May rain..brings June flowers?

Finally, a rainy day! Earlier this week it was so dry I had to water the stuff I planted in the garden. Then we had scattered showers for a few days, but it was still pretty dry. Now it's been raining for about 14 hours without stopping. It's a good long, slow soaking rain.

The last of our snow melted on May 13th. By then it was just the glaciated-type stuff that had slid off the north side of the barn and packed down. There were still patches around the yard and woods around may 1st. This is the third year in a row that spring was late. Last summer we never really had summer weather.

Well, let's see if I can do some catching up...

" I'm baa-aack!"

This is my Dad's canoe. When his leg got bad he backed into it in the garage because he couldn't get his foot on the brake in time. It was pretty mangled and we weren't sure it was fixable. With a lot of patience Steven managed to straighten it out this spring and repair it.

Steven had to make a patch for the cross brace at the top of the picture.

We haven't taken it out on the water yet, but I'm sure it's water-tight now.

"I'm...dreaming...of a place where it never snows..."

Okay, truth be told, I'd rather spend my money on something besides toilet paper.

In one month I can save at least enough to buy a pizza!

Old towels, cut into squares and hemmed. Bucket on the right for clean ones, bucket on left for used ones. Washed in boiling water, rinsed in vinegar water, hung to dry in the sun.

Not even as bad as the days we used cloth diapers, when the babies would soak or soil the diapers big-time and they had to be washed out. These toilet paper clothes don't get as soaked or soiled. My yearly savings? $120 to $150.

"Here, I'll grab this blue pencil and help you. Two brains are better than one, right?"

The goatling, looking very stately!

His horns almost look like a birthday hat!

He's got a forelock curl above his eyes on his forehead. From the right angle he looks like a "who" from "Whoville"! (Thanks, Dr. Suess!)

We moved the chicken coop from the other side of the driveway back down the trail behind Steven's workshop. Then Steven built them a nice, new pen.

"Watch me turn myself into a chicken! Abra-ca-dabra!"

(Scroll down)

"Ta-DAH!"

The stock split on Steven's .338 rifle and he had to get a new one. He fixed up the broken one with a dowel rod and a block of wood, for the grandkids to play with. Yeah, yeah, guns are dangerous, but the kids raised around them aren't usually the ones who mis-use them.

This is a very cool (and cheap!) greenhouse made by the parents of Tristan's girlfriend!

We went over to meet them and see their garden efforts. They've made an artform out of adaptive gardening for this cold climate.

Tristan and Krystina.

Front left, Krystina. Back left, Steven. Back right, Krystina's Dad. Front right, Krystina's Mom.

This is looking through one of their budding-out apple trees. I like the view.

Their dog, "Dicey", is like a blend of our cat and out dog!

Back here at home I've harvested parsley twice already. I nibble at it fresh and used some in cooking, but I dried the rest for later.

I kept them alive all winter under the glass caps. Once the snow started sticking on the ground I piled it up around the glass. When it got below zero it was enough insulation to keep the parsley plants alive!

We lost two hens this winter, but still have five. They're good layers. We get 4 to 5 eggs a day.

Steven cut down some dead trees on our property and cut them to firewood length. If they're standing and dead we leave them for a few years. If they fall, we cut them up, because if we leave them lay, they'll rot.

Our ancient horse trailer. Steven put the 300-gallon water tank in there. Bryan gave us the tank a few years ago. It was off one of those wildland fire rigs. We're going to pain the trailer fire-engine red and paint "Mosquito Mountain Fire Dept." on it! If there's a fire, Steven can put the gas-powered water pump on the trailer and we can tow it to where it's needed.

If he gets our '69 International pick-up truck running again, we can drive it in the Rendezvous parade and pull our firefighting trailer!

"I think Ill sit here in the shade and pretend it's hot out!"

CAUTION!

Next picture is kind of gory.

JD butchered 3 buffalo. Steven helped, along with JD's Dad, brother, and a few friends. We got the meat of half a buffalo and two of the hides. I was a very busy girl for a whole week, canning and freezing buffalo meat. Steven was a very busy boy before that, cutting all of it up! He ran some through the grinder so we could make buffalo burgers. The day they did the butchering we had buffalo steaks on the grill! They were great!

These are some violets in the yard. They're pretty, and they're all over the place.

Barbara and Victor are getting ready to move up here and build a house near us. It's going to be 20' by 20' with the smaller upstairs that has the sloped ceiling on the edges. They bought this motorhome to live in while they build. It's a 1970-something, but seems to run pretty good. This picture is in the road in front of our house as they arrived with it. They had to wait for our road to thaw out and dry before bringing it up here.

Barbara does all these cool Star Wars-like hairdo's. I don't know how she keeps her fingers straight doing this!

These are the glass covers like I had over the Parsley during the winter. I planted some of my pepper plants and covered them since the nights still get cold. It got down to 22 one day last week, and until a few days ago we hadn't had a single night over 32.

The water pump cracked on the Cherokee, so Steven had to put a new one on. In the rain, too!
It started off as quite the project. The pulley was rusted to the spindle part of the water pump and I had to hold some bracing bars against it while Steven pounded on it, and hoped not to break anything and make it worse!

Plants waiting to be planted in the garden. Some came from Randy (box on chair to left), some came from Becky (tray in front on table), and the ones on top of the old microwave I started. The bucket on the right is the potato plant I started a couple months ago just for fun!

Finally, after all these years, I've got bulb flowers blooming!

I moved some tulip bulbs over to this planting area last fall when I thinned out bulbs, and one of them is going to bloom. The other flowers are annuals I planted last year and for some weird reason, they came back this year!

Over in another flower bed nearby, this red tulip bloomed! Yay! It's a start!

We still have to work around stumps and stuff in the garden, but after years of work we have beautiful soil! Now if only our summer nights weren't so cold!

Steven is tilling a section toward the back. So far I have peas, broccoli, Kale, and 46 hills of potatoes planted. Much more still to plant. If we don't plant, we don't eat. I'm grateful for the garden, and for the delicious, wholesome food it produces. At least I keep telling myself that when my back and legs ache like crazy out there! :)

Victor and Steven working on one of Victor's rifles.

This year will be the first time Victor has ever hunted.

He's a very amazing guy, from chicago and turning into a mountain man!

This is where Barbara and Victor are going to build their house. The site is where the blue tarp and red roofing are, and the brush pile to the left of that is the other end of where the house will be. The blue tarp covers the materials for them to build a shed where they'll store stuff for now, and later it'll be their woodshed.

Krystina's family gave us an apple tree for my birthday. I smiled when I saw the variety is "Sweet Sixteen"! Ah, to be that young again! We planted it on the spot where rabbits killed one of our apple trees the winter before this one, by chewing the bark off the trunk.

Thanks for the tree. It's the most beautiful and perfect present!

We went to the sawmill north of Fortine and got some "slabs", the part they cut off the log to make it square so they can cut boards. We're hoping to use it for siding on our porch, for the bottom two feet. I have a roll of screen for the top part.

This is a close-up of the mountains in the picture above this.