Memorial Day

Memorial Day in our town pulls in a nice crowd.

Main street has quite a few folks gathered on both sides to
see the Veterans and the bands come by.

Colton.
This will be his last Memorial Day parade.

Chyann.
Her first Memorial Day parade.
I didn't get a good picture of the middle school band marching
because they went so fast and my camera was being goofy,
but did catch her at the cemetery.

Instead of a War Veteran speaking a seventh grader
and an eighth grader read essays they had written about
what Memorial Day means to them.
I enjoyed hearing what they had to say.
It gave me another perspective on what this day
means to different people.

When we got home we attacked the potatoes.
Last night we had a nice thunder storm with steady
rain and you could practically hear my garden gulping
it in, so today the weeds came right out.

In the top half are right to left
tomato, peppers and onions.
Then in the bottom half are the spuds.

No pictures of the small garden yet as the seeds
were just planted last Tuesday.

The backyard all mowed.

Krissy and I enjoying a glass of wine while the kids splash us.

A very nice day.

Spuds, apples and other stuff

The spuds are coming up!
At last count 63 of 99 have shown themselves.

Now I need to get out there and pull some weeds, but with it
being so dry they don't come out easy. Hopefully
we'll get some rain tonight and that will loosen them up for me.

The apples are coming too.
We've had a good sized apple drop, also known as
the June apple drop. In essence the tree produces a hormone
to limit the number of fruits to what the tree can support.

Not sure what the official name of this one is.
These apples will be about baseball sized, yellow/red/pink
in color and so very sweet to eat fresh. Will make a mushy
pie though.

These are the lady apples.
They will get about golf ball sized and are bright red.
I've made pickled apples and candy apples with
these in the past.

Got the lawn mowed yesterday.
Colton used the push mower around all the trees and wore
sandals. Grass was too tall for me to notice he wasn't wearing
shoes otherwise I'd have had him wearing somthing else.

He's got Jolly Green Giant toes.
This picture doesn't do justice to how green his feet were.

Chyann and I rode horses yesterday and today before it
got too hot. We've just been having the best time.
Jenny was a little spooky today due the wind blowing
like crazy, but nothing too bad or I should say nothing
that freaked me out too bad :)

Got the rest of my garden planted.
Yahoo!

The pool is up and running and we spent a lot of time in it
yesterday and I'm sure we'll be out there again today.

The difference a year makes

A friend of ours called me last year on Mother's day
asking if I was interested in some flowers that she
was dividing and since I love flowers and you can never have
enough I went over and helped her dig them out.

Having no place to put my new treasures we
decided to put a new bed in.

It sure didn't look like much then.

But now?
Can you believe the difference a year can make?

I absolutely love all the different colors.

These looked like they were going to be black.

These are cream, yellow and pink.

The yellow and white have to be my favorites though.
I have a strange love of all things yellow.

Poor Benny, he is a Pomeranian, got a bunch of poop and
pricklers stuck to his hind-end and had to get a trim.
Pretty funny how he will just lay there and let Chyann
cut his hair. Now he needs a good brushing. I'll probably
end up doing that though.

After his cut Beegee appeared to be eating Benny's hair.

Not sure why she would be doing this, unless he got some food
or something slopped on his fur?
(I looked and nothing odd in there)
Benny would just lay there and she would pull out hunks of hair.

Very weird.

Hope you all have a safe Memorial Day weekend.

New Bike

Caden and his new bike.

When we got to the Hubby's sisters place
Caden found this big bike to ride and rode
it the whole time we were there.

It is a West Coast Chopper
with a Jesse James signature on it.

Pretty cool, right?

Caden's cousin didn't ride it anymore and decided to give it to him.

I've been incredibly busy this week helping a friend
clean college apartments that have been vacated.
Most of the apartments don't have air conditioning
and it's been in the 80's, no humidity though so that
has been a plus, still it's hot, sweaty and hard work.


Looking forward to the weekend.
I need to finish getting the garden in, mow our jungle of a
lawn, weed some spuds, laundry galore, ride some
horse, and get into the pool!

Yippee for my Hubby!
He's got the pool almost ready for us.
I think all that's left is for him to put some calcium for
water hardness in it and vacuum!
We can't wait!!

Home sweet home

Made it home from ND on Monday evening.

It was about 1300 miles round trip.
We had good driving weather and gas prices were
on average 2.67 a gal.

