July 9, 2022

 Well, here I am again.  Just boring ol' me.

Chuck is gone until next week.  My Nigerian house guest just left yesterday.  So I am suddenly feeling rather....alone.  So I am posting to keep you company, or vise versa.

Do you ever get the feeling that you are always staying busy, but feel like you get nothing done?  That is how I've been feeling.  I suppose it's because I tend to do the same thing every day.  Every day I have to repeat what I did the previous day, as if I hadn't done it at all.  Like making the bed, watering the garden, cooking meals, washing dishes, washing dishes, washing dishes, did I mention washing dishes?  Apparently we are always eating something and dirtying up dishes.  I keep doing these things over and over and over.  Like a hamster on a wheel.  I keep moving to get these things done, only to do them over again, as if these things never get accomplished.  It's not like writing a book where you write every day, and then "Voila!" one day it's done and you don't have to work on it anymore.

Oh, me and my hum-drum-ness.

I am not complaining though.  I am very happy with all my blessings. It's like the old poem about washing dishes - we should be grateful for dirty dishes because it means we have food to eat.  Right? Of course, right!

So all that being said, it's nice to have something different or unusual happen once in a while to break things up or just to make my hum-drum life a little more interesting.  Nothing real big has been going on for me, but I did do something that I normally don't do.  I volunteered to host a college student from Harding University for 3 weeks.  Her name is Hannah and she is originally from Nigeria, so I was able to have some interesting conversations with her about her background.  She came here with 3 other Harding students and 2 chaperones on a Mission trip, so they spent 3 weeks just helping out church congregations with whatever they needed help with. I mostly only saw her in the mornings and evenings. Anyway, I don't know what compelled me to rise to the occasion and host her, but at the last minute they were still looking for hosts, and I have an empty guest room, so I thought "why not?"  I had no idea who I was taking into my home or what it would be like or "what was I getting myself into?", but it turned out to be a good experience for me.  Anyway, after 3 weeks of her company, and Chuck gone in Juneau, I just suddenly feel alone.

But I still remain busy with my everyday routines.  This summer has been hot and dry, so I've been watering my gardens every day.  I have learned to do this in the mornings because the afternoons were getting "scorching hot" and it's no fun to be outdoors working in that heat.  I know that high 70s, up to 80 is not "scorching" to most people, but for us Alaskans, that's hot. Our June temps were 10-15 degrees above normal. Our Harding guests were feeling hot too, but they were still dreading going back home where it's worse.   Anyhoo, it's been like that day after day after day for most of June and into July.  Just this week we are finally getting cloudy skies and cooler temps (high 60s), but still not enough rain, so I still have to water everything.  Sometimes I get bored with my daily routines, but I am glad I have something to do, and I can see that the fruits of my labor are already coming.  We are already picking some tomatoes, and I am picking a bowl full of strawberries every 2 or 3 days (YUM!) They are so good with granola! 

My greenhouse is looking like a jungle!

I have to be very careful now walking to the back because my squash plant got too big to be under the shelf, so it decided it needed to lean out into the aisle.  When I planted those there, I was not anticipating them getting that huge.  Also, you can't see it, but way in the back is where I planted my pumpkin, and the vine has gone crazy!  The vines are growing so long and hanging onto everything it can.  I just wish I could see some pumpkins on it.  Chuck said he saw a good-sized one, but I still never saw it - I suppose I'm not looking in the right place. I tend to avoid digging around in the leaves too much cuz I don't want any spider surprises. My cucumber vines are also getting out of control.  After Chuck gets back, we will have to see what we can do about getting them stringed up.  Strung up?  

Other than that, in my free time I have been doing more scrap booking  because Hannah was sleeping in my sewing room.  I had to stash away all of my current sewing projects while she was here.  Now that she's gone, I can pull them out and work on those again.  I don't even remember where I left off, but I believe I was starting to tie my Halloween quilt.

Welp! That's about it.  I'm back in the kitchen again now.

Enjoy your summer weather!

Wild flowers growing in my back yard.

Spring 2022

 Happy Memorial Day, Y'all!

I hope everyone out there is having a fun and safe day.  We spent the weekend in Fairbanks and got back last night.  It was a good weekend - very very busy.  Steph is putting her house up for sale, so we went up there to help her get prepared for that.

On the way home we saw a Mama Grizzly and two cubs.

I know you can't really see the Mama in this picture.  By the time Chuck took the picture for me, she was disappearing through the trees, two cubs following her.

