Morning miscellany

    This is a lazy sort of day, sitting on the front porch with the remnants of a single cup of coffee, left over from yesterday and rewarmed, not my favorite, but not wanting to waste it.  I used to save it for iced coffee, but only when the brew is decaf so I can actually sleep at night.  This pound is high test.

 

I never tire of this view.

     The pups are chasing each other around the yard that again needs to be mowed.  Many of the farmers here are cutting a second mowing of hay already.  Last night in the relative cool before dark, I attacked the garden and compost area with the weedwacker and can now at least walk the paths and see the beds.  I still need to weed the beds and get some fall plantings in along with cover crops for the beds that are done for the season.  The tomatoes are producing copious quantities, some being frozen whole, some cooked into pasta sauce while there is fresh basil and oregano and homegrown onions and it too is being frozen.  There are enough jalapenos to can a few and make fresh salsa for snacking and saucing.

     As I have previously blogged, we live on 30 acres in the midst of hayfields and pastures. When we returned from Florida, I found evidence that one or more of the little four legged mousey critters had gotten by the cats and sneaked inside, so the traps had to be pulled out and set.  The first night we caught a large field mouse, last night a much smaller one managed to get only a leg caught and caused so much ruckus, that hubby woke me to help him figure out what the racket was and where it was coming from.  I guess the traps will have to stay out for a while longer as they never come in one or two.  It is a bit more challenging finding places to put the traps that the pups can't get into.

     Another swift built a nest under the eaves of the garage on the south side of the house.  This has provided me with some amusement as they dive bomb the pups when they are in the back.  They usually attack from behind, swooping down as close as they can come to the dog's back or head, causing a confused start by the pup.  It has interrupted their daily business more than once.  Interestingly, they are learning and tend to move farther from the house now to avoid the mystery attacks.

     Our basement contractor returned over the weekend and he and a helper pulled up both the leading and end edges of the bamboo flooring that they had installed that had buckled so badly that we did not  want to walk on it.  It has been trimmed to leave, hopefully sufficient expansion space to prevent it from happening again.  It has been down all summer and should have expanded as much as it can.  This also necessitated putting a dehumifier down there to try to remove some of the moisture, and requiring 2 or 3 emptyings of its bucket daily.  It is a basement with most of 3 walls underground, even though the remaining wall is south facing and exposed.  This problem has forced us to use our A/C consistently for most of the summer, which we haven't done since moving here 6 years ago.  I have very mixed feelings about that as I love the sounds of the birds and bugs that are a benefit of peaceful mountain living.
    
    The second project that son did when he was here was to cut the stringers and shelf boards for me to finally install shelving in the linen closet nook in the downstairs bathroom.  The installation was completed over the weekend and all of the spare linens finally have a home, not in dresser drawers.

    Summer goes on, hot and humid, though the temperatures have returned to seasonal hot, not the upper 90's of June and the mountain nights are blissfully cool.