The O-Zone

Summertime we should see deep blue skies, but here the air is pretty heavy with smoke.  Even though the fires are a long way from here, this morning you’d think you were singing songs around the campfire.

The colors of summer, cool blue sky, deep blue shadows, smokey blue... well... smoke.

So far we’ve gotten enough rains from the thunderstorms which roll through to keep the hills green.  This is a more “normal” summer weather pattern this year, unlike the prior three summers we’ve lived here where the hills were dry and the grasses were crunchy by the end of June at the latest.  Summer temperatures have arrived, however.  Yesterday we saw a high of 92F (33.3C) and today is forecast for at least that hot.  We won’t see any relief from high heat until the end of this week when more thunderstorms are predicted.  Hopefully they will contain rain and not just dry lightning as the green grass we’re seeing will not be green much longer.

Serviceberries are blue when ripe. These few remaining berries have some sort of mold covering them, perhaps from all the rains we've seen this summer.

Elderberries are also blue, a more powder-smoke blue.  Several bushes along the road up to our house are loaded with the berries, a favorite of all sorts of bird species.  All sorts of berries are blue this time of year, and my most favorite of all is blueberries.  I froze the berries I bought and we’ll have pancakes and muffins all winter.  I smile about that whenever it crosses my mind.

"It's shiny, Captain."

My new computer 🙂  Dan is getting it all set up for me.  I’m such a lucky girl, I have in-home tech support and an admin on hand at all times.  Yes, I’m spoiled.  This is as it should be.

A half box of fresh totally tree-ripened peaches.

They have a very faint blue tinted fuzz, hence they fit into the category of all things blue.  We picked these up yesterday when we made a trip to our favorite fruit stand.  We also brought home three small seedless watermelons, Queen Anne cherries, and ears of corn.  All of these are more sure signs of summer.

We were feeling blue until Dan found this cookbook. This totally solved our lack of bread in the house.

I love to bake things on Sunday, and that’s my plan for the day, to play in the kitchen.  Yesterday I made two kinds of muffins, a banana-walnut-cinnamon muffin, and a lemon-coconut muffin.  They were both absolutely delicious.  I still have four bananas which are perfectly ripe and I will make two more batches of muffins for the freezer so we have them over the coming month.

A baby Calliope Hummingbird. We will be blue shortly as these little guys will leave our mountains within the next several weeks.

The adults are all gone, for the most part, leaving behind the babies to find their way south.  Migration is such a miraculous annual event.  Truly astounding that these tiny creatures can go so far in such a small amount of time.

He thinks hot weather is interesting.

How does he fit into a blue category?  He’s a Russian Blue, or at least partly that color variety.  Last night he was so hot.  He was laying flat on the floor unside down and completely stretched out with his paws above his head and back legs stretched out straight by his tail.  He looks dead until his belly gets tickled, and then he comes alive.  He gives us a dirty look if we disturb his cooling off postures but it obviously takes too much energy to do anything about it.

This morning a Snowshoe Hare came up to the sliding glass door where Mish was sitting, and they got nose-to-nose before the bunny left the porch.  I’m not entirely sure he even saw the cat; it was more like he was admiring his reflection in a mirror or wondering who that really good-looking bunny was.  Mish got a hugely fluffed tail out of the encounter.  He was feeling blue that he couldn’t go chase.

Just pulled this out of the oven, and it is still bubbling.  Decided to take a picture quick, before we devoured it.

Cinnamon and peaches, baking together. Wow, what an aroma!

Our plumbing project is finished as far as we can take it right now.  There are a couple of very minor leaks which may resolve themselves over time.  We’re going to keep an eye on things and see how it goes, and the buckets will live here for a while.

From left to right we have a shutoff valve, a sediment filter, the water softener tank, and then the conditioned water flows into the house.

This system solved a number of problems.  The shutoff valve and original house filter were both in the crawl space which is accessed by the door to the right of the filters.  It was extremely difficult to change that original filter.  We removed the original filter and left the filter housing in the crawl space as a means to drain the pipes.

This new water conditioner is like a catalytic converter in that it changes the polarity of the calcium carbonate which is in suspension in the water, and makes it so that it won’t stick to anything like pipes or plumbing fixtures, or hair or clothes.  The calcium carbonate is still present in the water, but it is not in suspension and just slides on through.  Very cool concept.

