July Photo Challenge Part 2

Sorry for the cliche, but can you believe how fast July went! Here are the rest of the pictures for the July photo challenge. I'm happy to say I made it through the month, even if I sometimes got behind on posting pictures. Since this post is mostly pictures, and many of them, I'm putting in a jump, click below to see the rest of the photo challenge pictures.

Garden Update

The garden is thriving! Even in spite of the massive earwig infestation we've been enduring. I discovered a non-toxic way to kill them on-contact, I'll share it at the end. I took these pictures a few days ago and already things have changed.

We've been harvesting more summer squash and zucchini than we can consume, but our neighbors are taking some off our hands now and then. Yesterday Blake and I ate four squash between lunch and dinner, fresh off the grill both times. Tonight, we made stuffed zucchini out of that big one you see in the picture below. It was delicious.

Right now the pile on the counter is a little smaller, but we pull off more each day.

We ate those two tomatoes above, these, and some of their friends with dinner tonight

Our one little pea, the plant is only about 8" tall so we're pleasantly surprised
that it could produce anything yet. Today we found two more!? 

This little cucumber got a little bigger, and we ate it with those
tomatoes in a little Greek salad. 

Clockwise starting with the cabbage, onions, celery, okra, eggplant and Thai chilies. 

More eggplant, cucumber, strange bean plant with red flowers, tiny peas and pole beans.
These were all late planters or replants thanks to the rabbits.

Three varieties of peppers and our mess of tomatoes.

Our goofy cauliflower and broccoli, out of five plants only one looks normal, beets, carrots and artichoke. 

Butternut squash!! This plant is HUGE and there are tiny to medium little squash all over it. 

Acorn squash!! Same situation as the butternut, we are going to be up to our eyeballs.

The massive bramble of squash plants and the corn.. oh man.

Yams and potatoes! Not 100% sure what to do with these but hopefully we'll find something in that dirt later.

We also have some adorable little watermelons and cantaloupe developing overnight. Yesterday we found a melon the size of an eyeball (the rest are about marble size) and today it was the size of a chicken egg!! I didn't get pictures of it, but man they are cute :). I think we'll have an easier time sharing the plethora of melon than we will with the squash.

We are mostly flying by the seat of our pants with this garden, but we're learning a lot about what to do next year. We're also getting some nice sun burns tans and have discovered that weeding is a compulsion more than a chore or passion.

: :

Non-toxic Earwig Spray: 1 Tablespoon of non-toxic dish soap - I use Method brand - and 50 oz of water. I put it in a hand held pump sprayer just for that purpose. Blake and I go out at night with our head lamps and catch the little devils in the act. They are on everything! We just spray them and within 6-10 seconds they stop moving. After several nights in a row of spraying them while they're out and about, we've noticed a significant reduction in their numbers. They did some serious damage to a row of our corn, but the other plants seem to be bouncing back. So far, the soap doesn't seem to hurt any of the plants. While I was testing out the ratio of soap to water, we had a few pretty sudsy batches, and we rinsed those plants down with water just in case.

Old School Wine Tasting

What a crazy experience this was! It took everything I thought I knew about wine (granted, that isn't too much) and turned it upside down! 

Blackwood Canyon Winery does what they call, Old School Tasting (by appointment only). They make Burgundian style wine, which is different than our traditional American or 'New World' wines. These wines are processed and fermented in a totally different way and for SO much longer. We tasted 19 year old wine from a barrel that would still need to sit in there for another ten years! The other notable 'old world' difference in this style of wine was that it could, and should, be left open for months on end. In (what I now know as) American wine, you can't leave a bottle open for more than a few days. Burgundian wine is what you see in decanters, sitting on someone's table in an old movie. It not only lasts months but gets better the longer its open. 

I have to say that I enjoyed some late harvest syrah and some of the other red wines we tasted, but I can't say that I enjoyed many of the Burgundian style of white wines. We started tasting whites and at first I wasn't sure these people knew what they were doing.. except who was I to say! 

Once we got into the reds, I could see the wine behind the acid and started to really enjoy the wine when it came to tasting the ports and what would become ports. 

It was truly the most unique wine tasting tour we've ever taken, and hands down the most extensive tasting we've ever done. We got a nice tasting at the counter with food pairings and then we toured and tasted wine out of the barrels that were sitting outside (!!) among the grape vines.

Truly an experience that felt like stepping back in time and far from the usual pretentious wine tasting trip!

Sun and Sand

 Time after time, we are spoiled with great weather at the beach. This trip was no exception. It was a gorgeous couple of days with clear skies and a slight breeze.. unless you were on the beach then it was downright windy. Somehow, we still managed to have a great time ;).

This was a super special trip that included some friends that I don't get to see often enough and my mom. Unfortunately, Blake couldn't come because he was hard at work.

Walking to the beach, flying a kite.

Along the trail

Escaping the wind and resting up before the sand castle construction begins.

This kite was being difficult. Eventually we got it up too.

Let the construction begin.

We needed water to make wet sand, a necessary building material.

Look how deep it is!

The crew (I just carried the water and took pictures)

And sat here with these dear ladies and chatted :)

Nearly finished! 

The final product.

