I am getting out and walking a mile in the morning lately. I took some pictures of the field behind and to the sides of our house. You can see that the wheat is soon to be harvested. The last picture shows our house in that clump of trees. That clump of trees works really well to keep the house cool when the temperatures get near one hundred. Our daughter called and said she was sitting on the air conditioning vent today. They live a few miles south of Portland, OR. Portland recorded 105 degrees today. Seattle hit 104 downtown. Highest temp ever recorded in Seattle was 100 degrees. This is some pretty serious heat for the Northwest, but the wheat is loving it. Should be a good crop. Funny thing about NYC recording the coldest month of July ever. You can see that our neighboring wheat field is pretty stressed by a healthy yield of thistle. There is a county ordinance--actually state law, about failure to control weeds. Evidently, farmers are unofficially exempt from compliance. Not really, but, well, really. The weed commissioner visited a couple of summers ago and did not give me any hassle about my weeds--I do a good faith effort trying to control them--but herbicides are really expensive now. There is no way I can eradicate the thistle on my property and I do have a problem with thistle if the farmer is not doing his part. The best solution I have come upon to control weeds is to plant sunflowers. They go to seed and then go wild. I have 8-10 foot sunflowers all over the place. Guess what? The weeds don't have a chance under those sunflowers. The weed commissioner was duly impressed. He had never heard of doing that before.

Hey, hey! the garden is beginning to produce. The yellow summer squash is just about a staple of our dinners now. We are getting a few cherry and grape tomatoes, but in a week or two we will be overwhelmed with those small tomatoes. Plan to give a lot of them away. We got our first ripe slicer tomato yesterday and it was yummy. Forget about buying tomatoes in the store. In-season-tomatoes are the only tomatoes I eat now. I don't even call in-store-tomatoes, tomatoes. Just some red, artificial matter. And, the first three ears of corn. Oh, that was so good. My sister and brother-in-law will be visiting in September and they have their mouths already set for those tomatoes. Brother-in-law calls the cherry and grape tomato plants candy bushes. If you eat a sun warmed and ripened tomato right off of the vine, then you know what the sun tastes like.

We had come to the conclusion that our lonely squirrel was love denied. Hah. We are sorely lacking in knowledge concerning the sexual habits of tree squirrels. We have three little squirrels running around. They make a habit of not running around together, so we don't really have an accurate count. I believe that we may have squirrel stew this fall after all. Well, maybe.

Tomorrow I will be off huckleberrying again. Depending on how it goes, I may go back out again Friday. I got a hot fishing tip from a fellow in the waiting room at Hanigan Chrysler while we waited for our vehicles to be serviced. The creek with seventeen inch rainbows is within a few miles of one of my huckleberry patches. Hmmmm, I could possibly get distracted if the patch is not producing a lot of ripe berries.

In case you were wondering, coyotes, I am sure eat huckleberries. I use to have two Brittany Spaniels, Teddy and Leaky, who would most delicately eat huckleberries (one at a time) from the bushes. If I was picking huckleberries with them around, and they often accompanied me on such outings, I would have to pick like mad to get my fair share. A Brittany Spaniel with his pink nose and blue tongue is quite a sight. Oh, for a picture.

Papa Coyote has to go, bedtime. I won't be dreaming of huckleberries, but last week after two days of picking berries, I kept seeing berries in my mind when I tried to doze off to sleep. Geez.

Night, Night,

Papa Coyote loves you all