Willie report:

Yesterday afternoon Willie discovered a new toy to add to his collection.  It's a buoy that our friend and former neighbor, John Underwood, gave us back in May of 2010.  

We were on a fishing trip to the Washington coast with our other neighbors, Ann and Neil Wimberley.  Jon, Neil and John were going to go fishing for halibut on a charter out of Westport on Gray's Harbor.  

While the men were out fishing the women spent the morning on the beach scavenging for shells and interesting pieces of driftwood.  Ann, who lived in Mobile, Alabama for many years, was very familiar with beachcombing and loved spending hours doing just that. 

When we woke up at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of the fishing charter, the winds were just howling outside.  I remember wondering why anyone would want to do anything that required waking up at 3:30 a.m. and then going out into the wind and cold.  As it turned out those winds were gale force winds and there were 16 foot swells.  There was also a "crossing the bar" warning for the harbor. 

We did not have that information and only learned of it later.  The charter boat captain decided to go out while many of the other boats did not.  It was a risky adventure.  The conditions were such that the day long trip for the guys was not that much fun.  Everyone on the boat got sea sick, except for John Underwood.  He was smiling when he got off the boat.  He had also caught the biggest fish.

Both Jon and Neil looked pretty haggard as they were walking up to the dock.  The good news was that everyone recovered and by the next day the winds had died down.  We rented another charter to go out to look for whales and we did see one, but I did not get a decent photo of it. 

Ann and I found many treasures that we brought home from the beach, plus the buoy from John.  I don't remember what I did with all of the shells and driftwood, but I hung the bright orange buoy on a tree branch in the woods on the east side of the house.  It's been there all that time until yesterday when I'm guessing either the branch broke or Willie decided to jump up and give the rope a pull. 

What a great dog toy.  He spent at least three hours outside pulling and tossing it around.  It slides really well on the icy snow and I think he could probably chew forever on the rope without it coming apart. 

 

 Mr. Wilson Report:

Yesterday Willie ventured over towards the neighbors and while he did respond to my recall, when he appeared at our front door it was quite apparent that he had been having a really good time rolling about in some kind of fresh poo.  Oh boy.

He would not be the first dog we've had that liked to roll in poo as Maggie loved to do that, especially in the spring.  

That meant we were now forced into giving Mr. Willie his first bath.  I searched in the basement for the rubber bath mats, doggie shampoo and towels and got everything set up.  

Willie was having nothing to do with hopping into the tub so Jon had to pick him up and put him in.  Once he was in the tub and I started washing him with the sprayer he calmed down, but mostly he was a bit afraid of just what was happening to him.  We reassured him that it was going to be okay and managed to get him washed down and rinsed off.

The problems arose after we were finished as he really doesn't like to be dried off with his towel.  That resulted in a lot of "doggie shaking the water off" in the middle of the bathroom.  Water everywhere, but at least we had a clean dog.  Willie was pretty happy to have that experience over with. 

Mom and dad just had to clean up the mess which included washing all the rugs, mopping the bathroom floor and of course, cleaning out the tub and hanging up all the mats, etc.  We're just hoping that this will not become a daily event. 

When he's not rolling in poo, Willie likes to entertain himself outside by chewing on assorted branches, boughs and bark.  He is pretty polite about keeping his "toys" in one place and has about a 5' wide circle of torn debris in the front yard.  He has added one real treasure which is a black 6-pack planter container that he found somewhere underneath the deck.   Even though he has chewed on it a bit and torn it apart, it's still in one piece but I'm sure it makes a lot of noise whenever he's playing with it.  

The planter made me think of gardening. 

Since we are almost into the final week of February it is time to check my begonia bulbs and possibly take them out of storage to get ready to plant again.  It's also time to think about starting my patio tomato seeds.  

I've been growing Red Robin tomatoes for at least ten years now.  By starting them this early I usually get two big crops off of them.  One in early June and another in August.  I like the convenience of harvesting a few cherry tomatoes from the pots on the deck.  I can just step out the door and pick a few fresh tomoatoes for my dinner salad. 

This is not a small project as it will mean checking all of my 4' flourescent plant lights as there's almost always at least one that doesn't work and it's not easy to replace the tubes, especially if the fixture is one that is hanging at the back of my plant stand. 

I will also need to get out my portable light fixture and my warming mats for seed starting.   At least it will be something to keep me occupied during our below zero weather event next week.

Tonight is the season finale of All Creatures Great and Small.  I love the little Pekingese, Tricki Woo, so I hope he's part of the final episode. 

I'm going to get ready for the cold weather   A beef stew sounds really good.

Have a great day!

