A week in the country.

One thing about this time of year, it's warm enough in the morning to sit on the front porch and watch the sunrise. 

Everything is beginning to spring to life. 

We had a productive week. 

We freeze dried five pounds of cream cheese, and freeze dried peaches, and pears.

I made sourdough biscuits, and then put my starter back in the fridge to be neglected for another week, or so.

It's been fun to have new recipes to try out. 

 I have a sourdough banana bread recipe to try this week. 

I bought a 40 pound box of bananas, a while ago, and froze some to use in banana bread and muffins, and smoothies, and then I freeze dried the rest. 

The box cost me five dollars, and I knew I couldn't go wrong for that price!

Freeze dried bananas are so yummy!

Shopping bags full of MaryJane's Farm magazines.

One of my friends has been saving these magazines for years and gave them to me this past week. 
I'm going to read through them, save what I want to and then I'll take them back to her. She's over the Senior Citizen's yard sale and she'll put the magazines in the yard sale.

Fish Fillet station
This is the filleting station that the DNR set up, after gathering the fish from the nets.
At Piute State Park, the DNR checks the health of the reservoir by placing nets in the water, then seeing what type of fish survived winter and determining what type of fish to plant in the lake for summer time. 
All of the fish netted where donated and that way there wasn't any waste.
The water is used for farming, and in fact the water in our subdivision is all from Piute.
Our subdivision was farm land, and the water rights are preserved now that this land has been developed into a neighborhood.

Attitude of Gratitude:
Our Grands and DIL made it back from Brazil this week; our son is overjoyed to have them home again! The Grands called us to tell us that they missed us and they love us.
Our DIL's grandma is doing ok, and her health for now is stable.

Feeling accomplished with all of the freeze drying that we got done this week.

Grateful for sunny days that allow me to work in the yard. It's been far too nice to be in the house.
 
Grateful that me sweet husband has giant trout to smoke this week... should be delish! 

Things to smile about ....

Colors of Spring

New adventures this spring: sourdough.

Our daughter in law recently gave me a sourdough starter; of course I happily accepted her gift. 
In years past, I did all the Amish starter and sourdough starter things. 

I have changed the way that I do sourdough this time around.

I do not babysit it. 

 I neglect it in the refrigerator for days at a time.

I feed it periodically and use the 'discard for things like chocolate chip cookies, or blueberry pancakes, and even 'Everything but the bagel seaoning' crackers. 

Then, about once a week, I feed the poor neglected thing, and make bread.

Chocolate chip cookies... made with 'discard'

Sourdough Boule

Double chocolate sourdough 

April Fool's day storm... we ended up with an inch or so.

In a tall tree, vultures spread their wings to dry and warm themselves.

Sun setting over the mountains.

On our way home from our five hour shift at the temple, the sun was beginning to set and it was such a beautiful and peaceful sight. 

💗

Attitude of Gratitude:

~ Thankful for the morning sun. 

I've always been 'solar powered'!

~Warm bread coming out of the oven.

~A birthday celebratory luncheon for my husband with our family and our new Grandson.

 

Woven days....

Manti Temple

We're working as Coordinatiors in the temple again, and it keeps up busy and blessed. 

We are trying to work on more of our family history, and do ordinances for our ancestors. We are nearing the 2000 persons mark for our personal family names that we've done in the past 12 months.

(This is an older picture of our son and his wife)

On that note... our youngest and his wife have added to our family.

We have another Grand! 

His name is Charlie, and he's now 6 months old, and perfect, of course :)

Tucker and Timber

The pups have grown up. We take them on daily walks up the mountain trail, or near the creek trail. 

Otter Creek Resevoir

More camping trips are in our future, to one of our favorite places.

I've been freeze drying a ton of stuff; things to take with us camping.

 This week, I freeze dried cream cheese. 

Clear Creek Canyon.
Going on a ride through the canyon is a frequent event.
We like to stop and view the many petroglyphs and pictographs along the way.

It is amazing how quickly time passes... 

I've especially noticed that time flies as I'm getting older.

I hope to blog more and have a small record of everyday life .

Attitude of Gratitude:

Daffodils blossoming, working in the yard, day trips. 

 

~ Summer Scrapbook 2 ~

 

Beautiful summer sky. 

I can't remember a year when I've enjoyed summer as much as I am enjoying this summer.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I can hear the pft~pft sound of the pressure canner.

Turkey vegetable soup is being processed. 

My second pressure canning session of this summer. 

I am so rusty where pressure canning is concerned, so I've been doing small batches to remember and tune up my pressure canning skills.

My first batch of pressure canned goods was some boneless country-style spareribs.

They turned out wonderful, although I had a bit more siphoning than I wanted. Too hot of a burner... this time I'm trying to find the sweet spot on the burner setting.

Morning sky view, from my front porch...

Along our walking path, early in the morning. On this morning, we could still see a bit of the smoke from the fire over by Fillmore, on the other side of the west mountains. Quite a long ways from where we live, but the smoke was quite visable in our valley. The fire is completely out now, thankfully.

Our view from the front porch... mountains and more mountains.

Also, our neighbor's pasture for their two mules... that "HEE~HAW" so loudly in the morning, and see their chickens running around.

