Termination Dust

In Alaska the end of summer was often marked by termination dust. That was the term for new snow on the mountain tops. It was the sign for the miners to finish up for the season and head for a place to hole up for the winter. I don't know what they call it in Utah. Today was like a monsoon...cold, drizzly rain fell a good part of the day. This afternoon when the clouds started to lift, there it was...termination dust.

Celtic Festival and Highland Games III

It seems to me like the ancient Celts were a rather warlike bunch. The bagpipes screeched into battle to scare their enemies. The shops prominently feature weapons. The Highland Games all seem devoted to warlike purposes as well.







There seem to be several typical divisions of highland games:

Caber Toss
Stone Put
Scottish hammer throw
Weight throw
Weight over the bar
Sheaf Toss

The Scots are famous for eating oatmeal...while in England the oats were fed to the horses. From this arose the observation: What mighty horses they have in England...but what mighty MEN they have in Scotland!

Here are a few pictures of some of the events:















And of course, we pioneers drummed up a little competition of our own with some cub scouts in order to get some firewood cut.

Celtic Festival and Highland Games II

A most popular event at the festival was a booth giving passersby an opportunity to 'fight the giant'. Armor, swords and shields were available for use of the participants. It seemed especially well-loved by the younger set. The poor giant fought valiantly, but succumbed many times, to the delight of the crowd. Fortunately, there was also more than one giant.









One 'giant' even painted himself blue in true Celtic fashion.

Celtic Festival and Highland Games I

Today was the annual Celtic Festival and Highland Games. It was a blustery day, but no rain, thank goodness. Many of the clans had booths. There were also various other vendors as well as food vendors. My favorite was a booth called The Holy Grill...which sold Holy Grail sandwiches of some sort. People in kilts were everywhere, as was the sound of bagpipes. There was judging of bagpipe playing, so it seemed like every nook and cranny had a piper practicing. One was even playing in front of the woodwright shop, using the windows as a mirror to check how he looked.

After the judging, 5 bagpipe bands marched in together to officially open the event.






After the bands marched off the field, the clans lined up to enter the field.

I love the garden....

I always enjoy the time of the year when the garden begins to produce. It seems like harvest is late in coming this year. I blame the cold, wet June we had. Our apricot tree is a late-blooming variety anyway, but this year it has seemed like they would never get ripe. The last few days, the wind has blown quite a bit, resulting in several apricots on the ground when we get up in the morning. So far it has been the less than perfect ones that have fallen, but today just bumping into the tree while mowing the lawn caused some to fall, so we decided we'd pick the ripest ones at least. If you look closely, you can see that some are still on the tree. We'll try to get those on Monday.



These were worth waiting for!



As long as I was out in the yard, I checked the garden as well to see what was ready. When I brought my haul into the house, I decided I could make a pretty good dinner out of some of it. I mixed strips of round steak, with onions, zucchini, tomatoes and peppers from the garden. It was really tasty over rice, and best of all, I have enough left over for 3 meals to put in the freezer for a busy day.

Peach Tree

This has been a strange weather year. June was cold and rainy, with even a few late frosts. That really bodes ill for fruit. Indeed, I've heard several folks say their fruit got frozen when blooming this year. That is why our little peach tree is so odd. It must have bloomed at just the right moment. Ever since the blossoms turned into little peaches, I've been thinning and thinning the tree...and still it is overloaded. Every day I go out and take more off the tree. In addition, when pruning in the Spring, we didn't get enough branches off the tree. Now, the peaches are just starting to get bigger and showing some color. It's hard to see all the peaches still on the tree, but on the ground you can see some of the fruit I pulled off today. Now if it will just ripen before it frosts, maybe we'll have some peaches to eat.

Paintings of H. Grant Stephens

My grandpa never really had much time for hobbies except for maybe a little fishing. When he got older, someone gave him a little paint by number set to try, but it frustrated him. The spaces were so small, his hands were large, and then the picture did not look right to him. He ended up using the paints in the set to create a picture of his own. Around that time, he and Grandma came to our house to spend a couple of weeks with us. Grandpa started painting on anything he could find...a piece of notebook paper, a piece of cardboard...whatever he scavenged up to use, so Mom went to the store and bought him some pieces of canvas board to paint on. His work evolved over time, but here you can see pictures of some of the things he painted at first. I would guess most of these were done between 1961-1963. I think many of his subjects were copied from calendars.