Wrapping Up Summer

In Washington, this has not been a bountiful summer. Or maybe I am just not skilled enough to garden well in overcast weather for two straight months. Now that we are at the end of August, we've had a few more days of sun, so some of the garden is taking off. The kids and I searched for vegetable growth today.

Looks like we might get a few green beans. Maybe enough for one meal? Let's hope. They are a Lewis family favorite.

The onions are doing fine. A few of the Walla Walla Sweets flowered, so I had to use them early. They were sweet, although small. The red onions are also small, but the whites are huge!

The squashes are doing fine. I think zucchini seed should be on every Apocalypse believers' survival list. It grows in all conditions. Carrots and beets have also done fine, again not getting very big. A benefit of the cooler weather has been the long life of lettuce. We have had less planting and as much lettuce all season.

Now, tomatoes are another story. I'm asking for some tomato prayers from all of you in blog-ville. I think some of my tomatoes will ripen on the vine if the sun can last for the next 4 weeks for 8 or more hours a day. How about it? Up for some praying for the impossible?

Inspired by the garden walk about, I harvested and made salad for dinner. To encourage lots of eating, I placed all veggies in separate bowls and had everyone build their own salad. Robby wondered with a slight whine, "Is this another only salad dinner?" As though this was a regular occurrence in the Lewis household. Just to be clear, it was not a vegetarian meal. Not with my dear Arnie around. There was a bowl of ham and a bowl of tuna for protein. We also had crescent rolls. The meal was a successful adventure. Everyone ate more than a plateful and seemed to enjoy it. No one asked for ketchup. At the end of dinner, Katie declared, "Wow. I haven't felt this healthy in forever."

The last few days of summer feel bittersweet. I will miss "free" time. I will miss random cleaning frenzies. I will miss television. I will miss soccer in the front yard, or having my nails done in the bedroom spa. However, I am ready to get back to the school year. Just maybe, though, I will wait to clean up the garden until October.

4 Days at Fort Flagler

For one last summer trip, the kids and I went to Fort Flagler on Marrowstone Island in Admiralty Inlet. I love Flagler. The campground is green. The water is so close you can smell the salt. The playground is new. A big field lies near the beach for flying kites and playing soccer. The forest provides several peaceful hiking trails. The fort is still there. You can run around in the bunkers and play soldier. Or rock band because the echo is incredible. The best thing about Flagler for the Lewis family, though, is that it is very close to Port Towsend. So north we went for four days.

We spent the first night setting up camp. Robby arranged the chairs around the fire. Katie arranged the mats and bags in the tent. I set up the table and equipment. While I built our fire and made hotdogs for dinner, the kids scootered around the loop to investigate. Our site was on the cliff side of Mystery Bay and had a landscape view of the bay, the inlet, and across the water, Port Townsend. As the wind picked up, we had the added aroma of the paper mill, it's stacks steaming away full bore.

The next day, we headed to PT to see Grandma and Grandpa and Auntie Rochelle. We visited for a while and then offered to help Grandma clear her back deck of old flower pots. In her healthy heyday, Sandy's back deck was an array of color all year long. Her pot garden was extensive, colorful, and fun to admire. When she and Bruce fell ill, though, the amount of plants outside were not to be worried about and were left to their own devices for a while. Our job while there was to rid the area of pots that were now empty or full of debris. We cleared off their deck and emptied a lot of pots. As she feels better, Sandy can begin gardening again with lots of empty pots to fill! That night we went out to dinner with Auntie Rochelle at a cute little hamburger joint called "Nifty Fifties". We sat on their deck overlooking Admiralty Inlet and had lots of silly conversation which ended with us dubbing Robby "Dark and Tempting". That is a whole other story.

