Still on Vacation

I am still on vacation and loving it. Have been home this week sewing, canning , knitting and of  course some housework. Made some incredible zucchini blueberry bread. Went and saw a friend up in the foothills. What a beautiful home, so peaceful and is Peggy a great gardner. I saw a black bear on my way home from Peggy's on the side of the road, the site made my day.

Today I will quilt some more on Collin's quilt and get some blueberry jams made for Christmas gifts. I also need to check the garden for any more ripe beans and tomatoes. I have already put up 4 quarts of frozen beans. We seem to be able to eat the tomatoes so will most likely be unable to can any of those.

School starts here next week and it seems weird not to have any children to get ready to send off to school. Erin is all set up in her own place at her university and she is my youngest. So for the first year their are no children for me to send off to school. Kinda sad, another reminder that Mr.P. and I are entering a new stage in our lives.

Camping,Garden

Home from camping which as usual was wonderful. Very beautiful, peaceful, restful and just plain fun to spend alone time with Mr.P. I would write where we went but I do not want to let the best kept secret out regarding N. Colorado. We read, fished,watched the beautiful view,walked read and fished some more. I caught the biggest rainbow I have ever caught up in....... Eric of course caught several but not as many as usual. We noticed that this year the fish were much bigger and much smarter. It is always wonderful to stand in the middle of a river and cast, and cast then to my total surprise feel a fish on the end of the line.

We returned home to find our garden exploding!!!! It rained big time here while we were gone and the plants just soaked it up. So this week I will be freezing beans and tomatoes,( at least everything we eat. Also I will be canning peaches, pears and tomatoes.

The other project I need to get going is machine quilting. I have one quilt ready to put on the machine and I finished piecing another top today. So my last week off of work I will be kept very busy.

No Spend - Greening Up- Birthday

I signed up for a challenge from Crunchy Chicken blog , No spend in the month of August. This is quite daunting to me. I can be a low spender but it seems the harder I try the more I find cracks in the foundation. Already I have eaten out with Mr.P. and went to an Irish festival with Mr.P. Maybe Mr.P. is the crack, no I can spend like an expert all by my self. All one has to do is look at my sewing room.

Things I have been doing to be a little more greener the past month:

- all water of out flower pots has been recycled water from showers or baths

-composting is up

-inside watering is from recycling of kitchen water.

-less driving, more biking

-only used the dryer once in July

-eating from what we have in the house and garden, plus left overs.

-last month savings am pleased with what the bank tells me.

- 18 hand knitted wash clothes

Today the Z. are coming over to celebrate youngest dghter's B day. She is 19yrs. Hard to believe that I am getting old, I mean that my baby is 19. She and Mr.P will be going to a movie this afternoon and then we are BBQing burgers and brats. Will also have some fresh green beans, bread ,tomatoes, motz. cheese with garden basil, and fruit or lettuce salad. I will make my famous chocolate cake and Fahey will be over to decorate it early afternoon. 

The rest of the week, weather holding( meaning no rain), Mr.P and I will be off camping and fly fishing up in the mountains. It will be nice to get out of this wicked heat here. As been 100+

here for several days now and above 90 for 23 days. I do not care for this kind of heat. kinda scares me with all the talk about about global warming, it certainly  appears to be happening.

The To Do List

I seem to be having trouble writing consistently on my blog, but what the hell no one reads it but me! I am a women who has too many things she wants to do and no plan to get them all done. Some of the projects/daily life habits I would like to accomplish are to finish about 8 more quilts this year, knit about 10 dish clothes, can peaches, pears, toms,beans and freeze zukes. Also I renewed my interest in getting allot "greener". Driving less, cutting plastic out , no corn syrup, cooking from scratch, bread making, soap making, sewing clothes....basically what my list gets down to is living like my favorite families I grew up with and raised my children on: The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie. These families lived on less, reused everything but most important they new they were rich. Rich with family love, a home that they were wanted and needed in, where their opinions and ideas were listened to and discussed. They were a family that was a community!  Self Reliant!!! Of course I know these are TV shows and that the these lives were written out on paper, that real life does-not happen this way.. As we say shit happens. It is the bigger picture that these shows represented that intrigues me. I also know I live in a different time, but I can always continue to work to make my house a HOME where my children will want to come and visit, I can learn to listen more to people, talk less, give my opinion less, and try to live a little greener everyday. 

Which brings up the next question that has been on my mind ; what do I do with all the plastic bags I have, and what do I line the garbage cans with if not the plastic bags?  I know I could crochet a plastic rug to use up some of them, but it is the lining of the kitchen can that has me most dumbfounded. 

Water and More Water

Today I have stepped up the water collection thing to collecting the warm up water from our showers. ( Mr.P keeps giving me that funny look). My shower which I must say is normally short, but Saturdays are shaving days and I collected 4 gallons!! That was just the water in the bucket, not what went down the drain! Mr.P was a little concerned about the soap that was in the bucket, I said I am only using a half of a pump,( have not noticed any difference in the results of how clean my hair and/ or body is), so this is a double win, a win, win I believe what it is called. Well anyway that bucket watered all my outside flower pots, back and front yard. I was gloating. 

Talked with my sister today (one of the M sisters on the east side of the river) and she had an interesting question.  Can llamas be considered a pet in the burbs? This is something I want to pursue( I will not tell Mr.P just yet, don't want to push him over the edge), but I love to knit and I would have my own yarn source. Not that I do not have a yarn source in the basement, enough yarn I am no longer sure I can use up in my lifetime. Good thing DDC loves to knit, yes that it is, I am collecting for her future knitting desires.

Today is suppose to be wickedly hot so I will be spending my day in the basement quilting. Am working on several quilts, yes all at once, just depends on my mood and what is on top of the pile.

Garden

The garden is doing oh so great. I planted, beans, beans and more beans, we love beans. I also put in some lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, cukes, and lots of flowers. Some of the beans are pole beans without the poles. Oops, did not realize they were pole beans, not real sure how they will do, life is an experiment. 

Have been taking some small steps to go GREEN. I have saved the "warm up" water from my showers and used it to water the flower pots on the back porch. Eric just raises his eye brow with my new antics. he can be slow in coming around to my thinking but he does come around eventually. You know boys don't go to kindergarden late for nothing.

Was able to get off work early, yeah, love my job but I prefer to be paid and stay at home. How can I make this work in the real world? I am working on it, will let you know as soon as I get it all worked out.

This last photo I am not sure is legal in my part of the world. Crazy, I say if I can not collect water from my roof, then I want to know who owns it so I can send all bills for any rain damage to my basement, stone walk etc., to them for repairs caused by their rain damage. Sounds reasonable to me. Yeah, now no one wants to own the water off my roof, oh and I only own the one bucket, how illegal can I be?

Eric is out mowing the lawn and the smell of fresh cut grass is a slice of heaven. This truly is one of life's simple pleasures. Today I dead headed some roses and then cleaned and I mean tear apart cleaned the basement. Ellen and Dan will be here at the end of the week so need to get things a little more organized.

Am reading alot on the internet regarding peak oil, living green and simply. I have been trying several of the ideas, like collecting the water in the shower while it is warming up, bailing out the tub water and using this for the garden and flower pots. it is not as much work as I thought, and I am savinf about 2-4 gallons of water each time. We also have not yet turned on the air. This summer has been very pleasantly cool with rain. Yeah for us.