It's been a busy week, and today's a nice rainy day today to catch up. So I'll take a break from practicing my ukulele and post a few photos of events since I last wrote. I will not mention how bad the Red Sox have been doing. Too early in the season to worry about that.

We've had some nice days this week to work around the yard. Lloyd's latest wall project is finished. The Great Wall of Lloyd is now tiered. Note the fancy curves. The garden area is ready, after a load of compost got mixed in. That sucker was steaming yesterday... Now we've been warned NOT to plant anything until the snow is gone from the tops of the hills along the Gorge. It is not yet. In fact, the snow level is supposed to drop to 2500 feet tonight. Just rain here, though, so it's mighty tempting. Soon. Hard to undo all that gulf coast training, where I finally figured out you plant your tomatoes in February if you really want a harvest.

We've been hiking, and more wildflowers are out and about. Here are a few pictures from last Tuesday's stroll, mentioned in my last post. It was a little hazy, so my photos with Mt Hood in the background didn't show it. You'll have to take my word on it, it was there.

The water was very still that day. The first photo shows the Columbia looking east towards The Dalles. Less hazy. There was no wind so it made for a great hike.

Wednesday I discovered the joy of the new Band Aid blister gels. Man, you slap those puppies onto your sore heels, and you can actually wear backed shoes without pain! Worth every penny. That night, I had my first ukulele class. I was afraid I'd be the only geek there, but was thrilled to arrive at the Westside Elementary music room to see about 20 fellow geeks. We had a great hour with our ukes. Best part was, I already knew the chords he taught us. The evening went downhill after that, when the car wouldn't start. It was dark. It was windy. It was beginning to rain. And my car wouldn't start. Dead. So after trying everything I could think of to get it to start with no success, I called my personal AAA guy (Lloyd). He arrived 20 minutes later, just as the rain was getting heavier, watched me turn the key...nothing. As he went back over to his car to get the jumper cables, I gave it one last try. You guessed it, the dang thing started. I do think a new battery may be in my future.

Saturday we had another hike with the Ice Age Floods gang and the Friends of the Gorge. We hiked around an area near Horse Thief Butte (where two climbers died last weekend). The photo with all of us standing (in brutal wind by the way) overlooks Hwy 14, with the Butte between the road and the river. If you look closely at the picture of the Butte, you can see little people on there...Anyway, the land is held by the Friends of the Gorge Land Trust. It's spectacular.

This view is looking west towards Hood River. There is a state park on that little spit, where there are lots of petroglyphs. It's a great place to stop if you're on a road trip. You can't go back in to see the petroglyphs like "she who watches" without a guide, but there is a display of relocated rocks that you can see from the parking area. More on that later.

The photo of the round little lake is actually where a 'water tornado' during one of the floods essentially drilled a round hole into the basalt. It's spring fed. During the Ice Age floods, the water was about 900 feet high here.

After the hike we put on our work clothes and headed up to Energeia Vineyards to help Regina, John, Lynette and James plant gewurtztrauminer grape stock. We worked for about four hours, got ourselves VERY dirty, and got about 4 rows planted. I think they got 11 or 12 done all total that day. I found three Easter Egg prizes, a candy watch, a bottle of Rainier (that I didn't collect) and a really gross candy lipstick. But hey, I got prizes!

Regina really likes driving that tractor.

John was in charge of dinner, and prepared a fabulous seafood boil, which included shrimp, crawfish, mussels, clams, crab, Louisiana sausages, corn, potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery. He cooked it on the fire pit in a former stainless beer brewing vat. It is now officially a camp steamer. The only beer it saw was what John poured in to replace the stock that leaked out of the spigot when he was trying to get it all started. Anyway, he had me concerned, trying to fuel a fire to get a big pot of food to boil when that pot was sitting on top of a wooden pallet...I always consider the most disastrous thing that can happen. But he was confident he'd be able to deal with it. He did. And no one needed to be rushed to a burn unit.

The contents were dumped onto a table. Poor Gavin had never seen a seafood boil of any kind before and thought John had accidentally spilled the goods. He gasped in horror, much to all of our delight. I didn't get any pictures of that. It was dark. I was very hungry. And my hands were very messy as I gobbled up a goodly amount of mussels. It was quite a feast. A few people partook of the Walking Man keg, but most of us were too cold for beer, so we warmed ourselves up with some of Joel's new release AWARD WINNING Cab Franc.

The fire morphed from cooking status to bonfire status. No lack of wood, since they'd taken out loads of pear trees to plant the grapes. It looks like a pear tree apocolypse out there.

John took the challenge of 14 year old Madi to a Chubby Bunny competition. This was new to me. Rather disgusting, actually. You stuff marshmallows in your mouth and say Chubby Bunny. Whoever crams in the most and can still utter the words, wins. And I thought they wanted the Jet Puffs I brought for s'more's. Silly me. I'll spare you the more disgusting photos, but John totally whooped that teenager, with eight large Jet Puffeds to her (maybe) five. Way to go John.

Fortunately, Ryan arrived with his guitar and we settled in for some real entertainment by the fire. We all put on our rave bracelets, including the dogs. Here is Mr President, Regina's boxer, sporting his night light.

We took the leftovers home to store for the campers. I got rid of all shells, cut up the sausage, and turned it into a stew with a few cans of tomatoes. We delivered it for lunch to the gang, huddled in the camper because it was too wet and muddy to work. So the rest of the plants will have to wait for the next sunny day.

The things we do for fun around here.