  

This is a great photo of my friend, Kristine.  She and I go way back.  When we first met, neither of us lived in Hope.  It was 1972-73.  She and her husband, Glen, happened to be visitng from Rhode Island that summer and Jon was working for his uncle, Kermit Kiebert Sr.   At that time we were living in Missoula while Jon was going to college at the Universtiy of Montana. 

A couple of years later, we had both moved to Hope.

Kristine and I had a lot in common.

  Our husbands were teachers.   Jon taught at Stidwell Jr. High and Glen was a teacher at Sandpoint High School.  

Both Glen and I are from Nebraska. 

 Nebraska and football.

Our sons were about the same age. 

Jon and Glen carpooled to Sandpoint every day since there was an oil embargo and the price of gas was really out of sight. I'm saying here that the economy in the late 70's and early 80's was a lot worse than it is now.  Teachers were paid once a month.  No one had credit cards so if you ran out of money towards the end of the month, you weren't buying anything.  

We raised gardens, canned and preserved the harvest, hunted for deer and elk to put meat on the table and if you lived on some acreage, there were chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits and cattle. 

Groceries were really expensive. It was a luxury to buy soda pop or any kind of processed food.  We didn't mind because we loved cooking from scratch.  

 

We had each rented the Loman cabin on West Spring Creek Rd.  Glen, with his friend, Gary when they were fresh out of high school, (maybe 1960?)   Jon and I rented it from 1974-1980.  

We spent a lot of time together and there are a lot of great stories about our experiences that I could tell.   Some of the more famous ones are the "Lasso and the Deer" - in the winter with 3 feet of snow - 1978. and the "Whiskey Bowl" - Thanksgiving crica 1982.  A football game played on our front lawn in 12 inches of snow.   

Fast forward 50 years.  

We stayed in Hope, but Kristine and Glen moved back to Rhode Island in the 80's. She decided that she would write a romance book and proceeded to do just that.  Not just one, but a LOT of romance books.   The Only Man in Wyoming, The Husband Show, A Montana Christmas... 

She loves canning and preserving, especially her favorite fruit, peaches. I will admit to enjoying it but not as much as Kristine.  She and Glen now spend every summer in Hope. She visits the Peach Man every week through Labor Day weekend.

They are both musicians in the Cougar Creek Band.  Kristine plays the fiddle, the guitar and has a beautiful singing voice.  She is the only person I know who can yodel.   It's awesome.  One of my favorite songs that she sings is, "I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart".  Yes, there's yodeling.

The girls in the band created our own group for a couple of summers.  We were the Hope Mountain Blues Band and we played one gig at the Green Door Art Gallery and Coffee House at Garfield Bay during the summer of 2013. 

We still get together during the summer to play music and we have a great time.   We spend many hours visiting and reminiscing while playing our songs.  There's nothing like spending the afternoon on the deck, hanging out, drinking ice tea or maybe something a little stronger, while singing and playing music. 

 

Yesterday I received a package in the mail from Kristine that contained a beautiful handmade quilt.   It's just one more talent that she has and it's a very beautiful piece of artwork.  

It's called "Connie's Keyboard Quilt" and has shades of my favorite color, blue.  What a lovely gift.

Our bedroom is small which made it difficult to get a good photo.

She also has a blog, "Is There Anymore Pie?" and there's a link to it on this page. If you read her blog, you will learn just how many quilts she has designed and sewn.  Whenever she is traveling she can't pass up stopping at fabric or quilt shops, which means she has closets full of fabric.  Her quilts are one of a kind and now I have the gift of an original, "Kristine's Quilt Design". 

You may wonder what is happening in this photo?   

We were celebrating our first gig.  It was also our only paying gig.  We were all counting our loot. 

As I said earlier, she has a beautiful voice and some of my favorites she sings are: I'm Just An Old Chunk of Coal, Spanish Pipedream and Java Jive, but the one below is still my favorite.

I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart.  

Willie Report:  He has been banished from sleeping on our bed.  There will be no dog hair on my keyboard quilt. 

This morning I am thinking about the line from the movie, Forrest Gump.   "Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you are going to get."  

Last week we learned that our grandson Dylan, has multiple myeloma and it has caused a compression fracture in his spine.  This was very tough news to hear. 

Dylan's doctor is moving quickly with diagnosis and treatment and he has already had a biopsy of the tumor.   The results will tell us what stage his cancer is and what the treatment options will be. 

Dylan with son Jason - out for Jason's first sledding experience up and down our driveway on New Year's Eve, 2017.

Dylan and Jason getting ready to "go to the woods to cut up some logs and burn a brush pile".  Christmas 2019.   

We were fortunate that when Dylan graduated from high school, he got a job working on the fire crew for the Sandpoint Ranger District and during that time, he lived with us for two summers.   It was a special grandparent time for us.

As I am writing this I am thankful for all the researchers around the world who are working on a cure for myeloma and other cancers.  I have hope that they will find an effective treatment and cure. 

