Camp Redington has it's first guests from the website

3/4 inch rusty "pail" with painted wildflowers

1/2 inch pot of natural dried wildflowers

This is my first chance to use the internet except to quick check my mail for a week. Been gettin' great comments here and it sucks that I haven't had regular access lately. I'm so not prepared to give up the internet and hope that whatever happens we can all somehow still get online... think that's possible?

2ml painted bottle with untouched wildflowers

1 inch mini pot with handpainted wildflowers,

1/2 inch bear and cub

2 inch clay pot with painted wildflowers

1 inch mini handpainted wildflower bouquet with eagle

Fireweed and yarrow grows everywhere in the yard

Drying racks made of duct tape

Ron, Corina, me and Nordica made a big dinner for our camp's first guests. Our friends Jewel and Brenda have perfect timing.

Snap peas almost ready to be stolen off the vine

New minishelf I made out of the one that plopped into a water pot overnight, fell apart at the seams in the morning. My alteration holds 9, 2ml bottles, and now I'm gong to soak all those cute, dinky, useless shelves and rebuild them all to fit my bottled flowers.

new all Alaskan mini roombox

Chitina smoke keeps moving up our road. Copper's rising again too.

Smoking Garden

Host of the year

Our first "official" Camp Redington guests E and Ray, lovely, lovely folks who may just inspire Tim to actually open someday. Even though the email at CR's website is bad, E tracked me down via this blog and reserved their space. We had a lot of fun with them, fed them moose ribs their first night and Copper River Reds tonight when they came back from McCarthy. Today they drove Tim's 4 wheeler and then we shot my guns, a first for both of them. It was great to meet such open and friendly people who were interested in meeting us after they read the site. It meant we could totally relax around them, smoke, swear, have dirt on us, whatever... they didn't come to change us or judge us, just to enjoy meeting us. I liked them a lot, and we all got to see how easy and interesting it is to meet people who come here because we're so different.

The garage sale grill in action, and yes, I lit it myself this time!

Gertee's new shower and garden delights

Justice wants my fox hat!

Gertee shower addition

Fireweed by the garden

Putting up the shower roofring
Balanced the stool upside down on the top of the ladder and put the roofring really carefully balanced on top of the stool, then placed the poles in their holes and hooked them very slowly to the tension cable. Didn't drop one beam on my head.

Garden in mid July

Shower gertee attached to back door
Ugly on the outside, lovely inside

Snap peas

Mustard greens salad from the garden

Soaked leaves and flowers in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, cinnamon, pepper, basil and sea salt

Kill all communitarian bugs on sight!

These are not an Alaskan ladybug,
this is a ruthless killer lookalike.

Hired killers putting the beetles in a spider web.

The spider freaked out and moved today.

My garden (and everyone else's) was invaded by a mean little red beetle disguised as a ladybug. I knew something was eating my radishes and a few others. I asked Tim and he thought the y were "ladybugs" eating the bad miniature critters that were doing so much damage. Then Ron told me what they were and that Charlie Benjamin (one of the areas oldest farmers) told him to buy #7 from Home Depot. Well I never get to town anymore, so I decided to get rid of them the original organic way; I had a couple little girls help me pick them out by hand. They used their bare hands but I can't touch them and have to use my garden gloves. We've picked probably 500 in the last 24 hours. More keep coming so I scour the garden every hour or so, and I've been watering as I go, it's 18 hours of sun lately, so lots of growing action happening today!

Sign on the entrance door at the Merc

My Aunt Judy gave this hat to my dad (when Clinton was pres?), he gave it to Susan who just passed it on to me. I can't imagine what my dad's hats would say if he'd lived to see Obama elected.

Gary, me, and his "new" dump truck, a 1960 International
with only 28,000 miles on it. It was owned by the State.. go figure.