Time With Dominic (again)

First of all, is it just me?  or are the leaves turning yellow already?????

Last week we spent three nights and three days taking care of this little guy again:

"You have to spoil me because I'm cute!"

The smiley faces are nice to see because that means he got enough sleep.

And that's a good thing.

As I've mentioned before, he's not a good sleeper.  At night he fidgets and squirms all night long, and during the day time, well, he pretty much hardly sleeps at all, no matter how tired he is.  When he gets tired, he fights it with everything he's got.  Sometimes the only way to get him to sleep is to take him for a walk in his stroller:

And when he does go to sleep, that's the time to take care of all those little things for yourself, like go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, check your e-mail, etc.  Don't even bother starting anything that you can't put down cuz he will wake up.  For no reason at all, oh yes, he will wake up.  Too soon.

So I spent three days playing with a happy baby, trying to put a crabby baby to sleep, and watching classic episodes of "Sesame Street".

In my opinion, the classic episodes are the only ones worth watching, but maybe that's just me being sentimental.

Of course I know that Dominic is a little young for Sesame Street, but he did sometimes stop what he was doing to look at the tube whenever something interesting came on.  After Chuck came home from work, he would put UTube videos of "Metallica" on, and for some reason, Dominic was totally mesmerized by them.  I guess he prefers hard rock bands over Sesame Street.  Yep, he's definitely a little man.

As I mentioned, his lack of sleep was the cause of MY lack of sleep, so I was pretty tired most of the time, but his happy moods are worth it.

We will have him again next month, and if all goes well with his "mom"s" eye problem, it should be our last time taking care of him.  Unless they decide to go on more fishing trips.

So, after we were relieved of Dominic, we had a restful sleep Friday night, and then yesterday we finally drove up to the cabin. 

When we got there, we found a hole in our gas can. What kind of critter would chew a hole through a gas can? How could the critter even stand the smell of the gas?  Whatever it was, it must've gotten quite the "high" from sniffing it!  (The can was empty, but it still smelled like gas.)

After Chuck swept the creepy crawlies out of the outhouse so I could use it in privacy, the first thing I did was check on my blueberries.

There were a few here and there, but still nowhere near what they should be.  It's going to be slim pickins again this year. I only found just enough to throw into a bowl of oatmeal.  These will definitely not make it to the freezer.

I know it's still a little early for them anyway, but by the looks of things, I know now not to expect a freezer full of them this year.  But we will go back and check again in a few weeks.

So I focused on high-bush cranberries and rose hips.  Here is my loot:

After I got home, I did some research and read that these are best picked after the first frost.  So I don't think I'm gonna use these.  Actually, I learned that last year, but in my excitement to harvest something, I forgot about that.  I'm glad I didn't pick buckets full.

I had my "Alaska Flower" book with me, so I took the opportunity to educate myself on some of the other things I found.

I think these are Bunchberries.  The book says that their edibility is "questionable".  It says that the Pilgrims made pudding out of them, but some complained of stomachaches after eating large quantities. Even though these berries won't kill me, it doesn't sound like something I want to take a chance with.

Here is a wild geranium:

And here is a watermelon berry: 

Yummy!

Watermelon berries are few and far between, so whenever I find one, I eat it on the spot.

That flower book comes in pretty handy, but I think I need to find another book that focuses specifically on berries.  It does an okay job helping me identify some berries, but I think I'd like a book for that specific purpose, since I want to make sure I know what I'm picking.  High-bush cranberries can be easily confused with baneberries, which are deadly poisonous, so I'd like to find a book that does a good job showing the comparison between the good ones and the poisonous ones.  From what I have seen on the internet, I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any baneberries on our cabin lot, but still, I want to be careful.

Here is something I learned about fireweed:  On our drive up the highway we passed these charred trees on both sides of the highway.  They were charred from that big fire that we had up there a few weeks ago.

And I noticed that in the midst of all these charred trees was what looked like fresh new fireweed.

Here is what that flower book says about fireweed:  "Its common name is derived from its ability to revegetate quickly after a fire (due to its deep roots that escape damage)."

How interesting to see living proof of that!

Since fireweed is so prevalent up here (they are EVERYWHERE!), I always wonder why fireweed isn't our state flower (instead of the forget-me-not).  Is it because it's considered a weed?

So that is pretty much all the news I have from my world.

Alistair Cookie Monster says "Adieu"