There was a lot of road construction on the 694 bypass
for Minneapolis/St Paul and in the Fargo area.


It was wonderful to see all the Hubby's relatives.
They are a great bunch of folks.

The graduation made me cry, a lot.
Makes me cringe to think of how I'll handle
Colton's next year.

Colton did not burn the house down while we were gone.
With the exception of the kitchen floor needing to be
swept, the house looked like it did when I left.
Except VERY HOT!

(ND weather was cool, wet and blustery
nothing like the hot and humid weather in WI)

He only had a few windows open and it smelled vaguely
of dirty socks and cat box. Lovely I know.
Humidity and a cat box than needs cleaned out are
not the best combination.

All the windows were immediately opened and
the floors mopped.
Much better!

Got about half of the garden planted last night.
We'll try to get the rest in by the weekend.

Anyway, it's good to be home.


This picture was taken in Carrington, ND.

Road Trip

Our nephew in North Dakota is graduating from
High School on Sunday.

We are leaving early tomorrow morning.
It will be a fast trip.
Arriving back home Monday evening.

Colton is going to stay home alone!

He has a commitment to play with the band
in our school's graduation
and a few other things he can't miss.

This shall be interesting.

He's never stayed home alone. I'm not really worried
because he's not into the whole party scene, but
does like to get together with friends
to play music/video games and all that.

He just has to make sure the house is as clean
when I get home as it will be when I leave tomorrow.

Now if it were me?
I'd have a huge party!

This would be Jennifer Rain taking a nap in the small garden.

When we get home I'll be putting the rest of the garden in
and the horses will be banned from the backyard.

It was Hot, the flowers fragrant and the work was stinky

It was a wonderful day here yesterday.

Low humidity and temps in the 80's.
AND
Just the slightest breeze to cool you off,
can't ask for nicer weather than that!

I got busy and replaced most of the screens in the house.
Somehow little fingers, pencils and other assorted things
manage to poke their way through our screens.

The sliding screen door was actually torn up by a
big dog we use to have.
That was Chester, german sheppard, he got hit by a milk
truck a few years ago.
I never got around to replacing the screen.
(was actually hoping if I waited long enough I'd get a
whole new door because that one is really hard to
slide open and closed - it's junk)
So, I put a patch on it.
Very redneck looking, right?

And presto chango, look how nice a new screen looks!
Can't hardly even tell there is one there.
The aluminum screens were the hardest to change
out and that was only because they were so prickly
on my hands. Other wise, it was pretty easy.

After the kids got home from school
Krissy, the kids and I went to Klingers farm & market
and did a little flower and vegetable plant shopping.

The greenhouses were hot!
Kris said I was probably loving the heat and I said yep!
She doesn't like it when the back's of her knees sweat so
she wasn't enjoying it as much as I was.

While we were out enjoying ourselves the Hubby and Colton
were cleaning out our cow barn.
They loaded Krissy's truck up and started a new compost pile
for the rest that wouldn't fit in her truck.

Then they spread it on her garden to be.

Colton looking all macho and tough.

Let me tell you,
Krissy's baby goats are something else!
Both Chyann and Caden want one.

Caden wants the little boy and his name will
be SNAKE!

Chyann wants Nutmeg and will rename her Nicatoma?
What kind of a name is that?

Here is Chyann helping Krissy feed the babies.

And Yes, I'm the mean ol' mama that wont let them
have goats!

A delicious Mexican dinner followed all the work.
By the time we got home, I had two kids sleeping in the van
that had to be carried to bed.

I'd say a good time had by all.

Cherry problems

So, we've got two bing cherry trees.

Last spring they got buds on them, then we had a hard
frost and they never ended up doing anything.

I thought the frost has wrecked the buds for that season.

Now this year, both trees got buds.
This one never did any more than that.
The other has some leaves and half of those appear
to be dying.

I got on the internet looking for cherry tree diseases.

Verticillum wilt looks to fit most of the symptoms our trees are having.

Verticillium wilt - is an airborne fungus, usually attacking
stone fruit trees. The fungus invades the root system or
through wounds in the tree. Once in the tree the fungus
produces toxins that invades the xylem (water conducting tissues)
in the tree. Basically it gums up the structures that take in
water and the tree dies.

Treatment is kind of iffy.
Some sources say there is no hope of saving the tree
others say trim all the dead stuff off and keep it watered
through the season along with fertilizing it.

