Catching Up in July

July 19, 2018

We have been so busy this month with cleaning, unpacking and purging, kids activities, Phil's gone for almost a week, and hauling the rest of our stuff from their various storage areas. We have a little more than a week before Phil goes back to work and we have been working long hours trying to prepare ourself for the next school year.

Beautiful evening lighting:

Phil was cutting the boy's hair and I didn't want to see Brighton's beautiful curls go. I asked Phil to give him a mohawk. Phil did and then realized I wasn't joking about leaving it that way. I love the way it turned out. Phil is getting used to it LOL.

This picture was taken on the day that my Gram passed away. It was a very hard couple of weeks. I was very impacted by her end days and her passing.

So peaceful (taken on the 7th).

Phil had a conference in Seattle:

Banana art?

Meanwhile, I tried to plan something fun for the children every day.

Smores after working hard outside.

Blueberry picking

Swimming at a friend's when it was 98.

I had to chase this rotten deer out of my garden. We had deer in, goats out multiple times, a cow got out, and someone left the gate open and all the sheep and alpaca escaped. My garden has been eaten down and trampled.

I finished my "dry bed". I will be planting drought hardy plants in here in the Fall.

I joined Salem Sketchers when I took a sketching class in June. Basically, the group gets together once a month and sketches somewhere on location. This time, it was at someone's home in their lovely garden.

I chose to sit under this wonderful old maple. I got the story of it from the owner. The man who had previously owned the property (and had recently passed away) used to climb on this maple as a boy when it was in a pot at a nursery that his parents frequented. When he bought the house, he went back to the nursery to see if they still had the tree. The nursery had closed but they did still have it. It was so big, that he had to have it crane lifted into his garden. It is 160 years old.

The group sketches.

Random summer evening

I had a Saturday out where we (my mom, Kathy, Tina, and I) had lunch in Eugene and toured three different display gardens through the Hardy Plant Society. It is always inspiring to see established gardens and how people have organized their space. I am so curious to see what my own garden space will look like when the trees and shrubs start to fill in.

I asked Brighton why he was sleeping in a laundry basket. He said he didn't want the sun on his face in the morning.

Poor Brighton, he had another appointment to get his tooth drained. The infection was back but this time, they gave some sort of calming medication, laughing gas, and Novocain instead of general anesthesia. He couldn't figure out what was going on with his hands at first and kept lifting them up to see. Despite all that, he still wiggled quite a bit. Toward the end, I had to sit and hold his hands and lean on his legs to keep him still. His body just needs to move!

There is a forest fire up at Silver Falls. Fortunately, it is not near the Trail of Ten Falls or the old lodge. We could see it the first day but not the days that followed.