Sniff with me, will ya?

If you've been wondering what we've been up to, here's what: sniffing flowers.  This time of year is a riot of blooms here on our homestead.  I can't keep up with taking pictures.  Here's a little collage, and I tell you I can't wait for technology that allows scratch and sniff on a computer screen, because you would faint in ecstasy:

Right???!!!

On a less romantic note, but just as exciting: we heard wolves howling the other day.  I wanted to keep it a secret that we have wolves here, lest poachers get some dumb idea, but it's all over the news.  Wolves have entered the Western side of the North Cascades, and they are talking with each other.

I'm so excited about this!  Every day, I walk on trails that they tread on.  The only evidence of their existence is scat, a foot print in the snow months ago, yesterday's howling, and my dog Raka's hyper alert and slightly freaked out stance when we sit by the creek.

Poor thing: she has to contend with cougars, bears and now wolves.  Below is a little bear present we ran into the other day.  Can you see how worried Raka looks?  She takes her protect-my-people-and-the-foofy-dog-job very seriously.

The garden (and its slugs) are thriving.  We are eating lots of salad, greens, radishes, chives, asparagus, and soon peas.

It's so hard to keep up with the weeds this time of year, so I enlist my kids with garden work.  They wanna eat, they gotta work.

Especially now that I have teenagers with huge biceps.

I reward them with lots of food.  I can't count the number of times I made rhubarb cake and pie this spring.

I planned on freezing rhubarb, but we are using it so fast, I don't think anything will be left.

Talking of food: salmon berries are ripe, and I already ate some very, very early huckleberries in the forest.

It has felt like my life is all work, what with the garden, getting three kids to and fro to their events (including Kai with track meets), and my job as a Feminine Power Ambassador, enrollment specialist and coach.

So that we don't suffer with overwhelm (too much), we try to take time for play.  We went to the Methow Valley with friends over the weekend, where we got wickedly sun burnt and biked in 90 degree heat.  We also saw a bear.

The weekend before that, we rented an excavator and dug water lines for the new cabin, as well as built huge jumps for Luke's mountain biking.  That kid is so motivated, it's scary.  How far and high can one jump on a bike, and then add tricks like, "Look, Mom, a one-hander and one-footer!"  I'm worried that it's gonna be a no-header soon...

I will leave you with two lovely pictures, one of them my son and his lovely girlfriend at prom.  Am I allowed to freak out how fast my kids are growing up?  Well, rest assured: I am. Freaking out, that is.

How about you? How are you doing?