Today was hugely productive. I’m ready to got to sleep now. We got up this morning and took Mango-kitten to the vet because she’s been sniffily and wheezy. The vet says upper respiratory infection hanging on, and gave us antibiotics and vitamins. Plus we have wet food for Mango to encourage her to eat and drink a little more (more liquid in wet food), but she has no interest in it so far — doesn’t know what it is yet. We also visited Rosanna the barn cat, who is at the vets recovering from a gash in her side. She has to board there when she’s injured (this is only the second time), because we can’t be sure of catching her to give her medication. Rosanna says she’s done with being fussed with and ready to come home. There’s just this little matter of stitches and medications to deal with. The gash is very impressive, and she’s wearing a cone to keep her from ripping the stitches out.



We came home and medicated the kitten, regrouped, and headed out to pick pears again. That took three hours, I think. It was long and hot and generally fun. John has a swollen under-eye from being hit with a pear that fell when he picked another one — the volunteer pear was 20 feet up the tree. He and I both got stung by something that wasn’t a bee, separately. We came home with three laundry basket sized vessels of pears and a few pieces of other produce too. Everyone had something from there with lunch. John and Jasmine are currently working on a Pear Pie, and we have other pears waiting to be sliced to go on the dehydrator. And then there are the ones ripening in bags. Pears are ready to be picked at the “almost ripe” stage. They come off the tree readily, but they aren’t actually soft enough to eat. So you put them away in a closed bag with other pears, and let them ripen. We’re going to have those bags everywhere!



After eating and setting up for processing some pears and other produce, we went out to work on firewood. Jasmine worked on reducing the fir trees that the goats ate the needles off of last winter into kindling. John cleared black berries off of a pile of wood left by the former owner of the house and started splitting. He got through three or four logs before we stopped for the day. One was two feet or so tall (he’ll have to cut it in half with the chain saw now that it’s smaller), another was a yard in diameter. He had to use all three wedges in succession on that one, sometimes more than once as one fell out still leaving the others trapped. He learned that from me, although I don’t swing the sledge hammer often at all. I learned it from Daddy. We still use the sledge hammer and some wedges that came from Mom and Dad, along with a second sledge and additional wedges.



Tomorrow is the final riding lesson for August. There will be more to come, much more slowly, but we’re not scheduling yet. School starts Thursday for Logan and Thursday and Friday for Jasmine. Jasmine has registration on Wednesday, then a freshman’s day on Thursday before school with everyone there on Friday in Eugene. Logan starts First grade on Thursday with an assembly with all classes in the Great Hall (with whomever wants in attendance — I’ll be in the audience! ) Where each class officially moves up to their new grade. She plans to wear her same dress as from the last day of school, and her golden star.



Now I’m past ready to go to bed — the kitten has been medicated again, which went very smoothly until nearly the end when evidently some bit of vitamin drops attacked her and she tried to claw her way free — my hands are covered in scratches. Logan’s in the shower, there are pears on the dehydrator along with some of John’s peppers (separate racks). Xia did the dishes, for which I am eternally thankful, and we all had some of the pear pie that John and Jasmine made. John says it’s his favorite pie. I think I’ll save my sweet preference for cherries. I’m happy to be putting up the pears and saving them from rotting on the ground. If the rest of the house eats them, it’s good use.



I have pictures of kitten and wood splitting to post. I’ll try to get to that tomorrow along with some pictures of the final riding lesson. In between more wood splitting and whatever else is getting squeezed in. Sewing beanbags for little hands to use in first grade I think.

Logan brought home a new kitten from the SPCA’s no kill shelter yesterday. (If you’re interested you can see the one’s still there at New Beginnings Shelter. (there’s a link there, it just isn’t highlighting the words for some reason.) Jasmine adopted one a few weeks ago, which couldn’t come home immediately, so we were visiting it. Which led to Logan getting to know a little black kitten — which died unexpectedly of a respiratory tract infection. So we then talked about it and she decided she’d like to adopt the sister to the one Jasmine adopted — and we now have Mango-kitten, who is about three and a half months old, and part Siamese with white paws and a white dot on her nose. I’ll take some pictures later on.
Mango has settled in well so far, finding the litter box once out of twice that she needed it (it was upstairs and she was down the second time), eating and even sleeping most of the night. She tried to play with River-dog’s tail when he was trying to figure out what to do about a kitten walking underneath him, and walked up to Peaty-cat who hissed at her and ran out of the room. (Poor Peaty!)
Today she’s going to spend the day in the larger bathroom, to make sure she has a limited space in which to find her litter box, and doesn’t get in to any trouble with the railing on the second story of the house.

Yesterday we went out to a man’s house in Drain where there were “some pear trees” that needed to be picked. He was someone who’d been at the Laundromat who’d offered free pears if we wanted to come pick. There turned out to be more than twenty pear trees loaded with fruit and fallen pears under them. And a garden that his brother had planted and grown before leaving on an extended vacation to Alaska. So we picked fruit and vegetables for three hours, and will go back again on the weekend. Logan was delighted with being a “farm girl” (I’m not sure what she thinks she is here then!) and how much produce we were saving from spoilage. Jasmine and I were pretty pleased too. We left Xia at home recovering from something she’d done to hurt her back, but we’ll probably all go on Saturday — John to pick and drool over the trees, and Xia to keep the man company and talk if she’s not up to picking. He uses versions of an electric wheel chair to get around and is fairly obviously not in good health, but happy to have visitors and people who will make use of the produce. He says one house on the land is from the 1800’s and the trees were probably planted then. Maybe I’ll take pictures of them too.