Mother Nature's wonder

 We took a drive this week to get away once more at least before the weather gets really bad.  We have had snow in the high country already!  This is between Cheyenne and Laramie in the Curt Gowdy area.  One wonders what keeps this stone of several tons balanced here as it has for many years without tumbling. Although the past couple of days have been a little chilly, the trees here had not yet begun to show the fall colors, but I imagine that soon Mother Nature will paint beautiful fall colors everywhere. 

We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on the kitchen remodel.  I haven't posted pictures as things are going at a snail's pace..but we take time to play.  The new sink is here and the laminate for the counter tops came in and all of the painting is done.  Have a light fixture to get shades for and install.  I rewired and combined two pieces to make a chandelier to hang above the table so if I wired it properly, it will be forthcoming.  Several years ago I was given a partial set of silver.  I had contemplated making wind chimes or something with these pieces until I searched for the pattern and discovered that the 7 place settings, plus sugar spoon and butter knife were pretty pricey.  (Prices to replace these individual pieces which are still available caused me to re-think that idea.)  At an antique shop recently, I spoke to the owner and she explained what she had done with similar pieces.
Since I already have silverware of my own, I decided that I would like to display this pattern.  A garage sale frame for $1.00, a piece of fabric left from the newly upholstered bar chairs, and some silk ribbon and- Voila! 
We have been very busy...the garden is mostly harvested and in the freezer...I have some cantaloupe which are volunteer from the compost are ripening - a gift from Mother Nature I guess-(hope they aren't listeria infected) and the tomatoes are still on the vines. 

"Look deep, deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." ~ Albert Einstein

Fall?

 These glorious sunflowers line the southeast side of the vegetable garden and will be fodder for the birds soon. I love the colors! There were so many seedlings this year that I planted some on the south side of my home and they nearly reached the top of the garage. But in spite of the temperatures in the high 80's and low 90's, my weather predictor tells me that fall is just around the corner and then snow.  Living in Wyoming, it is just a given.  We would like to go camping just one more time, but since we are still on the kitchen project (we sprayed texture this week and what a mess that is), who knows?

Our quilt guild held a show this past weekend and with over 100 quilts, both old and new, it was a large undertaking.  Having never participated in this sort of event, I volunteered to work and it was enjoyable, although it was work.  Hanging the quilts on wooden structures, some as tall as ten feet for the larger quilts was a bit frightening. Had one gone down, it would have been a domino effect.  It was a great success.  We are busy with the harvest, beets, turnips, cabbage, zucchini and the rest and I will be happy when the garden is empty, but that will surely mean fall has arrived.

"Gardens are a collaboration between art an nature." ~ Penelope Hobhouse

A walk through the woods

Because the temperatures predicted for today were in the 90's and because we can, we decided to take another day to play in the high country. Still wanting to explore more of uncharted territory for us, we loaded the crew up and packed a lunch for a day trip. Near Rob Roy Reservoir, we drove up a dirt road and noted several really good camping spots. As we rounded a curve we encountered these two bull Moose leisurely having their breakfast or brunch...maybe their coffee break. I threw a picnic lunch together and water for the dogs in the truck this morning along with the camera, but forgot exactly where the camera was at first. By the time I remembered where it was, these two were starting to move. We did get some great shots as they lumbered across the road in front of us..totally ignoring us and in no hurry to get away! This alone made the trip worthwhile.
We stopped to let the dogs play and had our lunch in the shade of the trees and continued our adventure. It was uneventful after that, but I marvel at the beauty of the mountain countryside and always find it relaxing and peaceful...the calm before the storm. With a little nip in the air in the early morn and with the children all going back to school, it reminds me that the snow storms will be here before we know and I will be longing for another walk in the woods.

More summer fun stuff

Here are a few of the teapot birdhouses we made...each of us was able to have at least two and some three. Click on the photo for an enlargement.

Sunflowers this year are so pretty! My garden has produced pretty well this year, considering that I wasn't sure what I would plant and since it was my first year, I have learned a lot. Next year I will dress the cabbages in panty hose to keep the white fluttery creatures from using them as foliage for reproducing. My daughter warned me and I kept putting off the task, however I was able to harvest my first head yesterday along with the multitude of zucchini and broccoli.
The Mr and I and dogs spent this past week camping. Weather was great, scenery beautiful, bugs were plentiful and in spite of a flat tire and cured plant seeds sticking to the dogs, it was a nice few days away from the rat race. We have a big quilt show here this next week and I suppose I will do more garden gathering and freezing for winter, but we may take a day to play again before it gets too cold to do so. Kitchen remodel on hold 'til bad weather or time permits.

More fun!

This is my teapot birdhouse and I will post more later! We had fun trying to determine just how much "junk" we need on them.House for rent? All five below. Click on the image for a closer view.
And in the cabin above the laundry this was the replacement for the old wicker shade from the 70's probably. The bulb could be replaced with something more decorative, but it sure did illuminate the area and I neglected to get a picture of the others. Figuring out how the wiring would take place with the different thicknesses of china and pottery was a little bit of a challenge, but our hostess outdid all when she shimmied up the ladder to place her birdhouse on an old aspen top. We have gotten a lot braver with our endeavors and discovered that we can find a solution to pretty much anything!

We spent the weekend with friends in the Platte Valley and helped with a community garage sale. What fun! Now we hope to get out of town for a camping trip sometime before the snow starts to fall. My garden is producing lots of goodies and I will need to take time to harvest and preserve soon. Fall is in the air.

Retreat project

This is the work table filled with teapots and do dads of all sorts in bins and boxes. I cut the pickets from cedar fence boards in various shapes and we painted or stained them to our liking. After positioning them on the pickets, holes were drilled for wire which was threaded through from back to front and twisted around the spouts and handles. I was lucky enough to have a lid with a hole in it and embellished the picket with a flower shaped piece from a lamp I took apart. A chandelier crystal hangs from the spout and I am hoping that a robin will find it a fit home for feeding her babies crumpets and tea. At any rate we had a ball picking out "stuff" and again--recycle, re purpose, reuse!
Speaking of crumpets and tea..We picked our first raspberry crop tonight. After the weigh-in, we only had half pound but they were yummy over vanilla ice cream!

The kitchen remodel is on hold while we have some "us time", but we are nearly ready to spray texture and then pick out counter top and sink and paint. When you do these things yourself you must have patience!

"A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains." ~ Dutch Proverb

Retreat fun!

OK, here is the gnome house which I finished at our wonderful Elk Mtn cabin with my dear friends. There were several hollowed logs last year which we decided would make great projects for this year. I took saws, drills, construction materials and a bucket of odds and ends I had collected for embellishments for birdhouses. The "roof" I used was a piece of kitchenware found at the Goodwill with a hole in the center. We decided we could put a plant in the center. I put this in my shade garden and had been given a fern start which I decided had not lived. To my surprise, when I got home, I found that the fern had indeed lived and put up one small frond. This will be perfect for my gnome village and this is the first of many more homes to come. I will post pictures of the others my friends made later. We had so many laughs. The logs were of various thicknesses and it was a trick to use the hole saws, but with a little patience and some ingenuity we succeeded! Just to give you an idea of our workspace, this photo shows our plywood tables perched on very old saw horses. We were shaded and protected and this is next to a stream. We discovered that we had neighbors in the form of a pair of robins with 4 little babies just outside the covered area. As we laughed and sawed and drilled and made all kinds of noise, they continued to feed the babies until one fell out of the nest. The resident boxer discovered the baby and with a ladder and gloves, our hostess carefully put the baby back and we were pleased to see that it was fine and continued to be fed.