June showers...

The wildflowers have been beautiful this spring.

Violets in our yard.

Steven mowing while Odie supervises.

The goat, while tethered on a runner rope to graze on whatever grows, leapt onto this scrap pile and butted heads with a pine tree!

A bracket was broken that holds out tailpipe on, so Steven got out the generator and his welder, and welded it. Now our tailpipe doesn't wag back and forth when we drive!

"Hmmm...are mosquito larvae a protected species here on Mosquito Mountain?"

Odie won the flip of the coin and gets to serve first!

...and she leaps, and she twists...

...and smacks the ball!
Her opponent goes for the 'unconcerned defense' play, with hands casually in pockets!

Back to welding. Steven fixed a picnic table Stephen's parents gave us.

When he was done, it was a pretty solid table!

If the weather ever dries out, I'll paint it.

Marl Lake in the spring.

We finally got over there to do some fishing.

Too many good pictures to choose just one.

This one was taken while ont the water in the lagoon, looking over the north end of the lake.

A loon, maybe?

From the boat launch area. (it's to the right, not in picture)

A Redwing Blackbird

(I think. It's what we always called them.)

You're fishing with THAT??? What are you after...minnows?

Let me show you what I'M fishing with! (Scroll down)

Now, THIS baby is gonna catch some REAL fish!

Or not. We didn't catch anything. :(

Ah, laundry! After having to wring the laundry by hand for a couple months it's nice to be able to use the hand-cranked wringer again! I feel positively spoiled! The 'rapid washer' is great too. It has several layers of metal in the cone with holes and baffles that force the water through quickly and get the clothes really clean. What better way to do laundry than out in the fresh air and sunshine! It's a blessing to me!

Steven went over to the buffalo pen to get some of the trampled hay and manure from where we had been feeding them over the winter.

Odie went too, but decided to stay in the truck and listen to the radio.

(now if only the truck HAD a radio... lol)

Steven gets a kick out of my 'pretzel' poses as I sit on the floor and read by the woodstove in the mornings! This is one of my herb books.

A Mommy moose and her new baby, on our road yesterday.

Since we had to go to Eureka anyway we decided to kill as many birds with one stone as we could...and gee, that's not a very nice expression!

We hauled the trailer along and picked up tires behind the tire shop to use in the garden. We like the fat truck tires because when they're laid on their sides they make deep planters.

Some people worry about chemicals from the tires/rubber, and that's something I've read debates about and still use them. Mostly I put herbs and things like rhubarb plants in them, because it contains them nicely.

Among other errands we stopped by Krystina's parents' house and her Dad, Randy, dug up some little Choke Cherry trees that were coming up thickly in a corner of their yard, as well as some kind of perenniel flower that gets little purple bell-like flowers on it. Later I dug up some lilacs in front of the Fortine church where they keep pruning them back and more keep coming up around them! We went to the Farmer's market in Eureka and I finally found celery plants. I bought a flat of 4 plants and picked up one for Kathleen. They were the only two I found anywhere in Eureka.

Barbara and Victor's driveway, before mowing.

After mowing.

And so it begins...the covering of plants. Another long summer ahead of doing just that, now that my potato plants are coming up.

I make rings of dirt around them so that when I water, it keeps the water in by the plant. Cuts down on weeding and saves on water.

I'm hoeing rows to plant leaf lettuce.

This is one of my Oregano plants, which I was in the proces of cutting when I took this picture.

There's the Oregano on a drying rack on a shelf above and next to the woodstove.

It'll take about 2 days to be dry enough to put in a jar and store it.

The celery plants were VERY root-bound, meaning they'd been in their little starter-planter pots too long!

I gently pulled the roots loose and straightened them out before setting the plants in the holes and carefully filling in around them with dirt.

Steven cut the sidewalls out of the tires to make a bigger planting space. It cuts easily with a knife.

I stood on a stump to take this picture. In the back left I planted broccoli seed. The two small square beds in the back right have carrots planted in them. In the middle on the left is the celery plants I put in. Bottom left is Chard. Bottom middle is four rows of leaf lettuce, and lower-right is four rows of spinach.

All that's left to plant now is onions. I'll wait another week to plant the rest of the potatoes and peas. Then I just have to keep the whole thing watered, weeded, and safe from frost for the next few months!

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.

Beautiful girls

Emily and I went to Missoula yesterday to watch the Miss Earth pageant. It rained most of the drive down there, but coming back we just hit wet roads here and there. The pageant was nice, other than one 'cheering section' for a girl who had a lot of people in the audience! They were obnoxiously loud. Lots of pretty girls. I'm glad I wasn't a judge. Some were clearly better than others in some ways, such as how they walked or smiled, but they were all very pretty.

Steven and I got part of the garden tilled the other day and planted Jerusalem artichokes and 46 hills of potatoes. It's a start anyway. Now begins the annual battle to keep the garden from freezing (even in July) and harvest enough food to eat for another year. Dumb climate here, unless you're growing snowballs and icicles!

Speaking of which, there are still patches of snow in shady places, mainly where snow slid off shed roofs and packed hard. The road up from the fork, which is the last mile to the house, is still a muddy mess with one really BAD 'sinkhole', as Tristan calls it.