First week of SUMMER, visiting a zoo and more...

Sunday, the first full day of summer, we drove to Tulsa to walk through their zoo. It was not a boiling hot summer day, cool breezes abounded .......and things at the zoo were very well kept, clean and green. Benches in the shade too!

I loved the flamingos and other tropical birds...especially the "Red and Yellow Barbet" from east Africa.

So colorful...this is the male, he has a black stripe on his throat. Below, this female shows the wonderful dappled polka dot black and white, so dramatic with the bright red and yellow!

We found a friendly zoo employee to take our photo....(what, we're not whippersnappers anymore???? Oh well!)

My favorite exhibit is the Central American rainforest....the tour starts where you walk with a view of the underwater world and tree roots....here the water level is just above my shoulder.

Watch out for the powerful anaconda.....huge and submerged with only his nostrils above water! Climbing higher you see exotic tree frogs and tropical birds.
There was also a jaguar in this zoo jungle!
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One good day this week, I was able to get my hands on the Spring 2014 Patagonia catalog....our son is a rock climber who was camping the year before with a photographer.....long story short.....Andrew is on page 26. The photo credit say he is planning his climbing route in the Sawtooth mountains of Idaho.

How cool is that? I think I posted this before...but not from my own catalog...teehee! [ I had requested it several times from their webpage and even corporate office....I guess it was intercepted by postal workers along the way!.... I knew summer was here and the catalog would be out of date soon....so I pulled into our lovely locally owned PackRat outdoor store and sure enough they had the catalog and even extra copies to give me! what nice, good looking young men they were to make my day! Whoo-hoo!]
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I went to several quilting events this week and took along my big stitch hand quilting project.....the "Liberty Road" summer quilt. It was a big hit! I am using a sashiko needle and # 12 perle cotton for the stitching!

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A friend had surgery this week and is home recuperating. I wanted to make them a special blueberry dessert.
I decided on this layered blueberry "pie" from an Alaska baking webpage.
Preheat oven to 350.

Start with 1 stick of butter and 1 cup of flour (gluten free). Blend well. Add 1 cup chopped walnuts.
Press into one 9x13 or two 8" pans. Bake 12 minutes.

Remove from oven and COOL!

Meanwhile have 1 8 oz. package of. Neufchâtel cheese in a bowl at room temperature. Blend in 1 cup powdered sugar then 1 8 oz tub of Cool Whip or whipped cream which you whip.
Eventually, spread over the COOL baked crusts.

Place in fridge while you make the blueberry layer.
In a saucepan, combine 1 cup sugar and 4 T. Cornstarch.
Add 1 cup water then stirring constantly over low heat, dissolve sugar and cornstarch. Keep stirring until mixture thickens. Add 2 T. Dry Raspberry jello powder. Turn off heat. Immediately add 1quart of fresh or frozen blueberries.

COOL THIS completely. [one hour in the fridge!]
When cool, spread over the cream cheese/ coolwhip layer.

Finally top with more whipped white stuff.....and then a few blueberries or chopped walnuts on the very top!

ta-da!

Delicious....like eating a blueberry cloud.....

That's enough for this first week of summer!
OOOps...one more thing...

Two little sundresses or nightgowns for the twinkies in Georgia!