One more day 'til June

I can't wait until June is here and summer begins! I am so tired of the long winter. The signs at J & L said "Be careful - it can still freeze" We were warned, but did we listen? Our poor little Sugar Babies will probably not survive this.

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J. Golden Kimball said where he lived in Round Valley near Bear Lake that they had a peculiar growing season there. One month of late summer - and eleven months of dead winter.

It seems that we are getting pretty close to that here. This used to be a little butternut seedling. Maybe we can have butternut sherbert.

It seems like every year I take a picture of the snow on the rhubarb ... and every year, it is closer to my summer birthday. This global warming stuff is too confusing for this old Utah boy.

Mysterious New Car Options

It all started with our rental car in Hawaii...

We have been looking at new cars and many of the new options simply baffle us old folks. But after having one of our grandkids in the car the other day and needing to roll down all four windows quickly, we thought this option would be particularly useful.

What is all the buzz about, anyway?

I went up on our hill tonight just as it was getting dark and noticed a big fuzzy mitten on one of our oak trees. It turns out that this swarm of bees probably came from one of our hives. We were looking at the hive a week ago and it looked like the bees were trying to make another queen. When they succeed, then the hive swarms and basically splits in two, leaving the old queen in the original hive. The new queen goes with the swarm to find a new home.

So... we found them a new home. We put all these bees with their new queen into another one of our hives. If we had not noticed, by tomorrow they would have found another place to live. We would then lose out on all the honey they can gather. These little gals were very patient and calm while I got a power saw and cut off the branch with them on it. We then put them in the hive and closed up the lid for the night. Pretty cool - thousands of bees and only one of them stung me.

A Project For This Old House

For a long time, we have had no windowsills in the front room. I wanted to make some out of vertical grain fir ( I love that wood), but I couldn't afford the wood. I also wanted to make the window casing from the same wood. I finally hit on the idea to make some windowsills out of an old piece of water damaged glue laminated beam. I found some old pieces of vertical grain fir that I salvaged from our apartments to use for the casing. So, without having to go to the store to buy any wood, I was set to start.

 I figured that this old piece would work fine. I first had to cut it in half widthwise.

 Then cut both pieces to a little wider than the finished windowsill.

 The next step was to cut each piece in half again lengthwise. This would give me four pieces for sills.

 Since my table saw could only cut part way through the beams, I had to cut the middle out with a sawzall....

 ....and pry the two pieces apart, because the sawzall doesn't cut too neatly.

 This left me with four rough blocks of glue lam big enough to carve each windowsill from.

 The planer smoothed out the rough cuts and cut off the water damaged layers of wood.

 Each piece had to be cut to the exact depth of the finished windowsill.

 Cutting and shaping the wood to match the shape of the windows came next with some complicated saw cuts and a few dado cuts.

 This was the final rough shape of the sill right before routing the edges and sanding.

 Here is a view of part of one of the completed sills. This little corner of the house is already a place where the grandkids like to sit and watch the sunset.

 Here is a detail of the lower corner.

,,,,,And an upper corner

 Did I mention that I love the natural color and grain of vertical grain fir?

Voila! The completed project. Well, sort of. There are still some nail holes to putty and some final finish and polishing to be done. After years of unfinished windows it is nice to have some done. And now, this old house just got a little nicer.

Just a thought about my new camera

The Unknown Blossom

Janene has this really nice house plant in our kitchen. In all the time we have had it, it has never bloomed. We got a start of it from Mary Lynn, who got hers as a wedding gift. Two days ago, I got a Fed Ex package at work. Carefully wrapped in a little (very wet) gift box were two flowers from Mary Lynn's plant. Here is one blossom to show the scale on our plant.

The little flower is incredible in it's detail.

It actually grows in clusters of about eight flowers.

We have a friend who has one of these plants that was brought across the plains by her ancestors and has been handed down from generation to generation. Janene gave her one of these flowers on the day that their oldest daughter was sealed to them in the Bountiful Temple. She will probably someday pass it on to her daughter. Hopefully their plant will bloom once in one of their lifetimes.

Life is full of tender mercies if you look for them - and are willing to share.

JANA

Here is our newest little girl. Jana is a darling little thing who was born right after Chelane's graduation party. At only a few hours old, she has no little old man wrinkles and just a hint of red hair. I could tell you all the stats, but suffice it to say, she is a little package physically, but a big bundle of joy for our family.

Janene (Jana's namesake) has yet to be able to hold her little granddaughter because of her cold. Tomorrow will be the magical day when Jana gets to know Grandma. I expect there will be few tears.

Ever wonder what happens in a tsunami?

Here is a picture of Hanalei Bay on the morning after the tsunami. The water in the bay would pull out to the sea leaving the bay exposed all the way across. It was really tempting to walk out on the coral.

Here it is five minutes later. It was not like big ocean waves. It was more like a river running in to fill an empty lake. It did this all day long. It was pretty cool to watch. Hopefully we never get to see another one.

Dr. Chelane - For real!

Chelane did it. She really graduated and got her degree. Here she is greeting the Dean of the College of Pharmacy.
Here she is getting "hooded". I did not realize that this was part of the doctor regalia. I should have paid more attention when David got his doctorate.

You get your hands off my little girl!

Almost everyone there was as proud of her as we are.


She had to take the oath with the others in her class. Very solemn. I hoped she would turn around for me.

She turned around later. She is so cute when she smiles.
The requisite picture with Mom and Dad.

Two of the cutest girls in the whole world.

Later, we had a party at our house with all of the family and friends. Mucho goodo foodo! Thanks to Lisseth and Mindy and Mel and lots of others. Chelane wore this killer dress. (where was my camera?) She looked just like a movie star. And then Angie went into labor.

Pretty cool, huh?