About gifts

I've been meaning to write about this for a while. Since my birthday actually and that was over a month ago. But then again, I've been meaning to do lots of things - send thank you notes, clean my house, work on Christmas gifts, not to mention all the garden/yard things that need to be accomplished. So one task at a time.

Raph built me this awesome solar dehydrator for my birthday. It really is awesome. He built it out of balusters that cost 50 cents and some weird plexi-glass stuff that someone gave us for free. Some of the insulation that was supposed to go in the basement (this is a point of contention I won't get into) was used on the bottom and back. The most amazing part is that the thing really works. I've been dehydrating peaches and tomatoes in there for weeks. It is so great I can't begin to tell you. One weekend when it was cloudy, I tried to dehydrate peaches in the oven. It took all day and they were still sticky and goey. Two days in the solar dehydrator with no fossil fuel energy and I have a bag of snacks for Makili! Raph is awesome.Here you can see some tomatoes that I just put inside.
So Raph's birthday is three weeks after mine. What did I do for him? Honestly, not a whole lot. THere were grand intentions. Building a walkway and outdoor grill. But I only got as far as pulling the stones out of the ground that formed our old crappy walkway.
Raph did use those stones to put under our chiminea.
which has allowed us evenings like this. Which are also awesome. Unfortunately, I didn't do it, but I've promised him I will finish the walkway before winter...