Five Babies and Five More to Come

My greatest pleasure this Spring and Summer has been the family of Western Bluebirds that took residence in our Bluebird House. The house has been up for four years, but this is really the first year that they decided this was just perfect for them. They kind of shop around for just the right place, and the requirements for placing the house is very specific, and we followed them carefully. The swallows are very aggressive with the Bluebirds, and that's what has happened in years past, the Bluebirds just get intimidated to leave. Well we have all ready seen the first batch of five leave the nest. Now Mama Bluebird is setting on a second batch of five beautiful blue eggs. I've done some research on these wonderful creatures, and found out that feeding them meal worms would encourage them to stay and thrive, the worms are very high in protein, and may I add expensive too. This has been so fun, because in the morning I go out and call Mama bird and she knows I'm going to feed her, no matter were she is she comes flying and lands on the fence and waits for me to put a couple of worms in the little dish I have for her on the fence post. She has even come out to the veggie garden, and we have had some long conversations. Now the first babies are grown and I see them flying around in the morning and they are keeping my garden clean of bugs. Speaking of the veggie garden, here is a resent picture of part of it. First I should tell you that I finished planting this garden on 26th of May, I had to be done with it because I was going to Spokane for the Association of N.W. Weavers Conference. I do a drip irrigation system that I designed and redesign every year just for for that particular garden, I have to make sure everything is in working order, so I can leave with confidence that it will be watered. So mid June we were already eating spinach and radishes and lots of strawberries. Now we are eating lettuce and snap peas. I put in a patch of ever bearing strawberries, so we can have them the whole season long. In this picture you are looking at, on the left to right, tomatoes and broccoli , them Winter squash, which are mostly Danish and I think a Deleca snuck in there too. Then three tomatoes plants, next cucumbers and a zucchini, potatoes and lots and lots of onions. I have three kinds of onions, Of course Walla Walla Sweets, Green onions that we have had in our salads now for a couple of weeks, another type of sweet onion and a storage onion. MMMM good ! This is a picture of the early strawberries we've been eating on everything, but mostly on cereal in the morning. A bunch of us from here in the beautiful Methow Valley, went to Spokane for the Weaving Conference, there were 430 people who attended. It was held at Gonzaga University, we stayed in dorms, that was interesting enough. I took two lectures, one on Sampling is not a Dirty word, and one on 8/2 cotton. It was a great time and I learned a lot and came home with some new enthusiasm for weaving. So the first thing when I got home I got a warp on my loom for some towels. The patterns a pin wheel, but its a triple one in three colors. It should be interesting when they are off the loom and washed,then you can see the twist in the pin wheels. kinda makes your eyes go weird huh. So that's about it folks, working on my veggies, and weaving. Soon I'll be making pickles, can't wait. After the Fourth of July Jens and Samantha are coming for a visit, and that means swimming and cooking and just enjoying their company. My Dad has been here since the end of April, and we've been having a good time, all most every night we play Yahtzee and have a great time and laughing a lot. Here's a picture of the lettuce and raspberries and one of the tomatoes. I'm wishing for a successful season