Positive reviews so far

Two reviews from Advanced Readers have been published on Goodreads so far for my sweet indy romance "Rachel's Folly."

Here's one:

This book was hands down very funny and sometimes serious. I simply couldn't put this book down. Fast paced and fun at the same time lol.

Wonderful characters that I fell in love with and connected with along the way. I felt like I was there right along with Rachel as she learned the ways of pioneer life.

Lewis has done a fantastic job of bringing them to life. I loved every minute of this book. This story sort of reminds me of Big Brother 😅 😂

So very good that I hated to see it end. Lewis has shown us that she can write anything and it will be wonderful! I love it when God puts these characters in their places at the right time and moment! I just don't like it when He does it to me lol. So I can relate to Rachel.

Hands down 5 stars for an awesome adventure that I thoroughly enjoyed!

And the other:

Chapter 1 - I'm hooked, and so will you be. This sweet romance written by a talented author is a page turner, an absolute must read! It included a clever plot twist and I didn't want the story to end; I wanted more. This story is compelling and it will capture your heart too. Such a delight! Can't wait for what's next.

The book is being released on Tuesday, August 19. The countdown continues!

Preparing for winter

We had a day of rain predicted today (Thursday), so yesterday Don and I did a lot of battening down. But it wasn't just battening down for rain; it was the precursor of battening down for winter. In fact, winter has been more on our minds lately after Don "called fall" this week.

Let me back up a bit to explain why this is important to us. In fact, let me back up all the way to  2003, when we first moved from southwest Oregon to north Idaho. We moved in June, which meant the weather was lovely. We had about five months, perhaps more, to anticipate what lay in store for us over the cold months. And here's the thing: Depending on whom we talked to, the winters were either "not bad" or they were horrible. Which was it?

Keep in mind we were far more rural in Idaho than we were in Oregon. With two small children (five and seven at the time), we knew we didn't want to risk their health or safety by not being ready for what, conceivably, could be a hard winter.

So we made a decision: By October, we would be prepared to be snowed in for three months. This meant we would have enough people food, pet food, and livestock food so we wouldn't have to go to the store for three months, and enough firewood to stay warm. Could we do it?

Yes we could, and we did. And boy, did it pay off.

The first couple of winters were fine. We got snow, sure; but it wasn't much and it wasn't bad. Were we overreacting by our "snowed in for three months" rule?

And then the winters of 2005/6 and 2006/7 hit like a ton of bricks. During the former, we had tons of snow. During the latter we had tons of snow and high winds. Combined, they left something of a psychic scar that made us never underestimate the power of winter. Ever.

The winter of 2006/7, we probably got five feet of snow (in areas north of us, apparently it was upwards of 12 feet). While this may sound like no big deal for battle-hardened Minnesotans, the two-mile dirt road we lived on at the time was not county-maintained, so it was up to the neighbors to keep it open. The combined efforts of everyone's mishmash of tractors, pickup truck plow blades, and (at times) snow shovels worked – kinda – but it was constant and brutal work and wasn't always effective.

While we weren't snowed in for three months, we got close. That second harsh winter – when heavy snowfall combined with high winds meant our road was closed under incredibly deep drifts – our remote neighborhood fell into a pattern: Storms came at about weekly intervals that, for whatever reason, always came in on weekends. It took about six days to clear the road (no exaggeration). If a storm came in over the weekend, then we were able to get the road opened by about Friday. Everyone would pour out of their homes, dash into town for mail, groceries, and errands, and make it home just in time for another blizzard to close the road.

This happened over and over and over and OVER. Those who worked away from home had to make endless excuses to their bosses. Many had no option except to work remotely. One person who normally commuted to a city job an hour away had to stay with a coworker for a few weeks because otherwise she would miss too much work. One family whose kids attended the public schools simply couldn't make it out.

Keep in mind these winter conditions also meant commercial roads were also impacted. Sections of a major highway were drifted shut numerous times that winter, so trucks were unable to deliver food, mail, hardware, or other items. Several times that winter, both restaurants and the grocery store in town were closed, either because of a lack of supplies or because employees couldn't make it to work. The local school district took a lot of snow days during those two winters.

