Do overs

     This post is about puppies and knitting, so...if you aren't interested in either, today's post is not for you.

     In early March, hubby and I bought a 9 week old English Mastiff puppy, expecting that we were bringing home an entity that would require, at least for a while, the care of a new baby.  We were blessedly wrong, they are extremely easy pups with a huge bladder, great control and very little urge to chew on things they shouldn't.  Basically, they are lazy, slug lazy, lawn ornament lazy, but gentle and loveable.

     Next, enter the young German Shepherd pup to raise with him.  This pup is on speed, all the time.  Constantly into things she shouldn't be, such as shoes, furniture, and has the bladder control of an old lady sneezing.

     Mastiff could be left unattended in the house by 5 months and didn't need to be kenneled at night.  Shepherd is an untrustworthy little wench.  After we had her for 6 weeks and she was 5 months old, we ventured to leave them both loose in the house for about an hour while hubby was out and I was mowing.  I came in to find this

several partial skeins of yarn strung over the living room, dining room and upstairs from our bedroom into the loft.  I was not amused, but salvaged what I could, threw away the rest and decided that she must be kenneled when we were out without them.  One evening last week, we decided to run down to the local store, about 2 miles away to get some ice cream.  We took the pups out, then left them with their toys in the house and came home to find that she had chewed a silver dollar size hole in the middle of my favorite sock yarn shawl, chewed on the edge of a scarf of my handspun yarn that I was finishing for a gift, and chewed clear through the power cord of hubby's laptop and we weren't gone 30 minutes.  I should have taken photos of that damage, but too frustrated with her for the damage and us for trusting her again.  Then two nights ago, the Mastiff decided that since hubby was asleep and Shadow was kennelled, that he would tackle one of the log siding walls in our bedroom, so I guess he can't be trusted out either.

 I will be making home repairs when I return from my babysitting gig, and while here, I have unraveled the shawl, rewound it and have cast on a new shawl out of a different pattern.  I guess knitting is really a process not a product and it is one of my favorite yarns to knit, so I get to enjoy it again.

Summer's end

     Summer's end again finds me in northern Virginia, helping our eldest son's family juggle the beginning of school.  He returned to his PhD program on Monday, began his teaching with his classes on Tuesday.  Our daughter by love had a meeting regarding her school year job and a meeting with her advisor on Tuesday and began classes yesterday.  Our eldest grandson doesn't start his second grade year until the day after Labor Day.  This puts them in a bind each year, though they plan their schedules to make sure one of them is home on each end of his day, the days that he is off and they are not causes them some stress.
     This year, he is in an afternoon robotics camp, so there aren't the nearly daily trips on the metro into DC to visit the Smithsonian or the zoo, and there have been very few parts of the day that one of them hasn't been home when he was, but it is good that I could come and help with the transition back to their school year routine.
     This year, also found a child who is reluctant for school to begin.  This reluctance has reduced somewhat once he found out who is teacher is going to be, a man he was glad to have as his teacher this year.  This will be good for the grandson, as he typically responds better to men.  And he discovered that a couple of his friends are in his class.  He doesn't do well with change, so these two discoveries have helped his anxiety about starting the year.
     With my gap coverage of his care, being able to transport him to and from his camp, and fixing dinner for the family at night, I hope has helped to reduce some of the back to school stress for them, without me adding to their stress by my presence.

Preserving season

 We are well beyond the halfway point of the mountain growing season.  Some of the tomatoes have died back, the beans are still producing, the kale and chard have been pruned back for another growth spurt as the weather cools.

 When we lived in the city and I still worked, the only preserving that I did was to pickle whatever jalapenos I could grow in my backyard garden and as an annual tradition, my Dad and I would make pomegrante jelly together.  The tradition began one year when his pomegrante bush was very prolific, stalled for a few years when he and Mom moved from the home of my childhood due to Mom's health.  A few years later, after my mom passed,  he remarried and moved into Norfolk, a neighbor of his offered the poms off of his bush and the tradition renewed until that neighbor moved and the new neighbor put up a privacy fence and I moved to the mountains.

