Sunday Wonders - M

M is for Missing.

The day before yesterday, there were twenty apples on our tree.  Our first crop!  We have watched over these apples as carefully as mother hens with new chicks.  We were bursting our buttons with pride at their healthy growth and reddening skins.  Our taste buds were waiting impatiently for that first tangy, crunchy bite. 

But, overnight, something took half of them.  This is what we have left.  They've been picked too early, I know.  The tang is more like tart and they could have stayed on the tree a bit longer.  But, since we have no idea who - or what - took them it seemed like a good idea to get them while we could. 

My daughter tells me to wrap them in paper and they'll ripen.  Good idea. 

Saturday Stash

It's been a busy, busy week.  I'm glad I have these ongoing blog themes that make me slow down on the weekends and go visiting as well as share what's been happening.  Today it's my knitting time.  Knitting keeps me relaxed no matter how busy  the schedule may seem.  there's always a place for the needles and yarn.

These mittens are the only true stash today.  Trolling ravelry for patterns, I found this one by Ruth Gallo for Maritime Mittens.  Apparently, this is called a Maritime Waffle stitch.  I have only seen it as Honeycomb but was delighted to be able to apply the - to me - more relevant name to mittens.  My father used to tell me of my great-grandmother who, even when quite elderly and unable to see, would sit in the warm kitchen knitting mittens for the many cold and snowy days the winter would bring.  I thought of her often as I knit these.

Ted has the most fun knit this week.  He's all ready for winter to show up with sledding and snowman-building.  It looks as though he might prefer to start with the hot chocolate and marshmallows, doesn't it?  The pattern is one of Elaine Fitzpatrick's cute little baby bibs, Snowbaby.  I love making these bibs - so easy and so much fun to see the pattern emerge.  If you can knit and purl, you can do this.  Great gifts.   I confess to buying a couple of balls of cotton yarn - on sale! - to make more of these. 

Ordinary socks for an extraordinary color way.  I tried making a pattern in these socks and it looked horrible.  Those beautiful colors just wanted to sing on their own.  They remind me of new Levis with shiny copper rivets and stitching.  Or desert skies just after sunset.  Oh, the heels are a bit fancy with an Eye of Partridge heel flap.  This is also new yarn because, well, I was standing in Michael's with a coupon.  What's a yarn-lover to do?

While not all are stash, all are for giving. 

 

Fifty Fridays #9

Summer is definitely sloping into fall here.  The tomatoes are ripening faster than we can pick them.  The apples will soon be ready to eat.  The squirrels are filching all the peanuts that the Stellars jays hide in the shrubbery.  But I thought maybe one last look at summer through the wrong end of the telescope.

Does anyone remember going for Sunday drives?  Our family used to do this almost every Sunday.  It was a way for my mother to get out of the house and see something of the countryside.  Because my dad was 'the telephone man' in the area, he knew so many interesting roads and places to visit. This photo was taken on one of those Sunday drives. 

I wonder who the spontaneous parent was?  Maybe both. I know that inherited those genes - as well as the 'lets go explore the backroads' ones.  Where is this?  It's called Stave Lake and it was formed by a hydro dam.  To me, it seemed way far away in the mountains.  But, really, it isn't.  Then, though, it wasn't well-known and Dad would have found it while driving his big truck around mending the telephone lines.  It was, I'm sure, a hot Sunday afternoon and the water would have been so inviting.  We just stripped down to our underpants and jumped in.  Of course, neither my brother nor I could swim and so Mom would have to get in and keep us afloat.  Although, I'm pretty sure that if she'd dared, she'd have been in the water with us.  She loved to swim.  But times being what they were, even with no one around, I doubt she'd have done it. 

Can you see that my brother has one of his toy vehicles in his hand?   It may have been a boat but was probably a car.  He loved them all and always had one ready to play.  To this day, he loves boats and cars.  I think this photo contains the essence of our lives then: always happy and sunny.

Update on last Friday's photo.  I did find out how much my Dad paid for that house in 1956:  $8,500.  Being a curious sort, I wanted to know what that was in today's money and was stunned to see that it calculated out to about $75,000.  Since this bears no relation to the asking price of the house today, I'm sure there are market forces at work here. 

Sunday Wonders - L

L is for Luscious.

If kind of lumpy-looking.  The tomatoes are really coming on now after a slow start to the summer. 

We planted about ten different varieties this year - a kind of taster tomato garden - and these are some of my favorites.  Especially the heirloom Black Krims.  They're the big dark red fellows.  They are less acidic than most tomatoes.   The gold and the yellow cherry tomatoes are also some of the best.  I'm saving seeds this fall!