Idaho August

 

August was rich in flowers! This one was in the art garden by My Father's Place.

We bought some tobacco flowers to keep the deer away from our other plants. Grandma used to grow these out front at their Amador Way home, and I remember the hummingbirds loving them!

This was an especially colorful sunset on one of our evening walks by the lake.

That same walk on our way home.  This is our condo building caught in the magic light.

A selfie with a Ponderosa pine in Ponderosa State Park.  This was my first hike since the surgery, on the shorter easy marsh trail.  It was fantastic to be out in nature again!

This was a bit of the trail.

The lake, boats and beautiful skies!  Usually our fire season starts in early August. Last year it was in late June, so we were thankful for every blue sky day we had.

Dave drilled our old espresso pot to make it a vase for me.  It's so cute!

The impatiens near our front door.

We saw this gigantic hibiscus blossom on a walk in the North End in Boise.

This is one of our patio flower pots.

Flower pots and sunset view from the patio.

Another amazing sunset on our evening walk.

August blossoms in Charlie's Gardens (which we visited often).

Dave in the Gardens.

One of my favorite flowering shrubs there.

We visited the classic wooden boat show by the Hotel McCall before going to an outdoor concert.

Our impatiens.

Dave finished the backboard earlier in our guest bedroom and in August we cleaned it up for a guest, my friend Grace from Caldwell.

Enjoying the lake view after our walk to the State Park from our home.

When Grace came to visit, we hiked the longer marsh loop in the state park before having lunch at the Alpine Pantry with Dave.

The following day we went to the Donnelly Huckleberry Festival, historic Roseberry and Tamarack Resort's outdoor patio for lunch.

Grace took this photo of us making dinner.

This was an outdoor jazz concert we went to with Grace after the pizza dinner.  The stage has the lake as the backdrop.  It's a great place to be in the summer and we can often hear the music from our home.

My favorite part of August was the steady hummingbird visitors to our feeder on the porch.  Mesmerizing!

The new rocks that the city put in at Brown Park.  One of my favorite walks is along the lake to this area.

A Western Tanager on a tree on one of our walks (yellow bird with an orange head).

Summer joy!

The huckleberry season wasn't great this year because there were very few to be found everywhere we went.

Another beautiful walk.

A walk down to Payette River to see the fish and view from the bridge.

Dave's Fire-Wise Grant's deadline for work was the end of August, so he spent mornings cutting branches and thinning trees.  Then one day we had a chipper delivered to mulch as much of it as possible.

These piles are what Dave worked through as I stood nearby as a safety watch and brought him food. 

You can see Dave feeding the chipper in this picture.

And in this one you can see the chipper shooting out a bit of ground wood.

Here is the sign that got placed on our property.  Basically, Dave applied for the grant and got it!  So he had two Forest Service agents come out to help him decide what to do to make our property more safe in case of a wildfire.  He did that work, then we recently got a check in the mail that covered the chipper's cost.  But now our land is beautiful compared to the others nearby and we have a good feeling that it will be safer than before in case of a man-made or wildfire.

We celebrated by eating on the top of the roof at the Salmon River Brewery and enjoying the peace and view.

The picture above is the wildfire that broke out somewhat close to our property, on the west mountains from a lightning strike.  Firefighters battled it for a long time before finally being able to contain it.  We had lots of other fires also, so Dave's hard work gave us a sense of perfect timing.

We had a beautiful August!  It flew by too quickly as they always do.  Love you!