Random yard photos, plus pergola (canning kitchen)

Art has edged, weeded, rototilled, and brought in truckloads of mulch to get the yard in shape for the summer. It's taken days and days, but he's almost all the way around the backyard. I love our backyard!

The pansies in the front yard will be pulled today, so we can prepare the beds for summer.

Back yard pansies will face the same demise.

The little container has lupines, which Art will plant in the front yard. They're a very favorite old-time perennial flower.

Notice there's already a blosson set on this tomato plant.

Strawberries ready to set. There is an entire bed devoted to strawberries along the back of our house.

Grapes. Grape plants are also planted by three posts on the pergola. Art's hopeful they'll grow across the top to provide shade.

Rhubarb! We've made numerous cobblers to share, especially with Pete. Pete is in his 80s, and Art's his home teacher. Art has also given rhubarb to the neighbors for them to cook up. Art put new landscape timbers around this bed last year. He'll do the third bed next year. The original boarder rotted out, and these timbers will be much better. They also look nice. Art plans to mulch the area between the beds - so they don't have to be mowed, but will proivde a nice area for walking.

Peas

The iris are just beginning to bloom. We're sharing them with neighbors, too.

Notice the blueberries! Don't think we'll be freezing quarts of blueberries this year, but they have potential.

Blueberry Hill

Humm...another strawberry view.

Pop's Pergola - and future canning kitchen. The cement board against the fence will become the counter - with a tiled top, with drawers and cupboards.

Up close

New Garden

Pop decided to try John Pratt's approach to growing tomatoes. He put new landscape timbers in the tomato bed, which was a big project. It really looks nice. He added a truckload of mulch and then rototilled it all in.

Then Pop divided the garden into four rows, with "walking paths" in between. He laid the new irrigation tape, which will water the tomatoes at their base, which is what they love.

The next step was to add time-release fertilizer.

He then covered the garden with plastic, put mulch between the rows, and in this picture he's planting 28 Roma tomatoes for our family to enjoy.

The next step was to put in stakes, which he'll use to support the plants as they grow. Notice Mom's dahlias at the end of the bed.

The finished project. We have a total of 42 plants. With luck, we'll have more produce than we can use.

Cousin's Party 2008

About 75 cousins gathered at Marilyn Dearinger's for the cousin's party. I (Bev) took all the RSVPs, and made the food assignments. We had honey baked ham (by the way, two 9-pound half hams will serve 75), and a large buffet of salads, breads, cheeses and fruit. Followed, of course, by a smaller dessert buffet. Marilyn's house easily handled us all. Her home was a fall-feast-for the eyes, as she had tables set up in three different locations, with two buffet lines. All tables had fall decorations and candles. Oh yes, the most important thing of all, Bev is flying solo on this posting! We took Aunt Verl and Joyce (Verl was an hour off on her party preparation, but we were pretty close to an on-time arrival.) Joyce and I helped with clean up during the evening, and we had so much fun talking, we stayed almost to the very end. We didn't arrive home until about 11:30. I wish I'd taken more pictures, but things got busy in the kitchen.

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Carol Morley, Aunt Verl and Gayle PalmerKarl and Michelle Stone, Linda Bateman, Dick Pratt, and Aunt ClaraBarbara Pratt and Sylvia Pratt
Floyd Morley, Garth Nilsson, John Pratt
Nellie Nilsson, Frank Johansen
Dick Pratt, Beth Anderson

Marilyn DeringerDallin, Karl and Michelle Stone
Wayne Anderson, Aunt Clara

Fall decor

I can never remember where I put things from one year to the next, hopefully this will help.

End of Summer

It's always a shame to have to pull out the flowers in the fall. However, if we plant the pansies now, they will give us a colorful show come spring.

Pop is getting the ground ready for the pansies. We'll show the result when there's color.

Nebo Loop and Scofield Lake Trip

On October 1 we took a lovely trip to see the fall colors. We drove over the Nebo Loop and over to Mt. Pleasant for lunch. We then drove up to Scofield Lake and home down Spanish Fork Canyon. The weather was perfect and the colors spectacular. We hope the pictures capture a little of what we experienced.

We took a little break just over the top and hiked out to see Devils Kitchen.

They were rounding up cattle on the high ground and the highway became the gathering point. We spent about 15 minutes in the middle of the herd but it was a nice break.

Scofield Lake.