 |
| Grab the Scavenger Hunt code. Photo Theme. Join the blogroll. Visit participants. |
~Colorful~
We were out for our walk on Friday and stopped by the local library. I had Kimmy with me and I had her pose with Anneliese in front of the gardens.
I also stopped at a local park near the lake and took this picture of the two of them. Look at those bright faces? Aren’t they just beautiful and colorful?
Happy Saturday, Everyone!
Today the sun came out again. This is two days in a row with no rain! I am so happy, but admit that my eyes are slightly sensitive to all this sunshine!
Since Anneliese will be entering a Dog Show at the end of September, I decided I needed to begin training her to walk on a lead without her getting upset, or trying to pull me off of my feet. I also want her to meet many new people so the chances of her growling, barking or biting the Judge at the show are lessened.
So, I packed my back pack with water for her and for me, and off we went to the Post Office.
As we walked up our driveway, I noted the large gully on the left hand side of the drive. All I can say is, we are lucky it wasn’t worse!
Right now we have many large State Highway Department vehicles in our town working to repair the roads damaged by the torrential downpours of rain that have plagued us all summer long, but most recently last week. They are noisy and create a whooshing feeling as they drive by you and I was worried it might upset the little dog.
However, Anneliese proved that she is truly a dachshund. She pranced right by my left side, and never shied away from a truck or a noise or any of the people that we encountered.
She was even happy when we went into the Post Office and she got to see the Postal Clerks. Several people stopped us to admire the pretty little dog, and Anneliese was more than accepting of their attention. In fact, she seemed to like it!
At one point I wondered if I had the wrong dog!
We walked home and came back along the lake front where I caught a Loon family taking their young baby Loon for a swim.
You almost never see the Loons swimming this close to the shore, but there they were and I was thrilled to get this picture. The young Loon is in the center,
I also got a picture of a very funny sign along the lakeside.
As you can see this sign covers all the seasons!
Once I returned home, I decided to go out and weed in my garden. It’s a rather depressing thing to do, as this years garden has been a real disaster. Due to the wet weather we have not had many delicious vegetables. Usually at this time of year my cucumbers are overwhelming us. This year I am lucky if I have 2 or three a week. I only have 4 Butternut Squash, and no corn at all.
My potted tomatoes have produced quite a few yummy tomatoes, and my Japanese eggplant truly is prolific and it’s vegetation delicious, so perhaps all is not lost.
The sun did shine today and I hope tomorrow too, and if it does I will take Anneliese for another walk and hope she continues to show me how well she can do out in the big world!
Did you ever have one of those days that went so well that you stand there in the sunshine (yes, the sun is shining today!) and with every breath you take, you feel wonderful and happy?
Today was one of those days.
It started with me losing 1.6 pounds at Weight Watchers, thus putting me over 40 pounds down from my starting weight, and just a mere 6 1/2 pounds from my goal weight! Once I weighed in, I felt absolutely slender!
Top that off with the fact that I was mistaken for being less than 40 years old, and I was truly ecstatic!
I had a rather cute gentleman flirt with me in the grocery store, and today I seemed to find everything I needed and wanted without a problem.
When I was driving home I listened to one of my favorite CD’s. It’s mostly instrumental music as it is from the sound track of “The Lake House”, and I felt my spirit soar.
Arriving home, I was greeted by Hubby and the dogs with such happiness, I thought I should probably go off more frequently just so I can enjoy the welcome home!
The sun continued to shine all afternoon and I was able to actually get a few things done outside, like fertilize my plants. I also got to eat my first plum of the season. It was bruise from the hail, but the flavor was good, so I guess that will mean great jam!
Yes, it’s been a good day!
Since we have not had anything resembling summer this year, it is quite simple as to how I will spend my birthday in November.
I am going to go to the tropics for one week. I will slather on sunscreen and sit in the sun, romp on the beach, and play in the ocean. I may even wear a two piece bathing suit, as I hear that the laws against indecent exposure are less strict there, than they are here in the states.
I will dance under the moon light and have breakfast overlooking the sea.
