A Winner and an Update

Good morning, my friends, and a happy weekend to you! We're back from our little boating trip over to Starbuck, Washington. I've spent the past half hour (at least) sorting through pictures and trying to pick out the best ones for editing. My Photoshop Elements editor has been giving me grief during this process. It seems I can only load so many pictures for editing at a time. Three times, I've selected one picture over another and then deleted the first one from my editor. When I do that, it takes me back to a much, much earlier picture, deleting a large number along with the one I selected. After the third try, I decided this post would need to be written in pieces. We're in the process of setting up the time-traveling machine as I'm writing this, and so I'm going to limit today's post to a short update. I'll write a series of posts telling you about our trip. We'll all live longer that way.

So let's take care of the most important business first, shall we? At long last it's time to pick a winner for my 13th Blogiversary Celebration Giveaway. Mr. Random has spoken, and the winner is

#41--Karen!

Congratulations, Karen! I've sent you an email, so check your inbox.

Okay, let's just get started on this little update. I needed to water all the flower pots before we left on Monday morning. While I was out, I took a few "status" photos of things. A lot changed while we were gone. First of all, the "Checkers" dahlia looked fairly ready to burst open.

Returning home, it looked like this yesterday afternoon. I haven't been out yet this morning, but I expect it to be fully opened by now.

To it's right, the newly planted tuber is doing great. I believe it is larger now than it was when the earlier one rotted and died.

I had tomatoes turning red in the greenhouse. 

I neglected to take a picture when I was out yesterday, but I can tell you that there are at least half a dozen ripe ones on the vine now. The slicer has a few tomatoes that are nearly tennis ball sized.

Our trip east took us to this location. I'll have a lot more to tell you over the next few days. We packed a lot into a short period of time.

For now, the only pictures I've been able to edit are the ones of the birds we saw, and so I'll just start with them. Below is the "dock duck." He had a mate and a nest somewhere, but we were never able to find them. Mike got a look at the mate at one point.

He hung out on the boat launch ramp, and he was there each and every day. He clearly takes his launch-guarding duties very seriously.

We went west on the Snake River our first day of boating. I had my DSLR camera with me, mounted with a small telephoto lens. With no tripod and a rocking boat, my pictures aren't very good. I'll show you what I took, and then follow with a better shot from the public domain so you can get a better look at the bird. We'd never seen anything like this grouping. They were squawking and making quite a racket.

Here's another shot. Notice somebody has an open beak in each picture.

With some internet sleuthing, I was able to identify these as Caspian Terns. 

Here's a better shot from the public domain.

("Caspian Terns 'parked' in Everett, WA" by Caspian Tern is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)

The bird in the image below is an American White Pelican. We saw several of them in our travels too.

Here's a better shot from the public domain.

("File:Mikebaird - American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos ) (bird) in Mo (by).jpg" by Mike Baird from Morro Bay, USA is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

On our second morning of boating, we drifted past Lyons Ferry State Park. We visited there when we came to this area last time. It's a small park, but a lovely picnic area with a swimming beach.

A contingent of gulls was there to greet us. Possibly they were practicing their drills.

"Company...left face!"

Of course, there were Canada geese. Show me a body of water, and I'll show you a Canada goose.

Also, we found an osprey nest with a nestling.

Driving on the road above on a different day, I was able to get it from a different angle.

In sewing news, I spent Tuesday stitching my quilt binding. I had a nice view for it.

By day's end, I'd turned the first two corners.

The next afternoon, I finished it off.

When we're traveling, I like to give just-finished quilts a glamor shot. It was too late in the day for that.

Instead, we celebrated with our one dinner of not-leftovers of the trip. Steak and lobster. Camping. That's how we do it. 

We waited for the morning sunshine to give Pieces of the Past its glamour shot. It seemed fitting to have the Joso railroad trestle in the background. (I'll say more about it in a different post.)

The quilt ends up at 61 x 68 inches. It was started October 26, 2019, and finished July 19, 2023. Finishing it off was my goal for July's

and so I'll link up there when the party starts.

And we did some sight-seeing on this trip, including a surprise quilt shop!

I'll tell you more about it day-by-day, but there's a little too much to do right now. I have 250 pictures to go through, and with Photoshop Elements causing me grief, I'll need to edit them in smaller batches.

For now, I'll just say we made it home and found two kitties waiting for us when we opened the door. Sadie seemed completely unfazed by our absence. Smitty was miffed, and he let Mike know it.

It was a terrible drive home traffic-wise. Our first stop was to sit outside and drink a couple of Bees Knees to calm our nerves. The kitties joined us, and we started settling back into our regular evening routine. Smitty lay under Mike's chair.

Sadie was concerned that we'd been out traveling. She decided to keep social distancing. She doesn't want to catch the Catrona virus.

Everything in the garden survived the hot weather and lack of watering. I was happy to see even more greenery on the transplanted poppy. It looks as if it will survive the trauma.

The green beans have climbed to the top of their pole.

And they have flowers. I expect we'll see some baby green beans soon.

There are pickling cucumbers nearly large enough to harvest, but not enough to do anything with them yet.

Some of the corn stalks have developed tassels.

At least one of the giant sunflowers has grown as tall as the fence. I expect I'll be seeing flowers soon.

Even though I harvested most of the zucchini the morning we left, it still worked overtime producing these babies. I have enough for a couple of batches of relish now.

And there's lots of canning to keep me busy over the next few days. There are also carrots and beets to pickle. 

The next week is going to be a busy one. We have dinner guests coming next Friday evening. It's another couple I don't know well...Mike's former boss and his wife...both retired now. I've met them once or twice, but it's always more nervous-making when I don't know our guests well. The garden needs hoeing and weeding, and I'm woefully behind in my housework. And let's not forget laundry and grocery shopping. When I list it all out like that, it sounds fairly daunting. I'm going to try to keep my head on straight and take it just one thing at a time. But I just want to point out that you guys were at the top of my list. Thank you for all the lovely comments on my giveaway post. You lurkers...just keep on lurking. I don't mind at all, but it's always fun to hear from some of you when you do leave a comment. 

All right. It's time for me to get busy unpacking. I haven't even had my breakfast yet. Today I'll be hoeing the garden and doing a little housework. I'm very close to finishing off the latest Domestic Affairs block, and so I'll find some time for that. I've also finished the Joyful Journey block, but it needs pressing and them it needs to pose for its photo. I'll be back with another update and some pictures from our trip tomorrow. Stay cool, everybody!