29.365

29.365

Soft dinner rolls!

 

I need a new title

 

17.365 

Heath scones I made the morning before work. They were so good, I made another batch after work.  

18.365

Selfie

19.365

My book arrived!!!  The delay from publish date was because I got it signed, and I ordered it from Diana Gabaldon's home base book store.

20.365

The sunsets this week have been great.

 - - - - - - - -

21.365 will get a separate post. All it's own. It needs it.

 - - - - - - - -

22.365

Orion and his belt. Handheld, so slightly blurry, but I was being lazy and didn't want to get out the tripod out.

 

365 in 2022

Well, that started off great. I got one post in and then forgot to update here... 

I'm updating on Facebook at least. It will be easy to do it once a week or every two weeks or something random for the month of January, but beyond that the day numbers get a little harder to keep track of - or at least take me counting to figure out. 

Gonna do a dump now cause that will catch me up and then I can try better. 

2.365 

Putting away Christmas. A day later than usual.

3.365

Milo

4.365

Orange orange

5.365

Chester

 

6.365

Gus, the Betta fish

7.365

Chewie, on his 6th birthday.

8.365

Sleepy, cuddly puppies - Milo and Chewie

9.365

Frost on weeds/plants. Feeling artsy or something.

10.365

I love the complete noodleness of puppies running. They run with their WHOLE bodies.

11.365

Being artsy again with my drying Christmas bouquet.

 

12.365

The moss growing on our retaining wall looks so much cooler than photos show.

13.365

Seed pods of Rose of Sharon bush

14.365
The big tank

15.365

Chester

16.365

Scrimpy shrimp - really cool to watch

The formatting issues - ugh. 

Maybe I'll come back and adjust it again when I'm not completely annoyed. 

But probably not. Enjoy! 

365 of 2021, days 19-25

I'm breaking up my next photo dump.  We're actually on day 35 at the time of this post, but I'm not doing that many in one post - just too much. 

I've also found I've forgotten a day here and there, not even a photo with my phone. I filled them in with photos taken on other days. 

 (Cell phone shots are marked with an asterisk.)

1/19/2021

Sunrise out of my front window. 

1/20/2021*

Carus picked charcuterie boards for dinner this night as there were some meats and cheeses at work she's been wanting to try (she's been working in a local grocery's store deli). 

We have black forest ham, pastrami, black pepper turkey breast, salami and pepperoni for meats.  Cheeses are cheddar, fontina, smoke gouda, havarti and manchego.  Spicy mustard and laughing cow cheese for spreadables. Crackers are Ritz and Safeway brad garlic parmesan pita crackers. 

1/21/2021

One of my little shrimp - Blueberry. 

(And one of my ghost catfish.)

1/22/2021

I believe this was late afternoon - I love my front picture window.  The view is always great. Sunrises, sunsets, fog off in the hills or rolling in, snow...and the fall colors.  It's all lovely.

1/23/2021

One of the barn cats - Eddie. 

1/24/2021*

Miss Caly.

Chester's stall neighbor. Way back before Chester we leased Caly for a few months. She wasn't a perfect fit for Carus but we still love her and we've been lucky to still love on her. She's a sweetheart. 

We were taking care of her for 10 days while her family was quarantined after having to get tested for Covid.  They tested negative thankfully - they just had a cold. 

1/25/2021

Early sunset with lovely clouds - out my front window again. 

It will probably make several appearances throughout the year.

365 of 2021, days 1-8

I missed doing the photo a day, 365 challenge, that I was doing a few years ago, and I'm struggling with finding joy in a lot of things I used to enjoy doing. I'm trying to find it again and I'm going to attempt to do a 365 this year. 

I'm posting here - and I'll probably end up making an album on Facebook as a way to hold myself accountable.  I don't want to make it into something that creates anxiety for me, but I do want some accountability.  I also want to try to use my actual camera more often than just my cell phone.  That's a conscious effort to set aside 10ish minutes to pick up the camera, or plan to pick it up, while my cell is with me everywhere.  And this first share is heavy on the cell shots. (I'll mark them with an asterisk.)

