Weekending

Looking forward to a beautiful weekend in our neck of the juniper forest.  Highs in the mid-70s, lows in the high 40s and dry. Time to soak up the sun, grow, move, play, work in the yard and then...enjoy an extra dance class ...

... enjoy a male Gerhardt family golf match with a special guest (to be revealed at a later date)....

...and a marathon water polo game to cap off Saturday.  Wait!  That's just Saturday?!

I think we'd better take a tip from the dogs and try and relax!

Teach Mama Hearts, 



....curl up with a book,



...relax by the mini pond in the front yard,

And make a paper crane, or two....  Now that's a weekend!

We don't always get skunked....

In 2010 we didn't get skunked at the Winema, and in fact had a great year with 4 nests, including one with an egg pipping (the first hole created by the hatching chick--very exciting! but we then left right away so Mama could come back and keep those eggs warm!).  These youngsters were banded and then put back in their nest platform to grow a bit more before branching out.

This is a not very good photo of an adult female Great Grey owl checking us out.  Somewhere on our various laptops we have better photos of these birds, so we'll try and find those and add them to our wildlife button on top.

This is what we go for every year.  A chance to see these birds in their natural setting, to find them using platforms we've put up for their benefit, and to informally monitor the Great Gray owl population in southern Oregon.

Getting skunked is no fun when it means we're deprived of such a wonderful sighting.  Thankfully there are many other special memories to be made on these Winema adventures, such as being together all day without the usual distractions, passing along our enthusiasm for bird watching, especially along the Klamath Marsh, listening to our favorite Hank the Cowdog CDs, singing silly songs, and picnicing in gorgeous meadows, and posing in front of the old trailer at Rake's Meadow.  All in all it's a great day, particularly when reminiscing after the mosquito bites have healed!

Winema Adventure 2012

Every year around late May (often Memorial Day) we load the six of us (and sometimes a brave friend) in the suburban and head south to the Winema National Forest.  It is one of the few annual traditions, outside of holidays, that we have as a family.  The purpose is not just a jaunt in the woods for a day.  No, we have much loftier goals than that.  Year after year, since the boys were tots, we have climbed trees, put up nesting platforms (and subsequently check them annually) and provide fresh blood for the awesome mosquito population that thrives near the Klamath Marsh.  The creature we most hope to benefit is the magnificent Great Grey Owl! (Here Jasper is preparing to mount a new nesting platform in this tree).

Here friend Brady holds the rope clear for Jazz.  Years ago, Rick used to do all the climbing, but now his boys do the honors, and this year Nathan did not come, so Jasper ended up climbing 9 trees to check boxes and mount 2 new ones.  It was an exhausting day for our second son!

 Rick provided mosquito food while checking Jasper's progress.  Strangely enough, while everyone else was later counting bites in the near 100 range, Rick's feet are the only tender part of his body and he was relatively unscathed otherwise.  As usual.

A new box, ready to be filled with "duff" from the forest floor (since owls don't make or otherwise enhance their own nests).

Lunch break at Yoss Meadow.  Renuka soaking up some sun.

A new tradition?  Tossing around the water polo ball.....what next?

And the last long hike of the day, down Rake's Meadow.  Sadly, this hike was concluded the same as all the others of the day, without owl sighting of any kind.  Skunked.  For the second year in a row. 

Practice Yarn Along

After we have a bit more content on this blog, I plan to link to Ginny's yarn along on some Wednesdays, so here's a practice run.

This is my second granny stripe blanket made from Lucy's Pattern.

The yarn is Caron's simply soft and the colors are Nathan's favorite (according to Nuka).  It has a nice heft to it for a blanket (very warm) and will hold up in the wash. 

The book is one of the Swallow's and Amazons series, and is our current Mama-read-aloud (Papa is reading Tom Sawyer in the evenings).  It is the second time aloud for me, but the girls don't remember it from the first read-through with younger boys.  It sure brings out the adventure-lust in our offspring!

