Project day

 We're continuing on with our carport project.  We contracted with Andy McChesnie, McChesnie and Sons, to haul in the gravel to create a pad for the carport.  We also needed to add some new gravel to parts of our driveway.  

Andy is a neighbor who we have known for years.  His dad, Clifford, did a lot of "cat" work way back in 1978 when we first logged and cleared some of our property so we could build our house.  Clifford's "cat" was called Alice, (Allis Chalmers).  Andy was helping his dad back then and might have been twelve years old at the time?  He told us yesterday that he was five when he first started working with his dad.

Clifford operated machinery with great skill and finesse and so does Andy.  During past few days both Jon and I were reminiscing about those days long ago.  Every Sunday morning Clifford would stop by to visit and drink coffee around our kitchen table.  Good times.

The photo below is from 1978.  Andy is unhooking/hooking a log as Clifford looks on.  The machine is Alice. 

This is the pile of gravel for the carport.

Andy did a great job smoothing out the gravel.

Yes, we needed more gravel for the driveway.

Once the gravel project was done we moved on to working in the garden.

Jon helped me out by weeding my onion rows.  After he finished we added some more mulch.

My peonies are almost finished blooming and now it's time for the lilies to put on their show.

 

The hummingbird babies are everywhere!  We have three feeders out now to keep them all happy and fed.

Happy Thursday and enjoy another beautiful day.  

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven...

 ...like the first dew fall, on the first grass, praise for the sweetness, of the wet garden...

After a day of wind, rain and a bit of a chill, this morning the sky was beautiful.  DIL Julie would love these clouds.  Later today JP and family will be here to visit for a couple of days followed by David and family on Saturday.   That means Jon and I will be celebrating our "weekend"  and Father's Day early.

Yesterday I baked a ham and scalloped potatoes in preparation for our family get-together and this morning there's a bit more baking to do.  

Miss Lady will be so happy to have more people here to spoil her.  

Happy Father's day to all the dads out there!  

A little thunder and lightning cloud

 So.  You want some rain?   The evening sky just before the downpour.

I would call these "angry clouds". 

In-between the downpours and whenever it was dry enough to be outside, we worked on clearing a space for a carport.  We've talked about getting one for many years and have finally made the big decision.  

There were three very tall birch trees that had to be removed, plus some white fir.  

Jon is skidding them to separate piles, one for firewood and one that's just brush to burn in the fall.  Lady is in charge and stays away from the truck and she's figuring out that when Jon is running his chainsaw, she should be on the porch.

The last one decided to get hung up in the tree tops and he finally had to put the chain on it to rotate it just enough to get it to fall.   The carport will be nestled between the three cedar trees since we really don't want to have to cut any of those down. 

My garden is growing like crazy.  I plan to get out there today to take some pics.  Meanwhile, I am working on spring cleaning that still needs to be done.  Yesterday I washed windows and there's still a lot of other "to-do's" on my list today.  

The weather has been beautiful, even with all the rain.  Enjoy!

Feed me, feed me.

Two of the feeders are nearly empty this morning. Jon needs to take care of the babies soon.

The volunteer sunflower in my tomato plant pot has taken over.  I'm going to name it Seymour since I like that name better than Audrey. 

 It's a short post today since I need to get out there and pick blueberries and cut broccoli before the temperature gets too hot.  

Happy Thursday!

Counting days, months, years…

First off- I had some technical difficulties with this post today, but I think everything has finally been fixed.

 It seems that most days there's a lot going on or maybe I should say there's a lot to be done on our "to do" list.  How does that happen?  We're supposed to be retired.  What the heck does that mean?

We made another trip up Lightning Creek looking for mushrooms, but no luck.  I spent one day sorting through my dried mushroom supply and it does need replenishing. 

I guess it also means there's a lot to attend to around this place.  The gardens are finally thriving, but seem to need constant attention.  I have been tieing up my tomato plants and trying to get my green beans to climb up the poles in the garden.  There's been a bit of harvesting as some of the broccoli is ready. 

