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.

Wild flowers seen while camping.

We're at the bottom of this post but in the meantime enjoy some pretty scenery.

Columbine is so pretty.  Especially surrounding our campsite.

There is so much beauty in the trees as well as the flowers.

My daughter took this photo.  

Mountain Columbine 

I think the flowers look even more tiny with a bit of the tree trunk showing.

Sunflowers overlooking the Tremonton area

I love the mixture of colors here.

 Wild Geranium

I love how this foliage looks 

 Again, it's amazing what a little fill flash can do.  Inspiration Point looking south.

The four of us at Inspiration Peak looking north

Wild flowers indoors

We planted a huge patch of wild flowers in front of our house. Basically we tilled it, tossed about $50 worth of seed out there and then watered it.  This is the first year these have grown. It's mostly going to be trees out there when we finish so it's nice to have a pretty filler for now.  My daughter and I spent a while gathering these the other night after Family Home Evening.  This pitcher was a wedding gift to my husband and I. I love it and it's perfect for wild flowers.

 Nikon D7000, 50mm 1.8 set at 2.8, ISO 800

Wild Flower Photos by my daughter

We took these photos while we were up at that high mountain lake.  These are the photos my daughter took.

 Wild roses

Fireweed

And Tyler took this wild flower photo with one of my favorite parts of the cliffs behind it.  He is so talented with the camera it takes my breath away. He just knows how to photograph a scene.

Wild Flower Photographs 2010

And here are the flowers that I photographed.

wild geranium

wild geranium in pink

even the thistle looked pretty

Can't wait to find out the name on this one - looks like we are due for a trip to the library

even the tiniest wildflowers added to the beauty of the area

These were by far the most prominent

These tiny flowers had a very strong scent.

These had the prettiest scent but were the 2nd smallest in size.

As you can see we really enjoyed our walk around the lake. 

Time to check out the wildflower books at the library again.

Happy Birthday Grandpa

We went to Great Grandpa's favorite spot for his birthday this past weekend.  Grandma S brought her little raft and the kiddos were excited to try it out.

Then we went for a walk around the lake.  There is a nice path all the way around it.

My daughter and I are talking about how she thinks the large rock stairs are 'Royal Stairs' made just for us to get down instead of a slippery slope.

The wild flowers were amazing.  I am going to send some of my daughter's photos for printing so that she can enter them in the county fair next week.  The photography section has the best prizes.

There are no motorized boats allowed on this lake.  So some of the people there brought canoes.

When we started our walk, which was slow because of all the flowers we had to stop and photograph and smell, there were a few white fluffy clouds in the sky.  About half way around the clouds showed up.  By the time we loaded into the car the downpour arrived.  It was a gorgeous rainstorm.  Which it would have hit the valley too!

Summer Camping and Wild Flowers

We recently went for a ride up in the mountains and did some camping.  We weren't in a designated camping spot so we brought up the camp stove and curled up in our sleeping bags and watched Back to the Future III with our kids. The scenery was breathtaking!

Starting with these - right next to our campsite.

another view

And then this:

My daughter photographed these up close.

and these pink flowers too:

These were right next to the snow:

Yep, we had a snowball fight in the middle of July.

And these were just down the hill from the snow.

This is what we saw on our way back down the mountain on our way back to our tent.

Lots and lots of Dust!

And a beautiful moonrise!