 Shortly after moving here, I heard about the Common Book Project and they were reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle  and I decided to read along.  That book changed my approach to life.  It is about living locally, producing and preserving food if you can.  As living locally is the theme in this community, it was doable.  The garden morphed into the produce that could be root cellar stored, frozen, canned, pickled,  or jammed, that I knew we would actually eat.  The local farmer's market has pasture raised beef, chicken, turkey,  eggs, locally made cheese, soap, starter plants, bread and more.  There is a local dairy that bottles in glass, also makes butter and sells in one of the supermarkets.  Other than snacks, coffee, tea and bananas, we are living locally.

So far this year, there are about 60 pints of tomatoes and pasta sauce canned, dozens of jars of 3 different jams and pickled jalapenoes,  pounds of beans and peas, plus some tomatoes in the freezer and the freezer awaits the half beef and half pig we have ordered from our neighbor friend that sells at the market.  We hope to eventually have our own beef and chicken for meat and eggs.  It is nice knowing where your food is from and how it is grown.  It is wonderful to be able to preserve it for the season that does not provide and during the winter, I will resume baking our own bread, it is just too hot in the summertime.

Wednesday pics

I'm sitting on the sunny end of a very chilly front porch, watching the silly pups in the yard that desperately needs to be mowed again and enjoying the volunteer sunflowers reach for the morning sun.
 Life is good!

Sunday Thankfulness

Hold onto what is good, even if it a handful of earth.
Hold onto what you believe, even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold onto what you must do, even if it is a long way from here.
Hold onto life, even when it is easier to let go.
Hold onto my hand, even when I have gone away from you.
-Pueblo verse


The bounty of Mother Earth is good.  The freezer, root cellar and canning shelves are filling for the season that doesn't provide.

My hubby is going to be okay, even though he smashed the crud out of the end of his right thumb in a car door last night.  Bloodied, black and blue, and he will definitely lose the nail, but not the thumb.

The beautiful wonders of the mountain life as I spied a Red Tail hawk sitting on my compost structure this morning, just a couple dozen yards from the house.

The rains to help break the drought.

The talents that I have been given, that allow me to spin wool into yarn, knit yarn into garments, grow the bounty that will feed us.

Two pups that love us unconditionally and provide much entertainment.

Today, I feel very fortunate.

Jammin'

Yesterday evening was berry picking time while hubby took the pups to the doggie park.  I picked 10 pints of blackberries and 2 1/2 pints of blueberries, plus I had a few pints of berries lurking in the freezer from last summer.

 Today was jam making day.  I started fairly early and just finished.

 The finished days work produced 7 half pints of blueberry jam on the left of the front tray, 10 1/2 half pints of mixed berry, a blend of wineberries (a wild raspberry), wild blackberries, and blueberries.  The back tray, because my daughter loves it so, is 15 half pints and 6 quarter pint jars of blackberry.  Most years the wineberries and blackberries would all be wild, picked from the unmowed parts of our land, but the derecho storm that hit here in late June followed by a series of severe thunderstorms this summer, destroyed all the wild berries.  Fortunately, the two U-pick berry farms did not lose their whole crops.

The Trail Less Taken

When we lived on the east coast of Virginia, it would take us 4 to 5 hours to get to the mountains for a hike.  Today it was a 20 minute ride for a 2 1/2-3 mile hike through a beautiful woods on a ridge.  The half way point offers the most primitive view with not a road, pole, or structure in sight.

War Spur Overlook

Overlook with pups

Hubby and pups on overlook

A stroll in the woods

We have hiked this trail at various seasons, but never before with the pups.  It is a beautiful, not difficult walk very close to our house and never crowded.  Today we were the only hikers.

Retirement bliss

As a kid, living in Lynnhaven, Princess Anne County, now part of Virginia Beach, I used to dread the Sunday at the end of the first full week of August as it marked the end of our family's week at Shrine Mont and signalled that the summer was drawing to a close and school was soon to resume.

Six years ago, we moved to the mountains and found out that the schools here begin much earlier, mid August as opposed to the Tuesday after Labor Day that I was accustomed to in Virginia Beach.  As a teacher and then a school counselor, we returned a couple of weeks prior to the kids and that was true here in the western part of the state as well, thus returning the adults to school during the first week of August, while my family was at Shrine Mont.  After my first summer here, as I was in a 12 month job, I took a few days vacation time and went with them to return to the back to school chaos that only an educator can understand.

Tomorrow the students will return to school locally, but since we have had several consecutive mild winters, they may be losing their early start waiver from the state and will have to start after Labor Day next year.  If I was still working, I would have been back for two weeks, trying to fix broken schedules, registering new students, listening to student and parent pleas for a different teacher or different order  of classes, helping with or planning Back to School Night activities.  I didn't even think about these things this year until a friend told me that Back to School Night was last week and another that she was back at work without us getting together this summer.

