It's mostly about me and Osker right now.   We both got stung by ground bees recently.  Osker had 6 of them clinging to his butt.  Now he is as freaked out about flying insects as I am.  He also gets grass seeds stuck in his fur and has to be combed daily.  He had one deep in his eye and had to go to the Dr.

Then, I broke a tooth playing fetch in the creek so I had to go to the Dr.  That turned out OK because I got a new soft floating toy!

Mom is slowly moving gravel, soil and mulch around the patio.  She moved the pile of leftover sand, but knew how much we enjoyed the pile so she made us a sandpit!!

She also finished the handspun latch-hook rug.  It's quite comfy, but could be a bit bigger!

Mom and Matt moved many tractor loads of gravel to bring the back porch up to grade, leveled it, compacted it, decided they had too much gravel, scraped it off, leveled it and compacted it again.  Brutal.

Then they put the sand layer down between two 1" pipes and screeded.  Laying the pavers on level sand is the easy part!  Just lots of bending over.  The pavers stay cool in the shade so I've been happy with them.

Matt drew the curve of the patio on auto-cad, then we transferred it from the drawing to the pavers.  Matt cut them; some were tiny angle pieces.

We're in full use now!! Picnic table, lounge chairs, a couple hammocks from our Maui friends.  Life is good!











The Wheeling University buddies were here last week!  They decided to dismantle the greenhouse and move it to the fenced-in garden area!! 

Taking it down happened pretty darn fast!
They rolled the plastic up, unscrewed the top pieces to remove, pulled up the side pieces, created a new layout in the garden area, drilled new post holes, set the posts, leveled them, put the top pieces back on, and...

Another task done!!  Now we'll order new plastic and get it ready for the fall.

 Hello friends!!  It's been a bit boring around here for me and Osker the last couple of months.  Mom and Matt have been building patios and Dad has been taking care of the mowing, weed whacking, and everything else!

 The gravel that was our patio was brought up to the correct height under the siding, and extended out 10 ft on the front side, and 12 ft on the creek side.  Matt runs the compactor.  Then they screed the area to level and get the correct slope (1/8"/ft).  That is the hardest job; adding gravel, leveling, taking it off, leveling, etc.

 This area off the mudroom is 20 x 20 ft.  The chickens are always checking things out.  They were very disappointed that the bucket-loads of gravel had no worms.

 We've had about 17 pallets of pavers delivered.  Of course I'm good at supervising!! 

After the gravel, an inch of sand is spread over the area and screeded to be level and sloped. Looks like I need a couple more process pictures to show this.

 The pavers are set down, compacted, polysand is spread, compacted, spread again, compacted, then watered to cement the pavers together and hopefully prevent weeds and bugs from getting between them.

The front and side are done!!

Now they're working on the back side!  This side has to be dug out first!

I've been lounging in my chair by the fire thinking about all of my friends.  It seems that the folks haven't been doing much lately, but then they reminded me that they haven't exactly been slacking off.

We had a quiet Christmas and a fun, but flu-ish New Year!!  We've had some rain and some gorgeous spring-like weather which has given us a jump on landscaping projects.

All the blackberries along the creek behind us in this picture are now gone!  You can't usually see the water unless we get a couple inches of rain.  Dad burned all the blackberries too.  Now we'll just have to keep up on the new sprouts.  There's still more trimming to do, but we have some beautiful creek beachfront now.

 They also removed the old, unmanageable, table grapes in the field near the house looking down to the creek.  Dad wanted them, Mom didn't.

The rock pile in the same field has been removed.  Mom wanted them, Dad didn't.

The field has been tilled once and will be done a couple more times as the weed seeds sprout.  Hopefully, when the wildflower seeds go in, the weeds will be gone!!  The goal is to have large areas of wildflowers and grasses that only have to be mowed once and don't use much water.

We photographed the lion for 6 nights.  We have about 2500 gross, time-lapse, pictures of him eating his dinner right outside the fence!  He showed up as early as 5pm.  One of the neighbors had seen the mountain lion cross in front of her car the night the deer was killed.  News spread and people were actually stopping alongside the road pointing at the deer.  Ranchers want him killed because he may kill livestock.  Hunters want him killed because he kills the deer.  We called Fish and Wildlife.  They said that we live in cougar country and we need to take precautions.  If we saw him during the day or he was after me and Osker, then they would come and shoot him.  They do not   trap and relocate because it's too dangerous.  We made sure we were inside by 4pm.

