Last day in July

What happened to July???? We have had lots of rain interspersed with some absolutely perfect summer days. The flora and fauna are lovin' this weather. My pole beans are 7 ft. tall and growing. I have several heads of cauliflower, brocolli,great onions, squashes, tomatoes and loads of peppers. I made two bottles of fiery hot pepper vinegar to serve with pork or beef dishes. I made a pepper salad for supper this week. Here is the recipe: seed and chop green peppers, chop a yellow onion, quarter a couple of tomatoes, chop fresh italian parsley and a few leaves of basil, chop a clove of garlic fine; stir together and sprinkle with balsamic vinegar and a bit of evvo. It makes a great side dish too. The flowers in my yard are all huge too. I looked at the pictures of the house I took last summer and compared them to this year. It looks as though I had instant landscaping done.

I like my work hours at the orchard. Most of the time it amounts to 4 hours with an 8 hour day thrown in for good measure. Bashey and I don't like the long days. But we manage.

I finished my notecards for the church's silent auction next week. Pete is donating one of his beautiful handmade spalded maple boxes to showcase the cards. I am also donating a small watercolour painting. The wonderful part of all this is, my creative has been roused from it's rest and I am eager to paint again. Now that is not a guarantee I will paint but at least it is a step in that direction. I think I mentioned,I hung 5 paintings at the winery. Now my grandson, Patrick, who manages a lodge in Smugglers Notch, VT has asked me to hang a few in the lobby there. Turns out, I don't have enough work that I would consider showing for sale. The answer of course, is paint, paint, paint.

We have been selling various local organic goat cheeses at the orchard. My favorite is the Rosemary and Fig Goat Cheese from Painted Goat Farm in Garrettsville, NY. Check it out - just google Painted Goat Farm. Then there is a local goat farm in nearby Argyle called Argyle Goat Farm. All delicious! The blueberries this year are numerous and large and sweet. I will walk up to the blueberry patch to take a picture for you.

I called a neighbor about helping me start my MH. He put a charger on the batteries and viola', she started right up. Next thing is to get the windshields resealed. I have a place who will do that in Glens Falls but I have to take it over there. It is an expensive job but must be done. I now have to register it with DMV and get it inspected after the windshields are fixed. I renewed my membership in the Good Sam Roadside Service so I guess I am almost good to go. I am hoping Sharon, my friend from Tampa, will fly up the end of Dec. and help me drive it to Naples.

The photos include Sebastian giving new meaning to the expression "booty call"; Emily, Dino and Sebastian taking a walk; and a shot of my "office", check out the website, Slyboro Ciderhouse Winery. We just added a new selection made exclusively from the old english cider apple, which is quite black in colour, Kingston Black.

Have day of Joy....

Beautiful July day

Can't quite believe it is almost August. Where has the time gone? I have been chasing Emily and her horse, Dino around Vermont, working at Hick's Orchard again and tending my gardens and lawn. I have been working on some watercolour note cards that I am donating to the church auction. That led to sorting through lots of old sketches, photos and paintings which led to my hauling a few up to the orchard winery for display. They liked them and I think they lend a bit of local colour. I am still picking jap. beetles off the potatoes and the beans which seem to be their preference. I don't like the traps because then all the beetles in the area congregate. I wish the birds would eat them. I saw a lovely doe in my yard early the other morning. I think her presence solves the mystery of the tramped down grass in the marshy area of my yard. I think there are several who sleep there at night. I have tried to create a safe haven for all the creatures who come to my little acre and a half. I hope that is why they are here. Bash and I see lots of different critters in the yard. My winter squash is taking over the yard. See photo. I have volunteer sunflowers scattered around the gardens from feeding the birds. Today, Pete helped me haul home some man-made stones for a path through the new flower garden I am creating. The stone wall is a work in progress and slow going since the stones are heavy. My little tractor and wagon cannot carry many.
Pesto pasta for supper tonight made from the basil in my herb garden. Yummer!

I made reservations for Naples in Jan. and Feb. Now need to find a driver to help bring the coach down right after Christmas. I hope to find a part time job down there for the time I'm there. Right now, the coach won't start. Trying to find a mechanic to come here is a real challenge.

I just discovered a major plumbing problem under my kitchen sink so gotta go friends. Enjoy the photos.

