Category Archives: Our Country Bungalow

Marcus Ciderfest 2023

There is no Hodgepodge this week so it’s a good time to go back to our time at the Marcus Cider Fest this past Saturday and get caught up with what’s been happening around here recently.

Every October the little town of Marcus hosts a Cider Fest that is well attended. It starts with a parade on Saturday. This year the weather was so nice it seemed the attendees and cars in the parade doubled!

Granny Great and Jim rode in Jim’s car for the parade.

His car was so shiny that we could see our reflections!

Our kids entered our DIL’s Thunderbird in the car show.

Jamie created all the t-shirts. Dan’s said, It is her car but she lets me drive. Jamie’s shirt said, It is my car but I let him drive and the kids shirts said, What’s the Word? Thunderbird.

We enjoyed the parade with our Grands and then we walked about the craft stalls, bought a caramel apple and headed home for the day.

The last Saturday in September I attended our Women’s Retreat and one of the workshops I attended was on Hospitality and Flower Arranging.

This was my arrangement. Those flowers were spent after a week and I replaced them with these Dahlias I purchased at Trader Joe’s keeping the same filler greens.

Last in this catching up post are photos from our back acres showing some Fall color.

Speaking of Fall, we finally had conditions that allowed us to take care of our burn piles. Branches that fell throughout the year were gathered up and burned. We worked as a team and accomplished a lot on Tuesday.

It’s been good to catch up with many of your blogs.

We are praying for Israel and the conflict on that side of the world. So distressed at how prisoners of war have been treated in such a barbaric and inhumane way. I can’t even imagine the sadness, terror and grief of losing loved ones in this way and the feelings of despair while huddled in a bomb shelter.

Borrowing the verses that Joyce shared on her blog.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day” Psalm 46:1-5

Dublin Day Two ~ Tour Part One

Up while it was still dark to get ready for our all day Paddywagon Tour to Dark Hedges, Dunluce Castle, Giant’s Causeway and Belfast. We were the second pick up spot at 7:20 am, Saturday the 16th of September. That meant we ended up in the back of the bus with 50 of our one day ‘friends’ in front of us. Looking a little blurry in that selfie I took.

This day will have to be split up according to our stops or else I’d have way too many photos. I’m sorry to have to mention that we were not enamored by our bus driver and the information he chose to dwell on and drone on during our trip. We did choose joy at each of our stops! We were last off at each stop which meant we had a few less minutes at each of our stops. We were last back to the bus on most of our stops because of that…

There was a stop about an hour into our trip at a motorway stop with many choices for food, drinks and other conveniences.

A while after our convenience stop, we pulled into a parking lot for cars and buses and were directed to the path to Dark Hedges. There were minimal services here. We were beginning to see the chance for some blue skies ahead.

Stop #1 ~ The Dark Hedges

None of the four of us are fans of Game of Thrones but we were happy to see this row of beech trees.

The Dark Hedges is an avenue of beech trees along Bregagh Road between Armoy and Stranocum in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

 

 

Our daughter-in-love has an eye for photography and putting it all together in a collage. I’ll be sharing many of her photos and collages, too.

We were only at this stop for 20 minutes. We beelined it to the restrooms first and onward to the Hedges. The lines for the conveniences could take a while so we tried to be quick on the draw when we could.

Our next stop would be Dunluce Castle and it was my favorite of the stops on this day.

Thank you for following along.

Back to the present…

We are already enjoying Fall colors out our windows here at our country bungalow. How about you?

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig!

Our outbound flight from Seattle to Dublin on Aer Lingus on September 14th at 6:50 PM arriving in Dublin on Friday September 15th at 11:45 AM. We are sandwiched in our seats by our youngest and our oldest with their wonderful spouses!

Our homebound flight from Dublin to Seattle on Tuesday September 26th at 3:10 PM arriving in Seattle on the same day at 5:05 PM.

We went through customs in Dublin which made things so easy when we arrived in Seattle. We picked up our luggage and shuttled to our cars and got on our familiar roads driving on the comfortable side of road for us. Our vehicle made it’s way to a familiar Mexican restaurant for a comfort meal before arriving at our son’s home for the night. Our daughter and hubby headed straight home to be reunited with their cats!

We basked in the memories of a most wonderfully blessed trip with so many ‘wow’ moments to remember and share. We thank our God for His special care over all of us every day and for now especially the days we enjoyed in Ireland and England.

On Wednesday morning still working on Dublin time Dear and I packed up our vehicle and started on our 5+ hour journey over the mountains and home again home again jiggety jig. When we arrived in Spokane (an hour and a half south from our home) we did our usual ‘petrol’ stop at Costco ($4.55 per gallon not liters). A quick stop in the warehouse store for a few items and on the road again reaching home at 1 pm. Our Colville kids prepared a welcome home meal for us that waited for us upon our arrival. They made Greg’s famous Tomato Rice Soup and Jamie baked an amazing fresh loaf of bread to accompany the soup. Perfect for us to enjoy after our long journey. Thank you to all our kids who made this trip special from beginning to end.

Funny note: I sent the photo of me sitting and enjoying my soup and bread to our kids and our granddaughter asked why we were eating on the couch! Oops, I’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Our Grands are being raised proper.

Now that we are home I’m looking forward to those special hugs from our Grands…soon!!

I’ll need a few days to catch up with Pacific Coast time before I can make my rounds to visit. Happy Autumn to all of you!

Shiver Me Timbers!

What a surprise we had on Sunday evening!

