Patience, Please

This post started out with my new ideas about replacing the email subscription service for those of you who read via email. Now I'm back editing to say I've given up finding an alternative. None of the services are free, and I'm afraid I'm too cranky and cheap to pay for one on a monthly basis. If you are an email subscriber, please know that you will stop receiving these emails on July 1st. If you want to continue reading, I'm afraid you'll need to follow via one of the services listed in my left side bar. Another alternative is to create a shortcut on your own screen. You can do that by dragging and dropping this Cat Patches link to your desktop and creating an icon there. It will open the blog for you, and you can read any new posts as they appear. And, I'm sorry...there's nothing else I can do about this. I'm open to suggestions, however. So suggest away if you know something I don't. (I imagine there's a LOT you know that I don't, but you know what I mean.)

Okay, everybody...now for the fun part. Or maybe it's not fun...I can't really tell from here, but I'm trying my best. We went out for a drive yesterday. The weather was lovely, and Mike wanted an excuse to drive his car. The mountains were out in force. I tried to get a picture of them, but they look awfully small in an image. They're much prettier when you can see the in person. Way off on the distant horizon, you can barely see Mt. Rainier (on the left), then Mt. St. Helens, and then on the far right, Mt. Adams.

But the real king daddy of the mountains here is Mt. Hood. Sorry I couldn't get a picture sans other cars and power lines.

We needed a couple of items we missed at the grocery store, but mostly, I wanted to get out with my DSLR camera and telephoto lens to capture these two osprey nesting by the side of the road. The road we were traveling runs adjacent to the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, and it was quite a treat to see this breeding pair. I'll check back with them occasionally in the coming weeks. Maybe we'll get to see them raising some babies.

As we drove away, I caught one of my favorite barns. I'm usually driving when I'm traveling this road, and so I never get a chance to capture it.

So we ran our errands. Back home, I took a few more pictures of the blooming things. Here's another image of the flowering plums lining the driveway, but from a different angle this time.

The Andromeda is starting to bloom. Eventually it will add some red foliage to its blossoms, and it is really quite stunning when it gets going full bore.

Also, the salmon-colored tulips opened, as expected.

I spent most of the day deadheading the hydrangeas. Using the clippers was hurting my hand toward the end, and so I called it a day early on. I don't want to flare up my thumb, which is feeling pretty good right now.

For dinner, I tried a new recipe from the diet. This is Orecchiette with Tomatoes, Fresh Mozzarella, and Basil. It was a nice pasta salad for a warm day, served cold.

We really liked it. If I were going to make it again...and I will...I think it would be better with an added tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. There was enough left over for lunch today.

As for today, I've spent the morning working on this email server issue. When I finish here, I'm going to do some slow-stitching. There wasn't much time for sewing yesterday, so I'm hoping to get more done today. Also, I need to catch up on some housework. We're taking off on a camping trip next week, and so tomorrow will be reserved for packing the RV again. It shouldn't take the whole day since it's a short trip, but the month has been busy. I'm sorry I haven't had more time for sewing. Things always slow down eventually.