Saturday

Two perfect summer days in a row! We are very grateful after this rainy cool summer. I may not like the rain and cool temps but my veggie garden just loves this weather. I have tomatoes as high as my chin and huge brussels sprout plants. Everyting is doing extremely well. The Jap. beetles came a few days ago but so far I am keeping aheaad of them by picking them off. My lawn became a thick lush hayfield as I waited for my mower to be repaired. But yesterday when I returned from Hick's Orchard where I have been working, there sat my red tractor by the back door, just waiting to get to work. Although, I was looking forward to a power nap after being on my feet most of the day, I succumbed to the lure of the red machine and began to mow. I quit an hour later to greet Pete who brought some most welcome libations. We joined on my porch as I grilled sweet potatoes and salmon fillets. A from-the-garden lettuce, onion and tomato salad and we had another feast. Pete and I enjoy our respective porches. We watch and identify birds with an occasional hot air balloon huffing and puffing in from my porch. At his house, we watch hummers, squirrels, chipmunks racing back and forth and the woodchuck fammily with an occasional family of turkey or deer. Last year we had a hawk swoop in and sit on the barn roof watching us. Oh, the beauty and excitement of a porch.

Hicks' Orchard is picking sour Montmorency cheeries and huge blueberris right now. We have been busy. I have been working in the store this week stocking shelves, cleaning and weighing fruit for the families of pickers that make it a yearly event. I will be in the Winery next week I think. I would like to get some free time to pick some fruit myself. I brought home a quart of cheeries which I pitted, sugared and shared with Pete last night with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yum!

Rosie Pup has been with us all week. She is the alpha dog. It is amazing how Bash just changes his habits to allow her to sleep in all his favorite places. She has emptied his toy crock several times searching for his stash of bones. When she gets to the bottom, she dangles in there huffing and puffing but comes up with nothing since I had already removed the bones. We found last year that the bones create problems between them.

Gotta go mow before so I can run to Granville for groceries then on to a party for Marty Nestle who just graduated from training with the Air Force. Team Jones is hosting the party at their place in Hartford Village. Gloria and Emory are motoring all day today back from the VA mountains where they have been vacationing with two of their grands.

Have a blessed day dear friends.....

Wednesday before the 4th

I am posting a current photo of my little house so you can see how the plants have matured since last summer's photo. I have been building a low stone wall around the new flower bed on the corner of the house near the drive. I found that hefting the big stones is very hard on my back so I only do one load a day. We are going through a rainy patch now. It rains every day - the news said 8" in June. In May, we were in a rain deficit. That is the way of nature.

Yesterday, as I sat out on my porch eating lunch there appeared a large coyote trotting up along the hedgerow towards the road. He was obviously very nervous and was roused up from a noon-day slumber by the town bushhog mowing along the road and ditch. Seeing the coyote explains a lot about the tracks I saw in the snow and the bloody evidence that some creature had been killed for supper. I pray he doesn't get hit on the busy road. I see large domestic kitties all the time too. I have another very welcome and unusual visitor in the presence of a Kingfisher. I don't have a pond for fishing but I think the bird flies over to the huge marsh SE of my house and also flies to my neighbor's pond S of my house. But I am honored that one of my favorite birds has chosen to hang out on the light pole near my porch.

I spend a lot of time and energy creating this sanctuary for critters of all kinds and it is very rewarding when I see them here.

I just posted some photos of the giant dredging project taking place now in Ft. Edward on the Hudson River and adjacent canal. GE poisoned the river there for many years with their effluent discharges. It was all damned up and pretty much contained until the damn was ordered opened. Of course, all the toxins went on down the River. Now GE will pay to clean it up for the next ten years. It is a huge undertaking and is carefully monitored (we hope) to avoid poisoning the drinking water of people all down the River. They will dredge for 16 miles downstream. This clean-up site is the largest of its kind ever. I took the shots from the bridge and from the yacht basin.

I put this website on my Facebook so you should be able to access both.

Last Monday in June

I went out to mow the lawn and got caught in a summer shower. Now I have time to write in my blog and post on Facebook. Friday night Pete and I attended of graduation of two grandchildren, Lydia and Conor from Hartford. It was a nice ceremony, rather short since there were only 43 in the class. It wasn't hot for a change. Conor claimed high honors and received over 10 awards. He will attend Sienna College in the fall. Lydia will attend Plattsburg State in the fall. Hartford has two extra ceremonies to their graduation since they are a small school. One is a rose ceremony where they have a rose bearer, usually a small child, who presents the rose to the graduate who in turn presents it to their mother. The other is a candlelight ceremony where a sibling received an unlighed candle to be lighted and passed on by the graduate. See the attached photos. Saturday, Pete and I started out early to help with the graudation breakfast/brunch being given at Mark and Mary Beth's home in Hartford. They are Lydia's parents. I had prepared two large egg, ham and cheese casseroles the day before and baked them early Sat. morning. It was a huge success with many creative egg dishes, pastries, mimosas and deserts. We left there late morning to attend another graduation party for a friend. It was fun since we kept seeing many of the same people. Then in a summer shower, we left Hartford for Conor's party in Glens Falls at his Aunt's house. It is a lovely gracious home with a heated pool and large shady deck. The kids went swimming, we just parked ourselves under the awning, indulged ourselves with steamed clams, bloodymary's and burgers. Another successful party. Back to Hartford to feed Sebastian before going to another friend's college graduation party in the evening. By then, I was drinking bottled water and falling asleep. Four parties in one day is too much for this old gal.

