blueberries and raspberry sorbet and...

We have such bountiful blueberry bushes. The neighbor told me they were at least 30 years old. I just picked another two pints easily out there among the chickadees and finches and scrub jays. There are several more to go, even after several chickadee meals. So sweet to hear the little babies almost grown calling back and forth. Chickadees take little nibbles of the blueberries and sometimes bite them off whole and nibble that way. This explains all of the blueberries on the ground. Scrub jays take them off whole and fly away to eat them on the roof. When I went out to pick I was reluctant to scare them away. Lucky for me they came back after I was there for a while.

We have so many birds in our yard thanks to the many different types of berries and seeds and the garden and trees and of course the bird feeder. The most abundant right now are the chickadees. There is a whole passel of them living nearby and they call back and forth in kind of a raspy dee dee dee. There are almost as many of them as the bushtits, who have recently shown up again for suet. We have some finches but not as many as at our last place. There are scrub jays and towhees (who I even saw doing an elaborate mating ritual in the spring!) and ravens. The raven babies have been a lot of fun to watch and listen to. They make such a fuss and are so loud that many is the time I walk out to the yard to see if they are ok. I want to offer them something to tide them over until mom or dad gets back. The cawing and clucking stops momentarily as food is literally shoved down their throats. Oh and of course the Northern Flickers are around. I have seen hawks circling over our yard but not actually in it, although at the last place there was an American Kestral who came and sat on the fence to watch the bird feeder. This gave me pause for thought.

Jack is not always keen on the different birds visiting the yard. He has a reputation to uphold and the ravens in particular are not to be trusted. He charges past me to clear the yard of squirrels, ravens, scrub jays... Yesterday he and I heard a call that I can't quite identify. I saw the little guy and know he is a wren but whether he is a Bewicks wren or another type I couldn't say today. At the time it seems like I could never forget that musical trill but after listening to eight different wren calls on e-nature, I am not quite sure. The wren made such a fuss in the bushes that Jack charged out to see what was up. We never did find out what it was all about. Funny to see Jack all puffed up over the little wren call. He was probably scolding Maxwell or Magoo. I wish we could tell the little guy that Magoo can barely see him, much less catch him.

Aunt Ellen went on vacation to the wilds of Wisconsin and left us her wonderful ice cream/ sorbet maker to borrow. We made some raspberry sorbet with some of our delectable u-pick raspberries and it was amazing! Eva said she wanted to eat more of the sorbet so her tongue could say YUM. I liked it so much I dreamed of different kinds of sorbet all night. I woke up excited to try peach sorbet, cherry sorbet, blackberry sorbet... And it was easy. For the skeptics out there, clean up was easy too! Almost effortless! Can't you just hear my enthusiasm! Just don't touch the cold part with wet hands because your hand can get stuck on it! It looks like I may be asking Santa for an ice cream/ sorbet maker for Christmas. What I loved about it too was that it was one more fun thing to do with fruit and sugar. If you cook it, you get jam. If you freeze it, you get sorbet! Thank you Aunt Ellen!

Autumn is definitely on the way. The geese have been flying since the end of July. Leaves are starting to change. The blueberry bushes have blueberries and also have little red leaves starting up. The birds are flocking more often. The sun here has a different angle characteristic of autumn and is already setting earlier. Longer shadows. I love autumn. I love its action and changes and movement. The swallows and gold finches will leave and the juncos will arrive. We will pick apples and pears instead of raspberries. Although we still have to pick some fall raspberries! And tomatoes! I am busy now knitting in an attempt to have at least one of the sweaters I have started ready to wear in the fall. I would like another hat and a sweater for Eva and now Samuel wants one and some gloves and...

We registered for a couple of classes at Village Home, a homeschooling resource here in Beaverton. Samuel is going to take a drama class and an invention class. Eva is excited to go to Little Villagers, a playtime/art time with other four-ish year olds. She says she will only talk to people that she knows but I see she is excited to make new friends as well. The classes don't start until the second week in September and we are excited. We are finishing up our art class next week as well.

Something I never thought I would say as a momma...

"Hey Eva! There goes an earwig! And there goes another! Do you want to put them in a jar?" Eva ran to catch the earwigs and we put two of them in a little jar I have all ready for this very occasion. Then we added some petunia petals and some geranium petals and a few oregano blossoms and a little lemon balm. When I set them free in a few hours I am confident that I will see little munch marks in the flower petals. Earwigs and slugs rarely pass up a good meal, even if it is in a jar.

