State of Emergency

 Two days ago started off as  just another hot summer day-and then we noticed Monday evening, that the air was turning acrid-the telltale sign that a fire was burning nearby.  It’s not an unusual occurrence.  Ellensburg is close to many acres of national forest, and also home to numerous hay storage facilities.  Both fire hazards in the summer.

We soon learned the details.  Monday afternoon, road crews working on a bridge between Ellensburg and the city of Cle Elum created sparks, causing a small brush fire to break out-a fire that quickly grew and is now burning over 28,000 acres.  Dubbed the Taylor Bridge Wildfire, it has, so far, destroyed more than 70 houses, killed hundreds of horses and cattle-and necessitated countless others to be turned loose in an attempt to help them survive the fire, and forced another 900 people to evacuate their homes-many of whom are desperately working to save their homes.

With no rain in the forecast, temperatures that are expected to stay in the 80’s and 90’s and wind that can gust to more than 35miles per hour, there is no end in sight.  There will be a lot more devastation before the fire is out.

(Photos courtesy of the Ellensburg Daily Record)

The need for help is great, from providing food, clothing and household goods to those residents who have lost everything, to supplying food for the countless animals-large and small-being sheltered in various places in town.  Stuart, Amy and I will be donating items such as bottled water and dog food, and I’ll be donating 20% of my August and September Etsy sales to the local Red Cross.

And to the firefighters, who have an impossibly difficult and dangerous task ahead of them, we can never thank them enough.

Smile!

Just look at that grin on Kona’s face! 

I have to admit, she might be looking a bit rabid as well-but I assure you, this is her happy face.

To capture her smile I had to get it on video, and then single out this frame.  Her smiles are quite impressive-but they are impossible to photograph.  She doles them out sparingly-and for just a few seconds at a time.

Kona is the first smiling dog I’ve ever had.  I didn’t even know dogs could smile! 

Just one of life’s fun little surprises…

Happy Monday!!

Here’s wishing you a few fun little surprises this week!

Day Trip

It seems a bit quiet around the house this morning.  Amy’s cousin Pippa is gone-back in Puyallup to spend the remainder of her visit to the state of Washington with my parents.

While she was here we decided to take her to Leavenworth, a Bavarian styled town framed against Sleeping Lady mountain in the Cascade mountain range.

It takes a little over an hour to get to Leavenworth from our house, but the scenery is really beautiful.  The drive winds through the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, stunning with its tall evergreens and blue sky.

There are many fruit stands near Leavenworth, as the area is conducive to growing peaches, pears, cherries and other summer fruit.  We bought some cherries to snack on and admired the flowers which were literally bursting with blooms!  Our home town of Ellensburg has a desert climate and it takes a bit of coaxing for flowers to thrive.  But in the mountain air, flowers seem to grow like crazy, and I love it!

 

We stopped for lunch at the Leavenworth Salmon Hatchery. I took the picture above from the vantage point of our picnic table.  What a view!!

And here is Sleeping Lady.  I wonder what it’s like for her, face towards the sky day after day.  She surely can’t sleep all of the time-and the night time stars must be magnificent!

 A  colorful and impressive mosaic depicting salmon…and the real thing below.

 

These are Chinook Salmon.  They are hatched, and then raised at the hatchery for 18 months before being released into the wild where they swim 500 miles downstream to the Pacific ocean.  1-3 years later they swim back to the hatchery to spawn-the same 500 miles, though upstream this time. 

By the end of the arduous journey, which also marks the end of their life cycle, some of these beautiful creatures are looking a little worse for wear.  This salmon has lost all of the skin on its head.

Salmon truly are magnificent animals, and such a big part of the rich heritage of the Pacific Northwest.

At the hatchery, there were flowers everywhere too. I especially liked these purple centered daisy like blossoms.

After lunch, we ventured into the actual town of Leavenworth.  There is a lot to see there, but unfortunately, you have thousands of other people who want to see it all with you.  Leavenworth is one perpetual festival after another and the crowds are always present.  Still, it’s a fun town to visit, there is good food, and the setting-that grand sleeping lady-can’t be beat.

More gorgeous flowers!

 

And the biggest beetle we’d ever seen-and with it’s own cell phone no less!

 

All in all, it was a fun day and it was great to spend time with a member of our family we don’t get to see very often.

Hope all of you have a great weekend, and here’s wishing you some pleasant day trips of your own!

Written in Dust

I was dusting yesterday, and I had a realization of sorts.  I was dusting because my niece is coming for a visit, and I wanted to make the house look nice-and because of recent painting projects, I have not sewn, written-or dusted, for weeks, so the dust was thick.   As I dusted, I did a little pondering, too.  (Tasks like dusting present the ideal setting for allowing one’s mind to wander around random thoughts.) 