Meanwhile our 300-foot driveway drifted shut so many times that after a few storms, there was literally nowhere else to put snow. The smartest thing we did was park our car at the end of the driveway before one of the blizzards. For the next two months, we snowshoed to and from the car, transporting the children (along with mail and groceries) on a hay sled. Had we not parked the car at the end of the driveway, we – literally – would not have been able to leave the house for eight weeks running. As it was, we had to shovel the car out after each blizzard.

I remember after one particularly nasty storm, a heroic neighbor who lived about a mile away – and who was a heavy equipment operator – got busy trying to clear one heavily drifted quarter-mile section of road not far from our house. He didn't own a snow blower, so he used his good-sized bulldozer to push snow. It took him EIGHT HOURS of hard work to get that one quarter-mile section of road opened, and by the end of it we had nine-foot canyon walls of snow along the sides. (To this day, I regret I never took a photo – it was in the days before I owned a pocket camera.)

For these reasons, we've never relaxed our "snowed in for three months" rule when it comes to approaching winter. In Idaho, you just never know.

Anyway, this is a long explanation of why we're starting to think about getting ready. Will it be an abnormally harsh winter? Don has never "called fall" this early before.

Don read something interesting a couple weeks ago about how global weather patterns are being impacted by one of the greatest natural disasters no one has ever heard of: The Hunga Tonga underwater volcanic explosion that occurred in January of 2022.

This event was spectacularly enormous, "bigger than any other modern volcanic eruption, even bigger than Mount Pinatubo and possibly Krakatoa," according to this article. "The erupting lava instantly vaporized fantastic, unimaginable amounts of sea water, which billowed into the atmosphere, changing the water composition of Earth’s atmosphere and heating it up for years. In just a few days, the superheated water from the Hunga Tonga eruption blanketed the entire globe, pole to pole, East to West. ... Current estimates [for the amount of water blasted into the stratosphere] are three times higher than initially thought: scientists now believe it was closer to 150,000 metric tons, or approximately 40 trillion gallons of superheated water instantly injected into the atmosphere." Scientists expect the effects to persist globally for a long, long time.

So yeah, a hard winter is not outside the realm of possibility.

Therefore yesterday was a day of miscellaneous battening-down chores. It started with a long-overdue repair of a couple of flat tires. Not even flat; utterly destroyed. One tire was on a small trailer we haven't been able to use for some time; and the other, crucially, was on our log splitter.

We have a bunch of wood to split...

...including rounds far too large to use our manual splitter.

Don was able to get the new tire installed. Now the splitter can be moved to where we need it to go.

Time's a-wastin'. We have to get the winter's firewood put up.

Other miscellaneous chores included re-stacking and re-tarping a pile of lumber...

...scrubbing out and refilling the cow's water tank...

...and moving the last of the older round bales into the barn. (The newer hay bales are stacked and tarped in the front driveway; we'll be moving them to the back, nearer the barn, before the snow flies.)

We still have lots to do before winter, including (hopefully) building an awning on the back of the barn to offer more shelter for the livestock this winter.

If it will be a hard winter, we want to be ready for it.

Calling fall

Monday morning, as I was picking blueberries, Don came out to tell me he had completed a project he'd been working on. Then he added, "And I'm calling fall."

"Calling fall" is something Don tries to do each year about this time. Clearly this has little to do with the actual calendar or even the daily temperature (a couple years ago, he called fall when it was 103F). But there are subtle signs he's good at picking up.

"Listen," he said, after tell me he was calling fall. I paused and listened and heard ... nothing. It was as if the birds and insects were taking a break. The silence was peaceful, not ominous; but it was also clearly a transition between seasons.

Then yesterday morning I was hanging laundry out to dry on the back porch. It was fairly early, maybe 10 am, and I heard a gentle breeze rustle the leaves of the oak tree right next to the house. The leaves aren't even close to changing color – they're still perfectly green – yet they somehow managed to quietly rattle with an autumn sound.

This is the earliest Don has ever called fall. He hemmed and hawed about calling it even earlier, and kept second-guessing himself because it was SO early in the season. It makes me wonder if it's some sort of indicator about what kind of winter we'll have.

Yes, fall is on its way. Don hasn't been wrong yet.

Two weeks until publication day!

