Tues. through Fri.

Tuesday I went to Kalispell with Kathleen. We went to Smith's to buy things on the caselot sale. It was the last day of the sale, and they were out of a lot of things. People were stocking up like crazy this year! We went to Taco Bell for lunch, then went to Costco. On the way home we had an unexpected visit with Kathleen's husband's Aunt and Uncle near Whitefish. What lovely people, and such a neat house! Lots of wood and stone, and glassed-in porches. She was quite the painter in the day and there were lovely framed paintings on the wall that she had done. He was a great hunter and there were beautiful mounts of sheep, antelope, goat, etc.

We were quite late getting home and it felt frosty. Steven had covered the squash and tomatoes, but now we went out with flashlights and also covered the potatoes. The sheets were damp and had frozen, so I expected the worst. We must have been in time, because although it was 26 degrees Wednesday morning, there was only light frost damage to the leaves of the potato plants.

The tomatoes and squash took a harder hit, even though Steven had covered them earlier.

According to my book, "The Northern Gardener", squash that has begun ripening will continue to ripen after harvest. Rather than risk losing all my squash in a freeze I harvested some of them and spread them on a towel on the bathroom floor.

We ran in to Fortine, and on the way out we stopped and fed the buffalo.

The hay is across the road. If it's near the fence, the buffalo will lean on the wires trying to get to the hay. That stretches the wires and before long the wires sag and teh buffalo can get out.

The dog was turning in circles trying to watch Steven and the buffalo all at once!

When we came back from Fortine there were two moose just before we turned off the paved road. Both were cows, though one was smaller and might be a 2-year old calf of the bigger one.

They jogged off into the trees after we stopped to take their picture.

Last year I waited too long to gather the tomatoes, thinking the plastic cover on the hoophouse would protect them. They froze. They were still green, like the ones in the picture here, and I brought them in to thaw and see if they would continue ripening, but they turned to mush. So Friday I picked the ones that were near the tops and outsides of the plants, just in case. I hope they'll ripen inside the house. Some were pretty green.

But the leaves on the tops and outer sides had frozen and turned black, even with the cover on the hoophouse. The tomatoes would have been next...

The pumpkin vines were among the corn, and even with a cover over the whole patch, both the corn plants and the leaves on the pumpkin plants froze. The pumpkins seemed okay, no frozen places, so I cut them and brought them in too. I recently heard that they will continue to ripen, too, if brought inside. I guess we'll find out. That's a summer squash on the top right. These are on top of the spaghetti squash that are in the picture above. I covered them with a towel and set these among them.

"Nothing stands between me and being petted!"

The kitten tries to keep me from my computer!

Sunday? Monday?

I've lost track of Sunday and Monday. Until yesterday, the previous week is a blur of cool, rainy days. In between rain showers I went out and dug potatoes and harvested other things, mainly herbs. I chopped a lot of onions and squash this week, for dehydrating. I finished an editing job I was doing and started writing a new fiction story.

Every time I look at the kitten she's found a new way to stretch out. Her hips shouldn't be able to bend like that!

Those stalks are Mullein plants. This is a particularly thick patch, out in the woods behind the garden.

This cool-looking bug was on one of the Mullein flowerheads. I was plucking the little yellow flowers to bring inside and dry.

I pulled two of the plants, complete, so I could dry and save the roots and leaves. The taller of these two is 5'5" tall.
I'll add them to my medicinal herbs, but I rarely use it. There are other herbs that work better in most of the cases I would use it, but I like to be well-supplied!

Mullein flowers drying. It's the second batch I've dried this year.

My sister

"Hi, Marge!"

Hot cocoa, a good book, and a cat.

The perfect recipe for a rainy afternoon, which it is HERE! You're probably 80 and sunny!

Sat. 09/18/10 Rainy again!

It's raining again today!

Raindrops on the rainwater catchment tank. This is a metal ring with no bottom, so that's why it's lined with a huge tarp. It's about 30" deep and 8' across. Someone mathematical can figure out how many gallons that holds. (I expect an email or a comment with the answer! lol)

This can't be OUR kitten...it's laying like a normal cat!

"Odie" laying on her blanket on the porch (taking from the kitchen window).


I quietly got a chair and climbed up on the kitchen counter and held my camera up over the wall and snapped this picture of an unaware Steven!
He does a lot of his writing in the morning.



We had apple pie for breakfast. I made this pie last night with the FIRST APPLES from our own apple trees! After six years of watering and caring for these trees, and going through the sadness of having a rabbit chew the bark off and kill and/or damage our fruit trees, it's amazing to finally get apples!