It is earwig season and earwigs love to hide inside little crevices. Be careful if you use straws during earwig season, for instance, because they like to hide inside them. I have actually sucked up two earwigs since living here in the mighty Pacific Northwest. Lucky for me and the earwig! I was able to spit both of them out in time. Still, I tend to check out straws now before I use them.

Contrary to popular belief, earwigs do not try and get inside your ears (at least not any more than other insects who like little spaces) and they don't hang onto your ears with their pincers. The article that I linked above is the first place I have ever read that earwigs might actually go into your ear. Actually it says they "probably" go into your ear, so I am still not convinced.

Earwigs eat flowers and fruit and can be found hiding on peaches near the stem at the u-pick and on flower petals. They also like to climb into the blankets I hang on the clothesline and hide in the little crevice between the rope and the blanket. When we take down the blankets they run like crazy. Why do they run? Because they know that Eva is going to catch them and put them in a jar.

Blackberries

Well it is blackberry season for sure. But then I guess the whole summer is blackberry season for one variety or another. I picked four different kinds of blackberries today at the u-pick. Can you tell the difference? You can when you pick them and when you taste them too. We are going to have a taste test later today to see if the kids can tell the difference between them. The top row in the picture are Triple Crown blackberries. Samuel asked why they called them Triple Crown and I just found a quote from the Agricultural Research Service's Fruit Laboratory in Maryland. "The berry gets its name from three crowing attributes- flavor, productivity and vigor. So much for that name. Anyway, they are one of three thornless blackberries I picked today. Another is the Waldo blackberry (right basket, center row). I prefer the Triple Crown to the Waldo. The best of the three thornless blackberries is the Chester (left backet, center row). I love the thorn-free picking but I prefer the thorned blackberries' flavor over the thornless, hands down. The Silvan blackberries on the bottom row have thorns for sure but their flavor is the best of the four, in my opinion. They are much sweeter and juicier, softer. I actually like the Himalayan blackberries that grow wild all over the place around here, even if they are considered invasive weeds. They taste great. I let some grow in our yard each year to pick at the end of summer and then cut them back.

Samuel and Eva and Jack

kimchi and fluffy

I made the kimchi yesterday and today. Yesterday I started soaking the vegetables in the saltwater brine. Today I mixed up the ginger, garlic, pepper and onions into a paste of sorts and mixed it with the drained vegetables, added a little brine and weighted it all down in a glass jar so that everything is submerged. It will now ferment there for about a week. I am very excited. I haven't done any fermenting experiments in a while. The vegetables I chose were Chinese cabbage, green beans, turnips and carrots. Oddly I am all out of radishes.

The kids have been having a lot of fun with our hamster Fluffy the last couple of days. We have fashioned a sort of leash for him and Eva has been taking him outside a little with the leash. This all started when they tried out the cat leashes on all three of our cats. The cats did not like the leashes, to say the least. We thought maybe we might have more luck with Fluffy and we have. There are a couple of things about a hamster leash to keep in mind. The first is that it needs to be very loose so that is doesn't smoosh the hamster, who is very delicate. The second is that it needs to be just tight enough to actually stay on the hamster, which is a challenge. The third thing to remember is that eventually the hamster will get out of the leash. Hamsters are sort of *made* to get out of things and will go from having the leash on to treating the leash as something to get through. Once the hamster begins treating the leash as something to get through rather than as something he is wearing, it is only a matter of time before he wriggles through the leash. This is another reason to keep it pretty loose. And as Eva said, with a Fluffy leash, you kind of have to follow Fluffy...

The garden is going along beautifully right now. It has been an amazing summer with lots of cool days and rain. My tomatoes still aren't red but I don't think there is quite as much sun for them as I have had in the past. I don't hear much from some plants like the eggplant and cantaloupe and the watermelon is really trying this year for me. The chamomile, calendula, shell beans and kale are really satisfying. And if I left everything alone the borage and fennel would just fill it all in with really happy volunteers. I have hummingbirds in my garden this year and that is a lot of fun. I was out there yesterday and one sat down just a foot away from me on one of the tomato cages. I didn't know they would like borage flowers and they even checked out the cardoon. I planted a salvia yesterday and was excited to see the little guy out there today!

