boxofdelights

She made a raspberry galette
Pastry and fruit
And not a thing more
There was no custard and no cream
Cuz it was too hot
To go to the store

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Having shredded ALL THE THINGS, Matilda settles down for a good night's sleep.

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Photos of two of my other dogs on the wall behind her reveal that I have a type.

You can give the Forest Service $5 and get a permit to go into a National Forest area that needs thinning and cut your own tree, with hand tools, or you can give them $25 and they will do all the work.

( I chose the $25 option )

Forget your madeleines; nothing summons the remembrance of things past like an old book.
I freecycled this large, beautiful bookcase with deep shelves, and started unpacking boxes of picture books. Now I am welling over with nostalgia. Mixed feelings mostly joyful, except when I look at all this treasure and think about not having grandchildren to share it with.

( bookcase )

( photos of me, Dutch, and Newt )

( me holding Dutch )

a photo of my hand, full of raspberries, on Instagram

Last month I went to a seed swap hosted by the People and Pollinators Action Network. I got some native flower seeds and supplies and instructions for making a native bee house. I just put the pictures up on instagram but I want to describe the process so I'm posting them here too.

Some native bees like to nest in small but deep holes. You can drill holes for them in blocks of wood, but hollow stems also work.

( gouging out stems )

A plastic bottle or tetra-pak box will shelter the stems from rain. Cut the container with a bit of an overhang, and mount it tilted slightly downward, so any rain that does blow in will drain out. I threaded two bootlaces through the bottom of the box, to tie it securely to a fencepost.

( the box )

Put modeling clay or glue in the bottom of the box to hold the stems:

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Wrap it in a pretty cloth so it doesn't look like garbage. Mount it facing south or southeast.

( finished bee house )

My library twin's holds this week are
The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. duBois
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
The Deficit Myth, by Stephanie Kelton
The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan
The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet, by Leah Thomas

( her holds )
I love her. We should be friends. I do not know whether she feels the same way about me: My holds this week were Red Moon, by Kim Stanley Robinson, and the movie Free Guy.

"Books, plants, and babies, that's all you care about," my kid told me once. And really the only rejoinder I could make was, "...dogs?"

( books plants and dogs )

I built squirrel-baffling cages around several of my pumpkins this year, and I count it a success:

I got eight pumpkins, they got three, plus many unripe ones. And they got a few of my acorn squashes. Last year, I don't think they recognized the acorn squash as food. I thought maybe they learned to eat pumpkin from smelling jack-o-lanterns that had already been cut open for them, but they didn't realize that the other squashes were similar. But this year they attacked both.

For the cages, I stuck an odd number of stakes around each little green pumpkin and wove grapevine around the stakes until the pumpkin was hidden. It wouldn't stop a determined squirrel, but maybe it looked like a squirrel trap, or maybe it just made it enough harder to get that the squirrels were deflected to easier pickings. (My compost piles are full of easier pickings.)

Next year I'm going to make as many grapevine baskets as I can, to hide all my squash under.

The family that used to live here liked to plant things with thorns, spines, or prickles. They also liked to plant things in spaces too small for them. This Japanese barberry fits both those categories. Also it is an invasive exotic. But it pays off in fall.

( cut for pictures )

Nixie and I went to Spring Creek gardens to look at the bonsai exhibit. ( one bonsai photo )

Then we walked around some of the gardens, and found another art exhibit: ( dead tree )
I didn't plan the juxtaposition of the tree's curls and my daughter's, but I like it!

This artist finds an interesting dead tree, and pares and burns it down to its strongest and most interesting part. There were some-teen of them in the gardens but we only found a couple.

( picture of a mushroom that looks like an animal that people sometimes do not want to look at )

My rhubarb has decided that this is a year for flowering:

( Read more... )

( photo of me with christmas cactus blossoms in my hair )

Dutch is the most Allie Brosh dog I've ever had.

( illustrative pics )

The Cameron Peak fire grew from 34,000 acres to 90,000 over the weekend. Ash is falling gently. The sun is an orange spot you have to be careful not to look at. I have two extra dogs because their house is in the fire area: ( extra dogs )

Newt thinks they smell funny. Dutch wants them to play with her. They are both quite old and not interested in shenanigans.

Sunday it got up to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Monday night it started to snow. The snow should slow the fire down, but it is only 4% contained.

I got some basil, tomatoes, and peppers, and covered the plants, but this might be the end of summer:

( harvest )

Sunshine challenge in green:

( green bed )

( green food )

Orange for the sunshine challenge:
( Read more... )

Also I have a week of temperatures in the high 90s and a truck of wood chips to spread.
( Read more... )

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