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Friday I picked Skip up at 2pm and we drove to Piseco to put in on Fall Stream for an overnight camping trip.  I had heard there were issues with leaving cars overnight at the put in and so left my car at Piseco Airport located about .5 from the put in.  I know one person in Piseco, Tony Colby, and he drove by as I was walking back to the canoe.  Tony was accompanied by his two schnazer dogs and our chat was brief.

We were on the water at 3:30 and at Fall Lake 30 minutes later.  We had several rain showers as we paddled.  I donned my rain coat for the 1st hard down pour, but embraced the cooling showers thereafter. There was only one hard rain that caused us to pull under a hemlock tree for a little protection.

Above Fall Lake we encountered a few beaver dams that required exiting the canoe and lifting over. The photo below looks SW and depicts the relationship of Piseco Lake in the background, the airport on the right with Fall Lake in the foreground and Fall Stream draining towards Piseco Lake.

We arrived at Vly Lake at 5pm and surveyed the two campsites along the north side of Vly Mtn.  Both had a nice view of the lake, but were markedly different.  The eastern most campsite had a fireplace and two areas cleared and leveled to accommodate solo tents. Unfortunately, i had brought my Big Agnes Emerald Mtn 3 person trip on it’s maiden voyage and needed more space.

The western most campsite had been “improved”.  It had a  an old canvas chair, a gas barbeque grill sans the gas tank, two flag poles, a half buried 5 gallon bucket (clean and 1/3 full of water), and a lot of garbage.

The last residents had left a smoldering fire and left toilet flowers all over the woods.    They had cut a large spruce tree off at 4′ that was apparently obscuring their view and dropped it into the lake.  They dumped crackers on the ground, burned their cans in the fire and dumped beans on the ground.  We ended up taking 2 grocery bags of trash out with us on Saturday.

All this aside, Vly Lake was beautiful.  It was hot, hazy and still as the sun set and the bugs (mosquitos, deer flies and gnats) were swarming.  Skip went swimming while I cooked dinner: corn bread using my Outback Oven and Spanish Rice with tomatos, onions, peppers and  hamburger.  Dinner was one of my better meals.

While Skip washed dishes I went swimming and washed off the sweat, sun screen and bug dope.  Although it was a full moon and bright the overcast kept the moon from being seen by us.  We turned in at 10pm.

One nice feature of the Big Agnes Emerald Mtn 3is the amount of mesh on the tent.  We slept with the sides open and had a nice cross breeze through the night despite recurring light rain sprinkles.  During the night we heard a owl close overhead.

We awoke at 7.  Within minutes after arising we could hear rain coming across the adjoining woods and across the lake.  We packed the tent in a hurry and donned our rain coats.  10 minutes later the rain passed and we had coffee and breakfast.

At 8pm we paddled over to explore Mud Lake which was interesting, but didn’t offer any opportunities to exit a boat.

Our paddle out was uneventful.  We arrived back in Piseco in time for me to walk into the airport along with the finishers of the Piseco Triathalon.  Once loaded up Skip & I did a scouting trip on nearby Fawn Lake and returned home.

We promised to take Eric to see the fireworks at Floyd Field Days.  It rained steadily all Sunday afternoon so there was some doubt the fireworks would be held.  We met Jennifer at the Field Days at 8:30 and found that  none of the rides were working due to electrical problems due to the rain.  So we ate junk food.  Eric played a couple of games and we hung out until 10pm when the fireworks went off.  It was a nice 40 minute show.

I tried to capture some of the fireworks with my digital camera, but it was difficult given the lag time in my Canon Powershot camera.  Kathryn would announce when a flare was going high, and I would try to capture it. Some of them worked out OK.

Sunday we went to BHA Hunter Show and Eric went in Lead line Equitation and Lead line Suitability versus his buddy Trevor, and two 2 year old girls: Trevor’s sister Maggie and Andrea’s Julia.

