If today is Sunday, I must be sad.

Peter's gone. But what a weekend it's been. Peter got here Wednesday night and, as always, time has just flown by. Over the last 4 days:

• We've made raspberry, blackberry and raspberry/blackberry liquor. It needs 4 months to ferment and form properly but early taste tests already indicate it will be delicious! I think I shall need to do tastings every few days to make sure nothing goes wrong! The good news is we seemed to have figured out the "work together" part because this time there were no hard feelings during the liquor making process.
• We witnessed a terrifying accident on I-5 Friday morning. A white utility van in front of us blew a tire, lost control, hit the median, flipped about 6 times while miraculously crossing 3 lanes of traffic and not hitting any other vehicles. Of course we stopped and Peter ran to offer assistance. I stayed on our side of the freeway, well out of the way and attempted calling 911 (I was not the only one and the line was full) Good news - the 17 year old driver, although shook up and bruised, battered and bashed should be just fine.

• We went rock hunting. It was Peter's birthday weekend and it was my gift to him. We went to "The Lucky Strike Mine", located in the middle of nowhere, on the top of a mountain somewhere between Prineville & Mitchell Oregon. It was the most interesting

  

  place with the most interesting people. Kop is the owner of the mine and he LOVES his rocks. We found about 50 pounds of thundereggs. Kop is 92 years old and he had to examine each thunderegg before he would let us have it. With each one he looked at it, ran his hands over it lovingly and then would exclaim at the red vein in it or the kind of gems or what beautiful mysteries we would see when we cut it open and looked inside. Then he would grudgingly let us have it.

• Yesterday we worked on to-do's around here, including researching paint colors for the house, and giving the chickens a proper roof.

• Today was Peter's birthday and he was King for a day. We went grape picking and then grape plucking - and I'm sure we did more than that because it was time for him to go far too soon.

This evening 284 days seems way too far away. I am sad and I am melancholy. Harumph.