That night we had some good food at Doogers - I finally tried the crab cakes that grampa raves about, and he was right, they were delicious! We'd decided to eat out and make dessert in, so the kids and I went to work on making peach crisp. Mmm it was good. We had a late night, and a lazy morning, and then hit the beach again in the afternoon.

Sand castle number two: bigger and closer to the water.

Hard at work

Skill and concentration

And of course, the traditional cabin family picture! This was before the beach actually.

Deacon, Mary, Ada and Kyle

Kyle was the officiant at our wedding and my youth pastor growing up, Mary is a kindred spirit and a dear, dear friend. Deacon read a scripture at our wedding and Ada was our flower girl. I'm their Auntie Jill and so proud of the little man and woman that they are growing into. Deacon is a budding photo enthusiast and has a foodie's heart (which warms this auntie's heart) and Ada is one heck of a soccer player with plenty to say and a sweet heart for Jesus. It was so good to get some quality time with these friends. I miss them so much! I see several more beach trips in our future :)

The whole gang with my mom and myself added in.

Trail of Lessons

What a trip. We were going to head up to the mountain on Friday and stay through Saturday.. but we got a late start on Friday and decided to run some errands and load our packs with more time and precision. Somehow we ended up still ended up loading our packs at 1:00 AM on Friday night and finishing in the morning. Despite our rescheduled trip, we still got a late start to the trail head on Saturday afternoon.

Adams Creek Meadows

37+/- miles out of Randal, Wa is the Killen Creek Trail #113. Our directions were slightly inaccurate from the get-go, and poor signage didn't help. At one point we found ourselves two miles deep on what we are affectionately calling the Goat Trail. Somehow we missed a sign that told us to turn (which the directions didn't bother to mention) and we ended up giving up on the Goat Trail, two miles out of four and wished we'd given up after about one tenth of a mile. There was a good lesson here about communication, listening to your gut and respecting your leader's decisions. I would have kept going the other two miles - just to be sure it wasn't the right trail road - but Blake wisely felt that we should have turned around at our first chance. I deferred to his intuition (Lesson number 1) and we were so happy to be off that narrow path. Upon backtracking, we found the sign that lead us to the trail head.

The Goat Trail.
The permanent scratches on my car from the overgrown Alder trees.. affectionately called 'nature's pin-striping'.. are a nice reminder of this lesson. 

My hero. Maneuvered that crazy trail like a champ, with lots of concentration. 

Finally at the trail head... not that you can tell, because I'm standing in front of the sign.

It was after the picture above that I see that my camera battery light is flashing red. Oops. I forgot to grab the charged battery or the car charger. Doh! Lesson number 2. I was taking a photo challenge picture that morning and found the battery dead, so I popped in the reserve battery that was fully charged at one point.. only to see that it had drained itself. I intended to bring the battery and charge it on the way with the car charger but thought I might as well give it extra time while we were still packing. Oops. Here's the funny part. I still drug my big camera and an extra lens up the trail because this trip was a practice run for our bigger hike, and I needed to troubleshoot my camera carrying method and see if I could handle the extra weight of the gear. Even though I knew it would test Blake's patience, I ran back to the car and got my old point and shoot camera, and I'm so glad I did!

Our map

Adams Creek Meadows. This is where we ended up camping, in those trees at the far left. 

We kept hiking UP past the meadows, hoping to get to the PCT and
really, we wanted to camp at Killen Meadows.

Blake said, turn around... look at the view. Mt. Rainier.

We couldn't find the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) and it was getting late. We snapped this picture and headed down.

Blake setting up our new air-beam supported Nemo tent. This thing is awesome.

The view from our tent door.

The next morning, and I mean morning, we headed out again to try to find the PCT. It turns out that we less than 50 yards away when we gave up. Lesson number 3.. sometimes I should give my opinion.

Made it. Blake's first time on the PCT. Can't tell where the trail really is,
but this marker tells us that it should be somewhere under this snow.

Mt. Adams in the background.

And of course some flowers from the trip down. It was a quick hike out, even with all the snow.

I loved all these flowers pushing through the snow.

Lesson number 4: check your campsite thoroughly before leaving and double check the location of each expensive item, namely your iPhone.

We were in our car, a mere one tenth of a mile down the road when I realized I didn't know where my phone was. We pulled over and emptied my pack... no where to be found. I knew I had it at breakfast, but didn't remember seeing it after that. I didn't think I had it in my pockets on the hike out, so we though it must have been dropped at our camp site. Boots back on and back up the trail we went. At least we didn't have to carry our packs the second time!

Five miles, two hours and a pulled muscle later - no phone. I also checked my sleeping bag and that confirmed that it wasn't anywhere in my things, wasn't at camp and wasn't on the trail. On the way home, we thought that the only other possibility was that it could be in the tent, and that is where we found it. (Yay!!)

Lesson number 5: even if you think you have plenty of gas when you leave civilization.. fill up anyway. No, we didn't run out, but all it takes is a wrong turn or a goat trail to make your margin of error pretty slim. We were coasting into town on the reserves and really wishing we'd filled up before.

Lesson number 6: training makes a difference. This was a good lesson. All of my training and working out has seemed to help! I was still a little slow, but had a noticeably better pace. Yay!! Enchantment Lakes, here I come.