How big?

That is how big a grizzly paw is

Gardening outfit of yesteryear

This is me wearing my romper and cooley hat working in the garden about 30 years ago.  I think I was planting corn.  I don't know why this style of dress hasn't caught on.  

Our oven died AGAIN

Our oven died again.  We've had it about four and a half years.  It has had two manufacturing defects (see this post for its history); this time it had a dead element.  We were fortunate to get Steve to diagnose and repair it again this time.  He is so very good at his job and so responsible.  He was about to go on vacation when I got in touch with him but before he went, he ordered the part he thought it would be.  He came with the part and he was right about what had failed.  So, he gets points for being responsible, smart, and experienced.

Anyway, it's now fixed.  I didn't use it yesterday since it was 96 and we barely wanted to eat let alone use the oven.  We had to wait 10 days for Steve to get back from vacation.  We could have used another tech sooner but we chose to wait for Steve.

Steve says the part that failed, the heating unit on the convection fan, is the most common element failure on this oven.  That heating element comes on to help preheat the oven for all the functions we use.

It's going to be cool for a few days and now I can make blueberry muffins and roasted vegetables and peach/blueberry cobbler.  The foods of summer.

August garden

 Still lovin those cleomes....

Most people in Portland don't water their lawns and the lawns go dormant in the summer.  But this year, with the drought, the dormancy is very long and the grass is scary dry.  The city has warned people not to mow their lawns during the heat of the day because of fire danger.  There have already been multiple fires sparked by lawnmowers.  But why anyone would mow a dormant lawn is beyond me.

Hollywood Farmers Market

We like to go to the farmers market, both the Hollywood one and the downtown Wednesday and Saturday Markets.  We go about once a week to one or the other of them.  Today it was Hollywood and, to my delight, Steve Cheseborough was playing there.  I love his music.

Eagle Creek Hike to High Bridge

We hiked at Eagle Creek today.  We went last week as well, leaving the house by 7 am-ish and getting started before the summer hordes.  We went as far as High Bridge.  I met a woman who recognized me from THIS blog.  That was cool.  She is quite a hiker and went to Twister Falls today.  You can see her blog post and photos here.

It was very very dry...scary dry.

Here we are meeting AnnMarie, who reads my blog.

Can't get enough cleomes

The bees and I agree on this.... can't get enough cleomes.

Like everything else, they are suffering with the heat.  Click to see last year's cleomes.