Hummingbirds

The birds seem to have gone crazy today, they are crowding the feeders, filling the birdbath and waiting in line for the Niger thistle. They seem fairly oblivious of me as I attempt to take their pictures, but in the end, I opted for two hummingbirds silhouetted against the sky.

The house we looked at yesterday is in #1 daughter's neighborhood, and just down the road from our realtor's, so we packed up the dog, the tomatoes and the computer and headed  to Santa Rosa. The realtor, Cindy, has a big Bassett hound named Hank and he and Ozzie hit it off immediately. They lumbered around the house a few times and then settled down on either side of Cindy's husband's chair to await our return.
Now that is a dog friendly house and a realtor who goes above and beyond...especially when Ozzie discovered Hank's food and had the lid off the bin and his nose buried inside before we discovered him.

Back at #1 daughter's, the computer glitches were easily sorted out and the spaghetti sauce was a hit. I am beginning to run out of ideas for fixing tomatoes. We have had bacon and tomato sandwiches, tomato and mozzarella salad, tomato soup, tomato chutney and tomato salsa. We have had tomatoes baked, fried, stuffed and sliced. We've had tomato juice and tomato aspic. I hate to complain about such bounty, especially when OilMan worked so hard for it, but I have to say it...I am tired of tomatoes!

Time to move on to...pumpkins! There is something satisfying about watching such a large and colorful squash grow from a little plant, but the only thing I know to do with  pumpkin is pie, and I must confess that the kind that comes in  a can makes superior pies without the mess! Faced with the dilemma of what to do with all that pumpkin, I think the Jack o' Lantern was invented. Once you carve a face into a pumpkin and put a candle inside, it cannot be eaten and rots quickly, but makes a colorful display which is worth the work of scraping all the seeds out and carving through the shell. Down the road from the farmhouse an artist's studio is advertising glass pumpkins! Now there's a concept...