I'm wanting to say "...and that's freshly whipped cream from our own dairy cow" but we don't have a cow! It's cool whip on the pie.

Since I'm running around with my camera today Steven decided to do something to look busy. He filled the kitchen sinks with hot water off the woodstove, for washing dishes. In this picture he's refilling the kettle.
Technically, he could have brought in a bucket of rainwater from one of the barrels by the house (which are pretty clean), but we often don't think of it. It just means we'll have to haul more from town when we go, to refill the jug.

Keeping his patience and still smiling!
Digital cameras are SO much fun!

I decided to do something useful for a while. I tore open used teabags, which have dried near the woodstove over the last few weeks, and dumped the contents in an old hot chocolate can. Later I'll take them out and sprinkle them on the garden. I've heard that they add minerals to the soil, so I've been doing this for about 2 years now.
The garden does pretty good, despite our climate. Don't know if the tea stuff helps, but apparently doesn't hurt.

Steven and I chopped all these onions yesterday, thinking Tristan would be home over the weekend and run his generator. But he went to Kalispell to hang out with Tim and the other kids, and it's cloudy, so not enough solar charge to run the dehydrator.

Not a problem! I just put the racks in the oven and the pilot light will create a warm, dry environment to dry the onions. Just slower, that's all, but still works!

(Kitten) "Nyah, nyah! I'M inside and YOU'RE not!"
(Dog) "Ha ha! You're stuck inside and I get to play out here!"

There's the wallpaper trim (fishies and bottom-of-the-sea pictures).

The picture above it is from Patty. The caption on the picture says "Everybody out of the tub", and that's a shark fin behind the duckies. Not sure what all shows up on everyone's computer.

A close-up of the trim.

There's the trim behind the toilet and dresser. I'm going to put extra sheets and stuff in the bottom drawers, and things like medical supplies and lightbulbs and stuff in the top two drawers.

There are various little shelves on top of the dresser and toilet that'll be put up. I confiscated Emily's "Little Nemo" stuffed fish to hang in the bathroom!
We don't have the vents and stuff hooked up for the composting toilet yet.

This squash on the lawn swing is what I picked this week. I have a bunch more, too. I dehydrated some already, but I can't keep up with it, so I'm going to Can some of it.

This picture was just a few minutes ago. It's 48 degrees and still raining. After Steven fed the woodstove he headed down to his workshop in "the shack" to work on reloading ammo.

I'm going to finish the story I'm editing. It's the last one right now, so maybe I'll have some time to work on my own writing before I get more sent to me to edit. In addition to the magazine articles I should be writing, I have a couple of fiction stories in the works, as well as a couple of other projects.

Earlier this week I read on the news about a 6-year old girl kicked off her kindergarden cheerleading squad because her mother complained about some phrases in their cheers being a bit racy for such young children. It's sad the girl got punished for this, but...

Kindergarden cheerleaders? What happened to letting kids just be kids? I watched the video and these looked like miniature high school kids out there.

These are 5 and 6 year old little girls! I know little girls like dress-up and such, but still! They should be absorbed with the innocence of childhood. They should be playing dress up with dollies, not on a football field.

My opinion, yes, but I firmly believe we take away childhood too early from our young people today.

Good grief. Kindergarden boys playing football, kindergarden girls being cheerleaders...

What's left for them to look forward to when they get older?

When I was in school you grew up knowing that when you got to a certain grade, certain activities or classes became available to you.

I believed in Santa Claus until second grade.

If my parents were still alive, I'd thank them for allowing me to have that magic so long.

Fri. 09/17/10

"No one will find me here on the chair under the table! Finally...I can get a nap without my picture being taken!"

"or not"

The linoleum is laid, the edges have been caulked to seal it in case water spills on the floor (so it won't get under the linoleum), and I've already put stuff back under the shelves next to the shower!

Steven tests out the new composting toilet!

I still have to paint the dresser to match the theme of blue, white, and black.

Or the theme of fish and ducks and boats!

We made a WMT run (Water,Mail,Trash) to Fortine this afternoon. The clouds were drifting among the mountains.

It rained today, and that is such a blessing, because even though the garden and it's water needs are winding down, this cool, rainy weather means LOTS of clean water available (rain water catchment) for laundry and extra showers; and the cool weather means the woodstove is going, which means free heat for the water!

Nothing is so wonderful as a shower with a huge kettle of fresh, soft, hot rainwater!

God is good.

