weekend in a waterbed lounge chair

 this trailer-park-fabulous setup cost me less than $20 (thanks, china!) and kept me cool the last few 95+ degree days. you know you want one.

 i had a feeling the chickens were going to figure out the doggy door eventually. they're always trying to get inside--they frequently gather at the doorstep and peck at the plastic door. i'm not sure how long they'd been hanging out in the mudroom when i heard clucking and went back to find all three of them in there, standing at the door to the kitchen.

 friday night jason and i had an impromptu apricot adventure in horseshoe bend. we've gone to this tree every summer for the last three years.

 normally i'm the one who butt-slides down the hill to get to the best fruit, but this year i was wearing a skirt, so j went for it.

 he took it a step further and monkey-footed up the tree to get the VERY best fruit. this made me a little nervous. not only is this tree clinging to the side of an incredibly steep, tall hill with lots of jagged rocks below, and thin breakable branches, but we were in the middle of a super windy thunderstorm. he made it out fine, though.

 the sky on the way back was dramatic. we drove up to the cemetery and watched the rain fall over the hills.

 then we met some horse friends, and i got my favorite horse picture ever!

 saturday morning i pilfered my parents puggle for a happy puppy playdate with cam's pups.

 the two dogs were a bit overwhelming for scout. they were too big and loud and scary, even though they just wanted to play and be best friends. DESPERATELY wanted those things. hugo had to sit out the party inside.

 scout is the puggle's official name. they went through dozens of ideas before settling--the naming process took almost a month. my favorite name was mucho. i still call him that. el mucho poocho! but ultimately my mom wanted to name him after the little girl from to kill a mockingbird.

 back to work tomorrow. i got a lot of nothing done this long weekend and i'm feeling pretty good about it.

stroll through the grape tunnel with me

almost everyone in king hill grows grapes. being that close to the snake river means extremely fertile soil and excellent conditions for growing just about any fruit--lots of apples, apricots, plums, etc--but the most common is grapes. this arbor stretches over part of a sidewalk in town, with three delicious grape varieties that are all perfectly ripe right now. the owner is fine with people coming and picking what they need--same goes for the vines behind the church, next door to rifka’s house. we picked this heaping plateful for our feast:

today my mom and i are going to glens ferry (a small town you drive through on the way to the even smaller king hill, about seven miles away) to tour carmela vineyards. we’re doing a story together--she writes, i photograph. and hopefully we both munch grapes.

alas, august.

mixed feelings about this month. too much is ripening all at once, not just in the garden.

sunday i shot a wedding reception and it was the most difficult photographic experience of my life. two big families, lots of big personalities, yelling, stress, frustration, exhaustion, bad badness. the photos turned out well which i guess is all that matters now, but i’ll think seriously hard before i accept another wedding job in the future.

this saturday is tour de fat, then that night i’m going to the fair. sunday i’m doing the red light variety photo shoot in idaho city which i can’t even wrap my brain around right now. today i spent hours working (not playing) in the garden, then even more hours editing photos...all while accomplishing the important goal of never getting out of my pjs.

this week is plenty busy at work, and every spare minute at home (until yesterday) was spent getting stuff ready for the state fair. i hadn’t been able to motivate myself to do any canning yet this year and bags of foraged fruit were taking up lots of space in my freezer, not to mention all the fruit that’s ripening right now and getting heaped into bowls making a mountain range of the kitchen counter, along with loads of squash and tomatoes and eggplants that i’m too exhausted to deal with. the fair entry deadline finally lit a fire under my ass.

i stayed up past 3am monday night making jellies. the kitchen was a disaster area like never before. it looked like a scene from hoarders.

tuesday was the day to bring everything in. it’s long-standing tradition for my mom and i to enter our stuff together--we drive out to the fairgrounds with her friend gail and the two of them sing along to the soundtrack of the old musical “state fair” like a pair of drunken hillbillies while i sit in the back seat giggling, making sure all the jars and bottles stay upright.

this year my mom was out of town. i had to haul everything by myself--eight bottles of her herb vinegars plus all my stuff: six jars of preserves, three collections of herb cuttings in jars of water, three 11x14 matted photos, knitted mittens and socks, 25 small tomatoes, eight ground cherries and five eggplants. do you know how hard it is to carry all these things, many of which are fragile, easily damaged and/or heavy, all at once by yourself? often it doesn’t occur to me that i can ask people for help, so i didn’t think to call anyone. i loaded most of the items into a rolling yarn tote (which ended up weighing at least 40lbs), photos and produce went in my backpack, then i carried the overflow in a mason jar box. making two trips would be unacceptable because i’m stubborn and i like to challenge myself, even when it’s enormously inconvenient.

a while ago jeanne and i were talking about the state fair, and about gardening, and how both of us could never have imagined ending up like this...so, country. if she could see me now, my 15-year-old self would judge my current self harshly--some of the shit i care about would seem unthinkably lame. when my family moved here from the east coast i resisted assimilation, resisted anything remotely similar to growing potatoes, anything uncivilized. i resisted for a long time. the process of giving way to whatever small-town, olden-times, pioneer-spirit current still flows here was slow at first, but now it’s swept me out, and i’m enjoying it.