Day 6: From a low angle

It's tricky, getting a cow shot from a low angle without being slimed.

This is Buttercup and she was mighty suspicious...

What the cats see, when they sleep under the daylilies...

Self-timers can be fun!

Not exactly from a low angle looking up, but I used the self timer on Twilla, too!  

I don't know why I like this toy airplane against the sky, but it is one of my favorite shots!  The kids tied it to the swing set to use as a mailbox, if you can imagine.

This is Elizabeth (formerly Cap'n Barbosa) looking down from the playhouse...she just wants me to pet her. 

Day 5: From a high angle

 I bribed my model with parade candy that's being held hostage and I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit it.

Even if I had a good map I still wouldn't have a clue...

Day 4: Green

On a red, white and blue day, this is what I found for "green":

I don't know whose car this is, but it was the greenest thing I saw all day!

The same color as young lettuce...

PANIC!

I woke up this morning, feeling exactly like Calvin...

And while I was trying to take cloud pictures...

Figaro was standing guard, watching for snakes.

Two snoops, looked me over, both hoping for early morning grub.

Molly was impatient for our run and yelled at me until she was panting from the effort.

I found a new lily that had never bloomed before, that I can remember! I'm not really a lover of things pink, but this bubble gum lily is really pretty charming.

The sun rose over my sun on the propane tank, and that made me smile.

Day 3: Clouds

Wispy, wish-y morning clouds, gently beckoning the sun up for another day on the prairie...

Day 2: What I Wore Today

Not really....

I would LOVE to have worn this, but in actuality, I wore this to run in this morning:

And this to live in, this afternoon:

(Yes, bare toes...shoes are sort of pointless at home in the summer.)

And I'm VERY GLAD that tomorrow is a cloud picture.

Dear Marybeth,

You wanted to know what I was growing in Montana?
Here are some photos with explanations!
It has been brutally hot, this end of June, so some things are very happy (tomatoes and zucchini) and some things are very sad (peas and cucumbers).


This is the zucchini; I think perhaps in your area they're called summer squash (?).  They have the most gorgeous orange-y yellow blossoms (that are edible!) and they produce baskets of little green squash per plant.  I have four zucchini plants which is considered insane around here.  Seriously.  When these babies start putting out the veggies, people lock their car doors for fear of being zucchini bombed, which is when an anonymous gardener who is swamped with the squash leaves a grocery bag full of them in your back seat. This happened to me, once.  Now I'M the zucchini bomber! (It's considered much kinder to first bake the zucchini into bread before leaving it in the car.)

Here are the zucchini plants with their friends the carrots (on the edge of the bed) and zinnias planted in the middle.  I know; zinnias are flowers!  But I love to blend the two !  More on that later...

Little carrots! I had just gotten done thinning them, took this picture and realized I needed to thin them more, yet.  I hate thinning carrots.  It's hard to decide who's going to stay and who has to die.  And it takes FOREVER.  By the time I get done, there are little carrot carcasses laying about and I'm thinking, "I can buy carrots...WHY am I growing them?!?!"  But home carrots actually have flavor, where boughten carrots are really rather bland.

Baby cucumbers....aren't they CUTE?!  I go out and check them every day, smiling at how they are so tiny.  My cucumbers are unhappy.  I think it's because I amended the soil in those beds this spring and perhaps got it a little "hot" with too much manure.  Either that or they're just mad about the weather being so blasted hot.  I can't tell.  But where the zucchini are growing wildly, the cucumber plants are just sitting there pouting and staying stumpy. Yellowing on the edges of the leaves, even.

I think spinach is beautiful.  I love to eat it in salads, I love to watch it explode in the garden...one day, nothing; the next day...SHAZZAM! spinach!

Tomatoes....personally, I think the smell of tomatoes is the smell of summer.  These are little pear tomatoes which will be used for sauce, not eating.  My cherry tomatoes are just setting on fruit and I'll show you pictures of them in another post.  I'm the only, only, only one in this house that eats tomatoes and I have at least eight plants.  I can't help myself!  Part of the reason I plant so many, though, is because tomatoes are delicate, needy things that die easily in this part of the country.  They don't like wind (it blows 20 mph almost every day, here), they need lots of water (it rains once a month), they desire a perfect soil (ours is sandy and needs amendment constantly) and they won't produce unless all these elements are just so.  Also, my dogs lay on them.  That tends to inhibit growth.

