Look at that! Summer is ending and fall just around the corner!
Those bushes have been coloring already for weeks now. I think it has a lot to do with how dry it is around here. 

We had a month of afternoon thundershowers from half of June to half of July, but that was about it rain-wise, which in combination with a few cooler nights, is apparently enough to do the trick .. 

I still keep finding (wildlife) trails I haven't 'done' before. It's so beautiful everywhere ..
These are the meadows towards the Snake River, there are still some steers in them, the ones that were left behind a few weeks back, but they usually don't bother me.



I still see loads of deer though, they're everywhere!
This is a fairly small fawn, that kept real still in the hope I didn't see her ..

 

But after a few moments Mama told her to get up and run for it!
Which they did ..

That's Mum, scaling the fence!

 

I don't have many bird shots these days any more. Just this little Plumbious Vireo, and of course another cute little Bluebird ..

James is still 'mudding', but really almost, almost done now! 

Phew, what a job, makes you see dots dancing in front of your eyes after a while!

He also finally found some time (after many years of thinking about it) to work on the truck exhaust. 
The weird thing about this model is that they placed it right in the middle of the truck, blowing straight down. 
You don't want to know how much dust that throws up! We always leave this enormous cloud in our wake, especially of course when were on a dirt road (like here), it's embarrassing!

 

So he ordered some lengths of pipe and ellbows and other parts and got to work one evening ..

There was some welding involved ..

And some drilling and elbow grease:
 

 

But everything went rather smoothly and he got it together. It's a beautiful thing! 

I hope that the RV won't be as dusty now, after we make it down the hill this fall!

As far as the weekly blackberry creations go, this week I made muffins ..

    

They came out too dense for my liking, but James thought they were good and he is the one eating them, so .. all's good!

But I did some 'real' work too this week. This is my painting handy-work:

Which is a lot better than:

And that's all for this week, folks! It's a beautiful summer! 

Life is good!

This 19th of August we were married for 19 years! Wow, how time flies indeed, honey!

                    
Since James needed some more parts (what else is new), we decided to make a little bit of a 'day' of it, by going down the hill and do some sight-seeing for a change also.
We had it all planned and were almost out of the door, when James went in the garage to grab our Styrofoam boxes for frozen groceries and he came across this ...



Overnight the cabinet that was holding a quart of red (oil-based) paint and one of dark-brown stain, had come off the wall, the cans had opened and paint had splattered everywhere!!
It took us almost 2 hours to clean up most of the mess .. sigh .. not a very good start of the day.

But, determined to make the best of it, we proceeded according to plan (somewhat), drove down the hill, and had coffee at the Hammer Creek Recreation area that we had driven by many times but never checked out before.



Fortunately I had packed some home-made blackberry coffee-cake, so we had at least something celebratory with coffee to munch on (instead of the planned pastries at the coffee shop).

It is a popular put-in spot for boating the Lower Salmon River via raft, kayak, jet boat or power boat. It has 12 campsites along the Lower Salmon River and is surrounded by mountain peaks.

After picking up Sam's truck at Wet Gulch (and a broken lawn-mower) we drove back to Grangeville, dropped off the mower and the truck (don't ask, the AC is misbehaving again), picked up the parts from the lumber-yard and drove to Cottonwood where we had lunch at 'the Hangout'.



Not much of an 'haute-cuisine' place but he Hawaiian hamburger was good, the 'Malt' so-so.
We were very hungry and it hit the spot, so .. good enough!

                 

Cottonwood has a Monastery, which has a yearly Raspberry festival, that we missed, but we were interested in visiting so we drove the 6 miles into the hills behind the town.
I didn't expect much, but coming around one of the curves, all of a sudden the enormous building loomed in front of us ..

              

They build them big in those days, didn't they!

We first visited the museum which explains the history of the Monastery that was founded in 1882 by three Benedictine missionary sisters from a cloister in Sarnen, Switzerland.




Afterward we visited the beautiful sanctuary :

We concluded our visit with a walk along the Way of the Cross behind the Monastery towards the cemetery, while also visiting the Grotto at the 4th.

All in all, a beautiful anniversary day, despite or maybe because of the splashy start!

Talking about splashy, my morning walk often brings me by this small pond, about 1.5 mile down the road from us:
 

I've been told you'll often come across deer or elk here, but I've never seen them, even when I got up as early as 6 am. 

Nice water-lilies though, and often some busy wading birds, like this Solitary Sandpiper ..

Other walks bring me to the opposite site of the hills, up into the meadows, looking towards the (cloudy) hills in Oregon ..

Lately I've come across a large group of White-tail deer that hang out together. 
They're mostly males with only a few does:

Their antlers are still 'in velvet', but I saw a few young ones play-fighting and head-butting each other. 
Practice for the 'rutting' season, which is coming up in a month or so!

                                                                  

  As soon as they get a whiff of me they're off, white tails flagging!

