Lady bugs

Our small aspen trees started spitting a month ago.  Turns out they have aphids.  LOTS of them.  Lucky for us ladybugs are sold by the bag.  Our aphids are biting the dust and our garden is full of beautiful spots of red.  

Summertime

It finally feels like summer.  There are refrigerator pickles pickling, flowers on the table, a sour cherry cobbler to be eaten and sour cherry jam to make.  The house smells like inspiration and good food.

Packing up a balloon

On any given weekend morning we see around ten hot air balloons.  We spend our early  mornings watching them fly over.  Occasionally they even land nearby. Our neighbor knocked early to tell us a balloon had landed down the street.  We got there in time for Lil to help squeeze the air out of this beautiful, brand new Cameron balloon.  I like Cameron balloons because I grew up near their shop in MI.

Book making

I know I've said this before but my children regularly amaze me.  Today it was my oldest making a magazine for the younger while she waited for the actual one to come in the mail.  They took turns reading it to each other.  The words were simple enough that they memorized them.  Lillian decided what it should say and asked how to spell the words.  I know its hard to tell but the middle picture says 'Kim and Carrots are climbing a mountain.'

From the garden

Having a garden is good for so many reasons.  Best of all is that I can't get the girls to stop eating veggies.  What is it about picking something out of your own garden?  I could buy a never ending supply of vegetables from the grocery and they wouldn't touch half of them.  But let them go crazy in the garden and there will be nary a leaf of tatsoi or a carrot left.  

Strawberries

Can't beat good scenery while berry picking.  Love those mountains.

We found a great organic u-pick berry patch called Berry Patch Farm. We're going back next week for sour cherries.  The strawberry rhubarb crumble that ensued was mouthwatering.

Sour Cherry Pancakes

I found myself up early this morning all on my own.  Imagine, a quite, early morning house just for me.  It was brilliant!  Wonder of wonders, Phil found our last bag of frozen sour cherries at the back of the freezer a couple days ago.  Those cherries, all defrosted in the the fridge begged to be used this morning.   As the title would suggest I used them to make pancakes.  I added some vanilla, a couple tablespoons of honey and a generous helping of cherries to our usual pancake recipe and then made cherry syrup to go on top.  The syrup consisted of berries and juice in a pan on the stove with some maple syrup thrown in for sweetness.  I've already had two plates but I may go have another.  If the kids don't get up soon they may miss out.