Do I miss it?  I can honestly say that I do not.  I have retired, twice.  The first time was as soon as I had obtained the magic combination of age and years working that the retirement system for the state mandates.  I was burned out from SOLs, the State mandated testing, can you believe they name them with something that produced that acronym?  As hubby was self employed, I was covering the family's insurance and that was a good portion of my retirement, so I went to work, part time for an educational non-profit to keep us insured. After we started our home in the mountains, I went back into education as the department chair of the School Counseling office of a local high school to pay back into the retirement system for a few more years.  When hubby finally retired, I followed a few months later and though I do miss some of the people, I don't miss the headaches of school opening days, standardized testing, student registration for the next year and school closing days.  I am blissfully happy to still be at home, enjoying my hubby, the pups, and the garden.

Country life

images from the 77th Annual Newport Agricultural Fair, the oldest Ag fair in the state of Virginia. This is our community and where we spent a good part of yesterday.

Pup day

 This morning was pups to the vet morning, one to be weighed for heartworm meds, the other for shots, exam and weighin for heartworm meds.  This event was traumatic for one and the highlight of the day for the other.
 .  As we arrived and I had to literally drag the little shepherd pup from the back of the SUV, the beast bounded to the back for his leash.  Since Shadow was cowed, I walked her on up the ramp to enter and check her in to be nearly bowled over by Ranger who had pulled away from hubby, sans leash and loped in to the vets and straight to the back to say "Hello" to the staff with hubby chasing after him, leash in hand.
     At 7 months old, the beast weighed in at 122 lbs.  Once inside, Shadow settled, took her exam and shots calmly, and weighed only 38 lbs.  She will be 5 months next week.  We survived this visit, physically unharmed, but with a considerably lighter wallet, and I thought raising kids was expensive.
    After the morning vet, the pups got a walk on the Huckleberry Trail and home to chill out on the front porch, in the shade and under the fan.  Don't they look traumatized?

Midweek break

Wednesday evening is my weekly knitting night with the gals and tonight also with two husbands. I haven't been going this summer and realized tonight that it is a good midweek social break.  I enjoyed socializing and knitting with friends.  I have spent most of my crafting time this summer spinning at home.
As I was leaving for home, I was treated to another beautiful sunset.

Tuesday shot

Our week of storms has produced nightly flood warnings near creeks and sometimes the river and has filled the woods with mushrooms. This one looked like a dumbbell and was about 10" tall.

Sunday morning musings

Two lengthy service calls and several hours later, hubby has Direct TV and a decent picture for his TV. Our local provider is a cooperative and as this is a poor county, the equipment is fairly low end, so the cable picture is not a good quality.  We have joined the satellite receiver in the yard crew that is the mainstay of country living, at least they aren't still huge dishes mounted literally in the yard

Mowing was finally done around the house between weekend storms.  This weekend was Steppin' Out, a huge street festival in Blacksburg with food, music, and crafts. We got a couple of gifts to stash for birthdays or Christmas on Friday when it was steamy hot before the first storm hit. Yesterday during one of the storms, I dashed between mostly hunkered down vendors to get to the farmer's market for bread, cheese, and a few, produce items not growing in our garden.  The meat vendors weren't there.

Last evening, between storms we took the pups to the Huckleberry trail for a walk.  Shadow has done well on these walks until last night and she was skittish, dragging, pulling, and dancing, especially when two skateboarders passed us from behind and again when they returned.  We were hoping she was getting over her fearfulness.  She starts puppy training classes today, mostly for the socialization in a strange location.  She won't take training treats from us except in the house or car and training is easy here but I don't expect much from the class except helping her to get over being fearful.

Kelly and Rich's wedding 8/13/2010.  Today my cousins, brother, and Dad will begin their vacation at the site of many wonderful memories.  Have fun, maybe next year.

Friday shots

Two pups entertained with chunks of beef femur stuffed with treats and peanut butter.

The linen closet, finally!

This weeks flower share was full of zinneas and sunflowers.

The zinneas faded in a day or two and were replaced by cone flowers, brown eyed susans, and daisies from around the house.

 Today no fog, but the heat haze potends a wicked day.