Two weeks from today – August 19 – is the official release date of my sweet indy romance "Rachel's Folly"! As I've mentioned before, this is by far my favorite story I've ever written.

We're jazzed. So far it's received excellent advanced reviews. When the book is officially published, we'll be able to get those reviews posted on Amazon.

We're planning a book-bomb on the 19th, and I hope friends and readers will join in and get a copy in either paperback or Kindle format. By having a large number of people purchasing on the same day, it creates a "bomb" and helps push its ranking up on Amazon.

Honestly, I can't do this without you, dear readers, so thank you in advance.

I'll re-post here on August 19 to let you know the book is available, and to provide the link.

So stand by. The clock is ticking...

UPDATE: Yowza, go read this review on Good Reads! Thank you!

Product Review Monday

This week's book review is a volume by Bill Bryson entitled "One Summer: America, 1927."

Essentially the book is just what the title indicates: A synopsis of the events that took place in the summer of 1927. Sounds kinda boring, right? It especially sounds kinda boring because it focuses (along with much else) on the stories that riveted the age: Trans-Atlantic flight, sports (notably boxing and baseball), and sensational crimes ... none of which, to be honest, I have much interest in.

And yet, because it's Bill Bryson, it's a fabulous book. He is one of those rare writers able to make the ordinary extraordinary. Many of the names still familiar today (Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh) and their accomplishments are discussed at length, along with political figures and national events. He explains just why the events of that year were, and remain, so extraordinary and groundbreaking.

"One Summer: America, 1927." Highly recommended. Hardback version is here, paperback version is here.

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This week's product review features something I, personally, haven't bothered to use. That's because it belongs to Older Daughter, and she uses it constantly. I speak of her air fryer.

Older Daughter had wanted an air fryer for, well, forever. She finally bit the bullet about two years ago and got a Ninja DZ201 two-basket model, a medium-priced unit with high reviews. It's no exaggeration to say she uses it almost daily.

I asked her what she likes and doesn't like about the air fryer.

Pros:

• It gets things much crispier than a toaster oven.

• It reheats pizza beautifully.

• It's good for small portions of things that can lay flat, or for larger portions of things that can be in a jumble (veggies, potatoes, etc.).

• It cooks things with a lot less oil to get the same amount of crispiness as, say, pan frying.

• Because it's a two-drawer unit, she can cook two things at different temperatures/settings simultaneously.

Cons: 

• It doesn't let you broil both sides at once. If you want something really crispy, you have to do one side at a time.

Older Daughter has several meal staples she now makes using this gizmo. She absolutely loves it and can recommend it without hesitation.

(Obligatory disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Affiliate, if you purchase through those links, we earn a small commission.)

(Don't forget: A complete list of all our book and product recommendations are linked here and at the upper-right column of the blog.)

Garden update

Since we've deer-proofed our garden by installing 10-1/2-foot-high nuclear deer fencing, some readers have asked for an update on what's growing.

Unfortunately we completed the fencing too late to plant some of the things we wanted to plant (notably corn), and we also didn't get the full number of raised beds installed. Bottom line, only about three-quarters of the potential space is currently planted, and some of the planted beds aren't thriving. Nor is the drip irrigation system yet hooked up, though at least the underground infrastructure is in place.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's a wide shot of the garden as it currently looks:

In the foreground are five beds of garlic. Another two weeks or so, and they will be ready to harvest.

Interspersed in several of the garlic beds are volunteer potatoes (guess what I planted there last year?). I seldom remove volunteers. They're too much fun.

Not counting the volunteers, I planted eight beds of potatoes. Last year I had planted six beds, and the deer ate the leaves down to nubbins. Discouraged, I stopped watering – and yet still managed to harvest about sixty pounds of medium-sized potatoes (i.e., about ten pounds per bed, an abysmal return). This year, with the vegetation undisturbed and with regular watering, I'll be interested in seeing how much we harvest.

I planted two beds of onions...

...and one bed of green (bunching) onions. The bunching onions got a hard start because I didn't get around to weeding out the wheat (which grows from the straw mulch) until quite late, so most of the plants are still playing catch-up.

I have four beds of strawberries.

I'm picking a bowl of strawberries every few days. Two of the beds are Fort Laramie berries, and two are Ozark Beauty.

