We spent the day at Charlie’s house, just up the road from us.
His grand-daughter Bailey was with us for a little while, it’s always a joy to see her and watch her grow up.
A very relaxed day of cooking and eating, with Penny & Charlie, and Tim arriving with a delish apple pie.
A small gathering of chosen family, just the way I like it.
Charlie, Bailey, & Penny
Mateel Aikido celebrated 25 years of training on November 20-21, with Frank Doran Shihan. Black belts arrived from as far away as Alaksa, Oregon, and all over California. There were 49 people on the mat training at the Beginning’s Octagon in Briceland!
Mateel Aikido 25th Anniversary Gathering
Some of the Sensei’s relaxing a bit!
Michael Friedl, Frank Doran, and Russel Wisby
The potluck was fabulous, and also a birthday party for Frank Doran. What a great bunch of people and what an honor to Russel and Forrest Kan and the rest of the Mateel Aikido dojo to be honored with such a full house. A great weekend!
More photos online at Mateel Aikido’s Facebook page.
My birthday was September 11, hard to believe I just turned 58! I really never thought I would get to be this old.
After many years of not much ‘fun’ for birthdays, this year I really wanted to have some out-of-the-ordinary fun..for me at least. Thankfully I felt good and much of my energy had returned after the months long cough issues.
We started the day going out to Ferndale, coastal farming town for the town-wide yard sale. It was a sunny pleasant day and we wandered, didn’t really find any ‘great flea market finds’ but had a nice time looking.
We did stroll into Abraxas, and a pair of leather boots caught my eye. Ok so your thinking, ‘Oh she likes shoes’, well only in that having ones that fit and are comfortable are hard for me to find. I am a hard foot to fit, always have been and I have been looking for years (yes years) for a pair of flat, leather, booties that are comfortable..and ta da!
I wore these shoes a week later to town for an all day shopping errand day, and felt like I was walking on a cloud. I just love them! And it is a big deal to me, as my other booties are 15 years old and worn out, and the only other shoes that I can even wear are SAS, which are really ugly.
Then we had great pancakes at the Main Street Cafe and then headed to Eureka for a few errands. We drove home through the redwoods along the Avenue of the Giants and stopped for awhile in Founders Grove communing with some big trees.
Then it was on to the Briceland Volunteer Fire Department BBQ & Boogie at Beginnings.
This was an event to raise money for our watersheds local fire department, these are the friends and neighbors who will show up at your place if you have a fire, and it’s all volunteer. So many generations of friends and neighbors were there, good music, good food and more than anything boogie-ing with our neighbors. It was really fun.
So all in all that was one of the best birthdays I have had in a long time. And it was also especially nice in that it was the only ‘summer fun’ I had since I felt better from the ‘cough’.
The garden is in full harvest mode, so what energy I have is going there.
Haven’t had time to work this site theme or any other Word Press projects right now.
We did harvest many of our tomatoes:
And we canned up 7 pints. We used the cold pack – 60 min water bath method.
Russel also made some fresh tomato sauce, which was so good, I am tempted to harvest and or buy more tomatos and can up some pints of that.
We have also eaten corn (so sweet and fresh), we have eggplant almost ready, and the peppers are really turning red. Cukes and squash are still producing, as is the salad bed. I love eating fresh organic food.. makes all the work worth it!
Doesn’t seem to have any problems that I have found yet.
I will need to do some major reconfiguring of content and php templates to use the new Twenty-10 theme, so that will be the next push.
Testing a upload photo now: Michael Franti
Today I went out to pick some dill head and leaf.. and found a least seven black swallowtail caterpillars on my dill plant! Guess they love dill, and I am mostly done with it so they can eat it. I hope they form their chrysalis close by so I can watch that transformation.
Next year I will plant more dill and some fennel to bring them into the garden.
Here’s another site with some good butterfly info: butterflies
I was picking the dill for another round of squash pickles, because we have just too much squash! I canned up 7 pints this time.
I have been making Pesto every couple of days, and freezing about 2 cups with each run. I figure I have at least 7 runs (6 cups packed leaf) left to do. And we figure we can eat pesto every week all winter and until harvest next year starts! What a treat that is.
Our tomato plants are 6 feet tall! Lots of just now starting to ripen toms. We will also be canning tomatoes, quartered & cold pack way I think. Russel will be helping me with that!
Blueberries started coming into the Farmers Market in the middle of July, I have been buying lots to eat as this is the only time of year we get them and I like to buy local. I also found a great new recipe for blueberry -zucchini bread that I like way better than the one I used to use with raisins. It’s been quite a hit with everyone.
Our garden is doing really great. We have watermelons (not harvested yet), and tons of winter squash on the vine. The lettuce is still producing and I just put in more starts. We have enough summer squash and cucumbers to eat all we want, the peppers are big and still green, I am waiting for them to turn red to pick. Lots of work, but worth it to eat good organic food that you grew.
I have an E-friend, Terry, who I met through my old friend from the Boulder days, TR, who now lives in Florida, he connected us years ago, (they are a couple) and we have been emailing and now Facebooking for almost 10 years! She was in Washington state, heading south, so I encouraged a visit.
It was wonderful having her here, meeting her was like greeting an old friend, which I guess we are, but we only talked on the phone once or twice in all that time and this was the first face to face.. it went so good. She is always welcome here.
She slept outside in the screen house / tent with her very old small dog.
It was also the first time anyone has stayed with us longer than over night. I felt like this has opened the door to that, especially if they are into camping. (no more dogs here though.. just doesn’t work for me).
The one room house doesn’t really afford anyone the amount of privacy they would want for any long term stay inside.
She stayed 6 days, it was hard to have her leave. We both got great massages the last couple of days she was here.
There was no lack of conversation, and I feel we barely scratched the surface and hope that she will put us on her list of ‘must visit’ folks when she is traveling.
See that jacket she is wearing? I went through a few containers of my Guatemalan clothes & tipica, she became the proud owner of several items. The same with my ‘too small for me to wear’ batik rayon dresses and some other clothes. It was good to pass some of this on to someone who really appreciates it. I just never got around to Ebay-ing the items, it just seems like too much work for the return.
Whatever I had / have I don’t think it was any kind of allergy. I started on antibiotics July 31, after many really bad days of coughing day and night. I finally called the doctor and specifically asked for antibiotics and codeine cough syrup (which did not help at all).
Within 4 days of starting the antibiotics, the cough was almost gone, by a week into the antibiotics, it was gone and energy was returning because I was sleeping. It actually felt like life was starting again!
After 3 months of this thing dragging me down.
So now, August 15, I am 2 days off the antibiotics and have just a light cough occasionally.. has me a bit worried that I will fall back into what ever it was, but I am trying to get stuff done while I have some energy.
And no spring cleaning was done this year.. and if it didn’t have to happen for the last several months, it didn’t .. so I have a ton of stuff to do to catch up.
Speaking of getting stuff done. I tried my first pickle-canning July 26, using zucchini instead of cucumbers. We just opened a jar a few days ago and they are quite tasty!
