OK - here goes!!!

Obviously, I haven't posted in quite a while.
Understatement.
That said, you, dear reader/s, will understand if it takes more than one post to catch up.
Right?
Chronologically, I will begin with the double rainbow - and, yes, it really did look just like this!
This was the view to the S/SE from the deck.
We had some pretty strange weather all summer. Monster wind storms that laid the corn out horizontally, gully washers, then drought for, like, 3 months.
During the drought period, we had some gravel delivered and Phil, from down the street, spread and compacted it for us. Dean, on one of those 100º+ days, sat supervising, while Phil works. Of course, we paid him for his efforts.
One of the highlights of the summer was the arrival of The Divine Ms K - aka Kerrita. Haven't seen her in a few years since she abandoned us and went east - to teach - college kids......
K and I shared in the experience of accompanying 11 of our church's teens to Tennessee for a combination world wide gathering of youth and mission trip to the "hollers". We had fun. I think the kids did, too!
Anyway, we didn't have much time to catch up properly, but we did have a good time! Here she is, loving our little piece of heaven, overlooking the Deschutes River. Don't tell her I said so, but I really think she wants to come back to this area...
The next big, fun event of the summer (well, actually, the END of summer.....) was our camping trip with some special ranch friends to Hosmer Lake. Here is Kymberli, Gloria, and Larry.And Dean, Gloria, and LarryWe ate well on this trip. Really well.
I wish I had taken photos of Kymberli and Jim's solar oven. We had part of our main meal each day from their oven. Amazing! Cod in a yummy lemongrass concoction, quinoa with herbs and stuff, blackeyed peas. Yummy.
We did not go hungry. Believe me!!
Here's Gloria preparing the salmon for the fire - under the supervision of chef Jim
Sitting around the fire - waiting.... Kymberli (probably checking on Kona, their dog...), Jim, Larry P, Gloria, Carol and Larry - Dean's brother and wife came up to join us. Speaking of dogs, we had 3 who had never met before and they got along wonderfully. The "older" dogs, Abbey and Luke (Gloria's border collie) were quite tolerant of the puppy - Kona. They all were well mannered.Veggie kabobs and salmon......... Can't you just smell it cooking??More veggies in the cast iron skillet - never too many veggies!
The satisfied group. I took several photos - you know how groups are? Someone is always looking away, closed their eyes, something! This was the best of the bunch.
Dean fed the camp robbers - as if they needed it. He was just having fun.

Abbey spent much of her time chasing the chipmunks - we don't worry that she would ever catch one, though! She thinks she has one treed - the monk thinks it has outsmarted Abbey - guess who was right?
A weekend of food, games and a bit of wine...
Poor Gloria - she had to leave early because she got a phone call that guests she was expecting were arriving early....... She hated to go - we hated to see her go
So, we just spent the last day sitting around drinking our woes away......
Not really.
But it was a great photo of Larry - staged, can you tell????

We went kayaking, introduced Kymberli and Jim to inflatables - couldn't get them out! Jim tried to catch one of those huge Atlantic Salmon - only place in the Western US where they're found - but it's the wrong time of year to catch much of anything.
We went hiking, Larry P went hiking - farther - and bicycling, we had some fantastic conversations, learned to play some new games.
We had a great trip. Of course. Great scenery, great food, GREAT company.
Hosmer Lake with Mt Bachelor in the background