Biomass

As I grab grass and wrestle weeds at home (by the armfuls, and with great urgency while the weeding is easy), and drive from home to work and home to Brian's school and back, I keep getting gobsmacked by the plant mass that has exploded in our area. The combination of an early hot, dry spell followed by this period of cool, wet weather has kicked things into overdrive. I predict our hay guy's second cutting is going to be incredible, as he got the first cutting of newly-planted orchardgrass off during that dry spell and now his fields are getting optimum moisture. That's great for us; hmmm, maybe I could breed a couple ewes this fall? 😉

Sarai is getting a little scoop of oats every morning until it warms up again

Speaking of "plant mass," we visited Schreiner's Iris Gardens last Sabbath. This is a near-annual pilgrimage, although we didn't make it last year. To our surprise, they are charging a per vehicle parking fee now. Nearby Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm does this and gets hoards of visitors every year, so it certainly makes financial sense and adds to their revenue stream. And the visual delights are worth the price of admission! Here's a small sampling:

You know you're getting close when you see fields of flowers (crimson clover in foreground)

Speaking of weeding, I ended up going through my blogroll blog by blog this morning and deleted probably half of the ones on my list. Some addresses were no longer valid, some hadn't posted in ten years or more. It set me back on my emotional heels and left me melancholy, thinking of the passage of time, of water under the bridge, of lost connections. It also makes me think of what I'm doing with my "one precious life," what impact I'm making, what legacy I'm leaving. We're not here just to be part of the biomass!

I'm still working on creating a positive legacy with this:

One thing this "Selfie Generation" does well is pose!

It was another busy weekend of going here and there. I finished spinning a second sample of Jamieson & Smith combed Shetland top, and then pulled out the first sample I'd spun to ply. But when I started to dissemble the spindle, this happened:

I broke this spindle years ago when I was in Spokane visiting my dad, and he helped me glue it back together. I will glue it again, but at that moment I was away from home with time to fill and nothing else to fill it with, so I bunted!

Waddya know? It worked!

That's it for now from . . .

Loving this weather!

Our cool, gray, damp weather continues, which is just fine with me for all kinds of reasons. For instance, clouds:

And cooking. Am I the only one for whom hot weather is a disincentive for being in the kitchen? But when it's cool I want to bake and cook. So I did both today, and while I was at it, I used up over a dozen eggs. (I had over eight dozen in the frig so it was an act of self-defense.) I made a marionberry kugen for potluck tomorrow and chocolate cranberry whole wheat bread pudding for dinner tonight, to go with a big kettle of vegetable salsa chowder.

And weeding. Right now all the grass that shot up and headed out during our month of hot, dry weather is easy(er) to pull out of the iris bed, so every morning I take an armful of fresh fodder down to the boys in the Ram-ada Inn and let the beautiful blossoms shine a bit more. It's going to take more time than a few minutes every morning to get ahead of the weeds, but it feels good to make some progress.

The pasture iris are completely unfazed by the grass, blooming where unknown hands planted them decades ago, a cheery greeting by our front gate (along with some Centaurea Montana, or perennial bachelor's button):

If you check in over at my less active horse blog, then you know Lance has added yet another diagnosis to his laundry list of problems. I took this photo while exercising him today, neck shaved (on both sides) so Rick could ultrasound his neck joints, mane and neck rubbed from spring allergies:

and those are just some of his problems, poor guy 

Unrelated to the weather, it's been awhile since I've shared any of Brian's music. He's taken one year of choir and two years of handbells at school, but that's poor compensation for giving up violin after 12 years of lessons. But lately he's gotten it out to play at church with the praise team and to accompany the bell choir on a number for their spring concert. Since some of you have enjoyed hearing him in the past, here are two full pieces from the spring concert and a snippet of his playing at church.

Musically yours, from . . .

Benediction

Last night while we were eating supper, I spied a partial rainbow and jumped up to take a photo (my guys are used to this).

As the sun lit up the scene, I had to take another photo.

Then the setting sun left the trees and kissed the eastern clouds with pink.

Blessings,

Family, flower, fowl, and fiber photos

The old-fashioned variety in our pasture

Rick complains that the Japanese maple in front has gotten too big; this photo made me see it!

Our weather has finally moderated; we awoke this morning to cool, gray, drippy skies. Our month of late summer weather has been replaced with NORMAL for awhile – hurray! The only bummer is that Lance has already had four days off for assorted reasons and he won't want to ride with rain in his face; hopefully we'll get a break. Oh, and the other bummer is that I still have seven sheep to shear, and this weather is not conducive to that. Not only are warm fleeces easier to harvest and bright light easier to see by, but my shorn sheep were shivering this morning. The house is cool, too, but I plan to remedy that by turning on the oven for rhubarb cake and bread, and making a kettle of creamy lentil stew for supper.

On Friday an unexpected package arrived. It contained an adorable knitted bag holding a "Debbie Plyer," both handmade just for me by a talented and generous blogpal! I can't wait to try plying with this; the eye-hooks should work much better than the loops on my Jennie Plyer, which often catch and hold my singles.

Sabbath afternoon we went on a walk with friends and saw this lovely stand of camas and – buttercups?

Mothers Day here was fantastic, with family and food and flowers (and waterfowl), oh my! It did end up being a very long day. We picked up my MIL first thing in the morning and then headed towards Portland, stopping for breakfast at a place we hadn't tried before. I got strawberry rhubarb French toast which was good, although it was hard to detect any rhubarb. Then we continued on to Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden (along with a whole lot of other people) to enjoy the beauty. There were lots of ducklings and goslings, so apropos for the day we were celebrating.

By the time we headed home we were all hungry again, so we stopped at Olive Garden for the other meal of our day. So unusual to eat out like that, but I'm not complaining! (A little cherry on top was that just before we left the garden, the Portland Trailblazers won round two of the NBA Western Conference semi-finals. 👏🏻  )

When we finally got home, we all set about doing what we could before bedtime. Somewhere along the way, my FitBit came off; the band had been disconnecting the last day or so, probably weakened from wrassling with my son. I had a pang of panic; it certainly isn't a necessary tool, but it was my Christmas gift from Rick and it does prompt me to be more active. I traced all my steps inside and out with no luck. The next morning it occurred to me that I might be able to figure out its general area asking my iPhone app to sync with it, so I retraced all my steps. It was exciting to have its presence confirmed, but the location – the lower barnyard – is made up of woods, the Ram-ada Inn . . . and the big compost/manure pile. I spent 30-40 minutes searching through the straw I'd dumped there the evening before, again with no luck, before having to leave for work (don't worry; I took a shower first!). When I got home, I put my iPhone in a grain can and tried to use it to narrow the search area (at the suggestion of a friend's engineer husband), again without success, while Rick built a screening box.

We sifted and sorted and sorted and shifted until Rick thought of another friend who owns a metal detector and called him. After he searched unsuccessfully, he said, "I wonder if there's a 'FitBit finder app." Waddya know; there is, I downloaded it – and it worked! We found my FitBit buried in the straw of the Ram-ada Inn; it must have dropped off when I put hay in their feeder the night before. We gathered for a prayer of thanks and our friend left.

With all the driving Saturday and Sunday, I was able to get quite a bit of spinning done. I'm finally working on a sample pack of dyed Shetland combed top I bought years ago from Jamieson & Smith; this is the first color, all spun up:

And this is the second (yes, there are more colorful colors coming):

That's it for now from . . .