On our way back to Flagler that night, we stopped by the store for a couple of items. Creative Katie checked out recipe cards while we were in the produce section and found one for Grilled Banana S'mores. Hmmm. In the spirit of eating adventurously, we took the card back to the campsite. We set all our ingredients out: Graham Crackers (We like Honey Maid because they don't seem to break apart), Marshmallows, Chocolate (Hershey's, of course), and long slices of one banana. I grilled the bananas on the propane camp stove. Mine has a grill on one side. The kids toasted marshmallows. The bananas certainly smelled great while caramelizing on the grill. On the s'more they were interesting. What I liked was that they weren't sweet, which made eating the s'more a little easier for me. I might make them again for myself but I don't think anyone else liked them enough!

The campsite proved to be a fun place to run around the next day. Grandma gave the kids kites which were really fun once we got them up in the air. Robby even laid on the ground for a while flying his. The wind is constant down by the water and makes kite flying a breeze. Katie's favorite activities are beach combing and getting wet. Perfect for this park! We found fish and crabs and crab molts and some things we couldn't identify. We saw a seal and lots of Blue Heron and Guillemot Pigeons. The kids ran around the bunkers and tried rock star howls in the caverns. Wow! A very full day. We made tacos for dinner with rice with corn in them.

My favorite part of each day were the sunsets. One night the sky over the water was hues of purples and pinks. Two nights they were yellows and oranges and deep reds. The whole experience of our visit makes me sigh with comfort and relaxation.

Fixing Up Our Fixer Upper

13 years after buying our fixer-upper, we are finally fixing it up! In order to get beautiful rooms like this, we had to change our lifestyle a bit.

First, we had to fill the other rooms in our house with stuff from the room being fixed up. The first room was the bathroom. I found myself fishing around in a basket in the kitchen every night for my toothbrush and floss. When we worked on the master bedroom, my underwear ended up in a suitcase in the kitchen. We've decided that "remodeled" should be looked upon as a character building time. Arnie has learned more about bathrooms than he ever wanted to know. His time and energy was worthwhile, I tell you. The bathroom is beautiful. No more powder blue fixtures. Now, everything is modern. And looks fantastic. Arnie is a talented character.

Next, we had to put the room back together. This is the only real work the kids and I did in the bathroom fix was holding panels for gluing and wood during sawing. We did shop for new towels and the shower curtain. We are excellent decorators. A new character trait for both kids. Robby chose neutral colors and Katie chose squares for our shower curtain.

We did get our chance to work in the bedroom, though. Robby, Katie and I prepared the room and painted a lot of the walls. They each got to use the electric screwdriver which was very exciting. Very character building. Then, I put each of them in a closet to paint. Since we rarely get our closet doors closed, we thought paint would make our room look neater. Hopefully if you come over, we will get the doors closed so that it looks like we live well, but I doubt it. Arnie and I had to touch up the closets after the kids went to bed. My new argument for updating the house is that the kids need to practice their painting skills. We'll see if it works. Arnie is pretty burned out on all this updating. It certainly pays off in beautiful rooms, but leaves him exhausted and not very nutritionally satisfied!

Things to Do on a Hot August Sunday

Eat strawberries while sitting on a fence post, like Chester.

Or, like Katie, clean out your swimming pool and then swim.

Water the plants with the yucky pool water, first. Lounge on the chairs with the umbrella for shade after you touch up the paint on the house and winterize the gutters, like Arnie.

Be smart. Sleep on a kitchen chair for hours, like Padme. Or like Anakin, sleep for hours under the bed in Katie's room. Quieter and cooler.

Whack at the bushes in the "back forty" to clear the area of sticker bushes. If you are like Robby, those sticker bushes are a pain when your ball ends up down the hill.

Finally, like Maureen, think about summer vegetables as you clean the house and do the laundry. Make Rachael Ray's Ratatouille Riggies (Everyday With Rachael Ray, September 2010) for dinner. Enjoy.

Lemonade, Anyone?

Did you do this as a kid? Dorrie, Jennifer, and I picked the hottest day in the summer to have another garage sale - I am not kidding when I say I loved the heat. We held it at our house. Arnie and I have a huge carport style tent that we put up for the sale to keep everything cool. With such a hot day, Katie decided to sell pink lemonade. She smiled at everyone and offered cold drinks to whoever had a quarter. The mail person even bought one from her. So cute. She made twelve dollars! Quite fabulous. We had a successful garage sale, as well.