I have replanted cucumbers, carrots, lettuce and beets and most of the seeds have sprouted during all this heat.  Speaking of that heat, today I need to get some shade on my lettuce plants since they don't like all of this hot sunshine.  That's one of today's projects.

Today is what I call one of my "music days".  My friends, Larry, Tim, Mark and Bruce will be here later this afternoon to play some music for a couple of hours.  It's always a good time.  We get a chance to catch up about what everyone is doing and play some songs in-between.

On Thursdays my friend Kristine is here and we play our guitars and I actually sing on some of the songs.  Kristine has a beautiful voice and she sings one of my favortie songs, I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart.  I love it because she can yodel and it's part of that song.  What a treat.  She likes harmony and doesn't mind me trying to find my vocal part on some of the tunes.  I do my best.  

Grandson Collin just had a birthday, July 25th, and is now 24 years old.  It doesn't seem possible.  I clearly remember the day he was born in Moscow.   We stayed at the Holiday Inn there.  The sign on one side of the motel said 102 degrees.  The sign on the other side of the motel said it was 104 degrees .  Let's just say it was so hot!  That night the motel air conditioning really didn't cool the room at all.  We opened the window to our room and during the night the sprinkler head on their system next to our room broke.  It sprayed water against the building all night long.  It wasn't a good night's sleep.

There was no air conditioning in the apartment building JP and Melissa lived in and the next day they brought home tiny little Collin and they didn't mind.  They were just very happy, estatic (and tired) new parents.  Happy Birthday to Collin who is no longer tiny, but is very tall and skinny, just like his dad. 

JP's raised bed with potatoes looks good.  He has a green thumb.

Son David was here with grandson Ben for the weekend as it was David's 30th class reunion.  We enjoyed hearing all the news about his classmates.  Boy does it make one feel old to realize that our youngest son is at his 30th class reunion.  Hmm. 

I'm posting some of his photo from the drive over and back. It's a beautiful drive from Missoula to Hope.

Speaking of tall and skinny, Ben is on his way.

Photos of the Class of 1992 Reunion:

Our grandson, Dylan is in the middle of his stemcell transplant procedure.  He and his mom, Julie, have been in Seattle at the cancer care institute since the middle of June.  He has been through the procedure to harvest his stem cells and last Saturday he received his chemo dose, which will erase his entire immune system.  They are now re-introducing his stem cells and the next ten days will be the most difficult since he will have absolutely no immune system and have all the bad chemo symptoms we've all heard about.  After about ten days, his stem cells will begin to start multiplying and he will very slowly begin to feel better.  We are counting the days with him.

He's smelling an orange while they infuse the stem cells.  It helps with the nausea.

We also have several friends who are also going through other types of cancer treatments.  The whole process is amazing and all I can say is, thank you science and thank you to the doctors and nurses who get cancer patients through this.  If everything goes according to plan, Dylan and Julie will be able to return home at the end of August.  That will be a major day to celebrate!

Willie Report:

Mr. Willie had his first encounter with a skunk about a week ago.  10:30 p.m.  Fortunately, he wasn't sprayed too much, BUT, we had all the house windows open at the time.  We quickly went around and closed all of them.  Whoo!  What a stink!   

Willie has now had two baths and is beginning to lose the stench.  It's amazing that just a whiff of  the smell is too much.  

He is not crazy about having a bath but cooperates once we get started.  He's also pretty patient about being brushed, which was something that Maggie hated.  At the moment he's shedding big time and hopefully he will be done soon. 

We've had a black bear visit our neighbors, but he didn't venture over here which is a good thing for now.  The reality is that there's certain to be a bear encounter at some point.  It's what happens where we live.  Maggie did not like bears and she had what we called her, "bear bark".  

Bear photo courtesy of Neil Wimberley.  Nice shot!

So far, Willie has what we call his, "deer bark".  He also gets pretty animated but at least he no longer takes off and chases them.  A success at this point.  He seems to be finally understanding that his job is to patrol the property and keep the deer away.  

We are working on getting him to stay whenever a vehicle leaves our driveway and he's beginning to understand although the desire to chase after the UPS truck is strong and hard to resist.  We are in the teenage dog years at the moment.  Oh boy.