When I got back home, I was worried about my garden that I had left in Justin's care.  The weather has been hot and dry so they really needed to be watered every day.  Our neighbor came and checked on them the day before we came home and said everything looked watered.  To my relief, my plants were still alive when we got home.

We finally bought a nice greenhouse this year!

Then Chuck wanted to add some gravel around it so he wouldn't have all those weeds growing up against it.  I think it adds charm, plus it gives me a place to set some pots, which adds even more charm!

Eventually I want to have the whole greenhouse surrounded by cute pots, but this is the best I can do for this year without spending another chunk of money.  We also bought a couple shepherd's hooks to hang a couple baskets.  I would love to have bird feeders and bird baths!  Maybe next year.

We also bought two apple trees!  I am excited about the apple trees cuz I have been wanting apple trees for so many years now.

So, when we picked our greenhouse, we ordered one that has a shelf on only one side and then we built beds to put on both sides.  I put tomato plants on the left side, and shorter plants on the right side under the shelf (squash and cucumbers).   And then I put all my peppers and some herbs on the shelf.  I also added a few marigolds to help keep aphids away.  When the cucumbers and beans get taller we will have to string them up through the wire shelf.

If you look closely you can see a bell pepper already on that one plant.

Outside in the beds, everything is doing really well.

I already have some clumps of tomatoes growing.

I think this is going to be a better year all around for gardening than last year.  We have more things going for us this year - warmer weather, a greenhouse, and also I had a better head start on everything (started my seeds earlier this year).  Plus I have been more diligent about fertilizing.

I put my pumpkins in the front yard this time just because I didn't have anywhere else to put them.  Chuck built these beds for me. 

 I want to fill them up with perennial flowers, but this year I wasn't very well planned for it, plus I felt guilty spending more money, so I just planted some different flower seeds in them (on both sides of the pumpkins) and now I will just hope that they grow.  Next year I will put more thought as to what perennials I want in there.  I think I want some bleeding hearts and some irises to start with.  Tulips would be cute too.  Chuck says he would rather use the beds for more practical things like more veggies, but I think I would like the front of the house to look pretty with flowers.

I planted some onions seeds in this frog.  I wanna see what it will look like with onions growing in it.

Around the sunroom we have even more beds!

This is where I am growing mint and catnip and some new rhubarb plants.

After I planted all my tomatoes, I had 4 left that I needed to find a home for.  A friend took my last two Polar Beauties.  Another friend said she would take one Sub-Arctic.  I was gonna give the last one to Stephanie but she is too busy now with selling her house, so my neighbor gladly took it.  I kinda felt like I was getting rid of a litter of kittens.  :-(

This is the last one that I am holding for my friend until she gets back from Texas.  She will be pleased that it already has some tomatoes on it.

When I posted last Fall, I wrote that I was going to start making a Halloween quilt.  Well, I finally got the quilt top done!

Now I just need to sandwich it and quilt it.  I am planning on tying it because I want it to have thick batting.  This quilt has sashing with cornerstones, which was a nightmare because my cornerstones weren't matching up, so I had to take in a LOT of seams in order to get them to match up.  It was a pain in the butt and I worried that it would look obvious, but now that I can see the whole thing, you really can't tell where I took the seams in.

The other sewing project I'm working on is English Paper Piecing.  I just learned how to do it and I am finding that it is something that I really enjoy doing.  

I am making a big stack of three different flower designs.  After I get all the flowers made, I will applique them onto some background fabric and make a quilt out of them.  This is just sort of an experiment project before I start trying out some harder designs.

So that's about all for now.  I know I haven't posted in a really long time, but that's because my posts are boring and uninteresting.  I don't know why I thought of posting again today.  Because I miss you??

Peeka and Weeners send their greetings.

It's Fall!

 Technically, it't not Fall until the 21st, but if it looks like Fall, and feels like Fall, it's Fall.

Our typical weather pattern for this time of year is cool temps and rain.  That's exactly what we've been getting.  I keep waiting for the night time temps to get down to freezing, but so far I've been surprised.  We  were watching the night time temps so we can play the game of keeping the tomatoes out in the garden for as long as we can, but since we are gonna be in Fairbanks this weekend, we decided we better bring them all in before we leave.  So they have three more days to stay on the vine.

With the colder than usual summer we had, I really thought we wouldn't have any tomatoes this year, but we do have a few clusters like this.  They are still green as can be, but that's okay cuz we can ripen them in the house.  I'm just glad we're getting some at all.

