Wood or Silver

Last Friday Tom and I celebrated five years of wedded bliss.  We spent the beginning of the month remembering where we were five years ago - driving to Bend, checking out Crater Lake, buying salmon on the docks of the Columbia, playing golf, BBQing with friends, and then finally - saying "I do!"

Five years ago we were just settling into Miami, building a mud porch, stashing boxes away that still haven't been unpacked.  It is a great feeling to have moved again - into the house, though there are still so many things on the to do list.  Five years really flies by!

My brothers inform me that the five year anniversary "gift" is wood or, more modernly, silverware.  We got a canoe - which is neither, but technically the oars are wood.  My older brother asked is we'd named it, which we haven't, but Tom rejected the idea of "Cinco" as it sound a lot like sink-o, which is never what you want a boat to do.  We enjoyed a great paddle around the lake, stalking the frogs, watching the dragonflies, and splashing (each other and our nieces also on the water).

Here's to many more....

Miami Sound Machine

We've got a whole other kind of live music here - and it isn't the band Miami Sound Machine.

This may end up being the wettest year on record - at least in the five years I've been here.  The rain is nearly daily, though the storms dropping an inch of rain or more are only once every couple of weeks.  We haven't been able to get the upper pond low enough to  finish it, and we're about to start our sixth water run of the season!!  People are actually passing up on their water runs because they don't want any more water or don't have room in their ponds.  Meanwhile, the lake is still too high!  How bizarre!  All the storms have made for some beautiful skies...the cloud formations have been amazing, not to mention the colorful sunsets.

Planting anything is a roll of the dice, as the ground has just been so saturated.  We did get a handful of perennials planed in the circle drive - where I'm grateful for the rain, so I don't have to water by hand.  We also planted some berries and an apple tree - hopefully they take well and aren't overly wet.  And then all the seeds that ever fell and weeds that ever spread by root have taken over everything!

just a sampling out the back window - lots of sunflowers

The sound machine reference is to the kind you purchase to lull young children to sleep.  The toads and frogs and crickets and other noisy bugs have turned up the volume - or rather the volume of toads and frogs and crickets and other noisy bugs has multiplied, consequently growing louder.  The pond is full of tadpoles at various stages, and I might have accidentally watered the apple tree with a few.  The mosquitoes are most plentiful, so I'm sure the spider and bird and frog population will explode - at least I hope something starts eating them so they'll stop eating me!

 sun setting on the fields and fields of green