Almost Summer! A Car Show and Catching Up

The warm weather is here, and we are edging ever closer to the official start of SUMMER in western NY! The windows are open at night, the days are long, and the sun is hot! My gardens are in full swing and keeping me busy. My favorite thing to do with some of my herbs is to make herbal infused water to keep in the fridge. I have mint, orange mint, apple mint, and lemon balm that I usually rotate through, adding any fruit that I may have like limes/lemons/strawberry. Yum!

Both boys had a dentist checkup a couple weeks ago, and although Jacob got a good report...Bradley did not! He had a bad cavity on a baby tooth so they went ahead and pulled it. He did good, and got a visit from the tooth fairy that night!

Jacob has been getting so good at reading! He likes to sit with me and read his books while I read mine.

Now for the gardens! Here is my herb garden right by my back porch. I have rosemary, chives, sage, lavender, orange mint, apple mint, and thyme.

This is part of my rose garden. I have over 6 different varieties of roses! And lots of lambs ear and Russian sage in between. Very fragrant!

Our fruit plants are all doing well! We have 2 golden delicious apple trees that are full of baby apples. We have one Bartlett pear tree with a few fruits growing, and our grapevine is exploding with grapes! Those won't be ready till early fall.

This is my perennial garden. I'm still trying to learn everything in it! Here I have some peonies, ground elder, dames rocket, and a huge clematis that is beautiful!

Last Saturday Nick took Jacob with him to Lockport where he entered his classic car into his first car show! The boys had a blast looking at all the old cars, and of course Jacob had to get his picture taken in the General Lee!

I haven't been "working" for the past 5 weeks, but I've been WORKING and man it's crazy how many things there are to keep busy with if you look hard enough. It's a full time job in itself trying to keep up with the house, the yard, the kids, my side business, hobbies......no time for a job! Hahaha

 

We finally were able to get our driveway resealed! We haven't touched it since we moved in 4 years ago, and have never had a blacktop driveway so we really aren't familiar with the upkeep. We called a few places in town this spring to try to get quotes at least, and we were unsuccessful getting someone to come out. While I was mowing the other day a guy stopped by who was in town doing driveways and asked if we wanted ours done! He gave us a good price, and started immediately. Perfect timing! We are very happy with it.

Later that day Nick and I rescued an injured crow from a bush in our backyard. His right wing had been hurt and he couldn't fly. He was very weak and we don't know how long he was stuck in the bush. We were able to quickly find a local wildlife refuge who specializes in birds and he came to our house immediately and picked him up! We are hoping he has a fast recovery and can return to his friends.

And I got my hair trimmed this week! Since I whacked it all off in Dec 2019, I've been getting regular trims every 3 months. This is high maintenance for me.....those who know me know that I am good with 1-2 haircuts a year! I have also been growing out my natural hair color (salt and pepper!) and now that 95% of the color is cut off, I'm ready to grow it back out again! So this trim I told her to leave the length and just trim the layers. Now I don't go back until Dec!

Bradley has been staying busy in school! This is a big project he did in art class. The picture will be used for Jacob's kindergarten graduation!

Lot's of happenings at the Pierce household so far, and lots more to come! My birthday is tomorrow, I'm going backpacking again this weekend, I leave for camp training next week, Bradley has a birthday coming up, there's Father's Day, then the boys come with me to camp for 2 weeks, then there's July 4, then we come home, then we go on a family vacation, then I'm going to Colorado, then back to camp for a week......WHEW

Hiking NY: Backpacking in the Adirondacks (Indian Head and Sawteeth)

Last weekend I made my first trip to the Adirondacks for the season! Me and my hiking buddy Ken snagged 2 overnight reservations from the AMR lot for the holiday weekend. I picked him up Saturday morning, and we arrived to the trailhead around 2pm. The weather was warm and sunny and we hit the trail! We took Lake Road up to Gil Brook trail where we would set up camp.

We relaxed the rest of the evening and after dinner we went to bed by 8pm! It got chilly that night but we stayed warm and started our day early on Sunday. After breakfast we hit the trail at 8am heading over to Fish Hawk Cliffs and Indian Head first. Amazing views!

After that we headed down to the bridge and dam to cross the Ausable River. We turned left to take the "scenic" trail up to Sawteeth.

As luck would have it, the dry weather did not hold out and it started to rain about halfway up Sawteeth. We begrudgingly got our our rain ponchos and continued our way to the summit! Thankfully we made it there successfully, and after taking the obligatory selfie we continued on our way down the other side.

We of course had to take the side trip to see Rainbow Falls! Always a treat. We were happy to be DONE with the summit, and we crossed the bridge again to Lake Road and the shortcut back up to our camp. We arrived back to camp by 4:30pm.

It was a bit difficult to cook dinner in the rain, and very chilly. After dinner we tucked in early again around 8pm and our poor feet were happy for the rest. The rain finally finished at some point late at night, but in the morning everything was still so wet so we skipped breakfast and grabbed a quick snack after packing up our gear and hitting the trail back to the car!

We made it back to the trailhead in less than 2 hours and it's a lovely relief to see the end! Another job well done, and 10/46 high peaks for me! We clocked around 14.5 miles and about 4100' elevation gain for this trip.

Now to plan the next one....