8+ Years of S and M

It seems fitting on Valentines Day to put together a blog of photo history of part of our 8+ years together!

First Date on a hike at Mt. St. Helens. Fall, 2001

Pacific Beach Hike, Fall 2002

Kakadu, Australia. April, 2003

Portland, July 2003

Mexico, Oct 31, 2003

Lake Tahoe, February, 2004

San Francisco, Calif. Feb. 2004

Mt Rainer, July 2004

Washington DC. Fall 2004

Whitsundays, Australia, January 2005

Seattle to Portland Bike Ride July, 2005

Olympia, Wash. Summer 2005

Mt St Helens Summer 2005

Amazon Peru January 2006

February, 2006 (Boston fundraiser for Amazon Promise)

Oregon Coast Fall 2007

Byron Bay, Australia. April 2008

Olympia, July 2008

New Years, 2010 Australia

Happy Valentines Day!!

My Tan is Quickly Fading!

My home and property in Olympia

Back to the Beautiful Pacific Northwest!!

Grey skies with the occasional hint of blue, accented with lots of rain.

While Susan is back home in Australia stomping grapes, I am living in my fifth wheel trailer again in Olympia while I am here for five weeks of work. I have settled back into the grove of M-F work schedule. I am very grateful for my job with Group Health and my ability to work when I return. I LOVE using my brain again, critical thinking challenges and seeing the frail old folks again who so appreciate the care they receive. With this said, I am also looking forward to sleeping in again when I get back to Australia! I only wish I had the ability to work there as a Nurse Practitioner or for that matter even as an RN. I will keep the blog posted with my nursing registration quest in Oz!

Winemaking -- The First Step

Hi everyone, this is Susan. I feel a little responsible for keeping up the Down Under blog while my beloved Melonie is in the U.S.

Tomorrow I'm going on a solo road trip. Yay! Anyway, I couldn't bear the thought of all those beautiful volunteer muscatel grapes out the back going rotten (or being eaten by the carroway birds!), so below are some photos of my first attempt at crushing grapes ... all 11 kgs! ... the hope being that I'll have time to take the frozen juice I made and turn it into some organic red wine. Yum! At least, that's the hope!

Picked and ready for washing and de-stemming.

It took some time to get rid of the stems and separate the unripe green muscatels. Hoping the greenies will ripen off the vine and I can crush them, too, in a few days.

Sanitized the bucket, washed my feet, and climbed on in. The first step was the squishiest! Lovely! Friend Sabi turned up just in time to take the photo!

I must admit that around this time, I was thinking about my old life in Seattle, wondering about all my friends working in offices while I was in the Aussie bush playing with grapes! (BTW, that's Buddha's teddy, not mine.)

Super juicy! Got about a gallon after we poured this through some clean muslin. Not bad for free grapes! And the vine is still laden with more yet to ripen. Ho boy, tho, very time consuming and messy!

Now I need to find the right recipe for a nicely alcoholic, preferably dry red. I might wait for Melonie to return before taking next steps. You know, for some extra confidence. It's a bit hot to start fermentation right now anyway.

Say, thanks Karen and Sara for your advice and inspiration!

'Shrooms

Hey hey! Look what's coming up in our woods after all the rain! Beautiful! And no, I don't plan on eating any (although I can't say the same for some of my crazy Aussie friends...)

Not sure if these are hallucinogenic ...

But these definitely are!

A little phallic, eh?

They sure love growing in the cow shit.

Interesting little fella. Kinda like a chantrelle?

Looks like something might hatch outta here.