Thur. 09/16/10

Steven, who usually gets up earlier than I do, worked on an article this morning and got a lot of writing done before I got up. After breakfast he went outside to set up and take some photos for the article. Then he spent the next several hours splitting and stacking firewood.

The kitten helped me lay the linoleum in the bathroom. She kept the carboard center tube from causing trouble!

The far end of the room was easy...it was square. On the other end I had to cut around the shower, back in under the shelves, and around the odd angles on both sides of the door. Stretched my brain to do it, but I did. I tore it a tiny bit in a couple places but it was easy to hide! I'm by no means an expert at laying linoleum. Carpeting is more work to cut, but easier to shape.

I cleaned out the rain gutters, and in this picture I'm tightening some of the screws that hold them up.

"Odie" wanted to come up there with me. She tried hard to figure out how to climb the ladder.

Then I washed the window blinds from the bathroom. That's a scrub brush with a long handle in my hand. This is our large rainwater tank, and the water was actually clean enough to do a good job on the blinds. Then I hung them on the porch to dry. Without a well and running water, this was the best option I had!

The goatling was tethered out nearby. Don't look at where he's nibbling in this picture and think "Poor goat doens't have much to eat!" He spent many happy hours digging through the brush pile behind him and to the right, eating branches we pruned off of service berry, willow, and pine trees! He was so stuffed when Steven walked him back to the pen that the goat practically waddled!

Much-loved friend

Hi Burma!

Wed. 09/15/10

This was not a fun day for the kitten. This morning we loaded her into a carrier (or rather, she was on to me, and Steven had to get ahold of her and put her in the carrier!) and I drove over to Kathleen's. She loaded her identical kitten into their carrier, and off we went to Eureka. We dropped them off at the vet's office for their, um..."cosmetic surgery", you know, the kind that results in them being gender-nuetral, sort of!

Kathleen drove, because our Cherokee was having it's Starter malfunction. We stopped at NAPA and I picked up the new starter, trying not to weep and sob over the huge dent in our finances. It wasn't any easier seeing the even-huger dent Kathleen had to pay out for the parts she and Gregg needed for their vehicles. I don't know what all she had, but it started with a steering box or something like that for their truck.

When I got back from town with the starter, Steven put it on the car. Before he did that he tested the battery to make sure it was still good. It passed.

I changed into "grub" clothes and went up on the roof to caulk the roofing screws and anything else I could see that looked like it might be leaking. I wore the rubberiest, stickiest-bottom shoes I had, and still was slowly slipping down the roof and had to keep rearranging my footing. I was going to use a safety rope but didn't. I don't even have a good excuse for not doing so. I ran out of caulk when I was about half done, but I had started with the center half, which is where it's been leaking, so I figured I might have gotten the worst of it, anyway. I was using silicone caulk, which should last a while. The original silicone caulk Steven put around the skylights when we installed them 4 and 5 years ago (different years for some of the skylights) is still in good shape.

We drove our car when we went back to get the kitties late this afternoon. We had to stop by NAPA and get our core charge back. These birds in the picture were sitting on those dead limbs behind the parking lot at the vet's office. There were trees nearby with red berries and the birds were eating them.

Suddenly they all lifted into the air, swirled around the area, then resettled back on the trees.

The kitties came through fine and are ready to go home. Kathleen's kitten, "Stumpy" is on the left in the red carrier. Ours, which we've officially named "Nermal", is on the right.

This is (part of) the Eureka Farmer's market, which is Wednesdays, 4:30 to 6:30 at Riverside park. I like this market because it really is mostly edibles, all locally grown. There's small amounts of crafts and soaps. And it's all local people, most of whom we either knew or recognized.

We didn't buy anything because most of what was there, we already have enough of in or from our garden. Kathleen bought a couple of Hubbard squashes and I think a couple other things too.

Since we had someone with us who is actually able to function with a camera in her hands, we asked Kathleen to take our picture together.

Of course, before she could take the picture we had to get the mischief out of our systems, you know--making bunny ears behind each other's heads, tickling and poking and shoving. You can tell I'm braced to leap away and yelp if he tickles me again!

And there's Kathleen, ducked under and behind the string blocking cars from that part of the park.

Steven preparing to put gas in a gas can for the chainsaw. And you probably thought we were gassing up the car! Right now the lower grade (87 octane) is $2.89 here at Town Pum in Eureka.

This evening I got the last of the stuff off the bathroom floor so I can lay the linoleum tomorrow. These squash are the last of LAST year's. They've been wrapped up on the floor under the shelves. Amazing, they've kept for a year.