I’m looking forward to sharing pictures from our trip to Wyoming, but before I do that, I have pictures from throughout July and August that I’ve been wanting to post. Summertime is such a full time of year and sometimes my camera gets filled up with pictures faster than I can keep up sharing them here.  

A few summer highlights I’ve been meaning to share:

We met friends at the lake in July. The boys had a blast just splashing around in the water. We celebrated my friend’s birthday there, and I knit her a hat. I was pleased that it fit and that she liked it so much. I chose a gorgeous deep purple yarn (Juniper Aran from Mosaic Moon) for the project, that I got at the Black Sheep Gathering. The pattern is called Cherry Rascal by Joeli, and I was drawn to the beautiful texture and unique design. The only change I made was to shorten the length to make the hat not slouchy (and I didn’t put a pom-pom at the top.) I had a hard time finding information on how to do the technique that created the texture with the exact wording that was used in the pattern, but shared the link I used in my Ravelry notes.

On our way home from the lake that day, we went blueberry picking at another friend’s farm while Bracken ran around with his buddy there. We were so excited for blueberry season. Then my dad and stepmom came up to our place a few days later for our annual tradition of blueberry picking at a different nearby farm. (We all really love that tradition!) They brought us up a load of alpaca poo, or “pacapoo” as they refer to it as, from their alpaca farm. Jeff was so happy to get that truckload to add to our compost pile I could practically see tears of joy in his eyes, we were so grateful to them. We found a tiny tree frog that came along with the load and Bracken thought that was pretty magical (and hoped for a whole family of them to live here.) The next day we went blueberry picking a third time with a friend nearby, who introduced us to a new blueberry farm we didn’t know about that was only a twenty minute drive from our house. Going blueberry picking three times in one week made for a great week! Blueberry picking is such an essential part of our summer and we’re glad to have so many blueberry farms around here.

The next week we went down to visit my dad and stepmom in southern Oregon. Bracken always has a blast at Grandpa and Grandma’s farm, but that time his two cousins were visiting as well which took the fun factor to a whole new level. He wanted to look for frogs and lizards there, and both were found much to his delight. (We found one frog that blended into the bamboo in the garden one evening.) There was a pool to swim in, a freshly painted playhouse to play in, a zip line to go on, and little vehicles to drive all around the farm. As if that wasn’t enough, Great Grandpa surprised all the boys with an ATV and they got to take turn going on rides with the adults. You can see why visiting Grandpa and Grandma’s farm is in such high demand. Plus all the animals to visit- alpacas, chickens, cats, and a dog too. They let one of their hens hatch out two chicks this year and it was so cute watching them roam around the farm together. The boys all got measured on the measuring board and had grown like crazy since their last visit. We enjoyed so many delicious meals, it was a great time.

The week after that we had a booth at the Mother Earth News Fair, and then we had a week at home before we headed out on our road trip for Wyoming. It’s been a full summer. We bought a bunch of peaches, but didn’t can them like last year, we sliced them up and froze them instead. Our garden has been a busy place too. We’re currently in between lettuce harvests and we’ve grown so accustomed to having it all the time that it felt strange when I bought some this week. Piles of cucumbers and zucchini have been making their way into the kitchen. And green beans! We’ve had so many green beans we’ve been freezing everything we don’t eat that day. Our thornless blackberry we planted in the garden was more prolific this year than ever before. I loved every time our family headed down there with containers and picked together. We got stained with berry juice and filled up our containers in a flash because there were so many berries. We’re glad to have blackberries in the freezer for our smoothies this winter.

We’ve had some hot weather this week, but I’ve been feeling the nights getting colder for awhile now. I’m not ready for summer to be over quite yet. I love summertime in Oregon so much, I’ve been wanting it to last as long as possible. I’m so grateful for all the fun things we’ve been able to do this summer… and there’s a few more things we’re wanting to squeeze in this year before the season’s over. What things were on your summer list this year? Anything else you’re still wanting to squeeze in before the weather changes?