The Official Start of Summer

Memorial Day weekend - we're very thankful for our military - past, present, and future.

Summer has officially started for me. After feeding some mountain bikers breakfast, I spent most of Sunday doing more canning - another batch of Strawberry-Vanilla Sauce, just because it's so dang good. That and we eat a lot of ice cream ...

I also tried a Cherry Lemon-Thyme Marmalade. I picked up some cherries at the farmers market and then had to buy 2 more pounds to make the recipe. Initially, I wondered about the logic of buying more fruit at the store when the point for me is to harvest/can what's local.


After having it for breakfast on toast this morning, totally worth the effort and added expense.

I also collected the first haul from the garden - a pile of beets and a couple of squash. Yum.


We took our first canoe trip of the season...




Next time, though, I'll be fine without the thunder, lightning, wind, and rain at the end of the trip.

May 2010

It's been brought to my attention that few people know we have dogs. I spend a lot of space talking about the kittens, so much so that you would think the blog was mostly about the cats and not the house. So, yeah, we've also got 2 dogs.

Buster...

And Sadie..


She's a little camera shy. Well, that and I'm a crappy photographer.


It occurred to me that I haven't written anything here since the end of April. Now May is almost over...in the meantime, how cute is this festive table?


And these two? How cute are they?


Mother's Day weekend I bought a flat of strawberries and made 3 types of jam and some strawberry/vanilla sauce (for ice cream, pound cake, etc). Jay helped me make jam.


Don't pass out. I was shocked too.

Then we went over to MaryBeth & Brian's one night to have birthday cake with his Grandmother. How precious is this cake?

We rode our bikes home and were greeted by this guy:


He was most likely eaten the next day by the really big snake we found in the flower bed.

Speaking of flowers, May has been a really good month for the flowers.




I've got peaches, pears, and a couple of cherries on the trees...




The garden has gone nuts...

And the bees are keeping very busy...


Jay's been busy too, digging the water and electric lines.


And Jeff came over to help...




They got a lot done. Seriously, they're having to jackhammer through rock.

So, that's been our May - busy.

We're all totally exhausted.