A Great Celebration!!

 There was a great celebration across the land ... the beginning of our year long 250th birthday as a nation.   It's truly amazing when you think about where we were way back then compared to where we are now.  The innovation is just mind boggling, especially when you grew up with an outhouse and a hand crank well.  My how things have changed.

It was a very sad day however for those in Texas who had the river rise over 20 feet and wash away a Christian camp.  My heart and prayers go out to those families.

That made me appreciate the sunshine and my garden all the more.  It's growing so huge that the chocolate tomatoes required a chair to rest upon.  Two of four huge branches were laying on the hot concrete, which made for dead tomatoes.  

Seriously, I don't now if it's the epsom salts or the horse manure soil, but these guys are just producing like nothing I've ever seen!!  Those little containers you see in the store?  Every day I gather up enough to fill one to the top.  The neighbors now love me, as long as I don't include any zucchini!

Speaking of my neighbors ... here they are!  They provided me with a little mini parade at 6:00 in the morning.  Diehard Americans they are ... decorating up their trucks for the morning small town parade.

Two of them ... twins as it were ... along with their matching car with flashing colored lights.  One Hundred Percent PATRIOTISM here!!  They drove slow, flashed their lights and provided me with a parade of my own.  

Even HALO gets in on the act!!  He gets to participate in the parade too!!  This is Cooper's best friend, the kid next door that has just as many allergies as Cooper does!!  He's such a sweetheart!!

Back inside, my morning brought a little sad news.  My sourdough starter which should be ready for the next round, just did not smell good.  The nose knows ... and my nose smelled a rat.  I've no idea why ... maybe because it's been too hot in the house ... but into the trash it went.  I'm not taking any chances on poisoning myself.

I have plenty of bread to eat.  Besides that, as I wandered through my bread machine cookbook, I found it has almost the exact same recipes as the sourdough book.  Maybe they won't taste quite as GOOD, but they sure are a whole lot easier to make!!

I set up another round of starter and will wait the seven days for it to become yeasty before trying it again.

That left me with nothing to do but sew.  So ... I sewed ... but that was boring.  How about setting up my mini hot tub slash swimming pool!  I filled it to the brim and did the TOE TEST.  CRIKEY!!!  My well water is COLD!!  There will certainly be no morning swim taking place around here!!

I watched a little Calgary Rodeo ... one of the BEST (thank you Canada) ... before heading out for a little sun.  Wow did things ever heat up quickly outside.  In no time I was lounging in the POOL trying to cool off.  Note to self ... set up a little cocktail table.  

Thirty minutes later it had turned into a HOT tub, resembling a bathtub instead of a pool.  Okay, I was done with that!!  

Back inside, I worked on this new quilt.  It's hard to see all the designs in this fabric due to the dark colors.  This is another stash buster since it's been in the cupboard for about ten years.  The good news is fabric does not go bad like sourdough starter.

And then it began ... the BANG BANG BOOM of bombs and missiles being set off at the back of my house.  I have to admit it wasn't as bad as years past.  There was nothing all day long, and this noise didn't begin until 8:30.  It went on until 11:00.  

Where do they get these commercial fireworks?  All illegal of course and they shake the windows of my house.  They cancelled the BIG ONE fireworks show at the old Air Base because of the wind, so these folks had their OWN party close enough to my house to start fires.  I just don't get it.  Who raised these people?

I watched as bits and pieces fell into my corrals, but luckily nothing caught fire.  I heard fire trucks all around the area, so everyone wasn't as lucky.  

Happily, Mr. Cooper doesn't mind the loud booms.  Jonathan fell off his perch twice, but survived.  I'm hopeful that they fired off everything they had last night and it won't continue tonight.  I'll put a big pillow at the bottom of Jon's cage, just in case.  

As much as I would like to lounge in my "pool" today, I'm off to the fabric store.  Use some .. buy more!  I've got two Veterans quilts to quilt, but not enough backing material.  I'm putting on my blinders before I even go through the door.  

Oh LOOK ..... FABRIC!!!