SECOND Harvest!

Sorrel and Chard.
Hard to put words to the glee garnered from the wee garden!

HIKING WITH TONI

I will not tell you the instructions that elicited the picture on top!

SUMMER JOY

You can imagine a farmers market is a huge hit in a community where the growing season is about 45 days long at best. The trick is to go early - as soon as you can get there after it opens at 8. It is then that you can get to your favorite bread maker and run into your good friends. Later, the tourists headed for or returning from Yellowstone descend and it is a challenge just to make it around the square.
About half of the vendors are local. That is, coming from 20 or so miles from town. Others come from Idaho and, sometimes, Montana. As the season wanes and the days and nights get colder the latter sort of hold things together. When the market closes mid September depending on the weather there is one big last day event that is not to be missed. Why? Because after that it is mostly locals and they know that the very next day it could be snowing.

THE GARDEN BEFORE HARVEST

Oh what a little Miracle Gro can do. This is so extraordinary!

July 20.....

....And, even though we have harvested arugula and chard from the kitchen garden on the deck and even though we are replanting said same plus more sorrel and even though it feels more like summer than any other day so far at a high ( so they say ) of 90 degrees, the geese are practicing for their flight south for the winter. You can hear them regularly just after dark, honking with high definition urgency*. This and the dimming daylight is sobering.

* I think the intensity has to do with training the young of the year to the formation. I have read that geese with no family affiliation can fly in the vee but must be at the end and can never be the lead goose.

A QUICK TRIP FOR A MOMENTOUS OCCASSION

We went over to San Francisco to hear my friend Pablo Sainz Villegas ( see multimedia page of www.annemullerphotography.com) perform as guest artist at San Francisco Symphony. The huge standing ovation that he received was not surprising but moving nonetheless. Pablo's music is a gift - an experience - to his audience. What a privilege to hear him perform in this great hall!

JULY 4, 2012, JACKSON HOLE. WYOMING

Do think that Teton County Democrat above is my friend Jean B.

JULY 4, 2012, JACKSON HOLE. WYOMING

RESPITE

I can't say that it has been hot here to the degree it is in so much of the rest of the country. Still, the heat that we have had...mid to upper 80s...is significant because of the lack of rain and the subsequent high desert dryness that sets us up, along with much of the West, for major fires.
Literally "out of the blue" came this little system with it's little rain that provided little serious moisture but nonetheless was greatly welcome and, in it's way, wondrous. Where did it come from and how did it manage to contain rain?
According to the forecasts next week gets mean with shocking highs of 90 degrees and the dread threat of thunder storms - translate: lightening storms. So, to me, this is a blog-able little accumulation of peach colored clouds. Thank you little clouds.

SWEET MEMORY

At Crater Lake. Lucky Grammy me!

SWEET MEMORY

Karen gives a cooking lesson, exquisitely blotting lettuce bit by bit and, while for some reason Meme and I thought this very funny, I have since - seriously - learned that this is the method great chefs use. So there, Karo!