Glad you had a good day. Ours was nice also. No sunrise service this year. We had our play for the morning service. Knock sang a special. He did good. Then we were invited to a friend's for lunch. It was nice. We visited and sang songs. Knock talked us into playing Wii with him. It was fun and funny. Knock and his mom went to a play at another church last night with friends while we went to the barn and did the work so we all had a full day.
Only one patch of snow remains in the big lasagna bed and it will be completely gone in another day or two. I have been cleaning a flower bed so that I can plant some pansies I bought to have some instant color. I'll have to dig up some of the asters to clean the quackgrass roots from around the plant roots. Pulling it up just leaves too many pieces of root that all make another plant. The project is going slower than I thought it would, but it sure is good to see that wheelbarrow load of weeds and grass that was growing in the edge of the bed yesterday. A full wheelbarrow always makes me feel that I am making progress!
This morning I took a walk around the vegie garden patch and noticed that my row of garlic is coming up through the mulch. When I planted it last fall I put bone meal in the row because it helps plants make good root systems, and that night a raccoon dug up a lot of the row because the bone meal apparently smelled like something he wanted to eat. I replanted the garlic and hoped for the best.
Yesterday I got 3 loads of wash dry on the line and today it is cold and windy again and looks like it could snow any minute. I don't mind saying that I have had enough winter! It's a good day to work in the greenhouse, and maybe wash some windows, at least on the inside. When the sun came up this morning and was shining though the kitchen window into the office where I sit at the computer, I saw spots! Nothing like bright sun to show up a dirty window.
A week or so ago, a stray cat showed up here. I always give them a chance to adapt and be nice, but they seldom are. Poor Neut got beat up and is limping round on 3 legs when he isn't hiding, so the stray has to go. Yesterday I set my live catch trap and baited it with a handful of dry cat food. The food disappeared but the trap didn't close. No cat in it this morning either, and I haven't seen him. All day yesterday I was very careful not to leave the cat food dish outside, and I hope he got hungry and decided our cafe is closed. Our cats got fed and the dish is in the house again.
Yesterday another storm rolled in and our world has turned white again. This one would have to be called a spring storm since the calendar says it is officially spring, but it has that look of winter just the same. The freeway was closed in both directions from town yesterday afternoon.
Today is the first endurance ride of the 2008 season and I am glad not to be there trying to keep warm. I haven't been riding at all yet, and don't even have shoes on Patch because of the deep snowbanks in the pasture. My farrier is gone someplace for a few days and will call me back in a few days. I haven't planned to do many rides this year anyhow, and will be doing more gardening and projects around home.
The stray cat finally got himself into the trap. I called a couple of places to see where I could take him, he seemed to be quite tame. So he is now relocated and I hope he will fit in and be a nice boy.
Neut is still limping around carefully. I didn't see him yesterday so took the food to the hay shed and fed him there. By last night he was putting the sore foot down and using it a bit. I don't blame him for not coming to the house in the storm.
Today and tomorrow a flower and garden show is being held in Boise, but we might not be going because of the road conditions. I had been looking forward to it especially since I have never been able to go due to it being on the same weekend as the first ride of the season. This year was my chance, but instead I might be staying home with a good book and trying to forget the weather.
Sorry to hear you are in the grips of old man winter yet again. You must be so ready for Spring. At least you have your greenhouse. It must be a necessity there.
Are the ewes all finished lambing now? If not, how will the storm affect them?
Does the endurance season always start so early? How does anyone in your area get into shape for a ride that early with your conditions? We haven't been riding much here and I know we don't get nearly the weather you guys have to contend with. Yesterday would have been a really nice day to ride here, but DH has an infection in his foot and leg and has to stay off it. The work took all my time yesterday so I didn't get to ride either. Hope the weather lets me ride a few times this week. I need to get in some hours on a couple horses I need to move soon. Haven't been able to ride my own horse since last October. He's liable to forget he is broke to ride. LOL
I planted 2 potatoes yesterday in my old tires. I hope they do well. My seedlings don't look so good. Guess I am just not a good gardener. My seed order came in from The Cook's Garden yesterday. I have to make me some more newspaper cups. I may have not used a good potting soil for my seedlings. I think the mixture might be a bit heavy. What do you reccomend for starting seeds?
