Patty, I did a quick look at that mine. Silver - means there can be any number of other interesting related minerals around. Is there an old tailings area that people are allowed to dig through? I've hiked up to mines in the Cascade Mountains and found small samples that were discarded in the mine operation. I've made any number of hikes up Vesper Peak in Washington, twice to climb the peak (it's a lovely climb and at the front of the range to have a great view of not only other mountains but of the Puget Sound area and across to the Olympics). On the route up I always was picking up crystals and minerals (you can't leave them along the way to find on the way down - that never works). I've also made the trip in order to hike around the modern copper mine tailings and higher up to an old garnet mine. (The copper mine is a shaft; the garnet mine was a surface operation, as far as I could tell.)

Charmion, does summer aggravate your allergies or asthma? The smoke from fires last year, for example? Pollen, dust, and heat itself (with associated lower humidity)?

Today I used up fridge stuff for another batch of my yellow squash casserole (without pasta). Onion, bell pepper, garlic, oregano, and olive oil are the base. I used two types of sausage (Italian and a local pork sausage with lots of black pepper), along with a batch of diced portobello mushrooms. Tomato paste thinned to sauce consistency, and some red wine (a few spoons of it scooped out of a jar in the freezer). Came out great and will be meals for the next few days. I also thawed a chunk of baguette to make a half-size bread pudding. The amount of bread and sugar is small compared to milk, eggs, butter, and dates, so not as bad as many other desserts. In my evening reading I'm learning more about the science of fat and oil (and polyunsaturated vs saturated) in diet, and my next book will be Grain Brain by Perlmutter and Loberg. And looking into the science of cholesterol-lowering statins.

More eBay stuff listed as I push to clear the front room and plan to move in furniture from my sewing studio. This will be a full summer of work, but worth the trouble. Selling these things on eBay supports paying off the heat pump loan faster since I expect the larger heat pump to die one of these days. Our weather now is warm, but it's weather we're used to (if the big heat pump goes out I may sleep on a cot in my office until replacement). The New England states that are getting our typical June temperatures seem to be suffering; later in the summer our temperatures will be 15 to 20 degrees higher and really miserable.