Rachael holds the horse and Eric keeps a hand on Maggie. Everyone was happy that Maggie stayed awake this time.  In a show a month earlier Maggie fell asleep in the warm sunshine as she was being led into the class despite Rachael and Eric’s best attempts to keep her awake.

Below our neighbor Andrea holds 30 year old Katie, who holds two year old Julia.  Julia was ready to rock & roll- she kept telling Andrea ‘RIDE’ while waiting for the class.  The judge asked Julia what her number was (a three digit exhibitor number pinned to her back) and Julia patted the mare and said ‘KATIE’.  In the Lead Line Suitability class (where the horse was judged), the 30 year old Katie took 1st place.  Good for her.

Below Eric shows a smile (and missing teeth) during one of the laps around the ring on Onyx.

Eric got a 2nd prize in equitation - a red ribbon and a coloring/sticker book.

It starting raining as we finished our classes.  We posed quickly for the picture below and then beat feet. They ended up canceling the rest of the Hunter Show.

We went camping last Friday-Saturday at Soft Maple and returned on Saturday evening.  There are several attractions at Soft Maple.  One is the large sand hill which the boys climb,

and then roll down.

Needless to say the end result is a lot of accumulated sand on the participants which then requires cleaning.  There is a small beach and swim area that the boys enjoyed.

There are also several short hikes to nearby waterfalls which offered opportunities to climb around on the rocks (and throw sticks and rocks into the stream).

Later that night we cooked hot dogs and salmon patties over the fire.  Here Eric and Trevor share a chair by the fire.

And later at night the boys roasted (burnt) marshmallows for a good sugar fix before bedtime.

Everything went well except that Trevor fell out of the camper during the night and Kathryn had a conniption.  She went to check on the boys and he wasn’t in the bed.  We did a search and found him sitting on the ground outside half asleep! He had squirmed between the bed and the canvas side of the pop-up and ended up on the ground.  Funny now, but we were in full panic mode for a few minutes.

As we were packing up to leave on Saturday night Trevor reached into the fire place to pick up a stone and burned his thumb and fingers badly.  He cried like a banshee until he fell asleep on the ride home. Like I said - it went well…..

Our garden is doing nicely this year.  I attribute it to couple of factors:

• Over the past 4 years I have focused on the garden, adding peat moss, leaves, and horse manure to the soil to loosen it up.
• This year I actually used restraint in planting peas and beans and staggered my plantings to enable harvesting over a longer season.
• We have had timely thunderstorms giving water at needed times.  This plus the abundance of horse manure compost have kept enough moisture for the plants.
• I got a some volunteer plants from last year’s crops, namely pumpkins and cucumbers, that I didn’t plant this year but were desired by the family.

Let’s take a look. Starting on the far right is a row of 10 rhubarb plants leading into a row of asparagus which has gone to seed forming big green bushes.  In the foreground are about 10 tomato plants.  On the far left you can see the edge of a volunteer pumpkin.  In the center back are carrots, beans and peas.  In the far back is what’s left of a pickup truck load of horse manure which I have been using to compost between rows as they emerge.

This is pretty much the same scene from the other side with a row of carrots,  1/2 row of yellow wax beans and 1/2 row of spinach in the foreground; a row of late peas, and the tomatoes and pumpkin in the background.

I haven’t grown carrots before because  they are so cheap to buy, but Eric wanted carrots and they are doing quite well.  You can see there is a lot of horse manure between the rows.

The tomatoes are starting to show on the plants.

This picture shows our volunteer sunflower standing at the end of what used to be a row of peas.  I planted three rows of peas in early April and we have been eating peas for about a month now.  Eric and I would eat them out of the garden and throw the empty pods to the dogs, who relished them.  The dogs made the short leap from being fed empty pods to picking pea pods themselves.  Unfortunately when they picked the pods they usually yanked the whole plant out as well.  Within a week they had destroyed the outside row of peas!  So I replanted the row and I am hoping to get some early September peas.

My pea trellis consists of hog panel fence.  It worked well for the shorter peas, but as you can see I have a row of peas that required 8′ poles.  These peas had extremely long vines and folded over the top of the trellis.