Lonely and Bored Again

Tonight's post won't be as long as last night's because I have a major pile of laundry to fold. Story of my life.

I drove up and took a few pictures of Jonathan farming. I was wrong...he is running a John Deere, not a Case. But it's still one major piece of machinery. One that I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

Here he comes...

And there he goes...if you look close you can see him talking on his cell phone to me.

On my way there I noticed a huge billow (is that the right word?) of smoke and wondered where exactly it was coming from. It looked like it was from inside Yellowstone, but it was hard to tell. When I got home I started investigating and found out my guess was correct. They are calling it the Arnica Fire and it is currently burning 250+ acres of lodgepole pine near Yellowstone Lake. It is lightning caused and was only at 4 acres yesterday evening. This is a picture from the Mt. Washburn fire lookout. That is exactly what I saw, only further in the distance. Between the smoke and driving into the sunset, the visibility was almost low enough I couldn't see to drive.

Last weekend my cousin came up from Ogden to visit, so we showed her the wild side of Idaho :) Here are a few pictures of us at Upper and Lower Mesa Falls...some of my favorite places on earth!

This afternoon I canned some plums (thanks again Jamie) all by myself. I have always been too scared to bottle anything without and expert's supervision. I grew up canning with my mom, and my mother-in-law has helped me, but I've never trusted myself to do it all on my own. I guess I've always been worried I'd kill us from Clostridium Botulinum (aka botulism). Plus, I've heard you're not suppose to use ceramic stove tops to can, which ours is. I'm not sure why that is. But, I took the plunge. My water stayed at a constant boil while processing them and all of my jars sealed afterward. So I think we're safe, but if you don't hear back from any of us I guess you can assume I did something wrong. :-/

And of course I couldn't post something again without some pictures of Maggie. I swear she gets cuter everyday!

Okay, who was I kidding? This was as long as last night's post. I think I suffer from longwindeditis. Goodnight and wish me luck folding laundry. It's a miracle if I ever get it all folded in the same day!

Oh, one more thing. I added a poll to the right column. Make sure to vote because I can't determine who Maggie looks more :)