Early Sunday morning found me cutting up fruit to take to early service at church for fellowship time. Another friend brought coffee cake. That too was a success. Just as I arrived home from church, I had a call from Kate and Will, grandchildren, coming back from NYC announcing they would like to stop by. I truly love drop-in visitors although I had to really scrounge around to feed them but we managed quite nicely. I just absorb their love and companionship - two blessed young people. Will is attending Lasell College in Newton, MA in the fall. Kate is out of work right now but is in the process of re-inventing herself. Everyone has to do it sometime from age 30ish through the mid-forties. She has been a nanny for many years.

Pete stopped by and offered to take Sebastian and I for a ride to Wells, Vermont where we can buy fuel that contains no ethanol. We like that for our lawn mowers etc. Also VT fuel prices are lower than NY's. One of our favorite things to do is go for a late day ride to view all the wildlife in these parts. We stopped at the mkt to pick up a few things for supper, came home to my house where I grilled veggies. I then served crab salad on my fresh garden lettuce and made a dish of coleslaw. We have both consumed way more food on Saturday than we needed so having a light supper was just the ticket. After watching the sun go down from the porch, Pete went home to an early bed (he was out half the night before on a fire call). Bash and I crawled into our bed and were soon fast asleep and none the worse for our graduation weekend.

I have decided to put the MH back on the road even though it means a fairly large expeniture to do so. I really feel the best place to sell it is in the south so we will take it to FL in January. I will need a driving assistant since my eyes are not good enough to drive the entire distance. Call me crazy but hopefully I can find some work in the Naples area. I need to be close to my dear friends Sharon and Brent who are enduring chemo for his cancer which has gone to his lungs. Please dear readers, hold them in the Light of healing to the level of that which is appropriate or in other words, God's Will.

Strawberry season is upon us. We haven't picked yet due to the rainy weather. When cherry season begins, I will be back working at Hick's Orchard. I haven't started my stone wall yet but hope to get that going soon. I have a long list of things to do.

The first image is of grandson Will and granddaughter Kate; second is Conor and his brother Dylan; third is Lydia and brother Thad.

Have a pleasant day.......

Thursday - School's Out!!

I am celebrating by going biking again on the Adirondack Trail in Glens Falls and Lake George. I went yesterday too. Bike 11 miles. Pedaling to an aria by Bocelli, sung in Italian, makes the experience quite etheral and unreal. Yes Gene, I use all my gears too and still walk some. I stopped by Cooper's Cave for homemade ice cream udoing all the good of the calorie burning exercise. I do enjoy sitting in the warm sunshine eating ice cream while people watching. I am now on FaceBook if any of my readers wish to follow that link. I don't devote a lot of time to the computer anymore since the weather is grand, the garden grows (weeds)and the nature calls me outside but I will try to keep up. I have been negligent in posting to this space so I don't know how many of my readers are still active.

I changed my header photo to a shot I took on the way to Emily's horse show in Buskirk, NY. We have a great deal of beauty around us. Emily was disappointed early in that show since she only placed 5th in one class and nothing in the others. Old Dino decided to get playful and bucked right in front of the judge. Not a good way to get a ribbon. But he got down to work in the jumping classes and she won all blues. Once a jumper, always a jumper. They will go to the very prestigious show in East Dorset, Vt. this July and back to the GMHA Hunter Jumper show also in July.