On Sunday after church we made a quick trip to Spokane to pick up my new prescription eye glasses. When we got home closer to the evening I received a text on my phone from Steven’s County informing us of a major Thunderstorm coming through our area. Pretty quick after the notice the rain started to fall. We saw lightning and then we heard the thunder and knew those strikes were very close by.

The rivers of rain starting coming off the roof. We had talked about putting the summer furniture away and taking down the shade cloth the day before but put it off, oops.

A gust of wind blew through and lifted the bar that holds the cloth up. We were fortunate the bar didn’t go flying into our patio doors. Down came one end of the cloth and the chair and a decorative lantern.

This was one of the stronger storms we’ve experienced since moving here. The power only went out for a few seconds which is very fortunate. The lightning and thunder continued through the evening hours even after the rain died down here.  That was an exciting Sunday evening at our country bungalow.

My plans to mow our acreage on Monday have been changed to later in the week.

On Monday (Labor Day) we put away all the patio furniture and took down the shade cloth and cover on the gazebo. Everything is stored for next summer.

Labor Day 2023

Happy Labor Day to us in the USA and our Canadian neighbors.

 

Several turkeys visited our front acre a few weeks ago. We do not water in the Summer so you can see how dry and brown things are.

Then before the end of August we had quite a downpour for several hours and things greened up nicely.

This photo above was taken on Sunday evening just before the rains came again with some good thunder.

I changed out some decor around here. What do you think? Too early? Schools start up in our town tomorrow and it just feels like Fall. As I’m typing we are having a nice downpour.

Have a great first full week of September!

Remember When Hodgepodge

Jo has worked on some more questions for us to answer for Hodgepodge Wednesday. Want to join in the fun?

1. What’s your earliest memory?

With this old brain this is a tough one for me. I seem to remember being in front of a wonderful bakery with cookies displayed, a Jewish Bakery, in East Los Angeles. Bakeries always draw me in and that brings me to my biggest first world problem!!

We moved from East Los Angeles to Montebello Gardens soon afterwards and most of my ‘early’ memories are connected with that property. I remember things like an incinerator in the back yard. A cement slab where our new family room would be built where we played jacks for hours. Our first black and white TV, watching Engineer Bill, Chucko the Birthday Clown, Ed Sullivan, The Mickey Mouse Club, and other Disney shows that included the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew? The only books we owned were Bibles and Encyclopedia Britannica. I remember having to sit for what seemed to me hours in front of a bowl of borsch, not wanting to eat it, after everyone else had left the table. Stopping by the seed man after ‘Big Church’ to buy packets of ‘plain’ sunflower seeds that came in brown paper packets and pumpkin seeds that came in clearer paper packets.

I better stop there, you really got my old brain going.

2. What’s something about you today that the old you would find surprising? 

The old me would be surprised that I moved away from the Southern California Beaches to Washington State and now I’ve left the city girl life for the country far far away from the coastal beaches!

3. Do you like to fish? Are you a fish eater? Favorite fish (to eat)? Favorite way to prepare fish? 

You know, I’m not a fan of fish unless it’s Fish and Chips or fish tacos!

4. What’s your biggest first world problem? 

Keeping that bakery weight off is my biggest first world problem!

5. What one word would you use to describe your year thus far? 

Sanctifying. Growing in the Word of God, the work of the Holy Spirit and fellowship of Believers. This is a life long process that got sharpened this year after Greg’s stroke last November and the state of our world. 

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

We got rain on Tuesday and what a wonderful sound that was to wake up to. We’ve had such oppressive smoke filled skies because of fires and the rain should help. Hopefully the rain will fall on all the fires in the region and help the Fire Fighters with their seemingly endless task!

Another good day to stay in and make a dent in the sky of this puzzle!

 

Smoke and Puzzles

All these sets of photos show what our view could be and what we usually enjoy contrasted to what those similar views look like with our smoke filled skies.

As you can guess the air quality is not good for working hard or exercising so I’ve added putting together some of my puzzles to my daily ‘things to do’ list.

 

I finished this one which was very enjoyable to put together.

This next one is a lot tougher and I don’t gravitate to the dining room table as often as with the London puzzle.

This one is of Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland. Hopefully I can face the sky in this one soon.

What’s new in your corner?

Update: I just woke up to the glorious sound of rain! Thank you, Lord. It’s been raining steadily for a while and there are already puddles. Hoping the rain will make a huge dent in the fires in our region and that the rain continues north to British Columbia to help with their fires, too. 

Chipmunks

 

 

These photos of the entertaining pests were taken last month. They are cute and entertaining but they can cause a lot of problems, too.

We are still smoky here and surrounded by fires from Canada and in our state, too. We are sorry to hear of those who have lost their homes. We are praying for all who are fighting the fires and rescuing people. We have mostly stayed in during this past week because of the very unhealthy air quality. We are also keeping an eye on the tropical storm coming up from Mexico into California and neighboring states. If that doesn’t rattle you the 5.1 magnitude earthquake close to Ojai will. We are hoping there won’t be any tornadoes!

Walks North and South

Sunday the 16th of July we headed out our door and walked north on our road until we reached this private drive that leads to many houses (see the mailboxes) and walked down across the stream and back to the main road again. On Sundays our road has a lot less traffic and very few if any log trucks or large chip trucks.

 

A week later on a Saturday we decided to try walking south out our door and onto a less traveled street for our walk. We’ll be doing this walk on the weekends from now on since the traffic is very quiet there on the weekends.

We try to get out the door at 5:30am and that insures even less traffic. Things start picking up at 6:30am.