Vilai sock #1 is coming along. I just passed the heel turn and the gusset, and now it's just straight down the foot for a bit.
As usual, there was a lot of the usual cooking during the week, including another batch of granola. This loaf of bread was cut into before I got a photo. It was tasty. I used my Dutch Oven bread recipe cut in half and baked it as an oblong loaf. (It's gone now!)
We have an assignment for this week's Madroña pop-up party meeting. We're supposed to make pesto and then do something with it. I'm thinking of using the pesto as a base for pizzas on pita bread or naan. Our basil has been doing well, but I didn't think we had enough leaves on all the plants to be able to make even a small recipe of pesto, so Charlie picked up a new plant at Trader Joe's. It's probably looking around at its new home and wondering if it was going to like it here. I'm going to use walnuts in place of pine nuts, because we have some we have to use (a Costco package!) and they make a good substitute.
We cleaned the front porch. I swept the floor and the corners of the ceiling. Charlie got out the pressure washer and washed it all down. It looks better. A few spiders got evicted, but carefully, so they can make new homes, preferably a little further away from our house.
We've been planning to tear up the "grass" in the front, because grass doesn't do well here unless you're willing to dump chemicals on it, and it takes a lot of water...not good in a desert climate like ours. This week we finalized the plans for what to put where and Charlie put out flags to indicate the borders of features.
He drew up plans for the entire front, so we could get quotes. We plan to put our park bench on some kind of rock/stone clearing, put in natural walkways to the bench and across the landscaped area to the trailer driveway, move some of the big rocks out from under the huge fir tree, have a couple of mounds for plantings and some sort of edging where needed. Instead of grass, we plan to have bark/cedar.
While we were out in the front yard, talking about what to do, I spotted a butterfly on one of the flowers. Jolena and Mariah would definitely identify it as a butterfly and not a moth, because they have learned the difference from their discussion with Mandy, a story from The Doll's Storybook.
I worked on my workroom closet some more. I the papers I found this poem, written for Charlie back in 1991
With it was also one I wrote for Karen. She would have just turned 18.
Then I came across this photo of Jim and Charlie. I'm guessing it was taken about 1943. I remember rescuing it from my in-laws' home when we went through all their things in preparation for selling the house.
It still needs some work, but at least it's possible to walk around in there.
We walked almost every day, because we're having a cooler spell and the wind is blowing the smoke in a different direction.
Johan seems to be over his jet lag. He's taking an online class in cartoon drawing. He seems to have some talent for art, and he likes drawing things like dragons.
Also this week, Miss Daphne passed her driving test at the DMV, so now she's a licensed driver. That should make things a little easier for Karen, because she can get herself places, run errands and take Zachary to places he needs to go.
David's sister Debbie is visiting Karen and David to help David go through papers and boxes of things, as he's no longer able to do that. She brought her little dog Teddie, shown here, getting acquainted with Katie.
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What's in The Doll's Storybook: Billy has a bad dream and comes to Veronika to get reassurance. She explains what dreams are all about and investigates what might have caused the nightmare in "What Dreams May Come."
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