Bolivia!

My sister and I arrived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia Saturday night at 10:00. I was indeed able to get my VISA at the airport, though I had to wait for the person on call to arrive and process me. We stayed and WGM (World Gospel Missions) guest house in Santa Cruz Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights while we stayed in the city waiting for my niece and her husband (Kari and Gabe) to finish more paper work for their permanent VISA's. Sunday went to Guembe to a butterfly zoo that also had a bunch of pools with slides to swim in. As it is winter here now, it was not crowded. Still, it was hot, so we made use of the water fun. We did a bit of tourist shopping on Monday.

Tuesday we loaded up their car and after going to several gas stations that were sold out of gasoline, found some at the last station on our way out of town. They are getting ready for the 'parvo' (gas strike) coming up soon, I guess. The line was long, but we were able to fill up and head for home in Camiri. The countryside is beautiful in its own right. As we neared Camiri, the Andes were visible in the distance. Camriri is located at the base of the Andes footfills.

Today (Wednesday July 30) I was able to go to market with Gabe to purchase fruit, vegetables, a few sundries and get a bike tire fixed. I loved it!

I am unable at this time to post pictures, but will try to get some on in a bit.

Pesto and Packing

I still haven't packed for my trip to Bolivia. It is 11:30 PM and I leave tomorrow. I spent the day cutting back bushes, deadheading others, watering, visiting with a friend, harvesting herbs, picking berries, making another batch of berry jam, baking a strawberry coffee cake, strawberry shortcake (trying to use up the freshly picked berries) and harvesting the basil and making Pesto. I use the recipe from Susan Branch's Heart of the Home Cookbook. It is simple and fast............

I grew the basil in my green house with success, after two earlier tries this year outside in the garden. I made two batches from the Sweet Basil.......
and one batch from cinnamon basil. I am thinking it might be good used on something Indian.
You simply put all ingredients into the food processor.......
and presto! You have Pesto!!!
I freeze mine in old ice cube trays, pop them out and store them in a freezer bag for later use.

That behind me now, I think I will go pack, take a nice hot bubble bath and finish the book I am reading that is overdue at the library (thinking I should turn it in tomorrow before I leave......). Next time I blog it should be from Bolivia! Adios mis amigas!

Raspberries and Friends of Another Sort

Today I went up to soak the raspberries. I was greeted to a sight of red jewels ready to be picked! When I was up there a few days ago, there wasn't any ripe berries yet, so this was a treat! I leave for Bolivia in two days, and thought perhaps I would miss the raspberry season altogether. I plan to make strawberry-raspberry freezer jam tonight, making use of the strawberries I gleaned from the garden last night. Perfect timing :-)




"Be off," says the Fairy,
"As quick as you can,
Over the meadows
To the little green lane
That dips to the hayfields
Of Farmer Grimes:
I've berried those hedges
A score of times;"
~ From "Berries"
by Walter De La Mare



While watering, man best friends kept me company. What were we all watching for? A bear. Yep, that is correct. A bear. Or maybe a family of bears. Every day we get a report from different neighbors that they have seen a bear in their yard. Two bigger bears have been spotted multiple times, and my husband spied a cub once down the road a piece. Wishing to take a photo of the bears to post on this blog, I carry my camera whenver I go outside these days.


We watch and wait. Scout sits right next to me so that he can protect me should any or all of the bears show up ...... well, okay, so he sits by me so that I can protect him. Boogera prefers to crouch a ways off from us so that she can be the first to catch a glimpse of the bear family.............



After some time passes and no bear approaches, Scout wanders to a more comfortable spot to keep an eye out.





Finally, he gets bored and decides to read a copy of the book Photographing Children, but gets testy when I catch him loafing off.











So he goes in search of Tillie to rouse her up from her lazy nap and rub noses. Why aren't you watching out for the bears? he seems to ask.

I think I hear something coming! Go check it out! responds Tillie.

Okay.........

It wasn't a bear, but Scout sports a worried look on his face when I see him come around the row of raspberry bushes with Coyote, the rooster who thinks he is the big boss around here.......... Can you read the battle of the wills in their stances?


Tillie is a bit more non-chalant about the intruder, but I noticed she never took her eyes off of him!

If there was any doubt as to whether or not this is Coyote's last day of life here on this green earth, his stealing the raspberries off the vines cemented it for me. Yesterday he cornered me and kept flying at me with his spurs bared. Ever see how a rooster charges his victim in the air, feet first? Before that, he was in the coop with his lady friends, but was too rough on them in his ardor. Sorry, pal. You may be beautiful, but this is my yard!!!


Rooster today, feather duster tomorrow!
~ Russian Proverb

Madder than a Hornet.........

Remember that nifty wasp nest I showed you a few days ago? Well......... Darrell sprayed it with a can of Bee, Hornet and Wasp Killer Stuff that same evening. It did not entirely work....... now they are madder than a hornet.......... but I didn't know they were still there when I tried to fix our address sign that Darrell knocked down in the process of trying to kill them. We have a young pilot with MAF that is going to Africa next year coming over this evening to tell us about his work over there. I thought he might need our address out front. At least I only got one sting. A whole swarm of them chased me down the driveway as I ran to the house to escape from their wrath :-O
Let us turn elsewhere, to the wasps and bees, who unquestionably come first in the laying up of a heritage for their offspring. ~ Jean Henri Fabre

And you better believe that!

