Happy 4th to All! This my favorite holiday and also the day my mother died, so I am going to set aside all things political along with any negative thoughts that try to take hold in my brain and enjoy the day. Time to reflect, think about my mom and live in the moment. One of the local churches has a pie sale on the 4th. Those church ladies make wonderful pies and I always get there too late to get a slice of pecan pie. This morning I got up early, walked down to the church and was one of the first in line. They only had half a pecan pie left, but I got my slice and, my oh my, was it ever good! After that, I walked over to the local pub and had one of their famous bloody marys. Wasnt much later and it was time to watch the parade. Hubby and I are now resting/relaxing. In a bit we are going to bbq some burgers. What a great day it's been! From last year's parade:

I'm just getting ready to hand-sew the binding to the back of this Eiffel Tower Panel quilt that I'm doing for a friend. I've been feverishly trying to get it done and sent. Other than that we are staying home, DH will light up the grill and smoke some sockeye salmon, roast some corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, and grill some broccoli and mushrooms with lemon. Yum! Larri, I absolutely LOVE Greek food, especially stuffed grape leaves, can I come, too? DH isn't as crazy about it, he'll eat it but never asks for it, so I'll leave him home. I do make some dishes occasionally - especially Greek salad and simple broiled lemon chicken breast. We have a very small franchise here that does the gyros, salads, rice bowls and they make this awesome side - feta fries - they are just too good to describe.

I made hot fudge sundaes with homemade hot fudge. I've never made it before but it was basically a cocoa fudge recipe and easy to make. I made half a recipe but will cut back on the cream a little next time to make it thicker. I used regular Hershey's cocoa as the bittersweet chocolate gave it enough of a fudgy flavor. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/6094-hot-fudge-sauce

I will try to stick a few pictures of the wildlife garden on here. We are just going to let most of it go because there is no way we can keep it watered enough in this heat, plus we are on water rationing.. This is one of the flower beds. You can see that it is about gone. This is along the hwy, I am parked down in the bar ditch. This bed has not had hose water this year. I am surprised how well the zinnias have held up. The sun flowers behind may not live long enough to bloom. There is another bed larger than this one about 50 feet back to the left, but the deer have eaten the sun flowers, in that bed they were not protected by an electric fence. This is some of the peas and tomatoes, their future does not look well either. Peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers, I doubt that we can keep them alive either. Water melons, peas and sweet potatoes. I doubt that they will live. Cantaloupe, we are going to try to save these.