMPING? Maybe loitering would have been a better chioce. Jon wondered where he would put the tent and campfire!

After that, he left..sigh. And as I said, we miss him.

Well, I am having trouble with this blog thing today. I am going to stop now and try to finish my curtains, which are not working well either. The bobbin keeps boggling up! I will post more this weekend, maybe it will work better! TTYL!

Busy, busy, busy!

OK, Wednesday we got Tony at the airport.

We went to Tillamook and saw the June Dairy parade and went to the beach and picked up Tony's bike at his friend's house:




See the purty cows???


We stopped in Arlington on our way home. The mama duck is the one from 'below', however this is not the best pic that I took. I will have to scroll through them to find it. The goslings and geese were also at the park.




We have played several games of triominos with Granpa and Grandma:

The boys went camping:



I, however, got to go blueberry picking! For almost $10 I got a little more than 24 cups. It was tons of fun! Here is the link to the place my friend and I picked www.lampsonblueberries.com


Then, it was Thursday and we celebrated Tony's 20th as well as shucked some peas. Phew, the time flies when you are having fun!!!





Well, that is our week and a bit more in a nutshell! I have two new books to read, so MUST finish the Long Patrol. Oh, while in Tillamook, I did get started up on Facebook (compliments of M. Beyer!!!). I'm always ready to do new things, even if they seem nervousing (I made that word up)!