I have some herbs.  This is the cilantro.  I make a lot of pico de gallo in the summer and like middle eastern dishes, all of which call for large amounts of cilantro.  This little plant re-seeds itself in my herb bed, but every year I panic and think it might not, so I buy a couple plants just in case.  Then, about 2 weeks later, it's everywhere and I feel so foolish for doubting...but one never knows!  I think it has lovely leaves, all scalloped and fringe-y.

I tuck vegetables in with my flowers wherever possible.  This is a whiskey barrel planter with dahlias (not blooming at the time) petunias and a little patio tomato plant.  The tomato is very happy, the flowers are very happy and when I can snack as I weed, I'm happy, too!

I'm embarrassed to show you OUR pumpkin plant.  Maggie and Angus, my kids, were supposed to be taking care of them but they are not as interested in pumpkins as they are toads, so I'm watering them occasionally and apologizing for the lack of care.  That's salvia in the background because, yes, the pumpkins are planted in a flower bed....

This is a poppy that volunteered to grow by the woven wire fence....I love poppies, with their tissue petals and stubborn will to grow in awful spots.

Columbine, raising its face to the sun. This is my favorite flower.  They look like shooting stars!

Flax, which only blooms in the morning.  The birds love the seeds and I love the true blue-ness of the blossoms.  There are very few honest-to-goodness blue flowers...have you noticed that?  Most are purple-y!  But flax is blue, blue, blue.

I have calves that are named for flowers....here are Poppy, Buttercup and Johnny-jump-up.  Poppy gets in my yard and I noticed this morning that she's been eating the lettuce...how NAUGHTY!  We will have words, later...

Here's my pergola, with the garden beds at each corner.  There's a picnic table under it that we use for just everything...the kids take color books and projects out there, I read and pot plants and have snacks, we have picnics, the dogs lay under it for shade.  There are solar lights strung so that when the sun goes down, the tiny white lights make a soft glow and we can stay out even longer.

That's all I have for right now.
I need to get busy watering because it's supposed to be 97 degrees today, a nice break from the 104 degrees of yesterday, and the plants are gasping!

Your friend,
Mary

Day 1: Self Portrait

What are you reading these days?

This seems rather backwards to the rest of the world, but we actually read more in the summer than in the winter, here.  There's something about the long days with no schedules, especially in July when the afternoons are 100 degrees and there are 69 channels of nothin' on the television, that seduce us into taking our books to corners of the house, quietly slipping away into worlds of faeries and kayak trips.

I'm one of those irritating people who read 6 books at once, depending on my whim of the moment as to which one I'll pick up.  This drives some of my friends crazy, as they are the type to read one book through, then read the NEXT book through, very orderly and thoroughly.  I've never been able to focus that long on one book, really.  Nor do I want to.  For instance, if I'm reading about someone in World War II and I can't bear the weight of it, I'm so relieved to have The Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League to fall into, to lighten the thoughts in my brain.  If I read a travel book, I like to be able to balance it out with a cookbook in the next room, bringing me back to this present time and place.  Moody readers are the worst, aren't they?

Here's what I'm reading:
(My friend, Joni, gave me this little tote and it's perfect for corralling my books by the couch.)

I've been grinding away at Cutting For Stone for at least 6 weeks, now...maybe longer; it has very explicit surgery descriptions and I have such a vivid imagination that I can almost feel them.  But I work away at it and when I'm done, I have friends to discuss it with and THAT is the reason I continue.

The time management and organizing books were for my workshop and have helped me IMMENSELY.  I continue to read and underline and mark, then turn around and apply to my life in as many ways as I can.  I knew I was differently wired than many of my friends, and these books are helping me learn to make changes to the way I organize in order for my habitat (so to speak) to work with the way I naturally think.

The John Grisham, Chris Bohjalian, and Racing in the Rain books are my fiction challenges to myself.  I have to FORCE myself to read fiction.  Isn't that crazy?  But true.  So I try to include a couple in my pile and pick up at least one, once a day.

The fishing book is feeding the passion, of course.  Loch and River is an illustrated journal of an avid fisherwoman who was born in England in 1884, but fly fished mainly in Scotland and Ireland throughout her years.  It has her notes from each day, illustrations of the flies she used, observations of the countryside and weather...it's incredible.

