This past spring, when I had professional prints made of the dog portrait I painted for my sister, there was a free pile outside the photo shop. “Thrifting” is another enjoyable non-lethal hunting behaviour for us right up there with mushrooming and geocaching. C views  everything through his “what can I do with this?” filter,…

Aside from fall’s foliage, it’s been an exceptionally colourful month here. I think I crave colour in preparation for the long Pacific Northwest season of foggy greeny greys. C finished another piece of garden art. Initially I thought it was responsible for this magnificent afternoon rainbow cast upon our rock wall.  In fact, that spectrum…

For me anyway. I got brave and participated in the big fall art show, featuring 60 artists, sponsored by the local guild. It involved a lot of preparation and I was pleased with the results having sold five paintings and lots of 5×7 cards, prints of my paintings.    Now that I know the ropes,…

Should have said fungi, as it sounds far more culinarily acceptable. In our most recent foray into foraging we hit the jackpot. We found six edibles, consuming four of them. The two rejects included one whose flavour is described in the field guide as “insipid” and the other requiring finicky cleaning.   The winners were,…

Last week’s post was absent while we camped on the Oregon and Washington Coast, passing through places whose names conjure up tough times on the foggy, rocky sea: Dismal Nitch, Cape Disappointment, Heartbreak Trail, Deception Pass and a ray of hope at Never Give Up Road. Geocaching at the 1906 wreck of the four masted…

Time to give C some space for his creative retirement activity – garden art. Part of the fun is combing the beach for interesting wood and sifting through thrift at the local stores. This is a 65th birthday gift for his sister. The vase on the bottom can actually hold flowers: Unfortunately his stash of…

Not that I’m planning on starting another kitchen from scratch. Nope, I’ve had the good fortune to say I’ve been there done that. Twice. Each time is a learning experience and there are inevitably things you’d do differently. Maybe, if you’re planning a new kitchen you can learn from  my experience. Most of the issues…

People told me that in retirement I’d have so much to do, I’d wonder where the time went. So true. How did I ever fit a day of work into my schedule?  Deep breath. One thing at a time. Fortunately mostly good these past two weeks. The first good thing was the opportunity to participate…

Years ago we heard about a couple who planted a few apple trees in their front yard. After several years they had so many apples they had to enlist family and friends to help with their apple problem. Something about that appealed to me. I wanted a fruit problem, too, so I convinced C to…

The trouble with making fresh pasta is you to make pavlova. Never fails. C sees the extra egg whites and asks if he's getting Pavlova. The opposing scenario occurrs when we start with Pavlova and have a load of extra egg yolks, then we had to make creme brulee. Lovely problems to have. With a…