Garden Pics

With our garden getting a really late start this year, we are super pleased with how it is turning out. The potatoes are doing fine, with big luscious plants (maybe little fingerling potatoes too!)

Peas as tall as me! They are just about done now, but the lettuce, kale, spinach and swiss chard are looking mighty fine.

Even though the peppers are still small, we were able to pick a Poblano and an Anaheim today. Zucchini's will be ready to pick tomorrow, the onions can now be picked as needed.

The carrots, beets, cabbage, brussel sprouts and squashes are all growing just as we would hope.
And last of all, the asparagus ( or is it asparagi) are now looking awful hairy since we quit picking the shoots. Add a few garlic and tomatoes and it looks like it will be a successful year after all.

The Road is Open Again! July 4th!

Once a year I get to post a picture of Trial Lake as the ice comes off. The road is open to the end of the dam at Trial, but no further. Washington is still completely iced over. Nobody is going to camp at Moosehorn any time soon with the sign just peeking out from behind a drift.

The view from Bald Mountain Pass could be used for a Christmas card

There is so much water going over the Upper Provo River Falls that the bottom part is filled up with water and the river is way outside its normal course. It wasn't exactly very warm either. But the lower camgrounds all the way to Cobblerest are open with campground hosts in place. Just in time for Brooke's birthday. Pretty cool!

Squawk! Should a parent be worried?

Our latest activity with our family was a great hit with the little ones. You have to wonder about the wisdom of letting little children fondle the carcasses of dead chickens. Ben was saying something here about snapping off the heads of the little chickenses ( I THINK THAT'S WHAT HE SAID)

Caleb was found to be having a great time with them himself, even if he did look a little guilty. Mommy am I in trouble?

These two little chicks weren't the least bit ashamed of showing off their plucked carrion. What was all this about, anyway?

Chickens falling from the sky! What is the world coming to now? Well, the whole idea of this game was to catch falling chickens from the sky in your pants. And if that isn't weird enough for you, then I don't know what is.

A Small Trip to the Bang Store

This adorable little girl got hurt earlier this year and had to have stitches on her forehead. With summer coming on, it is really hard to keep the sunscreen on to protect the scar, so Brooke decided it would be good for Lily to have bangs to cover her scar. Lily was excited to get bangs. On the way to Sharon's home to get her hair cut, she worried that they were going to be too late. "Mom, do you think that they will run out of bangs?" Brooke humored her and said she thought they would still have some left. As they were walking up the driveway, Lily relaxed a little. "Mom, don't worry. They will probably still have some left."

As they left Sharon's the wind blew her new bangs up. Lily was worried again. "Did the wind blow them away, Mom?" Don't worry Lily. They are still there, and as long as we can keep that big brother away from the scissors, they will probably be there a good long time. We all agree, she is as cute as ever after her trip to the "bang store".

Livin' the dream!

I love being Grandpa. Today Mikey and his Dad came over to borrow my truck. Mikey decided to put on all the safety gear, just like his Grandpa does. I think I need to hire him to be one of our technicians. Later today, I got to go to Max's last baseball game - the championship. Isabel had her head in a book, but Jake wanted to talk my head off. I went to yesterday's game and watched Max hit a home run as his team clobbered the other team. Yesterday, I was over at the house down the street where Cy, Andrew, Caleb and Elsie live and got to play with them a little before dinner. Tonight Angie Oswald and her girls were over here working on a project with Janene. Not too many grandpas get to spend this much time with their grandkids. I am living the dream!

First Fruits

I know everyone gets tired of us bragging about our garden..... but I just had to do it. For a month now we have been able to have asparagus every two or three days. Today we had a complete dinner from our garden including a mixed greens salad. Janene has made rhubarb pie and rhubarb sorbet too. Soon the peas, onion and parsnips will be ready, and I even saw a squash blossom on one of the butternut squash plants.

This week I had Mikey helping me in the garden ( he was a real help, believe it or not) and I took him around showing him all the plants. "Here, Mikey - what do you think these are"? "Carrots, Grandpa" " Nope, Lettuce" "What about these?" " Carrots?" Nope, Peppers"
"What about these?" "Carrots?" "Nope, Strawberries - What about these?" "Onions, Grandpa?" " Nope - Carrots" It was a hoot! Everything I asked him was "Carrots" and we went through 12 different things. When we got to the carrots, that's when he came up with ssomething else.

I love having our little ones close. Wait til I get to tell about Lily and her new hairdo! Maybe Brooke will blog about that first.

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.

"

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.