Bitter Harvest

Good morning, my friends. Oh my...what a dire title to this post. Not to worry, but it's okay if you want to grrrrrrrrrrrrrr a little bit. Before we get to the grrrrrrrring part, though, let's take a look at the slow-stitching. Yesterday morning had me finishing the reindeer on the left side.

Now I've moved my hoop to the right, and this is all that's left. I expect to finish it this morning.

Okay...now for the part that might make you want to grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Please come with me to the garden. At first glance, I was happy to see one of the bean vines has climbed to the top of its pole.

But then, I noticed this.

The leaves are all chewed off. Thankfully, the bean-producing flowers are still there. Only the leaves were munched. We've been thinking raccoons were responsible for this transgression, but this was up too high for it to be raccoons.

But what's this I see? A hoof print!!! We have an 8-foot fence all around the garden. How did a deer get in here?

And deer droppings to boot! WTF?

Okay, well, here's the answer. It's a little hard to see in the image below, but the fencing was pushed in where a deer (or more than one deer) had squeezed under the fencing to gain access to the garden. DEER!!!! (Shakes fist at no one in particular.)

Okay, so we spent a good couple of hours going all around the perimeter of the fence zip-tying the fencing to a cable that also runs around the entire perimeter. We're hoping that will keep them out. (Sigh). If it's not one critter causing trouble, it's another.

While I was doing my zip-tying, I noticed a few newcomers to the bee garden. My phone tells me this is chilopsis.

This is coreopsis

And my phone tells me this is globe candytuft. This little cluster is about the size of a ping pong ball.

And here's the day's harvest. These are the first of the pickling cucumbers. I don't yet have enough to do anything with them, but I believe I will later next week. That one on the left almost got away from me. They're a lot like zucchini in that way. You have to watch them every day or you'll end up with something you could use to club a deer to death. (Would I do that?)

Oh yes, and I was happy to see the first bud on the Firefighter dahlia. The others have been blooming away, but this one has been slow to the party. I was beginning to wonder if we'd see anything from it this year.

When it blooms, it will look like this.

It was time for some lunch. After scooting around the perimeter of the garden on my butt for over an hour, a nap was in order. When I was ready to face the rest of the afternoon, I went to work on the quilting. For this, I'm just doing a kitty paw meander all around. It's hard to see, but there's a kitty paw in the middle of the image below.

Probably I have a little more than a third done. When I reached a point where I'd quilted myself into a corner and was forced to cut threads, I stopped for the day.

Heading into the sewing room, it was time to trace the next block for "Home is Where My Flock Is." This is the 7th of 13 blocks. I'm kind of miffed because I ordered some sepia colored pens recently. When they arrived, their caps and markings all indicated sepia. Does that look like sepia to you? Oh well. It probably doesn't matter.

Finishing the stitching on this block seems like a good candidate for August's

With that ready for stitching, it was time to return to the lemurs. Smitty helped me choose fabrics.

When my hour was up, I kept going for another half hour. I wanted to make a little more progress on the face for the lemur on the left. If you're wondering about that large white piece, it will have several pieces over the top of it, and so I cut it larger than I needed. Some pieces overlap others, and I'm keeping the darkest pieces on top. That means the white is sometimes relegated to background status until the other pieces are added over the top. The lemurs are emerging, but there's still a long way to go on this.

As a reminder, this is the photo I'm working from.

Last night’s dinner wasn’t hard, but it took some time. Since the zucchini wars are gearing up, I’m getting a head start with this new recipe for Zucchini Soup with Dill and Sour Cream. It’s made with 2-1/2 lbs of zucchini and a pound of leeks. Then, it’s the usual kinds of seasonings. The vegetables are sauteed and then boiled in some chicken broth. Later, I added fresh spinach and fresh dill, and then pureed it. Some more zucchini and dill was set aside as a garnish. It was tasty enough. The most important thing about it is that it laid waste to around 10 medium-sized zucchini. 

The recipe is from America’s Test Kitchens, and so you’d need a subscription to be able to open it. If you want the recipe, please don’t hesitate to email me, and I’ll be happy to send it to you. As a side dish, I made this copycat recipe of Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits. I’ve made this recipe before, and the biscuits are good. Since I never ate the biscuits at Red Lobster, I can’t say whether it’s a good copycat. Either way, they’re easy to make and they were a good accompaniment to the soup.

There’s one housekeeping chore on the day’s agenda, and I need to water the flowers. Also, I’ll probably make up tonight’s dinner earlier in the day. Making dinner early interrupts my morning, but it’s nice to have everything ready when dinner time comes. There should be plenty of time for sewing today. I doubt I’ll finish quilting the Kittens today. Certainly, tomorrow isn’t out of the question. It’ll have to wait for its binding since things are strewn everywhere in the sewing room because of the lemurs. Never let lemurs run wild in your sewing room. Take it from me. Hopefully, I’ll see them emerge a little more today. When I work on them for a long time, it’s hard to “see” what I’m doing. It helps to take a break and return with fresh eyes.

Okay. It’s just about time for some Sunday oatmeal blueberry pancakes. After breakfast, Ill get on with my day.

Slow Boat Farm

Good morning, my friends! I’m back a day early. If you were hoping to have another day of peace and quiet without my blabbing on and on and on about nothing at all, then I’m sorry. But you know how it is…I get word overload, and then things just don’t go well at all. And don’t even get me started on all the pictures I have to show you. After giving it some thought, I decided to tell you about the trip in three installments. There’ll be this post. Then, I’ll write a post about our sight-seeing day on Thursday. Then, I’ll tell you about our journey home. And I can catch you up on current events while I’m at it.

