Update: Thelma's Cottage

Well, due to the poor economy & housing market in Utah at the moment, I bit the bullet and bought a tiny little house. It's barely over 800 sq. ft. but is cute as a button. I'm still working on storage solutions for organization with only 2 closets and only one tiny wall of kitchen cabinets, but it's coming along and certainly feels like home.

Left side top (L-R): kitchen looking into bedroom & bathroom, kitchen.
Left side middle (L-R): apple trees in tiny backyard, chickens under their coop.
Left side bottom (L-R): apocalypse water supply etc. in crawl space that I'm working on getting rid of each recycling week, front door.
Right side (clockwise from bottom left): side of house (incl. drive and back door), laundry cubby, kitchen as seen from living room, living room "library", living room/office.

Catching up: Jardine Juniper trail

A few friends and I took a day and hiked the Jardine Juniper trail, just up Logan Canyon. The Jardine Juniper is one of these impressively old and twisted trees with barely a sprig of green on it to indicate that it is actually living. On the way back down we were delayed by an impressive morel mushroom hunt (and 1 puffball).

Catching up: summer school

I taught Historical Geology as a summer class that was part of USU's pilot summer science course program. I had a tiny but mighty class - so despite the chaotic hard work of the compressed summer schedule, it was super fun. My whole class participated in a giant group project that was to make a Prezi of the Geology of North America. It is here.


Also, one of my students (with help from her toddler on one page) produced this impressive work!

Catching up: annual 4th of July cabin trip

This year there was a smallish Crocuta crowd for the 4th, likely because it fell on a weekday, but we more than made up for it by finding nearly daily reasons to create (and gorge on) feasts. One of these was to employ as many sun ovens as we could rally and fill them with delicious things that made our mouths water all afternoon as they cooked away on the deck...

5 sun ovens passively at work preparing an enormous feast

Carol's divinely good giant cookie bar of deliciousness

My best solar oven meatloaf yet

My cheesy potato & onion casserole