Late summer, 2012

Okay, here is the late summer photographic round-up I promised.

 We took the kids to the zoo.  This bear was in front of the gift shop, which had a special kid-sized door next to the adult-sized one.  :-)

 I love our front porch even more, now that we've acquired a glider bench for it.  If only I had the time to actually sit on it.

In late August, I took the kids down to Grandma and Grandpa Kluge's for a short visit, the main purpose of which was to spend time in the river and on our island, just like Daniel and I did when we were kids.  Conveniently, Daniel was still home on vacation while we visited.  

 Walking through our field towards the best path down to the river

 Our neighbors (who own the other part of the island) kindly allow us to use their spiffy gangway...

 ...and their even spiffier wooden bridge.  They take it up in the fall when the water begins to rise, and replace it in the summer.  It's a big improvement -- when we were kids we had to wade out to the island.

 Uncle Daniel helping Eve practice floating

 Samuel, getting into the splash of things

 The South Fork of the Yamhill River, with Eve for perspective

Hops, growing decoratively over my parents' dining room window.

Bail, bail!

This is a very short post to explain the chief reason why I haven't posted anything in over a month.  See on the calendar there?  That big blank no-posting period was the second half of July and most of the month of August.  As any gardener will tell you, that's harvest time.  As joyful as it is, I often find that harvesting and finding uses for my veggies takes on a tone of subdued panic, much like bailing out a leaky boat.  I'm not harvesting because I want to, I'm harvesting because I have to or the beans will get overripe and the basil will bolt and the cucumbers will turn old and bitter and in any case I'm harvesting because if I don't, I'll have twice as much to harvest tomorrow!

 This was a typical green bean harvest.  Every other day for about two weeks.  Gah!

This was back in July when my garden looked nice and tidy.  Now all the plants have grown so big, there's scarcely any room to step between them.

I'm still in the thick of it, actually.  Today I made an all-from-my-garden batch of salsa, a batch of blackberry freezer jam, a batch of kale chips, and I roasted and froze about 6 lbs of cherry tomatoes.  *whimper*  I want to lie down.  But soon I'll be back with more pictures of our summer doings.