Okay, so let’s back up to Wednesday morning, the day we left home. The flower pots needed watering, and I harvested five tomatoes and four medium-sized zucchini. Cool. It’s always nice to see the literal fruits of your labors. And what do you suppose I found outside the greenhouse? The first purple poppy! Yay!  

We had just a little last-minute packing to do, and then we were on our way. The traffic getting through downtown Portland was absolutely awful. It lightened up some when we were able to get across the Interstate Bridge on I-5 to the Washington side of the Columbia River. 

Happy to be here, Washington. We’re just here for a short visit this trip. We’ll be spending more time later this fall. 

The drive up I-5 is nothing special. Concrete freeway lined with Douglas fir trees as far as the eye can see. The scenic part of the drive doesn’t really get started until after you pass through Longview. That was where we turned off. We’d been driving alongside the Kalama River, and we crossed over just after leaving the interstate.

As we headed west, we paralleled the Cowlitz River.

By then, we’d already driven most of the way there. We could see the bridge that would take us across the Columbia channel to Puget Island.

We turned off at Cathlamet, Washington. What a fun little town…and historic. This is what Wikipedia tells us about Cathlamet:

Cathlamet was the largest, or one of the largest, villages of Columbia River Native Americans west of the Cascade Mountains, and the home of the Kathlamet people. Cathlamet was sighted in 1792 by Lt. W.R. Broughton, while verifying Capt. Robert Gray's reported exploration of the Columbia River. This village of cedar houses included 300-400 inhabitants when visited by Lewis and Clark.

In 1846, James Albion Birnie became the first permanent white settler at Cathlamet, moving there after a career with the Hudson's Bay Company. He set up a trading post, remnants of which were reported still standing in 1906. Birnie named the area Birnie's Retreat. The name was later changed to Cathlamet in 1851.

It only took about ten minutes to drive through town, and then we approached the Julia Butler Hansen Bridge. Julia Butler Hansen was a Congresswoman who represented Washington from 1960 to 1975. The bridge was built in 1938, and so it seems it must have been renamed at some point…or maybe it had no name before. 

Okay, here we go. It’s a pretty fancy bridge leading out to a small community.

We were crossing the Columbia channel.

And here we were on Puget Island, where I saw the first barn of the trip.

Here's what Wikipedia tells us about Puget Island:

The island was named for Peter Puget, a lieutenant in the Vancouver Expedition of exploration, which first mapped the island in 1792. 

Puget Island was settled in 1884 by the Ostervold family. In addition to running dairy farms, farmers on the island grew mint from 1917 to the late 1940s. The next major crop grown on Puget Island was cucumbers, primarily for pickling, until the crops were damaged by mosaic disease. In the 1990s, sheep, dairying, and cottonwood were the main agricultural pursuits.

Just about ten minutes later, we arrived at our final destination. Slow Boat Farm is kind of like an AirB&B for campers.  

We could see the kids and their new van as we drove up. We pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Looking in the other direction, the owner lives in one of those structures. There’s also a part-time tenant living here. Otherwise, they rent out their open field for camping.

Looking west, it looked like this:

This is how we arranged ourselves. It was very windy when we arrived. The weather would continue to get worse throughout the evening, unfortunately. On the positive side, we’d always planned to eat dinner at a restaurant in town this first night, and so it didn’t really interfere with our plans.

We had a few hours to spend before dinner, and so we sat and chatted and got ourselves set up. A family of deer visited off in the distance. There was a doe and her fawn.

The fawn still had its spots.

All around, these little buttercups were in bloom.

We enjoyed our dinner out. The rain started up as we drove into town. There’d been intermittent lightning and thunder all afternoon. By nightfall, we were into thunderstorms and drenching downpours. Happily, the forecast was for better weather by morning. 

The rain stopped overnight. When we awakened the sky was still gray, but it was considerably lighter than the previous afternoon. There are cattle ranches all around. The cattle were off in a distance the afternoon of our arrival. When we awakened on Thursday morning, they were right outside our back window.

Erik made us a delicious breakfast Thursday morning. This was bacon from their pork share.

It was delicious…possibly the best bacon I’ve ever eaten.

Also, pancakes.

And scrambled eggs.

Mae made fresh squeezed orange juice. I’m telling you…we were roughing it.

We’d been hearing the screech of an eagle, and I finally spotted them in a tree about 100 yards away.

I took picture after picture. It’s hard to get a good picture from so far away, and so I just take a lot of pictures. In one of them I captured the top eagle spreading his wings. I’m thinking the eagle below him is a little nervous about what’s got him so stirred up. If I were standing below him, I’d certainly be considering my options.

Okay, and from there we took off on our day of sight-seeing. I’ll save that for tomorrow’s post. I’ve done absolutely nothing since we got home, and so I have plenty to keep me occupied today. We realized we were out of cat food, and so, clearly, that will require an emergency trip into town. There’s not a lot of unpacking to do for such a short trip, but I need to hoe the garden too. I expect I’ll find time to sew at some point. I haven’t done any sewing…nothing at all…since the last Tiny Treasure. Honestly, I’m certain my pulse is getting weak and thready from lack of thread-based intervention. You may have experienced this affliction yourself a time or two. 

So, with that, I’ll leave you to your day.