HOORAY FOR THE RED, WHITE AND BLUE!

 I don't know where my summer is going this year!   My sister and a surrogate sister came up for a long weekend a while ago.   Good visit, although when I took them out to see Cape Blanco, we were greeted with a solid wall of gray.......rain and fog.  You couldn't begin to even see the lighthouse, much less anything beyond.  But the next day when we went to Bandon, it had that beautiful after-the-storm gorgous skies.......big fluffy clouds, shadows and light adding such great interest. 

We stayed home this year during the 4th of July festivities.   I had to have some kind of holiday celebratory photo so I placed a couple of appropriately colored things like white lilies and a hat around and snapped a few.  My favorite, though, is the flag up there in the trees.  And we watched a few fireworks from our deck.  And went to bed early listening to the fireworks down at BattleRock going off.  It sends the sound echoing up the canyon below our house.

I hope everyone's summer is going well in spite of the cooler temperatures.  It may not be as warm as we'd like but when I read about all the awful things going on over much of the rest of our country, I'm just so thankful to have our Pacific Northwest weather.  The garden is a little slower than it should be for this time, but we're picking plenty of lettuce, spinach and beet greens.  Just at their perfect and tender best.  Yum!  Carrots are growing nicely as is the garlic and onion.  The beans, peas, and cubits are a little slower and the broccoli doesn't know up from down......basil in the greenhouse has been clipped already.

My niece and her wonderful 3 kids are coming for a too short visit tomorrow.  They won't be here long so we'll have to cram a lot of visiting in.  Beach combing, maybe, a hike on the Heads, maybe the kids would enjoy the Wild Animal Park.........well, let's be honest......that's one of MY favorites!  8-D

I'm about done with any new clothes and things for my Alaskan cruise with Karen.  That will be coming up in about,  ummmm........46 days.  It'll be here before we know it!   I'm so looking forward to it. 

Did anyone else have some trouble with their computer and getting knocked off the Internet?  Everything seems OK now but yesterday and even the day before, in trying to get my printer hooked up to my laptop was just one big headache!   It seems that anything new or off with my computer I just know is going to be one big time-consuming, head-achy, hassle.  We have Frontier and I think to avert any problems on Monday, they did some switching around on Sunday.  Which was immediately after I had finished getting the software downloaded and set up for my printer (Mucho thanks for Nanci's help).  As I unplugged my printer (perfect storm timing here) my Internet connection went off.  So, anyone would naturally think the two were some how connected, right?  A few hours later, it still wouldn't come on and I was just about to make some drastic changes to my computer when my friend, Karen called to ask me, or tell me, that her Internet was off.  Now THAT was perfect timing!!  That call saved me from hours of more frustration and further drama. 

Saw our first little spotted fawn the other day.  Our squirrels still keep Norm on his toes with their antics and the attempts to help the birds eat their seed.  There was one I call, Junior, who kept trying over and over again to leap from the deck railing out to one of the circular squirrel proof feeders.  He had us in stitches and each try landed him in the bushes underneath the feeder.  Over and over, he lept too high, too low, sliding off the rounded top.........  Then he finally aimed his leap just right......or just blind luck.......and he got in.  So there he was, "squirreling" down the seed as fast as he could as he sat there all by his lonesome in the middle of all that seed, nervously looking up constantly to see if his position was in danger.  He was right; it was.  Out Norm went flying and Junior leapt from the feeder to the safely of the shrubs.  But in another few minutes, here he comes yet again!  Persistent little Junior!

I guess his leap of faith was just luck because he continued to miss his mark and finally got tired, I guess of ending up flying and falling below.  I think Norm did do something else to that feeder, whether it was more sticky stuff or hung it out further, whatever it was, that particular feeder is again safe from the squirrels. 

Well, hope you all enjoy your summer and whatever plans you have coming up........family, friends, fun or just relaxing.  Our summer of 2012 still has all kinds of possibilities. 

Be safe!