Ugly tomatoes

 

These have got to be THE ugliest tomatoes I have ever grown. Or even seen. I usually pick tomatoes a bit pink and let them ripen fully inside the house so bugs don't munch on them. These are just ugly, hard to cut up, impossible to slice prettily. They are hefty and big. But that's all. The stems are so big and tough they are hard to pick. I had to twist one of them off the vine. If they were fully ripe and soft, I'm afraid it would smoosh in my hand with all the pressure it takes to pull it free! 

Crazy. I will NOT plant those ever again! Tomato #2 from the seed library. Remember that. 

But, in contrast: What a CUTE kitten! Pure bred Persian.  She was in the home of the lady who hosted Book Club last night. 

My "Baby" is 35

 Eric turned 35 on September 13.

He and Matt came for dinner that night. Gail's family was here, too. And Grandma Autrey. It was a big, noisy, fun, filling time. Jason Murray came over and gave us some (3 gallons ) of raw milk while we were eating dessert. He had too much and was going to feed it to his chickens, had offered me some earlier while I was chatting with him when picking his basil. I had declined initially, but Eric was interested, so we got some.  Jason went home with cabbage and trifle. 

Nearly all the food. . . Well, ALL of it (!) was stuff we'd caught, picked or grown. Yummy. Cod, veggies. Plus a VERY yummy trifle for dessert.

This is an Internet photo, but mine was pretty darn close. I had raspberries inside and peach slices decorating the top. I even made the custard from scratch!

Finally! Rain!!

 It rained on Thursday evening while we were driving back home from Elko. We missed it, but there were puddles around and 1 tenth of an inch in our rain gauge.

But on Friday evening, we had RAIN. THUNDEROUS rain. POURING rain. Flooding kind of rain, to the tune of one inch in an hour in Cedar City. Yikes.

So much water! Wind! Lightening! Thunder! I'm

I was ushering at Shakespeare. They did have the closing night of Antony and Cleopatra. It stopped enough to begin 50 minutes late. They also had to keep "holding" for lightening . It was sort of sprinkling during the play. Most of the patrons stayed, surprisingly. They had a few delays in order to squeegee and towel dry the stage for the safety of the actors (so they don't slip). 

It was SO COLD! It was my turn to stay late and one of my friends /neighbor/ fellow ushers who was NOT staying late took off an over shirt and loaned it to me. Nice thick warm cotton. She lent her sweater to Paula who was also unprepared and freezing. I did try calling Mike a few times to bring us warm jackets, but he never answers his phone. He was watching sports on TV in the basement and never heard his phone. Ugh. He also forgot that he'd signed up to go and help clean the temple that evening. Oops. I forgot about reminding him. My Bad. Apparently I am the keeper of the calendar.

Sun flowers within sunflowers

 This is a small "Giant Sunflower" in my garden. It's only about 4 or 5 inches in diameter. It's trying really hard to make sunflower seeds. 

 

This is auch larger sunflower. It's head is easily over 1 foot in diameter. Each of the seeds in the head will be made with one of those teeny tiny flowers . 

Here is a zoomed in view of seed flowers.

I just think it's really cool.

September-- Library and Elko Temple

 I don't know why we always forget to take the picture when we gather as retired Library ladies! I guess we took a photo once. But on Wednesday, September 3rd, we did not take a picture. There were just five of us. I guess Linda Ahlstrom forgot, Paula Mitchell was having a funeral for her mother. Susan Christopher had said she was unable to come, along with Lorraine Warren. It was just Sheri Butler, Loralyn Felix, Diana Graff, and Janet Seegmiller. And me! I organized it this time. It was nice to get together. Sheri had had a recent near-death experience with a staph  infection that was really awful. It went septic? sepsis? I'm never sure what that word is, but she did almost die. She was in the hospital for 17 days in Portland, OR! It was a pretty awful adventure for her, and paralleled something that Diana had gone through 15 years ago or so. She was 16 days in the hospital, too! And it was a bacteria eating and staph infection. Terrible things! Sheri is still very tired and can only do one "thing" per day, so I planned the lunch to coordinate with her meds and energy availability. 

Backing up a little, August 30 was Mike's 55th HS reunion. We attended that Saturday afternoon. Iron Springs Resort West of town. It was fun. 

See the chubby hands in the corner of photo? That's me. Ha.

Mike had such a fun time visit with folks. It's his 'thing', you know. I met a new friend. Then on Monday night we had dinner with Marilyn and Ryan (?) can't recall last name. But we have an invite to stay with them in San Diego when that Temple Open House is going on.😉 Yes, I do love attending a Temple Open House.

 Monday afternoon we walked around the Iron County Fair exhibits and the largest collection of food trucks I've ever seen in one spot before! And we were good little healthy eaters and had lunch at home BEFORE going over to Parowan!

The Larson's came over on Tuesday evening to play games and have snacks with us. We always have a fun time with them. I made a really yummy peach dessert. It's called no-bake peach delight? I'm not really sure, but I do know it's yummy! We didn't stay up too terribly late playing games as Wednesday morning is our early Temple day. 

All day Tuesday I was really sniffy and drippy and thought maybe I was coming down with a cold! That kind of worried me since we have a trip coming up. But I took a lot of cold medication and that took care of symptoms. I was tired. But that's all. Wednesday morning when we got up to go to the temple I just took lots more medication and I was tired at work, but not sniffy and drippy and sneezy ( OR Happy, Dopey, Grumpy or Doc!). We were supposed to attend an endowment session, but I decided to cancel that appointment and just to do our initiatory appointment, which is shorter. And I was so tired. I needed a nap! After a good nap ( in spite of TWO  doorbell interruptions!) I was able the get to my Library Lady Luncheon. Then Mike and I packed,  loaded up the truck and headed to Elko Wednesday afternoon. 

Again, I was SOOOooo tired, so I just slept, slept, slept. And that's what I need to get rid of colds! I suck on zinc lozenges and I rest, and I drink lots of fluids, and if it is a cold that's starting, I can usually kick it right then! I always wonder if it's just allergies and not really a cold, but colds and  allergies do feel different. Just a bit. There are many similarities, true. And either case, I am well. And that is good. My hip is still healing,  however. It still hurts to walk up stairs. Not as bad as three weeks ago, however.

Elko was great. We had nice visits with Gail, Seth and Jonathan. We slept well that night at their house. Thursday Jonathan had on line classes to attend at his Ensign Peak Academy, so we waited for him to do that and then we got ready to go to the Open House. Seth even joined us from his work. The open house was lovely. It's a tiny temple! A sealing room that holds 48 or so can be reconfigured to become an instruction or endowment room! I've not seen that before. Baptism font oxen were relief cravings on a flat panel rather than whole or partial oxen statues. Interesting. Definitely space-savers! 

Gotcha!

The flowers were exceptionally beautiful on the grounds.

Mike and I said our goodbyes, grabbed a sandwich at Subway and headed home. We did get his audio book to work most of the time, and I even got to drive while Mike took a little nap. 

Uneventful drive home. We love those kind! We even treated ourselves to a Maverick donut along the way. Yum. I think we were home by 10:30 pm or so. It was lovely to be back home in our own bed. There's no place like home.😀 And my Raspberries await! 

 

Peaches and raspberries for breakfast. There are not many better things in this world, in my opinion. 

Some watercolors I did while watching Gail do cards in her shed when Jonathan was doing his Zoom classes.