This interesting picture I made after the sun reemerged from behind some dark clouds coming through our area.
Feels almost a little 'twilight-zone' ..

We're already two months into summer .. man, how times flies!
Temperatures are still 'mild', in the high 70s, low 80s and maybe just maybe, we'll be getting some rain on Monday and Tuesday!
After 47 days of no (measurable) rain we could use a good soaker!

        

I sowed some sunflowers in my little green-house early this spring and none survived but it looks like the birds had more success than I did and are most likely responsible for these two 'wild' sunflowers showing up in the field next to us.

                                                                        

Or maybe the squirrels were the culprits.
They do bury a lot of their haul as well, which might be the cause of that sunflower coming up in the field ..
They mostly go for the spilled seeds below the bird-feeders but now and than one climbs in the pole to try his/her luck in stealing some from the source!
 

Fortunately so far these ground-squirrels are not raiding the feeders like the grey squirrels tend to do. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

I tried out my new (to me) dehydrator this week:

   

It's a really simple method. You just spread out the thinly sliced fruit on the trays (not touching or overlapping), stack them on the base and plug in the cord.
Et voila! Dried fruit!

                               

The apple took 3 hours, the peach, strawberry and bananas 5 to 6.
I dried them until they were still somewhat soft/bendable, rather than really crisp, which is how we like them the best but I think I'll cut them a little thicker next time.
These came out very thin and didn't have much of a 'bite' to them. They tasted good though!

This morning we went to yet another garage sale, this one in Sheridan (the other village we live close to).


It was a rather disappointing event though.
There was no map so we just had to drive up and down the streets to find them and they were few and far between.
Still, I managed to find a few items, like this handy, dandy apple peeler which works as a slicer and corer as well:

                      

                      

 

And a few garden pots which I needed for some new plants I bought on sale at Walmart this week.
This pretty knock-out rose I got for $7 instead of the original price of $19.84. Score!

                

Other than that I got not much else to talk about for this week. Hopefully we get that rain they talk about, which comes with a little drop in temperatures as well.

(Personally, I would love some snow, but that might be wishful thinking ..)



Oh, I almost forgot .. the summer Olympics have started!
How about that incredible opening ceremony!

At times very weird and wacky but also very beautiful, awe-inspiring, exciting, uniting, all inclusive and absolutely memorable! And all that despite the pouring rain!

Well done Paris!

I'm going to watch a lot of it, hopefully they'll show some of the sports where the dutch are competing as well ..