Fair 2010

We lived near Puyallup when I was growing up, so we went to the Puyallup Fair every year. We loved the rides and the animals. I remember walking up and down the barns, peeking in at bunnies and roosters. The Puyallup Fair had this great big roller coaster. I remember screaming from the top of it many times. My mother loved the fair scones. We would bring home bags of them with raspberry jam on them. In Port Townsend, Arnie and his family spent a week every year at the Jefferson County Fair. His parents cooked and sold corn.


I think our fair memories have encouraged us to get our kids to the Grays Harbor Fair every year. We have even helped them enter projects a couple of times. So we headed off to the fair today with the best weather we've had in weeks. The sun was so bright, I had to move around the Ferris wheel to get a shot without the glare! Yes!


Robby and Katie each had a free ticket from the library summer reading program so we went in a rather small window of time that we had today.most? The kids didn't seem to mind our short visit to the fair, though. We packed a lot in. The kids wanted to start with the rides. I think they would have been happy to ride the Ferris wheel the whole day. Isn't it funny that they love that one the most? Katie said she screamed really loud every time they heat the top, just for me. They were bummed that they were the last on and the first off. However, from up on the Ferris wheel, they picked out the games they wanted to play, so the rides were cut short in favor of the games.


They started with the strong man game - you know, where you hit the lever with the hammer and send the little deely-bob toward the bell? We walked away with two enormous blow-up hammers from that one. Then they raced each other with the water shooters. Katie won that one and got a stuffed animal. Then they tried the basketball shots next, but neither won anything on that one. I heard my mom's voice coming from me. "They are always harder than they look." They threw darts at balloons next and both one a stuffed animal. Robby also tried a ball toss, but to no avail. In the car on the way home, he said, "You know, Mom, you are right. Those games are harder than they look."


Three stuffed animals and two giant hammers later, we headed for the food lane. After walking up and down, the kids decided on hamburgers and A & W root beer floats. I needed to try something new. There were fried pickles and Slavic rolls. I really thought about that fried pickle. Seems like something I need to try, but I do see them at various venues. A Slavic roll, though, I didn't even know what that was. Would I ever see that again? I decided on the Slavic roll. First, of course, I had to find out what it was.


A friendly woman with a heavy accent (a good sign I thought) called it a Slavic pastry, gesturing at dough wrapped around a large wooden rolling pin turning slowly above a grill. Turns out, this roll is a very pretty tubular pastry, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. There were several sweet things to spread inside the roll. I chose chunky peanut butter and Bavarian cream. The outside of the roll was covered in cinnamon sugar. An unusual appearance, but a familiar taste.

For dessert we had a fruit kabob from the Shishkaberries stand. We had to order the Dingleberry Kabob. Please tell me that we are not the only family who tells dingleberry jokes. We are so inappropriate. This Dingleberry Kabob was indeed delicious fresh strawberries dipped in milk chocolate.

One fair event that will likely get animal rights activists all over me is the elephant ride. The kids rode a camel at the zoo this summer, so they were excited to see the elephant at the fair. Here they are, riding a pachyderm at the fair! Afterward Katie kept calling it a dinosaur, laughing, then saying, "I mean elephant."

All in all, a great day at the Grays Harbor Fair. Our little community.

Caught in the Act

Padme was on alert this morning. Bleating like a sheep at the back window at Chester. I grabbed the camera. Without time to open the door to get a clear shot, I snapped this one. Try not to be critical of the photo. We already know my photography skills are limited. Chester was running around on the railing as though he was looking for something. Scampered across our brick patio and into the pot. He was in there for a few seconds. When he went in to the tomato pot, he had half a strawberry in his hand...Hmmm. Little rascal. Look at him. Pausing for dramatic effect. He looks very satisfied with himself. He's thinking what a great job he has done of hiding his food. I wonder if it will grow if I just leave it in there.