Slow Afternoon

Sue and I managed our walk with no rain yesterday. The weather report showed only a slight chance of rain until 11:00 a.m. when the chance rose to 70%. We were finished around 10:45. I stopped off at a grocery store on my way home. When I got back in the car at 11:09, the rain started coming down. Pretty amazing how accurate weather reports are these days. The sky was fairly dramatic as I drove to where we park. This picture was taken from the top of our hill.

Here are some things we saw along the way. As I mentioned in a previous post, there's quite a bit of work being done along this side of the trail. There have been some new office buildings and apartments built here, and so the trail has been improved from what it once was. There's also been the addition of this dog park...

To the right of that image is this bike rack.

Along the trail, we spotted this blue heron. He was suspicious of us.

Possibly if he turned his back, we'd go away.

When that didn't work, he decided to walk onto greener wet pastures. When we returned a few minutes later, he was gone.

All the squirrels are fat right now. Sue wondered if they might be pregnant.

We've known there is a beaver dam along this section of the trail. Yesterday, Sue spotted it with her sharp eyes. This is one of two beaver dams we know of.

Here's some of the resulting flooding. We generally turn around at this point because the flooding is worse down the way. The ducks don't mind. They're after some of our  Oregon slugs....delicious, or so I'm told. I've never actually tried them myself.

When I got home, I had lots of company while I iced my knee.

The kitties thought it was a good time for a nap, and so what could I do, but tip back in my recliner and join them.

And that made it a very short sewing day. I got just this far with the next Mulligan Stew block. I'll get them finished today. Also, my yo-yo maker arrived late in the day yesterday, and so I'll make the two yo-yos for the Garden Sunshine block.

Instead of sewing, I decided to make a test recipe from America's Test Kitchens. I used to do recipe testing for them, and then gave it up a long time ago. Now I'm back to it. They sent me a recipe for "braised eggplant," and that sounded positively ghastly. Then a few minutes later, they sent me a recipe for "Apple Crunch." Well, count me in on that. Only, the recipe was poorly written. That, combined with a tired and distracted brain, and I won't even go into all the mistakes I made while making this. I had to start over with the topping. Even the second time around, I effed it up, and then I was kind of stuck. Throw it out or bake it up the way I had it. So...what the heck? I baked it up and it actually turned out okay. It's far from the "apple crunch" it was supposed to be. Mine turned into something more akin to apple cobbler.

A couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream hide a multitude of sins.

So, I still want to try this again, and I doubt I can make any more mistakes with it. I'll have to get some more apples though.

Today is going to be NBS. I'm looking forward to that. I want to finish up the Mulligan Stew blocks. If I can, I'll finish up the Let's RV stitchery. And if I get that far, maybe I'll turn that into some kind of little wall hanging...we'll see. There is still one more small quilt I'd like to get quilted before the end of the month, and so that's probably next on the list. All of my monthlies are done, and so I have the rest of the month to play.