1/1/2021

Needles from some young Douglas fir trees we have in pots in the backyard. 

1/2/2021

Fredrick, the Angelfish, in front of hornwort plant in my 55 gallon tank.  

1/3/2021*

I'm receiving Round 1 of the Moderna coronavirus vaccination.  

I was worried it would burn like the last shot I had to get (MMR booster which BURNED), but it didn't burn at all. My arm at the injection site was sore for about 2 days - mostly the first 24 hours. I'm a baby about pain and it was not bad at all.  

No other symptoms or side effects. 

Round 2 will be scheduled in a few weeks. 

(I was lucky and qualified for one of the first phases of vaccinations through my work. I may not be frontline, but our job is still important to ensuring quality patient care.)

1/4/2021 *

Photo was taken by Carus.  

It was near the end of my lesson with our friend, Martha, on Chester.  I've been trying to have more regular lessons now that Carus has graduated and is out of 4H - I don't feel like I'm messing up his training for her.  (I know I wouldn't have, but part of my mom guilt or anxiety.) 

Lessons have been going good. I feel like I'm improving steadily - and I'm trying not to be embarrassed that I still can't ride this far into our horse journey. 

(No one goes near each other and we're outside so pandemic safe activity. Also all common surfaces get disinfected by everyone after they touch them. )

1/5/2021 *

Robert and I went over to a friend's farm (Heather and Justin) to discuss a woodworking project or two he has in mind and then chatted for a bit.  No one went near others - they're fairly quarantined on their farm, we're fairly quarantined in our life/home and we were mostly outside (the shop is open). 

While chatting we got to watch their dogs play, and the super adorable Great Dane puppy, Emme, would run and slide on the concrete back and forth, back and forth. And then try to pick a fight with Dally (the cattle dog).  Tuff (the pit mix) played his role of good big brother and got as much pets as possible. 

Bailey recognized my voice and called for me - I did stop and say hi - I think we all miss each other now that we're not out there every week for Carus to practicing driving Bailey. 

1/6/2021 *

I went out to help with turn in and PM chores, and got soaked.  I hate mud season. 

I can't decide if Chester minds it or loves it.  He's always covered in mud because they roll in it all the time, but he also looks miserable when it's storming badly.  And it feels like that's all it's doing lately - just constant rain.  Especially when it's time to do barn chores. It can be nice weather all day and the second we have to be outside, STORM.  

1/7/2021

All my Christmas ornaments off the tree and ready to be organized and put away.  

I usually get Christmas put away on the 1st but this year I worked so it got delayed until I was off again and could dedicate a couple hours.  

1/8/2021

Dinner tonight - Garlic rice pilaf, steamed broccoli, and honey garlic chicken. 

I don't know how to take food photos... maybe that will improve this year...

Project 52 - Weeks 11 and 12 - Letters and Food

I totally half-assed these two themes. I only found a small number of Letters to work with the theme and then I went back to photographing the tree blossoms while they are around. 

"A"

"Z" or Backwards "S"

"H" 

(If only it wasn't tagging. If you're gonna tag - make it pretty and not just a 'gang' call sign.)

The white blossoms are really striking.  Especially with the beautiful blue skies we got in abundance in March.  I know we need the rain - and the mountains need snow - but I have been really enjoying our unusually warm and dry winter/early spring.  

Even though the white blossoms are gorgeous, I adore the pink ones 10 times more. It's such a soft, happy pastel pink.  The pink trees seem to have blossoms longer than the white ones too, which makes it easier to admire them.  

Originally with the theme Food I envisioned making at least one delicious meal or dessert and trying to properly photograph that.  

Instead I played with my fajita peppers after Grandpa Alan's Mexican restaurant birthday dinner.  And then documented it with my cell phone and Instagram.  

Playing with my food.

A photo posted by Rebecca C (@smiles4u2have) on Mar 22, 2015 at 5:11pm PDT

Still playing.

