Sizzlin' Summer

 Here we are now nearing mid-August.  It seems nearly the whole summer has swept past without me posting at all in this much neglected little blog.  I was so busy living my life that I didn't take time to write much about it.

However, there were many fine days spent in gardens, among other adventures.  One particularly sweet time was a garden party at the home of Kim & Victoria of  Our Life in Idaho in early June.  My beloved and I had a delightful time perusing their lovely flowers and very much enjoyed conversation with other garden lovers.   (The photos immediately above and below were taken at their place.)  I fell in love with their feather lilies and am determined to find a spot to put some of those when I plant new bulbs this fall.

In May we spent a couple days at Shore Lodge in McCall.  I needed to be there for a work conference.  Since my sweet husband is now retired he was able to come with me and then we extended our time with a weekend at my brother's vacation home there for some fun on our own after my work obligations were over.  We found several geocache and enjoyed some nice walks, good books, and did a bit of fishing.  (The trout tacos were wonderful!)

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Over Memorial Day weekend we did our traditional venture to Utah for a reunion of my husband's family.  Then in June I went to Lapwai (very small town on the Nez Perce Reservation near Lewiston) for five days as part of a multi-disciplinary team doing a community review.  I learned a lot in the process and enjoyed seeing some beautiful country on the ride up there and back.  The many canola fields were particularly beautiful.

 

Then the following week we went to the Seattle area to commemorate a "celebration of life" for an uncle who had died.  While it is always sad to lose one of our clan, it was a peaceful passing of a man who had lived a long and productive life.  Also, there was a lapse in time between his passing and when the service was held, so it was more celebration that sadness for most of us.  It was great to see all the cousins.  We spent two nights with one of my cousins in Tacoma and had a wonderful visit there.  Since my brother rode over with us we did a detour on the way home to see the waterfalls and hike some trails along the Columbia Gorge which was delicious.

In July we made a trip back to Athena, Oregon  where we used to live before coming to Boise.  We went to hear the homecoming talk of a young man we know who had just returned from an LDS Mission in Botswana.  We also got to take in some of the festivities of the Caledonia Games, an annual event celebrating Scottish heritage.  There were bagpipe players and Scottish dancers, Clan booths and fair food.  There were big strong guys in skirts (ok, they were kilts) throwing huge heavy things in some sort of competition I never could quite figure out and of course the ever popular sheep dog trials. 

We mostly enjoyed cruising through the many yard sales that are always abounding on that weekend, and found a few treasures.

It was great to see all our old friends from church when we attended our former ward in Milton Freewater, where we had been members of the congregation for about eight years.  One sad thing - We went by our old house in Athena and were disappointed to see the new owners had torn out all the beautiful flowers we had planted and replaced it with lawn.  It's their house now and they can do whatever they want, I suppose, but heart breaking to see after all the love and work we put into that landscaping - even winning a "Yard of the Month" recognition from the town.

At the end of July I went to San Antonio, Texas for a week for another work conference.   I got to see the Alamo and did some early morning walks in the park behind the convention center which was really nice.

As soon as I got back from that trip I turned around and left again to go to Idaho Falls for meetings over there.  I was ever so grateful to my road warrior husband for his willingness to do all the driving.  As long as I had to go it was nice he could accompany me so we could enjoy each other's company on the way.

Between all that travel I had my hands full with an 8 week online instructors class (professional development stuff for the community college work I do) that took way more hours than I had anticipated.   I spent MANY a night working into the wee hours of the morning learning new tools and re-crafting the learning units I will be teaching from this fall.  

But even with all that going on we found time to have some fun day trips - such as the time we went with our good friends the Knams to Celebration Park, Idaho's only archeological park.  We enjoyed exploring all the different rocks with pictograph art carved into them who knows how many years ago and speculating on their purpose and meaning. 

 

   Afterwards we went on to find several different geocache in various spots - including one that took us to an old cemetery in the desert that was interesting to wander through.   

Throughout the spring and summer we've hosted several pot luck gatherings - one for our neighborhood,  one for my Spring semester students, and several for friends of ours from our church.  

So I guess it really is no wonder I didn't do any blogging.   Life continues to be rich and full and interesting.  As much as we could,  we enjoyed getting out in the gardens, savoring each phase of our flowerbeds.  We've also had great success with our veggies again this year, getting loads of snow peas early on and now being inundated with heirloom tomatoes, fresh garlic, Walla Walla sweet onions, and squash.  I've been making lots of fresh pico de gallo which has been absolutely scrumptious.

All I can say is that it's a darn good thing the whole yard is set up with automatic sprinklers because with us coming and going as much as we have, it would all die if it had to depend on us dragging hoses!