Unlike normal water softeners, this one requires no electricity, and it doesn't add salt to water we are drinking or using, nor does it contaminate ground water with saline.

There is a LOT of work pictured here.  We need to build the door to the crawl space, seal the grout, remove the stovepipe and patch the sheetrock, complete the electrical issues like moving light fixtures and fixing the wiring in boxes, install closet doors to the laundry closet, and then do all the painting.

It’s better than it was though, we have a floor that is possible to clean down there now.

“Red sky at morning, sailors take warning….”  So…  what cosmic message do bunnies send, when orange colored from a sunset?

"Ehh, what's up Doc?" Is this his message? I asked him to say "Cheeze" for the camera and he sniffed at me and continued munching his clover.

It was a fascinating sky last night.  Thunderstorms grew on the mountain right above us.

Thick dark clouds, heavy with rain, thunder and lightning, played havoc with our satellite dishes, blocking the signals entirely.

And to the west the sky was clearing.  The sunset was casting a warm orange fire over everything around us.

Clouds along the horizon were rimmed with gold in an orange sky.

These colors are reflected back onto the eastern landscape.

Highly entertaining vistas to enjoy as the moon set.  I should have taken a picture of that as well but I was being too comfortable in my chair.

More plumbing today.  It never goes well when modifying existing plumbing in an owner-built house when the original owner really didn’t have much of a clue about the subject to begin with and used different sizes of pipe in different locations.  We would have gotten farther along yesterday but the local electric company had an area-wide planned power outage  which lasted until mid evening, and no stores were open less than a 2 hour drive from here that stocked plumbing pipe or fixtures.  We remembered the planned power outage when the stores didn’t answer their phones.  Otherwise, we never would have known they were doing that.  Lovely!!  It puts being in the dark into a new light.

So the saga continues.  We’ll go shopping this morning and continue along.  It is going well except, well, it is a plumbing project and those never go well.

Ever since last winter when I realized that I couldn’t eat gluten anymore, I’ve been looking for a good bread recipe, one that would meet with approval from Dan.  He bought a couple of really good gluten-free baking cookbooks and I’ve been making things from them, and searching for a bread recipe that would make good peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and toast.

Success!  This one is excellent.  I’m so happy I can hardly sit still 🙂 and I want to dance around the house.  I can’t do that, however, as our parrots tend to get carried away and start yelling and even screaming.  I can never tell if they approve or want me to stop before I damage their little minds.  So, I will be using my energy for plumbing today instead.

This is a moist loaf, great texture, perfect color like a good 100% whole wheat loaf, and excellent taste. Happiness reigns supreme!

I’m just delighted, but being reserved and restrained in my enthusiasm, as usual.

This is a very odd thing to wake up to in July.

Fog!!!

The past several days we’ve had thunder and lightning, and very fortunately a lot of rain along with the storms.  So much rain, in point of fact, that our house is shrouded in fog this morning.  The air feels so soft and carressing on my skin.  It’s just lovely.  More rain is predicted for the next couple of days, along with thunder and lightning.  The woods are pretty drenched at the moment, and it looks like fires near here would be highly unlikely from lightning strikes.  There is always a risk of a human caused fire as a result of some idiot doing something stupid or criminal.  So far, though, so good.

It’s hard to be worried about something like a forest fire, or plumbing, when I have a loaf of bread in the refrigerator.

Forecast today and tomorrow is thunderstorms and a chance of rain.  The forest fire northwest of us blew up overnight and is now being called “out of control.”  This is not what we wanted to hear!

This morning while I was working I saw multiple bolts of lightning striking the ground due west of us, and it was exceedingly distracting!  We heard thunder on a few of the bolts but the majority were out of our hearing range.

Amazing how a change in season can change my perspective on the sky. In the spring or fall, this sky looks welcoming, promising rains.

In mid summer, this sky looks threatening and very frightening. The mountains to the far west are totally obscured by smoke laying heavily in the valley,

Trying not to freak out and just get mentally prepared to have to leave on fairly short notice.  We have traveling bird cages and the kitty’s carrying case all accessible and ready to go, and we’ll just stick close to home until we know if this storm has sparked any fires.

The changing season is still bringing us new wildflowers to admire off the front deck.

