1-10 July 2015 Fire season, dental work, and another book offering from Susan.

We've had a couple of short rains lately which really helped the fire danger around our place. Unfortunately the rain was widely scattered and even though it's good on our property the rest of the forest land is tinder dry.  We are under stage two fire restrictions now which means "hoot owl" restrictions for working in the woods are in effect.  I've been wanting to get out and cut some firewood but now I have to be finished by 1:00 pm and spend another hour at the scene to watch for fires.  I'd rather get done early anyway before it warms up.  The forest service has done an exemplary job in our county so far.  We've had dozens of fires start up but all were extinguished before causing major damage.  The scary thing is that this is more like late July than late June-early July.  We still have another two months of this at least until the fall rains and snow (in the high country) end the fire danger.

We've moved some irreplaceable things to kids who live in town just in case a fire rolls through.  Our place is about as savable as we can make it but there are no guarantees.  Plus, if we aren't home when a fire rolls through the chances are great that the forest service will just let it burn.

Susan has been intending to combine her three food preservation books into one for a long time and now she's finished.  The book can be seen and ordered from Amazon in either print or Kindle formats at:  http://amzn.to/1Sh50Ze

They are chock full of great information.

4th of July hamburgers on the grill with potato salad, deviled eggs, home made barbecue beans and tea waiting inside.  It doesn't get much better than that.

When we pulled the steel roofing off the cabin a couple of years ago we saved the screws holding it on.  About half still had the rubber washers on them so I sorted out those with the washers from those without.  I reuse the washerless ones on siding and the ones with washers on the roof.  It takes awhile but can be done while watching an old movie you've seen before.

We are putting some used/salvaged siding on a storage barn.  I needed some horizontal supports for the siding to screw to so I ripped a bunch of discarded sawmill slabs.  That way I got twice as many boards from the same stack.

We do that with 2x4's when we want 2x2's.  The 2x2's cost more than 2x4's so we buy the larger dimension lumber and rip them into 2x2's.  It's a lot cheaper that way.  

This is Benjamin, Scott's little brother. He was in a cheerful mood (and is most of the time).

Scott with his stuffed alligator and his alligator hat.

Scott found some old downhill skis while we were working on the storage shed.  He was having a lot of fun with them even though there was no snow.  In fact, he might have been having more fun without the snow.

Hmmm ... maybe I'll shoot out the skylight!

This is Aqua-Scott ready for some swimming fun.

And now we have Adventure-Scott with his color coordinated coat and gun.

Now it's Hunter-Scott, ready to slay some beasties.

This fellow was in our yard the other morning.  His friend was there too.  Both were spike bucks.

Then down the road a half-mile was a doe and her fawn.

Made a trip to the dentist this week. He fixed some of my teeth and I made a $500.00 "donation" to his bank account.

While I was there Scott and Susan went to the park across the road where Scott played on the cannon.

First you look down the barrel to see if it's loaded ... 

then you line it up with the target ...

and await the order to "fire" ...

Boom!   A direct hit and we sank the pirate ship!

Have a good one!