After steadily blogging for about a year and a half I have decided this summer that I am going to take a bloggy break. I'll still be around though visiting your wonderful blogs and occasionally popping back in here when I have something exciting to show.
I honestly don't think I can eat anymore lettuce, if I do I think I will turn green! The only meal that I don't eat lettuce is breakfast. I have been patiently waiting since last year for some homegrown lettuce. After eating it for a few weeks now I can hardly swallow any more of it. Maybe I will give it away at the garage sale... buy a book, get some lettuce. I can't even offer any to my neighbor as she has the same problem as we do. My daughter and my mother-in-law will be here for this weekends garage sale... guess what they will be going home with! I know once the season is over I will be longing for more, but right now I have had my fill.
My little veggie beds are really doing well this year, I think it's because of the wonderful weather we have been having. Although we haven't had rain for almost a month now, with our wonderful sprinkler system our little veggie plot keeps well watered.
The lilies are once again blooming although I think something seems to be nibbling on them, I will have to check on that.
I came upon this little bird nest this morning. The babies have been gone for a while, all successfully raised and well on their way.
Not far from our house is a group of wonderful ponds. They are the perfect spot for spying all kinds of wildlife. There are lots of dragonflies in many different colors...
... We were told by a lady taking photos that this blue one is a male and this... 
... lovely hard to spot green one is the female. We learn all kinds of information from the people we meet there.
Of course there were lots of frogs in the ponds. Some were a little hard to spot as they were well camouflaged.
I think it would be a really lovely place to live if you were a frog!
A little further along the path were these wonderful wild raspberries. A tasty treat for all the birds, me too if I could only reach them!
On the way back to the car we saw numerous swallow nests stuck up in the rafters of the wildlife store. This one looks like a condo! We even have a little barn swallow that zooms in and out of our garage as soon as I open it. He quite happily sits there watching me as I am making soap. I have really grown quite fond of him and will be sorry to see him go when he leaves for the winter.
Everything in my garden is just about in full bloom right now. This is my Japanese Snowbell tree. Around our small pond we have three of them and they smell just incredibly wonderful. The bee"s just adore them and they were buzzing all around me as I took this picture.
All the rose bushes are blooming too...
... it is just wonderful sitting in the garden when a gentle breeze is blowing....
there are lovely fragrant perfume scents coming from every direction.
It hasn't all been leisure time around here though. My daughter needed some coconut lime soap for her Etsy shop. Poor hubby thought I had been baking. Glad I stopped him before he tried a bar!
I have been waiting for this knitting pattern book to arrive for a while and it came today.
The patterns in it are just so beautiful, my daughter already has her eye on ...
... this one. I am afraid she will just have to wait a while though. As you all know I already still have two that I'm working on. Of course it wouldn't hurt just to go and look at the yarn store just to see if they have the yarn for these patterns, would it? Well maybe not!
These two little Ellies have been waiting so long for their clothes that they decided to take matters into their own hands.... I'm thinking of calling them Adam and Eve!
The winters do take a toll on the mountain roads and a few of them had sustained quite a bit of damage. At one point the two way road become a one way road as part of it had gotten washed away in the winter storms.
Along the way we were greeted with these wonderful mountain wildflowers. Only a few are blooming right now but as time goes on more and more will wake up.
They are so delicate looking that I often wonder how they survive the harsh winter storms, but they do and return every year.
There were waterfalls everywhere, already gushing with the winter snow run off... and yes the water was freezing!
It was misty and cool and I just loved every minute of it. We even stopped to take this shot of the road that we had come up. If you look real hard you can just spot a car taking the same road. 
This van caught my eye, they do expeditions and even have a mountaineering school. What fun, maybe one day I might be tempted. On the other hand I could just find a wonderful spot to sit and do my knitting. Yep that sounds like better fun to me!
My goodness have we had hot weather the last few days. It was over 90 degrees here today. My roses have been opening so quickly that you can almost here them pop!
I know I shouldn't complain about the weather being so hot when that is normal for some parts of the country, but we here, up in the Northwest are just not used to it at all. That will all change tomorrow as we cool down quite a bit, thank goodness.
My roses aren't the only things that are blooming in the garden. The dogwood tree is in full bloom right now and looks wonderful.
It has been a bit of a challenge to make sure that everything is well watered. Unfortunately my poor lettuce is not looking so good, the heat really took a toll on it. I think I will have to plant a new batch which hopefully will be ready in a couple of weeks or so.
Yesterday was the day for the dreaded six month check up at the vet. Our cat Mitzi sees it nothing short of torture. I have to admit I dread it too especially as we were expecting her thyroid test to come out abnormal. Six months before it was starting to get a bit elevated so we were advised to have it checked again in six months. The rest of the appointment went very well and we came home to await the phone call with the results this morning. At exactly 8.30 the phone rang, the caller I.D said The Pet Doctor. I gingerly answered the phone only to hear Mitzi's vet tell us excitedly that her test came out normal! She was so happy and surprised and I thanked her for giving me a wonderful start to our day. So no matter what I have to deal with today at least I won"t have that to fret about.
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