Fireweed

My wife started making fireweed jelly again this year. It's a bit labour intensive but certainly worth it. She has made a few jars of it so far but our son seems to eat it as fast as it's made. She picked a bag of blossoms yesterday with our son and we sat on the deck and started the processing. After we picked off all the blossoms from the stems she then boils it and strains it. It sure smells good in the house while cooking.

I'd Do It Again...

Two years ago four generations of us walked roughly 192 miles across England in thirteen days. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It was hard going; gale force winds, rain, sore muscles. All of it, in the end, added up to some fantastic memories and at the end of the walk I felt great. I've been thinking about that trip a bit more lately and I'm having a hard time believing it was already that long ago. It's hard sitting at a desk job, day in and day out, remembering the open air and expanse of countryside all around me...

80-200mm

I'm happy as a little photographic clam can be. After much deliberating on what lens to get then waiting until I could afford it (don't ask what the price was) and then impatiently anticipating it's arrival, I've finally gotten my 80-200mm Nikon lens. Yay.

I'm discovering that it's a whole new world of photography with a lens of this caliber. My kit lens (18-105mm) is fine but not of any special quality so some images just don't work because of it. With the new lens it's all up to me. If I do the shot properly it will turn out.

I'm quite satisfied with it.

Anvil

Here's the anvil in all it's glory. Maybe it's actually just sitting in the unfinished shed on top of my large future firepot...

Some cinder blocks, firebricks and a blower and I'll be ready to go with the forge. I still need to add a door and cover up the broken window.

Flickr changed the way they do things and now I can't find the correct url link back to my photos. I'm blogging through flickr itself which doesn't format the way I like. I'll figure it out at some point.

Return Home

Back home again. I'm not totally thrilled to be home because it means summer is winding down, and the routines of work/school begin again. I don't do well with routines. On the plus side we had a fantastic trip south. The visit with family and friends was great and the weather couldn't have cooperated any better. Our car even performed admirably and now can claim bragging rights to a ridiculously large odometer reading of 430000km.

Our normal trip south out of the Yukon takes us down the Stuart-Cassiar highway. We left Whitehorse amidst heavy rainfall warnings and light snow at the high elevations through the Stuart-Cassiar. Our return trip was a little different because we had to take the long way home due to the closure of the Cassiar because of fire.

But we are home. We have one less kid though. Our girl stayed down south in Burns Lake for an extended visit with Tanya's family. I miss her a lot; her happy ways, her talk of books and plans and crazy fun with her friends. There was a useful side-effect to her staying down south however. It allowed me to bring home my new-to-me anvil. It's a well used, 160 pounder which Tanya's Grandpa graciously passed on to me. So that's one less thing to try and scrape together for the forge.