Yes, we had rain again today.
I cannot believe the amount of rain that has fallen this summer, nor can I believe the hail storms we have had either. Until this summer I had seen a few hail storms in my life. This year, I have lost count on how many of them we have had.
Forget the gentle breezes, or the long lazy days of sunshine and heat, it has been one wet mess after another.
I want the sunshine. I want the heat that we only get for two maybe three months before it starts to get cold again! I want to be able to justify why I am wearing shorts when I go to Weight Watchers each week when the temperatures are in the 60’s, other than they weigh less than pants and I am trying to lose those last nine pounds any way I can!
Oh the sun actually did come out for a bit today. Just to tease us, I think. For just when I thought perhaps we might not have another day of rain, the clouds came back and the rain began to fall in sheets!
So, it’s simple. I’ll just make sure that for my birthday I have sunshine, warm temperatures and gentle tropical breezes.
Ah, excuse me while I go lie down and dream.
I was sitting here watching the Olympics when I started to think that real people don’t do what these athletes do. Real people have aches and pains, sprain wrists and ankles, twist knees and trip over their own feet. Come on, could any of us really swim that fast, or do multiple flips on a balance beam?
I started thinking about the real Olympics. You know, the ones we live with every day. Like, “Navigating Your Way To The Coffee Pot In The Morning”, or “Carrying A Full Basket Of Laundry Down To The Basement While Wearing Flip Flops”.
I wondered what I might be doing now that would give me a gold medal, or at least honorable mention in the “She Survived” category.
We all know that my skiing skills are such that I should be very careful when going down hill. I should also be careful when being outside as I can’t afford to lose anymore of my nose to skin cancer, and reaching over counter tops is also a category best left to younger stronger backs than mine.
Lets see what can I do in the “Games of Life Olympics“?
I truly excel at feeding 4 dogs at one time without loss of limb.
I can carry arm loads of groceries up the stairs without killing myself. (At least most of the time.)
But probably my biggest accomplishment is that I can make microwave popcorn without burning a kernel!
So what is your special skill? What can you get a “Gold Medal” in, in this game called life?
A few days ago friends of ours invited us to come and help ourselves to their blueberries. They have at least half a dozen bushes of blueberries and they were loaded! Hubby and I each brought a large basket and we began to pick. We picked and picked filling up our baskets in less than an hour! When I stood and looked at the area that we had been picking in I was shocked to see that you couldn’t even tell that we had picked any at all! And we had picked 18 pounds of blueberries!!!
We came home and looked at our bounty. What to do, what to do. We decided to make Blueberry Jam. We got out our canning books and found two recipes. The first one we made was a low sugar recipe and since Hubby has type 2 diabetes and I am a Weight Watcher, we thought this would be a good one to try.
So we measured everything out and got to work. Because I preserve things all the time, we have a good stock of glass jars, lids and rings to store our jams in. Hubby got all of those out and into their sterilizing pot, while I cooked the jam.
The first batch jelled so nicely and since we had all those berries we made a quick second batch. For the third batch we decided to try a regular jam recipe (more sugar) and that came out well too.
Soon we will have the plums and peaches to can and we will be very busy. The fruit on our trees, although not good eating fruit because of the hail damage, will make great jams and jellies. The apples I will make sauce with both for eating and for cooking with. Thank goodness for canning jars and for freezers.
I have been awarded The “Brilliant Weblog Award”
by Diane
over at DianeCA’s Metamorphoses. We have gotten to be friends by sharing our lives with each other through our blogs. I love that Diane and her husband Renny are such wonderful people and I really enjoy their writing. Thank you so much for this award, Diane. I am humbled by it!
Now it is time for me to nominate a few people that I enjoy reading.
The rules for this award are:
* The winner can put the logo on his/her blog.
* Link to the person you received your award from.
* Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
* Put links to those blogs on yours.
* Leave a message on the blogs of the people you have nominated.
