Sunday, April 24, 2016

Update from Oregon

So many things to catch up on....where to begin?

Shall I first tell you about what's happening on the homestead?

Spring seemed to leap quickly into early summer with very warm temperatures that brought out a succession of flowers. My lilacs, which for many years would bloom for Mother's Day in mid May, are blooming now!

                          
These are my three varieties. (Every year I say I will transplant some white ones. This year I am going to do it!) The first one has a double blossom, the second one looks red in the photo but actually is a deep red purple, and the bottom variety is very blue in color.

I'm actually sad that so many things are already blooming in April because by June all my best flowers will be finished. I'll have to plant a lot of annuals for color this year.

                        
This is my lovely little dogwood, a Mother's Day gift (several years ago) from my son. Now that he is a husband I am no longer the most important woman in his life, but that's a good thing!




                                         
             This fluffy bridal spirea grows tall enough to peek into my dining room window. I love that.




   
      The blueberry row is all in bloom and the bees are busy there and in the two apple trees.

   
  
The seeds I planted a few weeks ago have sprouted. It will be quite a while until we see fruit. (The second bed is herbs, onions and narcissus, the third bed has strawberries).





Spring brings more than bursts of blooms, there are also additions to the farm fellows.
Our boys always get pigs for their 4-H projects in March. They had to search in two states to find pigs that were born early enough to mature in time for the county fair at the end of July. We also always get an extra pig to raise for our own table. This year I requested that we get a pig born later that won't mature until September so that we could feed it out of the garden for awhile before it went to slaughter. So, this last week we acquired a young little pig that we'll raise for ourselves. We didn't expect that he would be SO small, but he is adorable. He was especially cute when rooting around the barrows for milk. 

We were initially concerned about how the older, bigger pigs would treat such a little guy. It was quite a pleasant surprise to see them immediately accept him without any conflict at all.

And this morning Sam found this scene-
                                      
                                                   The little guy found the sweet spot.


How about some arts and crafts?....

Besides the drawing classes, the young people in our house are taking a photography class at the art school. Samuel is especially enjoying it and learning technical details very quickly. Here are some of his shots that he was willing to share-

                                             
The forward focus of this photo is a technique called "bokeh" and I love the effect. I use it often when taking photos of cakes.
Here is another-
                                             


                    Samuel has a vintage truck restoration project and he loves to take photos of it.
                                             

Last week in photography class the students worked on portrait shooting. I think this is a fabulous shot Sam took of his little brother. The light and shadow effects are wonderful.

       




            He has also been experimenting with shutter speeds with the camera on a tripod-

      

In a future post I want to share the work in Photoshop class if I can get the guys to show me their work!

The weather turned cooler this week so I wasn't drawn so strongly to the outdoors. Staying in enabled me to get back to my neglected sewing project. This has already been a too long post so I won't give details except to say......because of my lack of proper planning and measuring, I ran out of fabric.

So....I won't be able to proceed until I make a trip to the big city. But here is a progress shot-

                                       

                                                    More about this one in another post....














3 comments:

  1. Love the photos! Can't wait to see more of the quilt...

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  2. Love the photos! Can't wait to see more of the quilt...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, Pam. You have such a gorgeous garden.
    Up on the mountain I had a couple primroses, batches of snowdrops, and thepaltry first half-dozen daffodils slowly open... And then the snow set in and won't budge until Thursday. Spring is STILL hiding around the corner.

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