The Farm in Idaho

Here we on on the farm. That's Stan on the left, Sharon, me and then Tom.

And then one with Jeff.

here's one of Stan's restored tractors.

down by the part of the farm that is next to the river.

The road and part of the orchard (apples, peaches, plums, and sooo many cherries!)

wheat field and view of the hills in the distance.

Stan's perfectly manicured garden.

On the way to Idaho

On the second day of our trip, we went to the Portland Saturday Market and stocked up on produce and bread. that was the best farmers market i've ever been too....good prices, beautiful food. turns out, carrots make a great nutella scooper.

Us at one of those "this is a good view" places along the drive through Oregon.

Turns out, it was a pretty good view.

And, this is on the border of Oregon and Idaho...we were about 20 minutes away from Weiser at this point.

Sunset.

A (very long) Day in Portland.

to begin a little blogumenation of our recent trip...we finished up our works around 3:30 on Thursday, July 2nd and Donna took us to the airport and we flew to Portland, Oregon. Picked up our rental car around midnight and drove into downtown, checked into our hotel and crashed. The next morning, we had a packed day. With only 1.5 days in the city, we had to fit in a lot of stuff. We started out our day with a maple bacon donut from Voodoo Donuts and some coffee from Stumptown. (no, they didn't have tshirts....but they did have coffee mugs, so we got one of those)




The we headed south to the Sellwood neighborhood to walk around in the park and the neighborhood which is like Portland's version of Decatur or Grant Park maybe.

The Sellwood neighborhood borders the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. Lots of birds here...

Everybody has a beautiful garden in Portland, lots of interesting flowers and vegetables.

A cob bus stop!

Jeff...waiting for the bus.

After our walk around the neighborhood, we walked to Bertie Lou's for breakfast. I highly recommend this little spot...such a delicious breakfast we had.

and then we went into Oaks Bottom and walked down the trails.

We rented bikes and rode along the river.

That night we went to dinner at a place called Noble Rot. They have a rooftop garden where they grow all their produce and we got the tour from the owner. all of their veggies are grown in baby pools.

well, and some things grown in these greenhouse box things.

here are the stairs to the roof....and i'm scared of heights even with a sturdy ladder. it was worth the climb though.

and then we got to eat it! here's our dinner. it was superb. I highly recommend this restaurant if you are going to Portland anytime soon!

here we are:

to top off the night, we went to a little dessert place called Pix and they have some o so delicious things to taste. here's what we got.

and if you look real close, there's us in the mirror.

and that concludes our first day in Portland.

Summertimes

Hi there. It's been a month or so, and as usual, i've got some catching up to do. These pics were taken before we left for our trip, so around the end of June. The garden has progressed a lot in these pics but i really need to take some pics now b/c it's at it's peak....tomatoes and peppers galore. anyway, here's lita and her peanut butter jar.

In this picture you can see the mystery vegetable that is no longer a mystery. I thought it might be cucumbers but it ended up being butternut squash! and, as you can see, it's basically taken over the whole front of the garden and beyond. There's a picuture a few below this one that shows their size next to my foot, but now they are pretty much done growing except for a couple and i'll just leave them there on the vine until we are ready to eat or until the first frost...ha, probably until we are ready to eat then....first frost might not be for a few months...

I bought the dogs a pool to sit in while i'm in the garden on hot days. Donna was the first one in it after a long workout. Abe joined her. Lita hasn't figured out the joys of the kiddie pool yet.

I made blackberry cobbler one night. Abe decided that jeff did not do a good enough job cleaning out his bowl...and this is what I found the next morning when i walked out of the bedroom.

a neat little plant my grandpa stullken gave me...don't know what it's called.

baby zebra tomatos! I have to watch these around the squirrels. they keep getting them before i do. I read that if you put panty hose over them or sprinkle the plant with black pepper the squirrels won't get them. i'll have sexy sneezy tomatos this week if i want to have any tomatos at all.

more garden progress...the peppers are on the left in the back...they are HUGE now...and i have some dark purples ones which is fun.

those squash.

a compost project. I had tons of acorns and sticks in my compost that fell in from a dying tree but other than that it was ready to use, so i sifted it.

garlic harvest.