After a few days, Dad put a rope around the deer and pulled it away from the road.  He said it must have weighed 100 lbs.  That night the cat came and picked up (didn't drag) the deer and took it to another spot that me and Osker found!!  The night after that he hauled it further away and we finally said game over.  


However, the icky stomach fell out and Dad tried to bury it, but didn't go deep enough and me and Osker had a good roll in it!!  I just dabbed it behind my ears.  Osker covered his chest and back in it.  We smelled really fine and were quite proud of ourselves!!  It took 3 showers to get Osker clean!

Bridge of Flowers, Shelburne MA

Gosh, I have to admit I've been lazy lately.  We've had some rain and it's so nice to snuggle in my chair near the fire!  Time to catch up:

Mom went back east to see Grandma and Grandpa for 2 weeks. Then our friend Jim came to visit.  Then Dad went to Reno to visit his buddies, and mom's girlfriend Karla came here to visit!!!  Lots of fun for all of us. 

A few weeks back one of the neighbors saw a mountain lion crossing the road at 8pm right below our barn.  That prompted Dad to buy a game camera.  While Karla was visiting, she and mom discovered a dead deer down by the creek at the north end of the property; one of my favorite swimming holes.   Without going too close to examine the deer for fear the mountain lion was watching, they assumed the cat had killed it and scampered back to the house.  To validate their theory, they took the game camera down to the creek armed with a pitchfork and hunting knife for protection.  The next morning the camera had not been triggered, and upon further inspection there was no damage to the deer.  He was a familiar 4 point buck with a very white nose and face.  After googling all about the life span and graying of deer, and how mountain lions eat their kill, they decided the deer died of old age.  We've also heard that a virus is going around killing deer.  He needed to be buried quickly because he was beginning to smell, and since Dad wasn't due home for a few days the girls knew they had to take care of it.  They like to think of themselves as farm girls who can do most things so they had a cocktail for courage, drove the tractor down to dig the grave, and used the winch to pull the old guy out from the creek to his final resting spot.  They also sawed off the antlers so he would fit better in his grave. Then they had a somber toast to show respect for the deer's life. 

We had a fun Thanksgiving weekend with lots of yummy food, friends and family!!!

Now we're back to projects. The guys installed a different radiator in the chipper, tuned it up, and it's purring!  This is the last of the crust bucket, rotting porch boards being chipped for mulch around the yard!

Our big excitement started a couple days ago when me and Osker noticed another dead deer right outside our front gate fence.  This one was a 3 point and since his gut was ripped open we felt certain that this was a mountain lion kill.  The game camera was set up again; the first night no pictures.  Last night we got great (but graphic) pictures of the lion visiting his prey.  He was there from 10:30 to 11:15 pm, then came back from 6:00 to 7:00 am!!  Wow!!  We went out to tinkle at 9:30, then had Dad take us out at 5:30 am.  He takes us on a little walk at that time!!    Maybe we should try harder to sleep through the night!!!!

Our vineyard didn't do so well this year because of the -5 deg temps we had last winter.  So we traded 2 six-packs of beer for 40 lbs of chardonnay from a guy in the Applegate!!  We pulled the grapes off the stems...

 Then Mom stomped them!  Then we pressed them with the cider press, put the juice in a bottle, added the yeast, now we wait!

 Dad moved a bunch of pvc pipe from the back of the garage which exposed the Styrofoam block.  The chickens started eating the Styrofoam so Mom had to stop what she was doing and finish putting rock around the base of the garage.  Don't ya love it when chickens decide what you should be doing??!!

This is the rock border and flower bed that Mom has been working on.  The boulders are from the basement excavation!

Dad got all the gutters sloping the right way and replaced the broken screws. 

This is the area where the double-wide sat!  It has been graded, raked, and seeded with grass.  There's a spot for a "memorial" bench!











We got all these pumpkins from one plant!