A good yard~sale find ~another puzzle by Eric Dowdle.

I've been collecting these puzzles whenever I see one for a good price at a yard sale or at a thrift store.

Turns out that our one white rose bush produces long-stemmed roses. What a treat!!

Another morning sky over our subdivision.

Another early morning soak at the natural hot spring . We only soak our feet and legs and watch the sun rise over our valley.

We have enjoyed taking our side by side aka : the scooter, up the canyon for morning rides.

The red barn. This is the red barn at a new RV park in town, where we can go for BYU Creamery ice cream. It's a real treat!

Growing up in Provo, and with my mom working for BYU, I have always been a fan of BYU Creamery ice cream, so all these decades and decades later to have a place for delicious ice cream in our little town is awesome!

We are big fans of popcorn. We recently bought 40 lbs of popcorn, We have Sam's club membership that we can order from and free shipping right to our front door. Sure makes it nice, especially with gas prices being so high and we are at least 2 + hours from the closest Sam's club.

We have a Whirlypop popper, and we love, love popcorn made in that thing! It's wonderful!

Along a 'country road' drive a day or so ago, we saw these hay bales being wrapped with patriotic mesh. How fun!!

Newest members of the family .. two border collies. Brothers.

We are training them and they are so smart!!

They will be outside dogs, but house trained so that when the weather is too hot or cold they can be inside.

Ye olde pressure canner **smile*.

I have a goal of emptying one of our freezers and canning all of the meat in that freezer. 

A few more yard sale finds... this glorious rooster and a wreath as well.

I don't know about where you live, but where we live, the yard sales have been few and far between. Not a ton of great stuff at the thrift stores either. I feel like folks are hanging on to their decor and deciding that they can live with their choices ...for now.

I did give one of our daughters in laws some darling country blue dishes that she has long admired. I found them at a yard sale, new in the box, last summer. 

She was tickled with them and I was happy that she was happy!

This week ~~ more canning. 

                 ~~ more cleaning out borders..trimming and weeding, etc.

                ~~ painting the garage side of the laundry room door. Really needs a re~fresh!

               ~~ beginning the process of switching around the library for my office. 

              ~~ morning walks and country drives, and watching the sunrises and sunsets.

~ Summer Scrapbook ~

 

Summer sunflowers.

Sleepy morning bees...still sleepy from gathering pollen.

Sweet little sheep, grazing in a field. 

On an early morning ride, we saw these sheep in a nearby town. They are very small and quite sweet looking, though I haven't any idea what kind they are.

We drove to Loa to a shop to have new tires put on one of our vehicles. Loa is close to Capitol Reef National park.  This cute old truck was at the gas pumps. 

Love it!

Lots of beautiful skies this summer. 

Most mornings we go for a walk, and what a treat to see such beautiful morning skies. Although, most evening skies are equally beautiful.

Sea Holly. This has been a good year for our flowers, and the sea holly is gorgeous. 

For July, I put out buntings and this sweet Uncle Sam porch sitter that I made years ago. I gave him a refresh this year with a new wooden USA tag. 
July is a big month in Utah... not only do we celebrate Independence Day, but Pioneer Day as well.

Also, both of our sons have birthdays in July, one of our daughter~in~love, and our only Grandson has a birthday in July!!!

There is a great barn door and shutter-making factory in our area, and many times they will have scrap wood that is free for the taking. It is a great benefit for the community to have the free wood, not only for making cute crafts but also there are those that heat with woodburning stoves, and that scrapwood is so nice for that.

We used a bit of the scrapwood to make these sweet little 'lathe' stars. I put one on all the exterior doors of our house for July.

 

Another day, another beautiful sky.

New French-style bistro in our area. 

There is a darling patio attached to the bistro as well, strung with cafe lights and cute French-styled bistro chairs and tables.

July hutch... all the red white and blue. 

Barn on the property just west of us. This barn belongs to the people that sold off 40 acres of their farm and made our subdivision. We are still on 'farm share' water, and we pay just $10.00 a month for pressurized irrigation.

Incidentally, the couple that owns the farm, and barn, and sold the land for our subdivision, lives in our ward. The Mr. told me that this land is fertile and some of the best farmland he had ever had!

We made this sweet 'Garden Angel' with scraps we had. The shutters were given to me by a friend when we lived in Spring City, the head and wings and arms were from the scrap wood pile at the factory that I mentioned previously.

The wheelbarrow was a curbside find and given a bit of a crafty makeover. 

I am enjoying this summer so much. It's been a long time since I remember enjoying summer so much! Usually, I tend to wish summer away a bit. 

Especially as I have gotten older the summer heat just zaps me, but not this year! I am loving all things summer and each and every day has been a blessing and a treat. I am thankful for this summer.

So many good things and blessings plenty this summer. My cup runneth over.

~ Country Roads ~

Another Country Roads drive....

 Vultures sunning themselves in the morning sun.

My favorite country road drives through one of the canyons.

In the same canyon above...a sweet wildflower grows out of a crack in the rock cliff.

Mule deer 

Cottontail

Natural cave

Dozens of pelicans.

Lastly, a morning sky along our country roads walk.