The hummingbird babies are off the nest and we are back to having three feeders out.  They totally empty at least two of them per day.  I love the sound of all those hummingbird wings fluttering when they are at the feeders.  Also, there's nothing like getting dive-bombed by one or more of them whenever I'm close to the feeders on the deck.  What a buzz!

The hummers love the flowers on my deck.

The Date we never forget.

Mt. Saint Helen's - May 18th.   

We were in a pool for the date the volcano would blow.  Neither one of us won the pool.

We still have a couple of jars of the ash that fell in our yard that day.  We also have several pumice rocks that fell and floated down the Toutle River.  The rocks were light so they floated in the river.  They were given to us by our friend, Brian Applebury, who worked for the Army Corp of Engineers out of Seattle.  

At that time we were renting the Loman Cabin on the hill.  It was built of big logs with caulking in-between.  There was a lot of space between the logs and some areas where the caulking was non existent.  It turned out that ash could seep in through those cracks.  The place consisted of 160 acres, with two pastures and a barn and other out-buildings.  

Our friend Linda Finklenberg's horse was in a field a mile away from our house.  She walked her horse from there to our place so he could be sheltered in the barn with our cows.  We fed them hay for several days because we didn't want them eating the ash covered grass.  

We had an Irish Setter, Lady, who we inherited from my sister, Mitzi, who also came inside the house for a few days to be sure she was safe.  

Jon and the kids scientifically laid out square meter pieces of plastic and measured the ash fall and particulate size  every hour.  Jamie was 12 and David was 6 years old at the time.

The scariest part was we didn't know if the ash was high sulfur or was dangerous for us to breathe.  

The TV told us that the ash would go through the air filters of our cars and destroy the engines, so nobody drove for days. 

It was late afternoon when the dark cloud of ash slowly blew in.  There was a large flock of geese flying in front of the cloud of ash, honking away as if to warn us.  They circled and circled and went up over the mountains behind us. The ash was soon everywhere and even seeping into the house.

I had already planted my garden that year and many of my vegetables were doing well due to some warm temperatures that spring.  The ash covered everything in the garden and the forest around us.  The next day, we hosed off all of the vegetables, fruit trees, berries, grapes and currants.  The photo below was taken in the garden.

A couple of days after the eruption David came running into the house screaming that there were a million snakes in the garden.  He refused to walk back out there, so Jon hoisted him on his shoulders and walked into the garden thinking he would show him that there weren't really a million snakes.  He had walked only a few feet when all of sudden he realized that there were several snakes around his feet.   There may have been a million snakes in the garden.  The snakes had found a green zone, without ash, for refuge.  

To this day, David has never liked snakes. 

The good news was that the schools were closed and they eventually decided to end the school year early.  They were concerned that the engines on the school buses would be damaged by the ash. 

A trip to visit Mt. Saint Helen's has always been on my bucket list.  

If We Only Had A Brain

  I hope you are enjoying your Sunday.  It's going to be another hot one.  I am sharing a poem written by one of my friends on Facebook.   Gary has given me permission to post it here.   

Gary Crooks:

“If We Only Had a Brain”

We could while away the hours,

drinking whiskey sours

in a summer of restrain.

Masks for a pittance

as we kept our social distance

If we only had a brain.

If our thumbs we didn’t twiddle,

while thinking individdle

or other thoughts insane.

Champagne we’d be drinkin

as the toll continued shrinkin.

If we only had brain.

If the science we weren’t dumpin,

replaced with all that Trumpin.

So sorry Herman Cain.

We could open all the schools

and reteach The Golden Rule.

If we only had a brain.

Stormy weather

Stormy weather.  What an interesting spring day yesterday.  Thunder, hail, rain and rainbows.  All of the rain made me think of one of our favorite places.  It's not far from our place.  Just a short hike.

Green's Falls

These are photos from one of our hikes there in 2006.

Walking in the sunshine, sing a little sunshine song

Put a smile upon your face as if there's nothing wrong

Think about the good time had a long time ago

Think about forget about your worries and your woes

Walking in the sunshine, sing a little sunshine song