Tomato Basil Soup

Even though it's hot outside, I love fresh tomato basil soup. The tomatoes are from my friend and the basil is from my garden. It's looks like carrot soup pureed, but that is after the cream is added. Yum.

Sweet Summer Treat

Summer is great for cold treats. Instead of ice cream, I sometimes make frozen banana bites. They are dipped into vanilla yogurt then toasted coconut or tiny peanut chips. Yummy, and less calories than ice cream.

The local bakery

Ahhh. A nice start to the day with Tom before garden and house chores.

The joys of gardening

The potted Blue Angel rose has bloomed abundantly. So gardening has its ups and downs and its "wait and see's."

The woes of gardening

Tomatoes do not like to be planted late nor transplanted once they have set fruit; but the sprinkler trenches required a move so I tried it anyway. One survived and two didn't, but they still yielded a small crop. Thank goodness for friends who also garden. Well, there's always next year.

Gardeners know all the best dirt

When there's nothing but dirt in the backyard and the vegetable garden is at the back of the lot, watering is a muddy business. This is after 5 hours of trimming, watering, weeding, loading the dumpster several times, and organizing the yard utility area. I had to take a bath with the garden hose before entering the house.

Blog Day

After working on the family photos for six hours yesterday, a light fever came over me and I succumbed to the cold I've been trying to avoid for days. My voice is basso profundo, sore throat, but no runny nose....yet. I took a long nap then rested in a chair and read farm and quilting blogs on the internet. A couple are amazing, and I follow them regularly. I found a cool site for embroidery: Crab Apple Hills. I will join their stitchery club. Though I'm not crazy about the name, I meet every criterion:

Join our Knot-y Girls Stitchery Club!!

Before you can proudly display the official seal of a Knot-y Girl

you must first meet our strict criteria:

1. You must embroider

2. You must have un-finished projects that you

“will get to sooner or later”

3. You must own several patterns that you will probably never make

4. You must have, AT LEAST ONCE, purchased a pattern

that you later found you already owned

5. You must have, AT LEAST ONCE, sewn either your clothing,

tablecloth or a finger to one of your stitcheries

Congratulations!

You are now an official Knot-y Girl!!

It sure smells good in here...

...that's what my piano students say on bread baking day.

It's a girl!

Miss Bella Mia: It's good to be the Queen

Roxanne got a standard poodle puppy this week. But Eric, Vanessa and Grant all claim her too. A cousin for Duchess, Sasha and Tiffany, and Jules (pretty much everyone in the family has dogs). I don't envy them the "new baby" training stage, but she is playful, lovable, and loves to be held. Just wait until she's 60 pounds!

First visitor

First visitor to our birdhouse since adding seed recently. Now that his tummy is satisfied, he's singing his thanks to God. The picture is fuzzy because it was taken through the screen door, so I wouldn't frighten him.

Duchess Gwendolyn

This little Havanese has declared herself Queen of the Household, even though she came from a spurious background and was rescued from "The Pound" not the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. Her name is inspired by the children's book about a homeless cat in the city who thought her name was Scat because that's what she was called everywhere she went, but eventually was picked up by a little girl who took her home and gave her a jeweled collar and let her drink milk from a dish, and gave her a real name: Gwendolyn. So this royal rascal assures we don't yet have an empty nest. She has a jeweled collar and loves to drink milk from a dish. She gets all our puppy love.

A life in pictures

Trying to organize a lifetime of pictures, first by decade then by year. I'm up to the 1990s. Note to self: at least put the year on the back as soon as they're printed.

But then, I don't print pictures anymore. Since a couple of years ago, they're all stored on my computer. That's a whole other pending project. Putting the grandchildren's pictures on a CD for them.

Garden redesign

Can you imagine weeding this amount of garden space?

Notice the new fence along the back.

The garden in 2007

Our beautiful English garden is being redesigned to mostly grass. I will still have areas for flowerbeds, but not the entire huge backyard! It was impossible to keep up the weeding and also have a life. The sprinkler trenches have been dug, and the pipe and electronics will be installed this week. It looks sad now, but will be beautiful soon. Have faith.

Exercise, gardening, and finally rest!

Today was both exhausting and restful. This morning Tom took his usual Saturday hike to the other side of town and back (10 miles). I am getting reacquainted with my road bike, and rode the same route. He's the athlete. His effort took 3 hours and he does it EVERY Saturday. My effort took an hour, and I probably won't do it that often.

Anyway, when we returned home the gardener and landscaper were hard at work trenching the backyard for new sprinkler lines. Since we've dug up the elaborate garden for a simpler one, we have 3 large piles of supplies: gray large trapezoid bricks, regular red bricks, and a woodpile. The orange groves our valley is renowned for are slowly disappearing for new homes and businesses. One day I actually saw them cutting some down (they usually do it at night so the citizens don't notice raise a fuss until suddenly a field is cleared). I asked if I could pay for a truckload, and they agreed. Thus orange tree firewood. But I digress. We had to move the large gray brick pile and half the wood pile so electrical line could be installed to automate the sprinklers. So we spent three hours in the garden doing that and clearing rocks unearthed by the trencher (we live in a river plain), and removing plant debris. After lunch we both napped a couple of hours and had a relaxing afternoon. I sewed awhile on a project requested by a friend who is going to deliver it to remote Africa women in a few days. Then dinner and more resting. A good day.

About that river rock. Tom and I have disposed of two partial truckloads of rock. Then three days ago my ten-year-old grandson and I loaded three wheel barrow loads into the truck bed and "released them into the wild" of the nearby dry riverbed. It's amazing that anything grows in the garden with the amount of rock that is lying hidden beneath the soil.

Picnic in the park

Our summer music festival venue.

I'm trying to change my lifestyle: carefully selecting what I eat and exercise consistently. However, summertime has just the best foods to eat and so many celebrations requiring food. My sister, her husband, Tom and I have begun having a picnic each Friday night at the local summer music festival. Delightful sitting on blanketed grass and enjoying the slightly cooler evening with good food and excellent music.

:( I baked oatmeal raisin cookies this week for my piano students theory classes. They loved them and so did I, so the leftovers went to the monthly quilt guild meeting Friday morning.

:) I've substituted buying store brand ice cream by the half gallon for making my own in my Vita Mix machine: 1 cup milk, 1 pound frozen fruit, 1/4 cup Splenda sweetener, 1-2 tsp vanilla. Takes 3 minutes. Delicious. Makes two generous servings. I get bonus points from Tom, and I don't eat as much, because I don't make it that often. With ice cream in the freezer its too easy to frequently serve up a cone with a double-dip.