A photo posted by Rebecca C (@smiles4u2have) on Mar 22, 2015 at 5:14pm PDT

One last one.

A photo posted by Rebecca C (@smiles4u2have) on Mar 22, 2015 at 5:17pm PDT

Next theme:  Red

Click here for posts for Project 52 in 2015 so far.

Garden

September garden






Green beans and strawberries. Not visible are a few tomatoes, cucumbers, and onion seed pods. 



A watermelon!  A 10 pound watermelon!



That was pretty delicious.  Sweet and juicy, and full of seeds unfortunately. 


*Photos posted from Instagram may not show up in emails forms of this blog post, please visit the blog to see photos at http://smiles4u2have.blogspot.com/

Radishes

So far I've only been able to harvest radishes out of the garden.  And I got a kitchen scale to weigh my harvests this year because I'm curious...or weird...or crazy...or all of the above.  I just think it would be fun to see how many pounds of produce I can grow.



This 5 ounces brings my total radish harvest total this year to 13 ounces (harvesting 4 oz twice before).  I don't have much more radishes to harvest and I'm not planting more as I have green bean and tomato seedlings to go there.

Or I will when these pop up.



I plan on planting radishes again in the fall, along with my other cool weather crops, and this time I'll try successive planting.  This amount of radishes is just about right for us for 3-5 days depending on the amount of salads and snacking, so I could plant a couple rows for harvesting about a week apart.  Each square in my bed holds 6 rows of radishes.



We removed the hoops from the bed this past week too as we are staying above freezing at night and are in the 70s and 80s with the occasional 90 during the day (Fahrenheit).

Garden bed 1 was planted without string lines to help me keep things neat and after this weekend of really nice weather it has gone crazy!  I will be putting in lines soon because bed 2 looks so much neater.



The broccoli was supposed to be ready to harvest this week, according to a tracking app based on when I planted the seeds, and it's no where near that.  The broccoli is in several places, but the largest ones are in the back there, taller than the clump of kohlrabi that I never thinned out.  I have problems thinning out seedlings - I don't want to throw away a plant that has potential of growing food. Which probably goes hand in hand with my problems throwing food out of the fridge. I don't like wasting food and will do all I can to prevent, including not thinning seedlings.  It might take longer for those kohlrabi to mature to harvest-able size, but I haven't had problems (yet) with harvesting the bigger ones and letting the littler ones stick around longer to be picked later.  (Speaking from experience growing radishes and carrots for a few years now.)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all.  We had a lovely day that began with opening gifts and ended with pie.

I hosted this year, and made lasagna with Carus's help (see below).  Carus got some makeup this year and some nice makeup brushes so she did her eye makeup festive green and red.  I think she did a really great job.


(Ignore the dirty underside of the microwave, I didn't realize it was so gross.)

Carus helping me make lasagna. She can do it all on her own, and usually asks to, but it was a very large lasagna and I wanted to get it done quickly so we worked together.

We had enough for us and in-laws, and we shared some with our frieghbors (friends/neighbors), and put the rest in the fridge for lunch or dinner later this week so I can enjoy my vacation.

Earlier, when I was slicing the apples for apple crisp using my mandolin to save time I sliced my middle finger.  It was the first time I cut myself on it, and hopefully the last.  I've had that mandolin for a year and every time I use it Robert reminds me to be careful lest I cut myself, cause he cut himself easily the first time he used it.  He is not accident-prone; I am.  It wasn't a horrible cut, but the location is right on the tip of my middle finger, which I use for typing.  OUCH!  I'm glad I have the rest of the year off work for one more reason!

Hello October, hello fall

274/365 - Timmy curled up on the dog cat bed.



275/365 - Rain and clouds on one side (left) and sunny clear skies on the other (right).



276/365 - Hydrangea in it's fall colors.


277/365 - Fall wreath is up. Makes me smile.


278/365 - Final green bean harvest, blanched and ready for the freezer.  I went out to harvest them since there was a warning of possible frost and ended up clearing out the garden.  I'll get my garlic planted soon and then plan for the spring.