We've been having lots of fun at the library lately. Yesterday we saw a magician who talked about different books and Samuel was inspired and checked out some books about spies today. He said he is going to set up a spy business, you know, put up a sign and charge for his services. He is always thinking about ways to earn money for Cloud City.


Samuel has been playing quite a bit with his bionicles. Here they are all ready to go.

Today we

went to an art class
caught a slug and put him in a jar
pounded open an old light timer to see how it worked
felt very frustrated
felt very excited
felt bored
felt rushed
enjoyed playing
dressed up as a witch
planted several flowers in the garden
pulled up chamomile and snow pea flowers that have had their day
watched part of Snow White
whistled and hummed part of Snow White's Whistle While You Work
made flubber
ate Annie's cheddar and shells (a.k.a. macaroni and cheese)
clipped Agnes' nails with new nail clippers, yeah!
planted more shell beans (second spring in the Northwest!)
pretended to be a ninja
used several band aids on various wounds
carried bugs around in a bucket
carried baby dolls around in a bucket
looked through the compost pile
looked at the human anatomy book
contemplated and arranged the magnetic letters and dinosaurs on the refrigerator
went barefoot
wore boots
cut up watermelon into thin strips
are off to go for a walk in the park...

Waterfalls and dragonflies

Yesterday we drove out to the Columbia Gorge and saw Multnomah Falls, which is the second highest year-round waterfall in the United States. But when I read up on it I skipped the next sentence on the website, "Nearly two million visitors a year come to see this ancient waterfall." We saw Multnomah Falls but we did not walk all the way to the top. It was pretty crowded and this for some reason really took me by surprise. I guess because I skipped that sentence. I was sort of envisioning a nice quiet hike around the spectacular falls and this is actually what I billed to Samuel and Eva and they had their adventurer gear to study with as we walked and Jack was all decked out in this dogpack, carrying our water and some snacks. Jack turned out to be the hit of the whole Falls, I think. We had many interested dog lovers approach us about his pack and how it works and chuckled with us about our dog carrying water and feeling good about it, etc. One couple with a elderly dachshund thought it was a particularly fun idea!

So after a little frustration and after we checked out doughnuts at the espresso and pastry stand! near the Falls, we got back into the car with the intent to drive over to Rooster Rock State Park for another adventure. But then we passed another Falls, this one was Wahkeena Falls and it was much less crowded, just 1/4 mile from Multnomah Falls. We walked up up up to the top of the Falls and stood in front of it. It was spectacular to stand in front of the water. We could feel the cool water splashing on our faces, Eva called it water sparks. Then we walked down and had a sort of picnic in a shady picnic area. Well worth the drive. I wish I had pictures but you will have to look at the photos in the link. I must get more memory for my camera.

I noticed some little guys living out in the water of our kiddie pool and hoped and hoped that they were dragonfly larvae. I really love the dragonflies who live out in our yard. They seem friendly and curious and come right up to my finger to check it out when I hold it out for them. They also seem to be able to get themselves out of the screened porch area without much difficulty. After some research, though, I discovered they were not dragonfly larvae or dragonfly nymphs. They were, in fact, red midge larvae and mosquito larvae. Midges can be biting or non-biting insects and I was ok with them. According to one article, they could even have been crane fly larvae, who are harmless, albeit frustrating because they seem to be forever having a hard time flying or getting caught in spider webs and when I try to help them they seem much worse off than before, which is not saying much. But I don't think they were crane fly larvae because I think I have found them in the garden. Anyway, the mosquito larvae kind of sealed the deal and I thought about it and then dumped the pool because there were sooooo many of them. And more and more kept showing up. At the time that I dumped the pool there were several different sizes of the larvae. It was fun watching them for a couple of days. They hang upside down because their breathing apparatus is on their tail and they kind of swirl around in the water to move. The midges were neat too because they ate the strange plant life that had grown up in the water. With both larvae you could see their jaws and what seemed to be teeth. They took large lunging bites out of the algae. Fascinating.

One thing that I learned was that mosquitoes can smell the carbon dioxide and they won't lay their eggs in moving water, only stagnant water with a high carbon dioxide content. Good to know. And did you know that male mosquitoes are pollinators? And (in case you don't read the above link!) "For the most part, mosquitoes feed on nectar or rotting fruit. The females drink blood only when they're ready to lay eggs." So it's nothing personal, she's just making her way in the world, trying to do the best for her babies just like the rest of us.



And if all of that weren't enough, Eva decided to cut her hair today! Here she is with her new hair cut and her adventure gear.