Dusting away the dust, it came to me.

Yesterday, Amy was off on an excursion to visit her first college.   She still has a couple of years of high school left, but it’s not too early to at least start thinking about  college.  Looking back on Amy’s elementary, middle school and now two years of high school, she’s shown an interest and aptitude for both the arts as well as the sciences.  This past year, though, seems to have have filtered and refined those interests and aptitudes, and Amy’s true passion is history, and she wants to study archaeology.

As I dusted around pottery vases and faded sepia toned photographs, obsolete film cameras, musty books, and out of date globes, the blue fan with shiny metal blades and a 1930’s travel alarm clock that still runs-the realization hit me.  Amy has grown up surrounded by relics.  Not ancient, but still, old.  Artifacts from bygone eras that I’ve collected over the years because I wanted to surround myself with tangible pieces of history left behind by those who came before me.

The thought of Amy leaving home in two years is very, very hard for me, and I know there will be many tears when that day comes.   But I’m terribly excited for Amy, too.  I’m thrilled that in her own way, she wants to follow in my footsteps.  Even if the footsteps that beckon her were left thousands of years ago.   

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I’ll be taking a blogging break to spend time with family-and I’ll be back Friday.  Have a great week!

Growing Soybeans

Last spring, when I was browsing the plant selection at one of the local garden centers in town, I was trying to decide what to plant in the planter next to the garage.  I was discouraged, because not only were ornamental vines expensive, but they looked sickly too.  And then Amy emerged from the area where the vegetable starts were displayed and asked, Could we try growing soybeans this year?

What a great idea!  The soybean vines cost a fraction of the price of ornamental vines, were green and healthy, plus I found the idea of growing soybeans appealing, too.

The picture above shows our soybean vines.  They don’t look like much of a success story, do they?  They have, however, done exactly what we hoped they would do, and that is to have produced soybeans-just a handful-but still, actual, edible soybeans!  At first I was afraid that I had overwatered the vines and that’s why they turned yellow and lost their leaves, but I’m learning that soybean vines aren’t meant to last beyond the production of soybeans.

Soybean vines. (Photo sourced from the web.)

 

Amy found a recipe for making edamame-an easy and delicious way to fix soybeans.  She simply boiled the soybeans in their pods for about 6 minutes and then sprinkled a little salt on them. If you’ve never had edamame, it is really good, and if you want to try making your own, grocery stores sell soybean pods.  I highly recommend this recipe for edamame and plan to start making it on a regular basis.

And next year?  We’ll most certainly grow soybeans again!

Edamame  (Photo also sourced from the web because my food photography skills are sorely lacking!)

 

In other garden news, my hollyhocks are in full swing and looking so pretty!  What I find interesting about hollyhocks is that when I first planted seeds six years ago I had only red, yellow and pink flowers.  Now they seem to have hybridized and I have a whole array of varying reds and pinks, and even white hollyhocks-but no yellow!

Hey you lovely readers of mine-have a great week, ok?

Dining Room Makeover

Happy Friday, dear readers!  It’s time for the dining room makeover reveal!

I’d intended to start with Amy’s bedroom this summer, and do the dining room later, but as it was extremely hot last week and Amy’s room is upstairs, we decided to paint downstairs where it’s cooler. (I’m happy to report that we’ve spent this week painting Amy’s room.)

The above photo shows what the dining room originally looked like when we bought this house…

And now…

I chose a pretty blue green for the walls.  The color is called Drizzle.  It’s a soothing color for our climate which is technically a desert.

Because Bing Bang Boomerang, the wonderful seller I bought my barkcloth from, sent me a little extra fabric, I had enough to cover the seat on my vintage telephone table, and make a valance for a window that previously had glass shelves hung in front of it .  My husband also replaced the traditional light switch with a vintage push button switch too, for an extra touch of vintage authenticity.

We love it!

I am so grateful for Amy’s help-she is such a hard worker, and I’m hoping to post pictures of her room very soon!

Have a wonderful weekend!!

Comfort

Right now, parts of our house are a complete wreck-a necessary consequence of home improvement.  Amy and I decided to take a little time out and make some zucchini bread with zucchini from our garden.

Our favorite recipe is an old one from a vintage Betty Crocker cookbook. It probably uses too much sugar and it also calls for shortening and white flour.  I know healthier versions exist, but still, we like it.  We added about a half cup of chopped dried sour cherries to this batch, and in the past we’ve also added chopped nuts, raisins, dried cranberries and chocolate chips.  (Combinations are good too!)

With a hot cup of coffee for me and hot tea for Amy, we were soon rested and restored and ready to get back to work.

What is your favorite quick bread-and what do you add to yours?