Saturday was wonderfully cool, clear and beautiful…

BUT.

At the construction site to our East there was grading and ??? and hauling of dirt.

It was noisy outside.

Bear, Auggie and I stayed mostly inside.

It was warm enough to close the house and run the A/C and so have none of the heavy equipment noise.

And early Saturday morning, I prepped a mix of swiss chard/onion/garlic and other spices, a ricotta-egg-parmesan mix and cooked some jumbo pasta shells.

Auggie had his usual.

But I had stuffed shells.

With Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce. (tomatoes, butter, salt and an onion…slow simmered for 45 minutes, then remove the onion – HEAVEN!)

Jumbo pasta shells filled with the ricotta-chard mix, nestled on a bit of the tomato sauce, drizzled with the tomato sauce, baked and then under the broiler with some fresh grated parmesan.

Major deliciousness!

Meanwhile, some progress on the plumbing issue – washing machine drain – a temporary solution is in place with a permanent solution to be determined before Winter.

And I uncovered a bit of firewood that is ready to be split – it has been covered for 2 years and I was a little leery about what else might be living under the tarp… nothing scary and the wood looks good!

After 3 or maybe 4 weeks of procrastinating, I took up all of the little rugs, dust mopped, vacuumed and EVEN damp mopped the floors. And I dusted. It is relatively clean in the house!

…Speaking of Winter. We are now half-way through Summer. In Montana, that is getting close to Fall: another 7-10 days and the visitor traffic will diminish substantially. It might still get warm-hot but daylight is decreasing/dark time is increasing…it gets more and more difficult to be uncomfortably hot for more than a short bit of the afternoon. The light at the end of the summer tunnel is in sight. Hoo..I say HOO-RAH!