Time is Flying

School started back up three weeks ago and fall began three days ago here in Portland. Needless to say, things are busy at the moment. I think I may have decided on a topic for my thesis research paper and my thesis work is well under way.

Its been some time but in my last post I spoke about picking huckleberries, alpine blueberries and thimble berries. I really wanted to bring these with us when we went to California for my sister-in-law's wedding but I totally forgot to bring them. :0( However, they were still waiting for me by the time we got back and I decided to use one of my new Pacific NW cook books that had a delicious "Perfect Muffin" recipe. No joke, it may indeed be the perfect recipe. So I put all the berries in the perfect muffins and things went swimmingly after that.





My garden is growing well in this chilly weather. The best things are the Brussels sprouts, they're getting big! I'm looking forward to having them all grow up and sprout.






The cabbage is okay but I've been having a hard time keeping up with all the nasty caterpillars that want in on all the brassica action.




The front yard beets and butternut squash are coming along. The butternut was a volunteer from the compost but the beets I planted on purpose, neither is necessarily abundant but I think we'll pull through with a couple mini squashes and a handful of beets.





The chickens are good and happy little things. The gold-laced Wyandotte has been brooding (i.e., sitting on the egg that is sometimes under her and sometimes in my fridge...), but other than that things are copacetic. The black Australorp may or may not be hiding her eggs from me. She gets out of the coop for a couple hours and then flies back in which leads me to think that she's laying her eggs somewhere that isn't in the coop. Where that is, I still haven't figured out.





All in all things are generally good. Some days I am very encouraged about school and all the work I have to do and others I am very discouraged, however, the point is to get through this and be happy that I got through. :0) And right now, the day is good.