Irene's Visit

She danced around a bit

Did a bit of javelin throwing

Brought a dark and stormy sky

These sticks were deep into the ground. We could not pull them out!

Took off our new gutters

And overflowed the Perkiomen Creek.  She even took park benches
and picnic tables with her!

Preserving Summer

By day we're Phd students and organ builders, piano teachers and church organists.

But we've been burning the midnight oil this past week trying to capture as much

summer as we can to put away for the winter season ahead of us. (That and because our

garden is dying)

Most nights our kitchen looks like this- cans boiling away- although usually there
is a big mess. This is right at the end after the dishes were finished.

Pressing the last Queen Anne's Lace for future projects

Pickles, Peaches, Peach/Tomato Chutney, Tomato Sauce, Grape Jelly
and Maple Syrup

Rustic Peach Tart to celebrate Peach Week in our house
The recipe can be found here:
http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/rustic-peach-tart-10000001213028/index.html

Then there's freezer jam and berries put away

And corn, beans, tomato sauce, banana bread, applesauce
cranberries and a few experiments: Watermelon/Orange Juice cubes, Pesto Cubes and
Mint/Lime Cubes for future meals

And for our comic relief tonight- crazy cats.  These pictures are not photoshopped
at all!

End of Summer Creatures and a nephew

We've been enjoying watching the creatures get ready for Autumn

The cats are watching the hummingbirds drink like crazy. Maybe I'll manage
to get a picture of the hummingbirds ones of these days.

While in Lebanon at home Adam snapped a few beautiful butterflies

This guy looks as if he is putting on quite a show- as long as he leaves our
cabbage alone I think we can be friends

A quick picture of Sammy- we had a nice visit together last week. He is
getting to be such a big boy. How did that happen?

Sunday stroll

It was hot and humid.  But we went exploring anyway. This time we went in the Greenlane park woods to see what we could find.

An August week in pictures

Our homemade Terrarium: For a long time we've wanted to try this out.  Then
our cookie jar failed its given job and found a new job as a terrarium.

We gathered ferns and moss from the Perkiomen Trail and voila!
The experiment has begun- so far so good.  It smells like a greenhouse inside.

We made pickles this year from Reba's cucumbers and our pale green/yellow ones. 

We boiled the jars

We gathered our pickling spices

  We made spaghetti sauce as the jars boiled,

We plan to can sauce when more tomatoes come in. But crock pot sauce for
the freezer is always a useful way to use up ripe tomatoes when one
can't eat them all.  In the middle of winter this is a welcome treat.

We stuffed our jars with cucumbers and spices (probably not too well)

Then the fun began

Adam pickling

On Saturday we went to meet Jaylynn Ralston- the daughter of our friends
 Dean and Jess. What a sweet little baby.

In other news- Claude has become an outside cat once again and has
rediscovered his love of trees

Lovely flowers from my Aunt