Weekend on the old Farm Place

I got my sunflowers!  I went to the grocery store on my way home from swimming on Friday and along with the carrots and muffins I snagged me a bouquet of these beauties.  Now my dining table is complete.

Is there any flower as evocative of Autumn than a pretty golden yellow sunflower?

There was a wedding held across the street on Saturday in the lavender field they've put in - they had bales of straw for folks to sit on and a big tent and strings of lights.  Yesterday someone walked across the road and asked us if we wanted some straw and I said.. "Yes!"  So Kristi hopped on the tractor and went over and they loaded all the bales on it and here she came so I snapped this photo.  Isn't she the perfect farmer girl?  :-)

I suggested we put one right in the chicken pen as it was just dirt on the ground so Kristi bucked a bale of straw in there and cut the twine and tossed flakes of straw around and the chickens just had a blast scratching in it looking for something to eat.

Travis had the week off and Kristi had an extensive "honey do" list.  Yesterday they removed all the furniture and potted plants on the deck and power washed it to ready it for a fresh coat of oil finish.  I miss the table and plants!

I had remarked a while back that this beautiful leafed begonia had no flowers and Dayle told me that it was indeed flowering.  You can hardly see them as they blend into the leaves.

My miniature variegated rose in bloom.. it's so cute as the flowers are coin sized.  This plant barely made it through last winter with only one shoot but it's improved a bit this summer.

Kristi also decided we needed a better piece of furniture by our back door with more storage and ordered this, it came in a box in pieces and she put the whole thing together herself.  

I don't think I've ever shown you the prehistoric mortar, pestle and metate of mine.  A local man had found these in the forest when he was out hunting in Eastern Oregon - well he had them most of his life and then decided to sell them when his wife fell into poor health and he posted them in the local newspaper.  Dayle read the ad and we called him and drove over and bought these from him.  A big regret of mine is he had a frame of arrowheads he'd also found and wanted us to buy them too but I thought we'd spent enough already and declined.  

The native people used this eons ago to grind meat, fats, seeds, nuts and berries to make pemmican to feed themselves over the long hard cold winters.  Pemmican is a concentrated mixture of fat and protein used as a nutritious food. Historically, it was an important part of Native American cuisine in certain parts of North America, and is still prepared today. The word comes from the Cree word pimîhkân, which itself is derived from the word pimî, "fat, grease".

My daughter Amy in Ohio grew her own pumpkins this summer and this was her harvest over the weekend.  Isn't that neat?

On Saturday Dayle and I picked up a special birthday carrot cake to take to a luncheon at my sister Denise's house as my brother who lives many hours away was in town - so all 4 of us siblings were there.  My sister and brother are twins and are named Robert and Roberta but were nicknamed "Butch and Sis" by all the family when they were little.  So that's what I had put on the cake. :-)

In our decluttering efforts around here I had to finally give up on something I didn't want to.. I had bought a village of little houses when my granddaughters lived 1/2 hour away and came to visit often.  They are called Sweet Streets by Fisher Price.  I took a photo of them and offered them for free on the Corbett Area Facebook page and within hours a woman came to take these away.  :-(  I kept one house and will snap a photo for my next post.  

I am off to swim soon.  What did YOU do over the weekend?  
((hugs)), Teresa :-)