I'm going with trimming it down,
which probably should have been done in the first place,
and watering it. Gonna do some tea also.
Tea is hot horse poop in a burlap bag seeping in a
55 gal drum of water for a day or so, then
watering your tree/veggies with it.

I hate to loose these trees.
Wish I'd have paid more attention to them last summer
so maybe they'd have had a better chance of recovery.

Anyhow, this is one of them before pruning.

Use your Hubby's cordless handy dandy tools and wear gloves.

Be careful of falling branches.
They WILL hit you in the head!
OUCH!

You can see the black areas in the trunk.
Apparently that is where the tree is clogged up,
not letting the water through the branches.

And all that lichen is normal. Apparently we
have nice clean air around here.

And the wood inside the cut areas was like cork or balsa wood.
Very soft and easily damaged.

After pruning.

Interestingly enough we also have a dwarf sour cherry tree
and it is not effected (yet).

Busy, busy weekend

Wow!
The weekend sure flew by fast!

Friday night while eating dinner my Hubby says
check out that bird hanging out on the Elm tree.
(the elm tree is right outside our dining room window)

It was a gorgeous blue/orange/tan bird.
After we ate I took the screen out of the window and
set up my camera to get some pictures of that guy.

I managed to get quiet a few nice pictures of him and
his mate bringing food to their nest.

Very cool, right?
Well for some reason I am unable to download the pictures!
I use an SD card and plug it into my printer to get
the pictures to my computer
and the computer says there is nothing on the SD card.

DRAT!
Camera says it's got pictures on it tho??

Not sure what the scoop is, but bottom line
is no pretty birdy pictures today or until
whenever I figure out the problem.

Saturday we went up North for Chyann's last Volleyball
game. The school sent home mapquest directions
for us. Which was a good thing because I thought
the school we were going to was about an hour and
a half to the East.

I followed the directions given and guess what?
They were wrong twice!!
No kidding.

The map said turn right on 5th ave NE,
but it was really 55th ave NE
and
the address of the school was given, but
the turn off for the school wasn't.

We ended up going to the next town and getting
directions from a nice gal at the gas station.

It never occurred to me that mapquest might
be wrong. I guess in the future I'll get directions
from two different sources to be sure.
No pictures of the games, of which they won 2 matches.


Chyann and I rode horses Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
I've been riding Jenny and she has done sooo good.
I can't believe how much she has improved.
No pictures of that either.


I did get my hair cut and highlighted on Friday too.
Didn't get it as short as I thought I would, but it's still
shorter than I've had it in recent memory.

And man is it blond!
My hair cut gal asked if I wanted to go lighter and I said
nope, same as we did the last time.
I am sure it wasn't this color though.

It's so light I look tan
and I'm not.
The kids think I look strange.
No picture of the new hair either.

Got the lawn mowed finally!
Yahoo!

Some sections and I'm not joking
were at least a foot tall!

Very slow mowing with the grass that tall.
No pictures of that either.

Can you tell I'm very irritated that I can't figure out
my picture problem?

I should just get a new camera.

Happy Monday!


P.S.
Never got the cow barn cleaned out.
Still too wet, hopefully Wednesday.

Tree eaters

That is a pretty innocent looking picture of our
cows Marble and Peanut butter.

They are just hanging out enjoying the nice weather,
right?

NOPE!
That's Marble eating my tree!
She totally annihilated every branch she could get into
her mouth!

And that's a red delicious apple tree!!

They've got hay, grain and grass to eat.
Why eat my trees?

Rotten cows...


Yesterday was Caden and Chyann's spring concert at school.

That sure was a lot of fun.
I love going to their programs.

Caden's grade sang a few songs and
Chyann played in the band.

Chyann started marching band practice at school this last
week also. Now both my drumming kids will be in
the local Memorial Day parade and a few other
parades over the summer.

I getting my hair done today and may just
get it all chopped off.
We'll see.

Horses must be ridden today after school
regardless of the weather!
So, let's hope it's nice.
I'm really tired of this dreary wet stuff.

Volleyball tourney tomorrow at a school an hour and a half
away from here.
A lot of parents aren't going so we will be giving rides
to at least four girls.
It's the last tournament and the progress the girls
have made over the season is amazing!

And if it dries out enough to get the truck up to the cow
barn (we live on a hill and it's mucky) all that nice
fertilizer is going to Krissy's house for her garden.

TGIF!

Bugsy

This is Bugsy,
one of our barn cats sunning himself on the porch.