A Sagebrush Mariposa, this is a member of the Lily family and used to be widespread but cattle munch the flowers which kills the bulbs and these are now fairly rare throughout their range.

We have several of these blooming.  We think about extending the area we mow but decided not to risk accidentally losing these plants.

This flower inspired a knitting pattern for a lace scarf.

It’s very stylized, but it was fun to design.

A lace scarf using some handspun yarn.

This is a cinquefoil, but which one is somewhat of a mystery. This is a member of the Rose family.

This a Sulpher Buckwheat; they become edged with pink as they age. The scientific name is Eriogonum umbellatum for anybody who cares.

Tonight we will watch the fourth episode of “Torchwood:  Children of Earth” on BBC-America.  This is an excellent science fiction show and we’re very much enjoying it.  It gave me spooky dreams last night.  I was awakened in the middle of the night by a entire hunting family of coyotes right next to the house, all talking to each other at full voice.  Then I heard deer complaining about the chorus a bit higher up the mountain and the coyotes must have heard it as well as they left our immediate vicinity.  It was too hot to sleep last night as well.  I think I may have to take a nap.

The fires to the west of us continue to generate spectacular sunsets.  The fires are coming under control and this is wonderful news; people get to return to their homes now.

This sunset lasted for almost half an hour, and changed character as the sun set.

Smoke blew out of here yesterday, and the sky here was crystal clear. It came back today when the winds turned around.

We have had lots of baby activity around the house.  Yesterday there was a baby Snowshoe Hare sitting next to the bushes by the front of our house.  We’ve never seen a baby rabbit that small, and it had “I am a rock.  I am invisible” behaviour down pat.  It was smaller than the palm of my hand; I couldn’t resist.  I petted his head and he hopped off as quickly as he could, but he was so tiny he moved very slowly.  I hope I didn’t stunt his growth!  He was so incredibly soft.

This morning a doe and her fawn paid us a visit.

Standing at the edge of mountain shadow created by the rising sun, they had off into the sunshine looking for breakfast.

Several does are raising their babies around our home.  One poor momma has twins, and they run circles around her, literally.  It is so fun to watch how exhuberant the fawns are and how much fun they have leaping and frolicking in the field of wildflowers outside our front door.

Yesterday some gluten-free flours we ordered arrived, along with several sets of English muffin rings.  My plan today is to play with my new gluten-free baking cookbooks.  Last night I made a peach crisp from a recipe in one of the books, and it was absolutely delicious.  This bodes well for my cooking fun today!

I’ve been working on a new lace shawl project using a very fine gauge varigated alpaca/silk yarn, from a book called “Folk Shawls” by Cheryl Oberle.   The pattern is a Norwegian Box Lace, an adaption from a woven lace shawl.  I’m almost 25% complete at this point.

Lace knitting is so cool because the beauty is hidden until it is blocked.

Right now, this just looks like a tiny crinkled fabric.  Just wait 🙂

I have a lot of cleaning to do today on the basement floor tile.  The grout has set overnight and I can get the haze on the tiles removed entirely, and then tomorrow put the sealant on the grout lines, and then it will be a finished floor.  The newest batch of grout needs to set at least 48 hours before sealant is applied.

My back and legs were so sore when I finished putting grout down a couple of days ago, I wasn’t sure how I would be feeling yesterday or today, but I’ve completely gotten over that soreness.  Now if I can just get into a habit of some strenuous exercising, I could avoid feeling that way.  It’s a thought.  Realistically, I wonder what the odds are of that happening.  Some exercise is good, but strenuous?  Get real.

Speaking of exercise, Mishkin caught a mouse three nights in a row.  This morning he was mouseless, poor kitty, and he’s been running around the house all morning looking for some mischief to be involved in.

Dan is going to put a new version of Linux on my computer this morning, and see if the current flavor of Linux is causing this odd screen dimming phenomenon I’m experiencing.  I hope that is the case; I really don’t want to have to buy a new computer.  The dimming stopped last week and we canceled the computer we’d ordered from Dell, not an easy task as the order was not completed in the first place and it confused Dell to no end when we insisted we’d ordered a computer and they didn’t find it in their system.  Fun and games!

Yesterday we ran out of the grout used on the tile floor, and so today we found some, only a 3 hour round trip to pick it up.

When we got home, I finished the grout and did the first cleaning of the floor.  Tomorrow I’ll do the major cleaning of the floor and the next day we’ll put the sealent on the grout.