Hot Days, Frogs and Little Boys !

I'm green with envy !!!

I want a pool like this to swim in :-)

“Frogs have it easy, they can eat what bugs them"

Beach Babes of SVBC

Today a few of us women from church went to a beach house at Tulalip Shores. It belongs to Char's mother, who graciously allowed us to use it for the day. We had wonderful food.............
BBQ's skewers of chicken, mushrooms, peppers, onions, tomatoes and pineapple.......
along with chips, fresh strawberries, chicken Gorgonzola salad and desserts..........

We ate out on the deck overlooking the ocean. Beautiful!
I have never seen so many wild gold finches anywhere else.
Karen and little Sam with his cute flappy hat :-)
Exploring the beach...........
Sam looks on at Darci's seashore treasures with the wonderment of the young discovering the world.....

Brenda collected crab bodies for her husband..........
Yikes! Is this one dead or live?
Enjoying the warmth of the sand on her feet, Darci sports a big smile :-)
The sun shone its radiant heat on us, making for an enjoyable day!
Char, Carol, Melissa and Shirley S. look so sexy with the windswept look, don't they?!?!

Or look at Carol modeling the beach scene look ;-)
This is what becomes of our garbage that we dump into the ocean. It eventually washes up on shore housing sea life...........
Later on when we were way down the beach, this adorable puppy came trotting along transporting the same can to yet another new home. We should tag the can so we can track its journey....... like we do the whales!
The scenery was fantastic, the sun was shining and the day was very relaxing!

“Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does.”
~John Kenneth Galbraith

Wasps and Bees and Pooh

Will you look at this marvelous specimen of a wasp nest that I stumbled across the evening while I was weeding out front! It has two entries: one on the bottom left that you see here, and another in the middle of the back. It is hanging from our name/address sign at the end of our driveway. They say that there is a bee shortage due to viral bee hive collapse. Not true in our yard! Two days ago while out picking strawberries from my garden, I heard a strange LOUD noise that I could not identify. It was like a diesel 18 wheeler coming from over the house. When I looked up I saw a huge swarm of bees charging over the house and towards the garden! There were thousands of angry bees coming my direction! I thought, Oh shit! Do I run or stay still? I decided to run......... into the house for my camera! When I came back out they were swarming in the trees next to the garden, and there they stayed for almost 2 hours. It was phenomenal! Above, if you can enlarge the photo, you will see thousands of yellow spots (bees). Below is a close-up of a smaller section. Imagine that up and down the entirely of several trees!
The amazing humming was the most incredible sound! Sure hope they are not killer bees :-O

"What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?"
"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best ---" and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.
~ The House at Pooh Corner

Happiness is........

My daughter-in-law invited Amberlynne and I to indulge in a pedicure with her this morning. So we obliged her ;-) This was Chase's first visit to a nail salon, too. He was happy and relaxed to feel the vibrations from the massage chair through Bethany! Let me tell you! If the only thing I received was the wonderful massage I had from the chair, that would have been worth the price right there! Never have I had such a wonderful kneading and punching of the muscles like this one from a chair!
First you immerse your cold feet into a deliciously warm water bath. There they soak for a bit ..... perhaps just to soften the nails for the work they are about to do on them, but in my case, it also had to loosen up the copious amounts of dirt from all of the garden work I have put in recently. (Yes, I did clean them before I went, but it was embedded :-p).

After the soak, she went to work cutting the nails and quite literally digging the dirt out from underneath them. I can only imagine what might have been rolling around in her thoughts about me.
Next came the paraffin bath ....... wow! What a treat that was, especially on my arthritic feet! Man oh man.
And have I told you yet how wonderful the chair massage was that we were experiencing this whole time? Thought I'd died and gone to heaven......... I hope there will be chair massages in heaven.........
With funny spacer things between our toes, they now started in with the polishing.
Amberlynne inspecting the painting progress...........

The real art work comes to play with special flowers they design on the big toes.........
Here was mine before I messed it all up by putting my flip flops on and walking around to take pictures of the others' big toe artwork.
Man, I thought I committed a murder or something......... my technician (who spoke little if any English) saw me, jumped up from her work on another woman and was hysterically pulling at me to come back to my chair and repeating over and over, "No, no! No, no!" All three of our mouths were agape with startled looks of what the heck? (This beautiful toe belongs to Bethany, by the way. She is the bold one around here :-) Isn't it so pretty?)
This belongs to Amberlynne. Cute little petite toe, no? Anyway, turns out I was not supposed to get off my chair yet, as the paint was not quite dry. Wish they'd learn some basic English phrases that pertain to their service......... so I had smeared my flowers. Well, I can see that she did not want her artistic abilities represented on my feet looking like that! So she rubbed it all off and started again ......... boy did I ever feel like the country bumpkin that I am .......... Amberlynne was struggling not to laugh out loud at the whole ordeal.
Anyhow, in the end we all had clean, soft feet with pretty toenails :-) They gave us these lovely funky flip flops to wear until our nails had completely set. I of course, already had my others on from my Big Mistake, so I missed out on that little extra. Did I say how much I really loved my massage yet? Well, I did.

Happiness is a pedicure ~ Bethany

Happiness is a happy baby while getting a pedicure. ~ Amberlynne

Happiness is a massage while getting a pedicure. ~ Me