July News
Yah! Summer has finally arrived in the Pacific Northwest. It is so great to see the sun again.
We went to see another Shakespeare play in the park. This time we took a picnic and explored a new park in Sandy, Oregon, which is about an hours’ drive from our place. We saw Pericles, the Prince of Tyre. This is one of Shakespeare’s lesser known plays. It was well acted and entertaining. Greg’s only complaint was that it didn’t have any of the famous quotes like “double, double, toil, and trouble” and “alas, poor Yorick” and “something wicked this way comes”. Part of the pleasure of the play for Greg is arriving at the quotable moments.
The nice weather arriving made it more difficult to stay indoors, but the World Cup still called us for the first couple of weeks. Most of the games were very exciting, but my favorites kept getting beat and falling off the schedule. Spain was the big winner this year with the Netherlands coming in second. One of the best games was Uruguay versus Germany. Little Uruguay was the only South American team to reach close to the top. Surprisingly powerhouses Argentina and Brazil got sent home early. Germany beat Uruguay and came in third place, but wow was it a great game.
Greg added another year to his existing 60 this month. We celebrated by going to see the Patrick Lamb band in the big park downtown Vancouver. It’s a jazz and blues band and they are very good. He was part of the summer festival they have every year. We pack a picnic and our camp chairs and sit back and enjoy the music. We took Mom to one of these concerts but I forgot who we saw on her visit. This month we also saw the Antics who do 70’s and 80’s tunes, and Quarterflash who rock.
I replanted several sections of the garden. Many of our seeds that I planted earlier were no shows – no green beans, no yellow beans, no carrots, no beets, no zucchini, no cosmos flowers. I don’t know if it was just the wet spring or whether the birds ate them or what but nothing sprouted from all those seeds. The potatoes are doing great – at least the big billowy green stalks above ground and my tomato plants are finally getting a few tomatoes forming. It is a very disappointing year for the garden.
We babysat Kodiak for the last week of the month. Ericka had a mandatory work retreat to attend. It was in Eastern Oregon in the Wallowa mountaims and they had to camp out for the duration. Her company, Ecotrust, has about 45 employees with six of them in her group of Edible Portland. They traveled in four big vans plus two cars pulling trailers with all their camping gear. Hopefully Ericka will write about her adventures. It ended uncomfortably with the car she was traveling in on the way home being hit by a drunk driver. She is ok except for a very sore back and is still pretty shaky. Two of her co-workers were transported to the ER via ambulance. They are now home and recuperating. Ericka went to her own doctor the following day who prescribed pain pills and ice packs for the back. The car was totaled and the pictures she brought home to share were pretty scary. Thankfully it was not worse than it was. The police still haven’t found the guy who hit them. He ran away after the wreck and no one answers at the house where the car is registered.
We had a good time with Kodiak with his visit with us here. He needs daily walks but prefers two walks a day so I got more walking in this week than I normally do. Yes, it was good for me, but, puff, puff, it was a work-out. I scheduled two play dates for Kodiak with our friend, Irene, and her Norwegian elkhound, Misty. We had ball tosses in the backyard, sticks to chew on, and squeaky toys to play with. I don’t think he missed his mommy too much.
I hope everyone is enjoying the summer. We are now that it has finally arrived!
Love,
Carol and Greg