The good news is that thanks to scientists and researchers there are options for treatment and more than fifty clinical trials for this type of cancer.  

 Come on Science!

Science has saved many of us from Covid-19. 

Dylan with his dad, David, and Uncle JP.  Everyone in the family is ready to help him fight this and will be there to support him. 

I have not been out to take any new photos so this one is from February 2014.  We have a lot more snow on the ground this year than we did in 2014.  Notice the snow shoe trail on the right of the picture.  We were younger then.

The weatherman says that today will be partly sunny and I am looking forward to that.  The temperatures are just warm enough to work on thawing the ice, but it's not happening quite fast enough.  Yesterday as I drove up the hill on our single-lane driveway to the county road, I met another driver.  There's thick, solid ice on that stretch of the road and it was covered with water.  

The other driver stopped and I tried to stop, but my car just slid backwards down the road.  There was no stopping until the car slid far enough back down that there was a bit of gravel for the tires to grab on to.  

We were lucky that we didn't just slide into each other as there's not a lot of room for two cars to meet on our driveway during the winter.  

There was just enough snow in 2014 to cover the bridge over Cougar Creek on the Underwood property.

As I was looking through my photos, it looks like the Cougar Creek Band also played a gig at the Hope Memorial Community Center that year.  A Mardi Gras celebration and fundraiser for the center.

Setting up for the gig.

The multi-talented Linda.  Music, art and so many other things.

Our brass section, Joe, Mark and Mike.

Julie on the drums and Bruce playing bass guitar.

Our mandolin girls, Ann and Ellie.

I wonder if there's a recipe for gluten-free King Cake?  

Basin Street Blues by the king himself.  Louis Armstrong.

 

While we have been enjoying several weeks of winter without a lot of snowfall, there are other parts of the country experiencing some unusual weather.

 Jon's sister and family live in Edmond, Oklahoma and they just went through a snow storm there.  They sometimes get a couple of inches of snow or worse, ice storms, but most of the time their winters are warm and mild.  

This week they had a taste of a more northern winter.  A decent amount of the light, fluffy snow and some cold temperatures. 

That meant that our grand-nephew Chase's wish has come true.  Enough snow to play in.

He looks so happy.  He got his chance to make snow angels and there is a video of him doing just that, but his Aunt Connie couldn't figure out how to post it on my blog.

Chase wasn't the only one getting to have some fun in the snow.  In Lolo, Montana, great-grandson Jason was building a snowman.

It looks like he had a little bit of assistance from his sister, Quinn.

It's so nice to see these smiling faces.  The only thing that could be better would be if we could be there to enjoy all the fun with them.  

I love the snowman's Pinnocchio nose.  

Happy Sunday!  

Enjoy some music played by another kid some years ago.  

The Second Line - Trombone Shorty at age 13.  

This morning as I drank my coffee, I wondered what the date was for Fat Tuesday this year.  Usually it's during the month of February.  

I checked.

Oh no!  It's March 1st!   That is not fair because I am already thinking about Chicken Gumbo and playing some Marci Gras tunes.   Basin Street Blues, The Second Line, Monday Night in New Orleans.  All great songs.

Willie report:

One of our major goals at the moment is for Willie to learn to control his excitement whenever he sees someone new.  His tail wags and it gets into high speed mode the closer someone gets to him.  If anyone acknowleges him, he's like a kid on Christmas morning multiplied times ten.  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

Most people are happy to see a cute puppy, but they really do not want what I call "crazy dog", jumping all over them.  He's getting too big for that. 

We have been going to Sandpoint and hanging out in the parking lots at Petco, Home Depot and North40 so that Willie can just watch all the people and cars go by.  

This is Willie outside North40 yesterday.  There were a lot of heavy, wet snowflakes falling out of the sky right then, so this was a nice spot in a covered area. 

We have ventured inside Home Depot twice, but I have decided that is too much for him right now.  He still gets really excited and does know to sit or lie down sometimes, but he really can't control himself inside the store. That means for now we just get out of the car and walk toward the entrance to just wait and watch "the people". 

It's all a lot for a puppy who has only been on "the farm".  

At home we are still working on leash walking and all of the other commands.  He is making progress.  We play a lot of "fetch" games with him, both indoors and out, to try to give him exercise since there really won't be any playing in our yard for some time.  It's still a frozen concrete snowy landscape.  

Willie does spend a lot of time patrolling and guarding the farm from varmints and any suspicious wildlife.  That is his job.  

It is usually exhausting work and requires a lot of naps. Mom and Dad are always happy when Willie is in this mode.

As I am finishing this post, the sunshine is breaking through the clouds.  Maybe this will be a blue sky day. 

I'm going to talk to my friend and fellow musician, Mark Heisel, about playing this song next week at our jam session.