Mowing here takes me about 3 hours. I stopped the other day for a break and as I was sitting on the deck with Sebastian. He woofed a couple of times. Then a passing motorist stopped his truck and walked into my yard gesturing towards the back. He said, "Do you see what is in your yard?" I fully expected a moose but it was a black bull with impressive horns and other parts. He was mooing softly like a kitten and strolling across my lawn. I called to him from the deck, something like, "Hi, bull, where you goin'" He answered with more soft mooing. The motorist went to try to find the farmer who owns the bull while Bash and I observed from the safety of the deck. The bull meandered on down the road and disappeared. He was gone about 30 mins or so. I was preparing to change the oil in my lawn tractor when he reappeared in my yard. A neighboring farmer appeared at the same time. We decided he would try to halter the critter and take him up the road to the farm nearby. We chased the bull speaking softly in "bullease" but Bull would have no part of it. I became the drover and traffic director since I live two busy roads. I have to hand it to Wayne Foote, the farmer, he has tremendous stamina and patience. Finally, after much time and wrestling through the tall grass and the ditches, the bull was snagged. Wayne tied the bull to the back of his old truck. He is truly a modern day cowboy. Certainly not liking roping the critter and tieing him to the saddle horn. Slowly up the road they went with the bull reluctantly following behind. Until the rope broke! Back to wrestling in the ditches and roadside weeds. As luck would have it, Wayne's son and friend came by. On went the four-way flashers and the bull was once again snagged. Now we had a convoy or was it a parade? Two trucks, two cowboys and a bull. Long story short, the bull was returned to his pasture safely. Sebastian is still looking for the bull in the yard.

Pete and I have to attend 4 graduation parties this Saturday. My grandson Will's graduation was two weeks ago. NYS is later than VT. We are both cooking for the first one which is brunch and is being held for Pete's granddaughter, Lydia here in town. He had a grandson, Conor, also graduating this weekend and that party is to be held in Glens Falls. The other two parties are here in town. Graduation ceremonies will be held Friday night in the gym. It will be terribly hot, it always is hot and crowded. I am not really looking forward to it but will surely enjoy the parties.

My trees are full of all the fledged young birds from the nests in the yard. Many different kinds of woodpeckers live here from the largest, the Piliated to the smallest, the Downey. I have many finches of different colors and Tufted Titmouse as well as nuthatches, doves, bluebirds, cardinals, chickadees, huge American Crows, catbirds, orioles and robins. My bird friends are many. There is also a mystery here. Down in back near the swamp is a circle of stamped down grasses. It is visited frequently by my mysterious friends at night. I have never seen them or heard them. In time, they will reveal themselves I'm certain.

Off to ride the trail.
Have a grand and glorious summer day.

Thursday night

Finally, I am writing in this journal. What a busy life I have inadvertently created. I have no idea where the time goes. I get up very early (the sun shines in my window at 4:30 a.m. along with loud birdsong) and I go to bed early since I cannot seem to muster up any more steam. I finished my long-term sub job as a secretary at the Special Ed offices of BOCES in Saratoga after 5 weeks. I met some great women and we had lots of laughs. The work was a challenge since I had very little training and actually hadn't done secretarial work in over 35 years. But I feel better about my ability to retain information and learn a new job. My mind is not all jello afterall. Bashey suffered the most from my long days away. He held his pee for 9 hrs. every day. That is remarkable for a 14 yr. old fellow. I am very releived that it is over and I don't have to drive down there and back anymore.

This week I have had two sub jobs in the area, all special ed classes. It has been nice to catch up on my yard work, wash and shine the MH tires as well as run the engine and genset. Then I mowed, Pete trimmed for me and I finished planting the veggies as well as my new flower garden. I planted a lovely Butterfly Bush out front and a couple of Lilac bushes. The fun part of creating an interesting yard out of an open field is like painting on a blank canvas. It will be a work in progress for sometime. I have to mulch yet. When I get it looking pretty good, I will post a photo.

Still no buyer for the MH. I have had a few lookers since I moved it out front. Such a nice coach. I hate to see it deteriorate.

Since I wrote here last, my granddaughter Emily and her Dino won Grand Champion of a Hunter/Jumper show in S.Woodstock, Vermont. I can't keep up with her so I don't know how she has done since. Our girls' softball team from Hartford HS may take the championship. They are well on their way. We have three graduates this year; My grandson William from Otter Valley HS; Pete's granddaughter Lydia and grandson Conor both from Hartford CS. All three are going to different colleges in the fall. My grandson Travis finished the Iron Man event in Orlando in good time. He is now out west for Army training. Annie my granddaughter is transferring from Tech to UVA in the fall. (Wendy can keep an eye on her). She has a boyfriend at UVA.

I just got off the phone with Gloria and I told her I was finally writing in my blog. She asked how I could remember what took place over the last 3 plus weeks. I realize, I am struggling to do so. But I guess I have a few highlights. Hope you enjoy these two pics of our mountain views.