One quick summer

Suddenly it's August 29. How did that happen? Many schools in Maine start classes this week; others wait until next Tuesday.

Either way, summer is as good as over.

I'm always sad to see summer end. I thought, when I was teaching, that the sadness was caused by my having to return to a hectic work schedule.

Now I realize I simply hate seeing summer end. We wait so long for our Maine summers, then they fly by in a flash.

It's been a busy summer for us. Our adoption of Sage has kept us on our toes. She's a puppy full of energy, so she loves to be on the move. She also loves attention, as you can see from this photo of my nephew, his wife, and Violet showering her with belly rubs.

 We celebrated our 46th wedding anniversary on August 15. I told Ken I'd love to have a lobster dinner at home, so that's what we did. He bought four lobsters, but we were full after one each, so the next day I made us lobster rolls.

Sage has claimed Ken's recliner. She hops into it the minute Ken vacates it. I'm surprised Ken allows her to use it at all, but he does.

Violet spent a weekend with us recently. We'd gone to a craft fair in the morning, and she spotted owl pillows. She decided we could make some quite easily, so that's what we did.

She sketched out the owls on paper, selected her fabrics from my stash, and cut out the pieces. I sewed them on my machine, then she stuffed them with polyfil. I got a kick out of her deciding the owls each needed a heart and a brain. She cut  out the "organs" with felt, I sewed them, then she stuffed them and placed them inside the owls.

Here's the first owl. You can't see his heart and brain, but they're there.

That evening a deer appeared at the edge of our woods. Violet was thrilled. I've told her of the many times we've seen deer on our property, but this was the first time one appeared when Violet was visiting us.

Here are the two completed owls in their official portrait. Violet says she'd like to make three more the next time she visits.

We also had a flock of wild turkeys in our back yard recently. We saw them only briefly, then they scampered into the woods.

I've been canning tomatoes, freezing tomatoes, and making roasted tomato sauce. This is a pan of roasted tomatoes, fresh from the oven. I slice the tomatoes in half, pour a little olive oil into the pans, add sliced onions, minced garlic cloves, fresh basil, fresh rosemary, salt and pepper, etc., and roast them in the oven at 450 for 1 1/2 hours.

I put the roasted tomatoes in the blender, then I sieve them with my chinois strainer.

Once the sauce is put into jars, I freeze it and use it in any recipe calling for tomato sauce. It's delicious.

I still have many tomatoes on the vines. It's been a banner year, despite our drought conditions. I tended to pamper the plants with a lot of watering throughout most of the summer, so that's probably when they produced so well.

So that's the summer of 2016.