I now have the honor of sending the award on to seven other bloggers. Here are my picks:
The storms on Thursday were even worse than Hubby and I could have imagined. When we woke this morning, we heard on the news that our area had been devastated by the torrential rain. We’d gotten 4.2 inches of rain in 35 minutes, so you can imagine the chaos this caused. Maybe you can’t. I certainly had never seen anything quite like this. I hope you will take a moment and watch this video of what the storms did to our community.
As we walked along the broken roads, with our neighbors and fellow towns-people, the smell of tar was everywhere. I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined this. Paved roads, twisted and broken like peanut brittle! There were trees standing there, but their roots were completely exposed and will need to be removed. Many homes will need to be gutted and repaired. I can’t even count the driveways that will need to be rebuilt, and how did we make out?
As you saw in Fridays post we had lost many pieces of fruit. However, when Hubby and I went out and started to carefully examine our crop we found that the 3 hail storms that went through had decimated the fruit that was still on the trees.
Oh, we’ll be able to make apple sauce, and we can make peach and plum jams, but there will be no premium fruit from out trees this year, and that has saddened us.
That’s okay. There is always next year.
You would not believe the storms that went through here on Thursday afternoon and evening. The wind blew with gusts up to 50 miles an hour and 4.2 inches of rain fell in a very short period of time. Our power went out sometime during the first of three hail storms, and has been out ever since.
The really amazing part is. We never lose our electricity. In fact a few years ago when Hubby insisted we purchase a generator, I scoffed at the idea. We have, however used the generator a few times and had lights when no one else has.
Like right now.
We watched with horror as the hail fell and the peach tree that is full of beautiful blushing peaches seemed to bend with the elements. We still don’t know the full extent of the damage and probably won’t until tomorrow.
Honestly this has been one of the wettest, stormiest summers I can recall since I was a teenage on Cape Cod and it rained literally every day, thus killing the tourist business for the entire summer.
Lest you think I am making too much of this I need to tell you that many roads here have been washed away, and I think it will take a lot of time, work and money to get the roads back into passable shape.
So what is forecast for the next week? If you guessed thunderstorms, lightening and lots of rain, then you would be correct.
I was out in my garden today before the storms started and noted that my summer squash and zucchini plants all have root rot from the rain. I may get a few more vegetables off of the vines before they completely die, but it will not be long. I fear the cucumbers are a loss.
Ah, Mother Nature is a fierce woman to deal with! After all, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”!
**Update**
Here are a few pictures just taken outside in our orchard.
This is our MacIntosh tree. It probably sustained the greatest loss of fruit.
See all the little apples on the ground?
And below is our beautiful peach tree. I couldn’t see any breaks, as we have it heavily supported, and the loss of fruit is low. I just hope that once the fruit ripens and we can take the weight off the branches that it will spring back to life.
I went to Weight Watchers on Wednesday and although I felt lighter, the scale didn’t show even an ounce worth of loss! I stayed exactly the same. Ugh! I was moderately upset. I sat down and started to talk to “my girls” and then the meeting started.
I know I have mentioned this before, but I get so much out of the meetings. They just fill me up with positive feelings and get me ready to start another week and handle the trials and tribulations of life.
By the time the meeting ended I was ready for anything….well almost!
As we walked out to our cars we were greeted with a torrential downpour! I had my rain jacket on, but my legs got slightly wet. I just hate that!
I had, however, heard about an end of the season sale on swim suits. Since I love to shop, and need a new suit, I wasn’t going to let a little waterfall of rain stop me.
Now I know that almost all women can relate to this. When was the last time you actually went out and bought a swim suit without pain?
I tried on 6 different suits and have to tell you, if I hadn’t already lost all this weight, I would be convinced I was terribly obese! These ill fitting suits showed me why they were still on the racks, and marked down to almost nothing.
Needless to say, I left empty handed.
I drove back home, stopping to get our mail and that’s when the heaviest shower hit and I got literally soaked! Once I got in, I changed into long jeans and a chamois shirt just to warm up.
The afternoon was spent making blueberry jam and inventorying our canning supplies. Soon the peaches and plums will be ripe and ready for canning and jam making.
Now if the rain would just go away, I would be a very happy girl.