I Have Come To Know there's a lot I don't know about setting up a blog.

 Looking through Blogs of Note, there are many beautiful sites to follow, inspirational blogs with colorful backgrounds, poetry and photographs. However, my efforts to add photographs has been for the most part, unsuccessful other than one seascape taken at the Oregon Coast last month.

This picture represents one of most beautiful days our family has experienced.  

We spent several days there, playing on the sand dunes near Florence, Oregon over the President's Day holiday week-end and Valentine's Day.  Pictures are worth a thousand words, so I will continue trying to upload the photos of Grand-Dad Jim, Grandma Cathy, and our children and grand-children riding quads and a sandrail  all the way out to the ocean.  What feeling of exhileration we had, and what a great way to celebrate Valentine's Day with those we love.  Dear Hearts and Gentle People, a song from long ago, comes to mind, when reminiscing about this  time in our lives.  It's good to keep in mind that our lives are made up of minutes, days and hours, and each one that contains beauty and joy is a bonus.   The smiles on the children's faces, the nurturing parents, and the peaceful, easy feeling we as grandparents had as we participated with them all made for an unforgettable experience,

Now that we're home, it's back to packing and preparing for the next adventure,  the summer on the land in South Dakota.  It will be just Jim and I this time as our children's work and lives are in the Seattle area.  

Yesterday, poring over Seed Saver's catalogue, we found many items to plant on the land.  Seed Saver's,  located at Heritage Farm, is a Decorah, Iowa based company that specializes in heirloom  seeds and is a long time supporter of organic agriculture.  It is also the base for Seed Saver's Exchange.  For those interested in the effort to pass along our vegetable heritage,  the address for Seed Saver's Exchange is:  3094 North Winn Road,  Decorah, Iowa  52101.  

Link is: www.seedsavers.org.

We plan to plant a lot of cucumbers;  Parisian Pickling is a our cuke  of choice.   Seed Savers carries this hard-to-find French variety. 

There is nothing like home canned pickles, and  they are quite easy to process on a jar by jar basis.   Along with the cukes, we'll plant dill and garlic.

There are several varieties of tomato that are good to grow; some for sauces, some for slicing and the cherry tomato variety for salads.  Some of our crop will be used to can tomatoes and some for canning salsa.  More about that tomorrow.... 

It's time to prepare the dough for Artesian Bread, a wonderful whole grain food.  See Kristine Farley's  Herbal Momma blog for more information about this bread, and her bread making classes.  You can find it on the blogs I follow.