The floor at the bottom of the stairs is a slightly different color tile from what we put in the basement.

If we had been thinking at the time we purchased the tile for the upstairs and base of the stairs into the basement, we would have purchased enough tile for the basement floor as well.  But we hadn’t decided what to use to finish the basement floor; such is life. 🙂

Some of the colors I'm considering for painting the basement.

I want to use a wainscotting finish on the bottom of the basement walls, and paint it a different color than the upper walls.  We’re also considering using tile on the windowsills.  So many things to figure out but it’s all the fun stuff.

Last nights’ sunset was courtesy of all the fires burning immediately north west of us, rough 11 square miles, some of which are contained and some of which aren’t, but they are working on them. Scary stuff for the people who had to leave their homes!

The sky was actually clear of clouds, this is all smoke.

There are several unmistakable signs regarding summer.

First, the hummingbirds arrive and set up housekeeping.  We call summer time “hummingbird season.”  The unmistakable sign that summer is here are the baby birds bombing around the house.  Like these two, for example.

Baby Rufous Hummingbirds, both keeping a beady eye on the photographer standing between them and the feeders on the front porch.

These two managed to sit still long enough for me to attempt to focus on them.  They are so tiny, I didn’t really manage it.  Cute little guys!!!

Perky, as ever. Looking at me and his little friend up to the left of him in the bush.

He's puffing up, ready to explode if I don't move off the porch soon!

Another unmistakable sign of summer is…

Peaches!!!!!!! A whole flat of them to play with - heaven.

Yesterday we went to our favorite fruit stand, about an hour and a half from here.  We picked up peaches, several zucchini, a couple of sweet Walla Walla yellow onions, a watermelon, four ears of corn (lunch today), and a few pounds of sweet Queen Anne cherries.

And the third unmistakable sign of summer is …

Smoke from a forest fire.

This fire is 100 miles from us, to the northwest, and started mid afternoon yesterday.  It is over 1200 acres now, 9 homes and buildings have been lost and hundreds more are in danger; 15,000 people were evacuated yesterday.  They are fighting this like crazy, but if the winds pick up, they won’t have much, if any, chance of stopping it.  The forecast is for extremely hot and dry conditions for the next week or so.

Makes me nervous, but we’ll stick close to home now until the fall rains return.

Yesterday morning, Dan woke me to tell me that Mishkin had a mouse and was being a brat about giving it up.  Scenario:

Mishkin looks up and sees Dan, says to his playmate:  “Cheese it!  It’s the cops!”  Picks up his toy mouse and scampers upstairs.

Dan picks up leather glove and awakens innocently sleeping wife.

Wife wakes up, more or less, gets dressed and heads upstairs, glove in hand, to see what their furry child has done with the mouse.

Mishkin standing in his bedroom doorway, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt his his mouth (I hear butter coated mice are delicious), turns around and runs to a stack of videos in a shelf, drops the mouse and says, “Quick, hide in here, she’ll never find you.”

Wife starts moving videos while Mish prowls around her ankles, attempting distraction.  Mouse scampers out of shelf when enough cover has been removed, and dives into stack of videos at wife’s feet.  But, wife is now awake and snatches up the mouse.

Mishkin wasn’t paying attention at that moment and missed entire mouse-napping.

Wife carries mouse-in-glove outside and tosses into bushes.  Mishkin spends rest of the day looking for “The One That Got Away:  It was THISSSSSSSS big.”

Hell of a way to start my morning 🙂

Yesterday I also observed several feeding styles of Snowshoe Hare.  We had three in the front yard demonstrating their technique.  There is the nibble daintily, then wash paws and whiskers thoroughly, and take another nibble or two;  repeat.

There is the lawn mower method, albeit a very slow mower; move in a straight line across the grass and don’t stop until you run into something non-edible.

There is the stand straight up and get the high stuff method; standing at the end of a patch of tall grass, pluck one piece from the ground, insert into mouth and start munching until entire stalk disappears, and then repeat.

A yard full of Snowshoe Hares munching things is another sign of summer.

Yesterday evening we had a fawn running races around the house, flat out as fast as he could move.  They look just hilarious when they are doing that, such beautiful little creatures.

So, all the signs are here and summer has arrived.  It’s official!