We also had another visit of Mr. Coyote yesterday morning. 
He's coming awfully close to the house, but runs as soon as he hears or sees us ..

Good looking specimen though!

I'm steadily working on our frozen Blackberry-stash. This time I went for a blackberry coffee-cake:

After 40 minutes it looked done, but when I went to cut it after cooling down, the inside was still completely raw! It took another 20 minutes to cook through and through, but fortunately by than it was quite good!

It's fire season, all the grasses are dry and dead, and the fire danger is extremely high at the moment!
But we are prepared .. look what's parked in the driveway:

 

That is Sam's old fire-truck, lovingly restored and painted. 
The tank is full and the engine checked, so it does work, but I hope we won't have to use it!
James would love to take it for a spin around the block, maybe we just have to 'test' it one of these days ..

In the meantime, he's still working hard on the mudding and taping of the drywall of the suite and the basement.
It's something that takes a lot of time!
On the outside we had a few guys working on the 'chinking' of the suite which was never done.



A flexible sealant is used to seal the joints of log homes, called chinking, which is important for insulation and protection against the weather.
James could have done it himself, it's not rocket-science, but he's never done it before and required buying some (expensive) tools, so he decided to sub it out.

They did a good job of it and fast too! It was done in two days!

Phew, that was quite a post again. 
I never think I have that much to say, but than I remember more and more, and can't seem to stop.
But here it is .. the end ..

Summer is progressing rapidly, and we're over halfway our stay here 'up the hill'.
We've set the 1st of October as our target date for wrapping up all the work that needs to be done here and so far it looks like we're pretty much on schedule.

We had quite an exciting day yesterday when they wrangled up last year's steers, to weigh them and get them ready for their journey to Iowa, where they will be spending the last months of their lives being fattened up at a big feed lot.

They were already sold in the spring and spend the whole summer grazing on the mountain meadows, and they also had free roam of the forests and canyons.



They are (almost) all Angus cows ..



For the weighing a brand inspector and weigh master came up to supervise, just to make sure everybody plays fair!

 

The scale is situated right outside our gate, on the other side of the road.
Maryann and Wade did the wrangling by horse, with assistance of the dogs of course, and had them already all in the corrals when I arrived .. too bad, I didn't get to see that ..

The horse and dog's work was done, they're not needed for the sorting, but they kept a good eye on everything ..

 

I did witness the weighing though, they went on the scale in groups of twenty:

That's Maryann ..

And here's Bill, the weigh-master ..

According to Maryann they looked good, and each group weighed in around 20.000 pound. 

That's about 1000 per steer, which is about what they have to weigh, according to the sales contract.

A steer goes for about $600-700, and there were 140 of them, so .. cha-ching!  

There was a lot of sorting going on, separating the small ones from the bigger, and than making groups of a certain weight so they could all fit in the 2 big cattle-trucks that were lined up.

Calculating and judging ..

Finally it was time to load them up. 
The truck trailer has several compartments and they have to come up in certain groups to fit ..

I didn't hang around too long after they started the loading. 
The animals were much more nervous now and I started to feel sorry for the poor guys.
Their wonderful life here up the mountain was over .. but at least they'd had that life, which is more than most others have ..

Off to Iowa ..

James had miscalculated on his drywall sheets, only 13 but who's counting, so we went a little earlier than usual to Grangeville.
On the way down, we saw this doe with her fawn:

This picture is from a while ago when it was still a little green down the hill towards Cottonwood ..
 
 

This is how it looks now .. all browns and yellows.
The grasses are mostly cut ..

But the grain is still son the fields. A lot of it is winter-Barley, some are Oats ..

Of course we played a round of golf, one of our worst ever, followed by (much needed) coffee at Crema:

Franklin was a wise man!

I've seen some more Elk lately, but they are very skittish and I have a hard time getting another shot of them.
The deer are calmer, and we have quite a few that come by almost every evening in the meadow in front of the RV ..

I so hope they will survive this coming hunting season ..

During our trip down the hill we picked more blackberries and I have a huge stash in the freezer by now. 
Fortunately we can use the one in the house because there's no way it would fit all in the RVs.

We eat a lot 'fresh' in our cereal and yogurt or with ice-cream, but I use the frozen ones for baking, like in this cobbler:
 

It looks a little messy, but it's delicious!

James has finished the drywall by now, these pics are from when he was almost there ..

He's working on the mud at the moment, and the rooms are really starting to take some shape now.
The carpet is ordered, the tile has arrived and it's time to pick out the paint color. 
This part of the work is so much more rewarding!

Well, that was about all for now, I have to start making a zucchini/chicken casserole for dinner.
Miriam has gifted us a whole crate of cucumber, zucchini, squash and peaches from her garden down the hill. Yum! 

Better make the most of this summer-bounty, 

it's going to be Fall a month from now!