We already uprooted all of our carrots, got about 2/3 of them all washed and put in the freezer.  The rest I am going to keep out and use for snacking on - they are so good.  We got a TON of carrots this year!  Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but .......... we got a lot of carrots.

Also, I was surprised to see a couple of these pumpkins trying to grow.  They are pretty small yet, but if I can get them to ripen I can still use them.

Look at these really weird mushrooms.  They are growing out of our gravel!  So weird.

I tried planting sunflowers in my beds this year and I am surprised some of them actually made it, especially after I neglected them really bad.  I initially planted them in cups and then planted the cups in my garden beds - that way I wouldn't mistake them for weeds.  But they kept growing and I never did take the time to replant them outside of the cups.  Some of them died, but some of them made it and grew really tall.

Every time it rains we get a puddle in our driveway.  This puddle had a big collection of worms in it.  I was wondering why the birds didn't come and use it as a birdbath and get their breakfast all at the same time.  I guess they only like them if they're freshly pulled out of the dirt.

So I finally finished PW's kitty quilt!

It was fun and easy, but as with every project, it's always a good feeling to have it done!  I'm thinking I might want to make another one like it just because they are fun and easy to make.  I had fun experimenting with the different colors and facial expressions.

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the back of the quilt is "cuddle fabric".  It's really soft (and very ex$pen$ive).  I had a hard time keeping Peeka off of it.  Working with cuddle fabric was something new for me, so I was nervous to use it.  I thought I would have major problems with it jamming up my machine with fuzzies and bunching up and puckering, but surprisingly, the back side looks a lot better than the front.  I ended up with a lot of puckering on the front of the quilt, which annoys me to no end, but I don't know how to avoid that on my machine.  Even with a "walking foot" I still have puckering problems. Anyway, PW was very happy with it and she was surprised when I gave it to her because we were meeting Stephanie at a coffee shop for breakfast, and I brought it with me there to give it to her.  That is probably why she might look slightly embarrassed in the photo.

I had some leftover flannel fabrics so I decided to use them to make some table runners.  Or they are also big enough to use as a bed runner.  I have enough flannel left to make two runners like this one, plus two extra blocks which will just end up being just single blocks that can be used as a table topper or maybe a pillow or whatever.   I'm just trying to use up the rest of the flannel.

So for now I am going to work on some smaller projects like these and that'll give me time to choose my fabrics for my next big project, which will be for ME.  I want to make a Fall/Halloween quilt for my bed.  I already have the pattern picked out - I just gotta figure out how much fabric I need and which ones I want.  Yay!  I love picking out fabrics!!!  I have to see what I have in my stash first though, and go from there.

Well, that's all for now.

Enjoy your Fall weather!

Visitors from Indiana!

 This past week has been such a treat for us!  I hate moving away from Alaska, but sometimes the things we hate can bring us something good out of it.  In this case, spending 19 months with our church family in Indiana has made us some new friends that we didn't know we had!  Tim and Darlyn wanted to come up here for their 40th Anniversary, so we let them stay at our free "B&B".  It was SO MUCH FUN having them here!!!!

They got here on Saturday morning.  I figured they would be too tired from traveling to do anything, but they didn't want to waste any time in exploring Alaska, so we just started them off with a short trail right up the road from our house.  Since Darlyn is more out of shape than I am, she was already huffing and puffing.  I told her that was just the appetizer.  But I knew it was also an appetizer for me too cuz I am not in very good shape either, and we had a lot more hiking in store for us before they were gonna leave.

Sunday afternoon, we took them to Hatcher Pass.  More hiking, but not too bad.

Tim & Darlyn

Darlyn brought her granddaughter's stuffed kitty with her and took photos of it everywhere she went.  Her granddaughter didn't even know that she took it.  I thought that was a really cute idea!

On Monday they left for their own little adventure at Denali National Park, and they got back on Wednesday.

So on Thursday we didn't think they'd want to go very far after that big trip, so Chuck took Tim golfing in Palmer and I took Darlyn to Anchorage.  She wanted to do some shopping so we went downtown, and then we spent some time hiking around at Earthquake Park, and then we went to Point Woronzof to gaze upon "Sleeping Lady".

Sleeping Lady

At Earthquake Park you can walk down to the swampy edge of Knik Arm (a part of Cook Inlet), and from there you get a gorgeous view of the Anchorage skyline with the mountain backdrop.