Pretty comical that he sleeps with his tongue
sticking out like that.

He's getting annoyed with me for waking him up.

Anyhow, I've been thinking about post titles lately.

While blog surfing I always look to see what is on
that particular blog's "favorite list"
and if I see a title or picture that catches my eye
I'll check it out.

Occasionally the title has nothing to do with the post,
some folks will try getting you in with a cliff-hanger statement,
a one word attention getter or
even a catchy metaphor.

Me, I just throw out what makes the most
sense to me at the time and hope for the best.

So, really how important is a post title?

Will a title determine what you read?

Riding

Chyann and I are doing a little bit of riding around home
before we take Jenny out on the trails.

Jenny seems pretty solid (so far).
No spooking at weird things (yet),
focused on what Chyann is wanting her to do
instead of having her head in the clouds.

I'm afraid that since she has been so
calm and cool Chyann is going to let her
guard down and when something does happen
to freak Jenny out Chyann wont be ready.
(uugh, I know I worry too much)

What in the world is up with this weather?
Sure doesn't feel like May.
Oh that's right we already had May back in April
and now it's time for the April weather!

It's supposed to rain most of this week, but
the temps are getting warmer everyday.
When it finally dries out I'm gonna have a jungle to
mow out there and it'll be almost time to get
the rest of the garden in.

Around here the last frost date is May 20th,
so most folks usually plant Memorial weekend.

I sure am looking forward to that first fresh tomato!

My Mother

Yesterday, Mother's Day was also my
Mothers Birthday!

My Mother is the best!

She is the Queen of Scrabble, triple word scores every time!
She is the best biscuit and gravy maker, EVER!
She has a great sense of humor, sharp wit with a sly smile!
She likes her Baileys and coffee, yummy!
She has the best hugs!

She always understands EVERYTHING!
(when did she get so smart?)

Mom and me back in 89'


Happy Birthday and Mother's Day Mom!

I miss you!
And I love you more than I can ever say!

Wish I was there to make you a cake!


P.S. It was my Brother and SIL's 18th anniversary also..

Jennifer Rain

We went up at test rode Jennifer Rain on Thursday
afternoon.

She had been in a few squabbles with the other horses,
which is to be expected and even was the queen of
her own little herd that consisted of a little donkey
and a young mare with a bad front knee joint.
Jenny was a mean ol' gal protecting them from
the geldings that wanted to run them off from the
water/food areas.

Wish I'd have had my camera out to get some pic
of that because here at home Casper and Cowboy
push her around so that she is the low gal in the herd.

Anyhow, I rode Jenny first and she did very well.
The trainer said she is a smart, willing horse and
even though she is a little spooky, with work
she will be a good ride for us.

Here is Chyann putting Jenny through the paces.

Nice relaxed head/neck - exactly what you want to see.

Then there's me.

The trainer said she was ready to go home so we went
up Friday afternoon and got her in the freezing
cold 38* weather.

Burrrrr, how soon we forget
how cold a wet 38*, light wind feels!

When we finally made it home our horses had a loud
rambunctious reunion for her!


I went to bed early with a sore throat and feel like
I'm getting sick. Too bad Chyann has a Volleyball
tournament all day today, I feel like I could just stay
on the couch (especially since when I looked out the
window I saw a few snow flakes fly).

Horse tales and nice smells

Chyann and I have been doing a bit of riding.

She is riding Gypsy and I get Scotch.
Gypsy has been a dream for Chyann, which is good.
Builds her confidence and all that.

Scotch is doing somewhat better.
We've been doing a lot of ground work and that has helped,
but not so much that I think respect is his only problem.
Nothing physical seems to be the issue either.
Could be he is just stubborn and I'm not mean enough
to make him mind.

We'll keep working him and see what happens.
He has scared the shit out of me more than a few times,
but I've managed to outmaneuver him so far.

This picture is looking South from our backyard.

(Those are Scotch's fuzzy ears)

We are going up to the trainers place to ride Jenny tonight.
Let's hope that goes well.


This tree is finally blooming.
I think it's a crab apple tree.
It gets small red berry/apple looking fruit on it.

The flowers are just beautiful!

The lilacs are really starting to smell!

The hedge of lilacs behind the barn are the only ones this
mature. The other lilacs are probably at least another
week from blooming.

I love this time of year!
Except for the wind!
Man, it was soo windy yesterday!
Felt like I was back in Cold Bay!
Yuck!