Eat, Pray, Love is almost done...I'll write more of that in a future post, as it smacked me upside the head earlier this month, oddly enough.  Pass the Butterworms is about travel, mostly to inhospitable places like Mongolia and it's more of a collection of writings than anything.  I'm afraid I read too many travel books and now grow impatient with the dozens of Tuscany writings.  Mongolia is a refreshing change.  :)

Finally, Confessions of a French Baker is a little book with recipes and techniques for making good french style loaves of bread at home.  I'll try some of the recipes, but think that truly...the only place to get perfectly French bread is in France.  Let's go there, now.


This is what I'm SUPPOSED to be reading for book club:

 Confession: I've only read about a chapter of the Marilu Henner Memory Makeover book.  It was for last month, for heaven's sake!!!  And this month is Sky of Stone by Homer Hickam who will actually be attending our book club meeting!  Can you believe the thrill?  I can't wait.  But I've read the book about three times, so don't feel a huge sense of urgency right now.  I WILL be frantically reading it for the fourth time about three days prior to the gathering.

This is what Maggie is currently reading:

A pet book, a dragon book, a horse book and a fairy book that she's just finishing up as I type.


These are the books Angus is looking at:

Very eclectic mixture of a mystery, a fable, an adventure and a nature book.  Hmm....


And finally, the magazines:

The fishing mag was a freebie at the library, so I grabbed it.  I like putting the food and fitness magazines together...provides balance, you know.  And I did NOT buy the People magazine with Kenny Chesney on the cover, even though I really, really wanted to because...another confession, here...I really think he's pretty cool and quite easy on the eyes.  Shelly put it in the little gift bag she brought for Maggie, knowing that I love the trashy tabloid but won't spend my hard earned money on it; bless her heart!  (It's starting to get a little frayed, but only because it has great recipes in this issue.) (I promise you, it DOES!)  Bon Appetit is a subscription from my friend Sara and it's the most wonderful gift every month!


So....what are YOU reading these days?

For Grandma Celestia and Grampa Jasper

I was gently prodded this morning to write more Chronicles because certain *ahem* readers were wanting to know more about what's going on around here.  (Which is nothing, really, but still, they want to see it.)

Today, we....

Captured a very nice, very tolerant toad.  They capture him DAILY, although Maggie insists it's not the same one.  I know it is.  He's the world's dumbest or loneliest toad, and I've grown rather fond of his little mug.  They always make sure to clean him up before presenting him to me, by bathing him in the bathroom sink.  Today Maggie was drying him a little too vigorously and I had to step in...but I think it must have been a sort of exfoliant because he does have a sort of amphibious glow, don't you think?

"We call him Mr. Perfect, because he's the MOST PERFECT toad we've ever seen!"

We have a wading pool, but it seems to serve the kids better as a shelter or secret hideout.  They miss the point of the "secret" hideout because they HAVE to show us how wonderful it is! Note the welcome mat out front.

He's mixing potions....

...that consist of water and dirt, creating the mud of his dreams.

We have artistic efforts, too!  This may be the happiest horse I've seen.  (I wasn't sure it was a horse, but it is, so now you don't have to guess.)

And this face, drawn next to the front door, which makes him look like he's peering around the corner.

This is typical summer attire:  purple satin harem pants and a cheerleading t-shirt.  No shoes.

We just had root beer floats and chocolate milkshakes for the afternoon pick-me-up and Mr. Perfect is languishing by the "pool".  

A prairie sunset for those in the mountains who miss them...

Photography Blog Challenge!

I'm not sure if it's a blog challenge or a photo challenge, so I combined them.
And here's the really, really....REALLY awful thing:
I see the word "challenge" and my head instantly converts it to "competition".
"IT'S NOT A COMPETITION!!!", I have to actually say out loud to myself.
Seriously.

My friend Kim is always inspiring and challenging me, sometimes when she doesn't even know it.  This time, she threw down a challenge for our blogs that uses photography, since we both use our cameras as much as some people use microwaves.  This is DAILY.  Which means I'll have to blog DAILY.  (I apologize in advance for the frequency of Chronicles in your email box....)

I'm going to post the challenge here, so if anyone else is interested in joining us, you'll have the list.
I'd LOVE it if you would!
We're starting tomorrow, July 1st and it will run for 30 days.
IT'S NOT A COMPETITION!
:)

I've gotta tell you, I'm going to have to look up what "Bokeh" is.
And "A bad habit" is worrying me.
And I'm going to have to really stretch on the "Faceless self-portrait".
But it should be fun!
Join us!