From there we walked along the stony "beach" of Knik Arm for awhile.  And then we got in the car  and went "moose hunting" by the airport.  Usually I get lucky finding moose in that area of town, but not that day!  Darlyn wanted to see a moose so bad.

I think it didn't help that our weather got "hot".  Moose generally stay deep in the woods when it's hot out.  But, we were so glad to have that turn in the weather because it's been a cold summer this year, so it was just nice to finally have some heat and sun.  But keep in mind, for us, when the temps get up in the 70's, it's "Alaska hot".  This weekend our temps actually got up to around 80, so for us that's sweltering, but at least Tim finally took his coat off!

On Friday we went to Seward.

We stopped at a potty place and this raven seemed almost tame, so Chuck was feeding him some peanuts.

As we were coasting along Turnagain Arm (another part of the Cook Inlet), we stopped to stretch our legs and soak in the view.  Then we noticed we got there just in time to see the boretide come in.

Then we noticed there were people actually surfing on the boretide!

How cool is that?

We walked around Seward for awhile to see what there was to see.  Darlyn did NOT like the smell of the fish at the docks!!

I didn't take a whole lot of pictures in Seward cuz I've been there enough times.

But on the way back, we went to Byron Glacier; somewhere I've never been.

So this one was new to all of us.

More hiking to wear us out!  (poor Darlyn)

The blue part up the mountain is the actual glacier, which would be quite the climb.  We just stayed in the bottom part and enjoyed the snow patches.

On Saturday, the original plan was to go to Matanuska Glacier, 

BUT - it turns out that they changed their policies there.  You can no longer go there and do your own exploring.  What they did is double the price and your only option now is to go on a guided tour.  

I AM SO BUMMED OUT ABOUT THIS!!!

So because of that, we tried out Byron Glacier instead.  It was a neat place to go, but I am still really disappointed that we couldn't take them ON Matanuska Glacier!!

So on Saturday, we drove them to the Matanuska lookout place.  I forget what it's called, but it's some kind of place where you can look at it from afar.  I'm glad we didn't have to pay for that cuz you can get even a better view of it just from the highway.  Going there just to look at it from afar was even worse for me cuz it was like it was saying "nanner nanner boo-boo" at me.

I cannot express enough how disappointed and bummed out I am about this change.

Anyway, here is a picture of Matanuska Glacier from afar - the glacier that I will probably never walk on again. (sniffle, sniffle!)

But on the way to the glacier, we stopped at the little town called Sutton!  We have passed it many times, but never bothered to stop.  It turns out they have a lot of little interesting historical buildings there.  Who knew that this tiny little town had so much history behind it?

On the way back home we stopped at King's River, just to stretch our legs and soak in more scenery.

"Kitty" had another photo opportunity here.  He's been posing and getting his picture taken pretty much everywhere!

Saturday seemed like a long day, but they still wanted to go to Thunderbird Falls, so that's where we went before going home.

Darlyn wasn't too thrilled about going down to this bottom path, but Tim talked her into it.  Both of us had a hard time but thankfully neither of us fell in the water.

On Sunday we knew that their time was running out, but Tim LOVES to hike, so we did some more!  This time we climbed the Butte.  It was freezing windy at the top.  Darlyn was laughing at her shirt flapping in the wind.

After we came back down we got a big laugh out of this sign because me and Darlyn are SLOW hikers compared to the guys. They often had to stop to make sure we were still behind them.   So we got our picture taken with the sign.

Monday was their last day, so guess what Tim wanted to do!  

Yup, more hiking!

So we went to Eklutna Lake.  In the past, I've been part way down the trail that runs along the lake, but climbing the Twin Peaks Trail was new to me.  I knew it was gonna be a steep climb, but I didn't realize how LONG of a climb it was gonna be.

The trail is supposedly 2.6 miles, but when it's all a steep climb, 2.6 miles feels more like 20.

When we finally made it this far, Darlyn said she didn't wanna go any further.  It was "Alaska hot" that day, so we were hot, sweaty, and TIRED.

While we were sitting there catching our breath and taking a break, Tim continued on up the path by himself a little ways.  For an "old guy", he sure has a lot of energy.  It started to rain before he came back, which cooled us off nicely.

Good view of the lake from up there though!

Eklutna Lake

Well, Darlyn never did see no moose, and she was determined to see one, one way or the other.  So before they went to the airport they stopped at the zoo to see one!  And I have no doubt that "kitty" got her picture taken with it!

Anyhoo it's been a very full week, and a very fun week!

I just love those guys!

(I miss them already!)