Rainy Day Monday

Drenched.  That's the word for the day.  Not a normal one for early June in sunny Central Oregon, but we're happy to see that life-giving moisture green up the lawns and water the vegetables.  The day will come soon when we spend hours on our feet taking care of just that.  It's cool, though, and that makes us wish we had fire in the woodstove to take the chill off.  But fires in June are a waste of wood, so we fired up the oven instead.  And baked. And drank tea. And baked some more.

Here we have some breakfast cookies, which are very similar to cowboy cookies, having lots of add-ins, but are on the more healthful side.  I found a recipe on the King Arthur flour website and reduced the sugar, of course.  Add in oats, shredded coconut, chopped pecans, white and dark chocolate chips.  Pretty much a granola bar in cookie form.

Here they are baked.  They don't fall apart easily, so are nice for packing into lunches.  We find them a great source of protein and energy for the swimmer, dancers, students and working men in our family.

From scratch yellow cake for tea and dessert, with mini chips thrown in.  In the glass bottle to the upper right is the entire dry ingredients for the cake.  When made up ahead of time it is just as convienent as Betty Crocker, but better for you, as you can add wheat flour, organic sugar and a smidge of salt.  Also, there are no eggs in this recipe, which is happiness for an egg-sensitive family member.  Recipe for this yellow cake and other yummy dessert can be found at the above link.

And what rainy day is complete without fresh homemade bread?  This is my go-to bread machine recipe from Urban Homemaker.  Jasper made some garlicky lentil soup for dinner, with the ever-present home-grown greens salad. Almost as good as curling up in front of the wood stove.

Last in the oven were these gluten free snickerdoodles made by Willow from a mix (Gluten Free Mama sugar cookie mix). They are so good we would all scarf them up if she wasn't so protective.  Moving from the SCD diet, which she held to for over a year, to mostly just gluten free has brought a huge smile to her face, and so far no complaints in her tummy! 

 It's been a slow day.  Just what we needed after a non-stop weekend of Great Gray Owling on the Winema forest, swim meet, golden eagle baby banding, changing pipes at the driving range,church, more swim meet, a soccer match and a water polo game.  Whew.  If it's raining again tomorrow, I don't think we'll mind too much.

Garden Talk

 Rick and Jasper have been rather busy over the past few months.  As work and school allowed they dug and hauled buckets of rocks and desert soil and dug some more.  They sawed and nailed and built new beds for the garden expansion, and though barely half complete, we are moving in.  The photo above is taken from the "lower garden", looking up toward the chicken coops in the background.  Basically where those colorful pots are now, used to be a fence--the end of the old vegetable garden we built up and worked in for 12 years.  Now we have double the space, lots more sunlight, and a giddy feeling of "possibilities".

We use raised beds and intensive planting.  So this bed above has radishes and turnips in front, lemon cucumbers just planted in front of trellis, and broccoli behind.  The next bed to the left has lettuce, baby bok choy and turnips, lemon cucumbers and leeks.  The last bed at top left has bush beans.  Warm weather crops will grow slowly over the next month or so, as our nighttime temperatures will creep from mid-thirties now, to mid fifties by early July--there's not alot of growing that takes place at night with those temps.  We are constantly reminded that a vegetable garden at this altitude and latitude and in the rain-shadow of the Cascade mountains, is a bit of a miracle!  It seems like a lot, but we are a family of seven and the garden produces enough for fresh eating with maybe a bit for freezing or cool storage of

If we took a poll of the younger Gerhardts, I would guess their favorite homegrown vegetable to be peas. The plump shelling kind that you score your fingernail down the middle, open up and pop in your mouth are the best, but sugar snap pods never go to waste either--and neither variety makes it indoors to grace a bowl or stirfry. All eaten fresh right where they're picked. Jasper built this new peatrellis to support these shell peas. On the left is a row of lettuce seedlings just popping up, and in the middle, between pea rows, a row of spinach which will love the shade when the peas are fuller.

This photo also makes it obvious that there is a smudge on Willow's lens.  We'll have to look into that....

And here is Willow's dog, Lanie, telling us that all work in the garden, and no play, make for a boring Jasper, Rick and Dawn.  We can't have that, can we?