I had a bunch of tomato plants I grew from seed that had been sitting on the deck until the garden was fenced. As a result, they were stunted when I transplanted them. They're growing, but they're not very big. I photographed this bed before I weeded out the wheat grass.

They looked happier after I weeded.

The broccoli, which I also started from seed, has fared worst of all. As with the tomatoes, they were stunted from the start.

Then, to make things worse, the poor plants came down with a massive infestation of flea beetles, tiny jumping beetles that suck all the juices out of the leaves.

I'm starting to get the flea beetles under control, but it's too late to expect much (if anything) from the plants. In fact, I don't think they'll survive, which is a shame since broccoli is my favorite vegetable.

I have a volunteer sunflower growing in one of the potato beds. No doubt a seed from our winter bird feed was dropped here.

I've had volunteer sunflowers grow before, but always the deer got to them. This time it will be fun to watch it mature.

I also have a couple of volunteer tomatoes growing in yet another potato bed, the one in which I had grown (or tried to grow) tomatoes last year. As always, despite being cloched with deer netting, the deer got the tomatoes.

Last year I grew cherry, paste, and beefsteak tomatoes. I have no idea what kind these volunteers may be.

By far the most successful plants are the spaghetti squash.

I've never grown spaghetti squash before, and I made a grave error when planting. I planted twelve seeds in one bed, forgetting one critical factor: Spaghetti squash are related to zucchini, which of course is famously productive. Imagine planting twelve zucchini plants, and you'll start to understand the scope of the issue. I have huge numbers of spaghetti squashes coming in.

And with many flowers still blooming, I can expect more.

And then, comically, I even have a volunteer spaghetti squash growing in one of the potato beds.

(If you're wondering how I can get a volunteer squash from something I've never planted before, it's because in the fall, when I empty the compost tumbler, I bury the compost in the garden beds. A seed from a squash we had once eaten for lunch sprouted.)

As you can see, there is room for one more row of nine beds (two of which are in place but unplanted).

Clearly the game-changer in the garden is the installation of the deer fencing. Next year, we'll get the rest of the garden beds installed and the drip irrigation system hooked up. I'll be able to plant early and, hopefully, realize the full potential of this growing space.

The maximum this garden can hold is 35 beds (three rows of nine beds, one row of eight beds). However we've designed it that, should the need arise, we can expand and double the capacity to 70+ beds by extending the garden length-wise. We have enough drip irrigation supplies to accommodate that possibility as well.

Obviously getting a garden installed has been a multi-year project, and many other projects have taken precedence. Still, it's nice to have a proper garden at last.

Wild fruit galore

As I mentioned before, this year the wild plums are producing abundantly. Last year, nada. This year ... holy cow.

We have a massive plum tree in our driveway.

The fruit was so heavy, I was afraid some of the branches would break.

The fruit often looked like clusters of big grapes.

I was describing this bounty of wild plums to a woman at our church, and she wanted to know if she could have some. You bet! In addition to our tree, I called a neighbor who has two abundantly fruitful trees right on the road and got permission to harvest some of his plums.

Between the neighbor's trees and our tree, our church friend went home with somewhere on the order of ten gallons of plums. The branches of our trees are a lot lighter.

And that's not all. Now the apples are maturing. They're not ripe yet, but they're getting there.

We have several venerable apple trees on our property, trees we had professionally trimmed (back when we had money) in an effort to bring them back into productivity. The trees are producing heavily, though the apples are still fairly small. However they're delicious.

There are also thousands upon thousands of wild apple trees in our region.

But wait, there's more! We also have blackberries. Lots and lots of blackberries.

Again, last year, this ubiquitous fruit yielded nothing. Zip, zilch, zero, nada. This year, as with the plums, it's making up for lost time. While we have some outlier berries already ripening, most won't get ripe until late August through mid-September.

Personally I hate blackberries. Not the fruit itself (that's delicious!), but how aggressively the vines spread. There are whole hillsides and pastures taken over by blackberries. That was one nice thing about our last home; we didn't have any blackberries around us.

But say what you will, we live in a spot that has wild fruit galore. It benefits the wildlife immeasurably. That's a lot to be thankful for ... even with blackberries.