Friday, August 27, 2010

Mt. Jura

This afternoon Karen and I drove up to Mt. Jura and much to my surprise, the road went all the way to the top. We can see Mt. Jura across the meadow from our house as you can see in the first picture that was taken from our deck, but I had no idea there was a road all the way to the top. It was a pleasant drive and not very far from home which makes me even more happy I live here now.

In the bottom picture we are on the top looking back toward our house which is on the far side of the meadow. I just love living here and having the opportunity to jump in the Jeep and be out in the woods in a matter of minutes.

Metal Detecting

Well, this morning I decided to break out my metal detector and look around our new digs. Of course I started finding the usual junk, and I mean that literally but pretty soon I found an interesting thing. It was an old axe head. It's pretty rusty and I think it's not too old but old enough to make it an interesting find. So now I'm out ranging around away from the house and I see a fruit on the ground and when I pick it up I see it's a pear. Unknown to both Karen and I, we have a nice pear tree and it has some fruit on it but not too much. So we start looking at the rest of the trees and shrubs and notice the berries and yet another apple tree. The berry bush I finally identified as Black Hawthorn, which is edible and is also used as an herbal treatment for heart conditions. You can make jam and wine out of the berries but they have some large seeds so some straining might be required and I think I'll stick with the berries that are easier to process. If I change my mind though, we certainly have plenty on our property.

So apparently we are coming to the end of a warm stretch of weather so I guess we need to head back to Idaho to finish up the business we still have there. It's nice and warm today but by Sunday we are supposed to be much cooler, to the tune of 30° less than a day or 2 ago. Ya gotta love that good old global warming, I keep hoping we will see some of it soon. Maybe it's in Idaho...

Monday, August 23, 2010

A berry good day

Yesterday we headed down the canyon to the Caribou road to do a little berry picking. The blackberries are coming along nicely but next week they will be even better since we found quite a few that weren't ripe yet. If we were going to be here I would go back down there and get some more for sure but we will be heading back to Idaho Falls by then. Needless to say we picked plenty to make a few pies and next year I want to get enough to make some wine.

Picking blackberries is a prickly affair and I had to wade into the patches to get to the good ones. I didn't see any poison oak but I know it grows down there and I hope I didn't stumble into any as I was picking. I was watching out for it so I don't think I got around any.

After picking and getting pricked we drove back up the Caribou road around Butt Lake and back to Greenville. It was a nice day, not very warm for August but then this year has been colder than normal all summer. Good old global warming... where is it?