Yesterday after church our son and daughter in law came out for dinner and visiting. Our daughter in law assisted with getting all the proper codes entered and pages downloaded so we can claim our rebate from the internet company. Actually, I handed her the paperwork, hubby dug a couple of invoices out of the drawer, and she did the rest! Today she begins another term of nursing school, and we will hardly see anything of her at all until summer break.
We didn't go to the garden show since another storm was supposed to slam us that day. The weatherman missed this one, or the storm missed us, but anyhow, we had decided we didn't care to be driving home in another wintery storm. The freeway between here and Boise had been closed in both directions from town the day before, and the second part of the storm was predicted to follow the same track, but somehow it missed us. I have consoled myself thinking of all the money we saved on gas, admission, lunch, and anything we might have bought.
I don't know the status of the remaining ewes who hadn't lambed when I stopped doing the night checks. The little group was down to 6 the last time I counted, and they would have been put into the barn overnight and watched periodically during the day. The ewes with lambs are out in a field, but the lambs use their mothers for shelter when the snow and wind come. They also still have the creep feeder to get into and an old homestead house that is an excellent windbreak. The old house is a storage area so they can't get inside, but they can go all around it to find the sheltered side. When the owner feeds them he watches carefully for any lambs who look sick.
The endurance season starts with a ride about the last weekend in March or first weekend in April every year. This was an exceptionally snowy year but there are lots of other riders who live in places in the region where conditions have been much better for riding. Usually I begin riding earlier, when there is still some snow, but this year the big drifts in our pastures were the main problem since they would have pulled shoes off and I can't ride on gravel roads without shoes. Patch needed more time off anyhow because he had problems all of last season with sore tendons.
A call to my farrier got me his answering machine with a message saying he would call back after March 31, so it might be a while before I can get Patch's feet into shape for riding anyplace other than our field. I haven't been to anxious to get out there in the cold wind anyhow.
We have had a pair of trumpeter swans on our pond for over a week now, and this morning another one has joined them. They are white with black bills and feet, and they are larger than the Canada geese. I wonder if they will decide to stay here to raise their young, they never have before. We also have a pair of Canada geese and a few mallard ducks swimming around down there this morning. The pond is about 1/4 mile from the house so I spy on them with the binocculars that I keep on the windowsill.
Yesterday we saw an antelope napping in the sun in our neighbor's pasture which is beyond our pond. Technically they are Pronghorns, not antelope, but nearly everyone calls them antelope. This is the first one we have ever seen from the house in the 15 years we have lived here. We often see them another mile or so away when we are on our way to town, so this one might have just been doing some exploring when he found a nice place to take a nap. I took the camera along when we headed for town, but didn't see any closer than about half a mile away. This herd migrates in a large area, some of it private land and much of it government land. I understand that they were brought in from somewhere like Wyoming to replace or augment our native herd.
I have been reading about potato diseases on a page from Cornell University that also has pictures. My garden soil is infected with several of them and so I will be using tires for a few years for potatoes, tomatoes and peppers to try to get good crops without resorting to chemicals. I still need to go to the farm store and get some certified potato starts, and I will throw out all the homegrown ones from last year. My compost piles all have peelings and trimmings from infected potatoes, so I can't even use my own compost to grow them.
And here is a not too good picture of some of the local pronghorns that I was able to get because they had just crossed the highway and I was able to stay behind the car. it was taken in late summer when nothing is green anymore, but they were looking for something before they moved on over the hill. If there is any grass left, it would be near the base of the sagebrush where it gets a bit of shelter from the sun and might have been missed by other grazing animals.
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