Harvest Monday - August 29th

What in the world?  No harvest here. Yeah, I'm being a rebel.  I am having my yard sprayed - tomorrow.  We have grasshoppers.  I don't just mean a few.  I mean so many I don't even want to walk up to my garden.  And the wind makes it worse.  The hoppers loose all control and slam into you as they try to hop back into the alfalfa field.  My grass is literally moving.  They are about 3 inches apart.  And not just little hoppers.  Great big huge hoppers make up about 80% of them.  My grass is covered with 3 inch long brown sticks that are moving - until you walk outside and they start flying.  Now I promise - they won't spray my garden.  But I will make sure they get close to it so I can at least walk to it sometime this week.  I'll post later this week.  For now I am avoiding the hoppers as best I can. One good thing is that they don't like day lilies and so far my new hydrangea is doing well.

In the meantime we drove up in the mountains to get out of the heat.  Think I'm kidding.  The 11 year old boy (who lives next door to his Uncle Scott and just up the street from us) that spoke in church last Sunday about fasting started out his talk saying, "It's been really hot lately.  So hot that when my Uncle Scott  went out to get the eggs from the chicken coop, they were already hard boiled." He got a good laugh.  And he gave an excellent talk.  

Don't you just love our outfits? Anyway, we saw a moose too while we were up in the mountains (under the first letter e).  My husband didn't want to walk any closer because he heard snapping sticks in the wooded area nearby.  This means that there might have been momma and baby in there.  So he kept his distance.  I love going up there.  We see moose often.  Sometimes they are swimming in the lake.  And the wildflowers were fabulous.  It's one of those places where the phrase "take only photos, leave only footprints" truly applies.

Scouting For Moose

The moose hunt is a once in a lifetime thing here in our state so we like to continue to shoot photos instead of the moose. We went out one night for Family Home Evening to enjoy the cooler temps in the mountains.  And see what we could find.

This was at old ephraim's grave - a huge grizzly bear that caused many problems for the sheep, cattle, and people of the valley (well, huge for the lower 48).  I saw this leaf and had to photograph it.  What really makes this photo for me is the shallow depth of field. I love details and this is just one leaf out of many.  I used my cheap old 35-80 mm Nikor lens. This leaf was on a long stalk and stuck way out away from the rest of the plant.  The depth of field allows the stalks in the background to go out of focus and not take away from the leaf while adding a little interest in the background.

Someone placed a monument to the bear here so that people could learn more about the bear and how long it took the people to stop his mass destruction. The rock behind us is as tall as the bear.  His skull is in at the Smithsonian Institute.

The next day my daughter and husband found a small moose.

My daughter photographed him.

And they enjoyed this beautiful sunset on the way home.