Lakeside

, originally uploaded by harpyr.

My brother flew in yesterday from Arizona for a surprise visit. Today is my dad's birthday and everybody is spending the weekend out at the lake cabin. I picked up my bro and we drove out to for the surprise visit. Dad had a big ol smile on his face. It's been two years since Tom visited last. I'm so glad to see him again. The kids had a great time playing in the mud and water. I didn't really venture far from the shaded deck and air conditioned cabin. It was about 85 F degrees out and I just don't like sweating all that much. It's weird that I spend all winter fantasizing about the summer and then when it gets here I can hardly stand to be outside for very long when the weather is like this. I much prefer the half cloudy days with a nice strong breeze and the occasional brief rain shower.. We've had a lot of those this summer and I've been thankful for that. We might head back out to the cabin on Sunday and I'll be sure to take some more pictures from different angles if I do. The few shots I did snap were all taken with a zoom from waaay up on the deck that over looks the water from a big hill.

A second chance

The only way to cope with my intense emotional upset over the destruction of my flower bed was to promptly go out and buy new plants to replace it. Never mind that fully 1/3 (atleast!) of the growing season is past. I couldn't go through the rest of the summer with only a scraggly bunch of lamb's quarter growing where my lovely amaranth had been.
As it turns out a few of the tiny sprouts of amaranth that I started from seed survived and I found some nice big specimens at Anne's Greenhouse to look pretty while the sprouts grow up. I also got a nice big sage plant (not the culinary kind) that says it's hardy to -30F. If I insulate it with some straw in the winter I'm hoping it'll pull through.

I also got a few daisy plants that I'm in love with. One is the perfect shade of purple and so well complimentedby the orangey yellow ones. So bright and happy!






















I reinforced the fence against the side of the house and patched up another hole I found with some chicken wire. I think that should do the trick. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Love-Lies-Bleeding

My favorite plants faced an untimely end. Adie, our youngest Corgi got into the flower bed and murdered my amaranth plants. I am bawling like a baby over this. A person should not be this attached to plants but when your growing season is as short as ours there is a lot of anticipation that builds up over the winter. Needless to say, I was really looking forward to seeing my favorite flowers this year. Now that dream is dashed in a few brief moments of puppy mischief. How depressing.

We rented a movie that has an Ironman preview on it and Quinn keeps watching it over and over and rocking out to the song.

Da Da DA DA DA da-da-da-da-da-da-da DaDaDa
He sings along with the heavy Black Sabbath guitar riff. It's pretty funny. We left Zay with Gramps for a couple hours and took Quinn and Meme to see that movie and we all really enjoyed it. It is my second favorite superhero movie after the Spiderman series. It's way better than the Fantastic Four or even X-Men. Loved it. Robert Downey Jr. was very funny and witty. I'm already wanting to see it again.. gonna have to wait for dvd though. Movies are so expensive in the theatre!

gettin stuff done...

Major stuff got taken care of today. My mom and her hubby Jon came over and helped me fix some stuff around here. He replaced an electrical outlet that wasn't working properly and patched a pipe so that I can use my outdoor faucet again. She hauled a bunch of boxes of toys out of the basement and out to the shed to get ready for a garage sale and held the baby so I could clean the cat box. I'm very appreciative and slowly warming up to her new husband. As it turns out he seems to be a decent sort of fellow with only good intentions. I'm glad for that.

Our dogs are recovering from being spayed and neutered on Sunday. No corgi puppies for us. It seemed like a good idea at one point but we came to the conclusion awhile ago that it would just be way more effort than we are willing to invest to take care of a litter and make sure they all made it to good homes.

I also got my shop up and running finally. You can see a link over to the left there for it. I haven't been doing anything for the shop lately but I hope to get back to it soon. Right now I just have some small pieces that I finished weeks ago.

I'm trying to get the yard all cleaned up and ready for planting. I got my compost pile all sorted out today. The old compost that is ready for using in beds is now piled up and the bin is empty and ready to take all the food scraps that have built up over the winter. I just stick my kitchen scraps in plastic shopping bags and put them in a trash can next to my back door and then empty them into the pile when spring comes. It's kinda messy but not too heinous as long as I wear gloves. It doesn't smell nearly as bad as one might imagine and occasionally, oddly enough, a very sweet earthy smell emerges from a bag that had just the right combination of veggie scraps. It's quite satisfying to see just how large the quantity of food scraps that we've avoided adding to the landfill over the course of a winter. And it was extremely satisfying to see the rich black humus that came out of my old heap. I'm eager to get it into some beds for planting.
Yay for summer!

oh and one last thing. My brother T called to let me know that he finally got all of my dad's old 8mm home movies converted to dvd. It turned out to be three hours of tape! Ohmygosh I am soo excited to see these.. he said not only is there stuff from when we were really young children but there is also stuff from when our parents went to Rome for their honeymoon and even stuff from my dad's childhood.. oh I can't wait to get the dvds in the mail!

spring has sprung!

Yep, the far north has thawed and the leaves are popping out and sunny has become the norm. Okay so the clouds have been consistently rolling in for the afternoons and we've been getting frequent drizzles but I'm not complaining. I'll take rain over forest fire smoke any day of the week.

I'm definitely feeling the added energy of 20 hours of daylight everyday. Yesterday I was brave enough to try walking all 6 children. Meaning the three human ones and the three canine ones. At the same time no less. All.by.my.self. Talk about a walking circus. There I was with a baby on my back, a great dane on one hand, two spastic little welsh corgis on the other and a two year old using my skirt to hang on to since I didn't have a free hand for her. And then top it off with a six year old riding circles around us on his bicycle. We must have been quite the sight. That was somewhat manageable until Zay decided that she couldn't walk any more. So then I had her held on my hip with one hand and all three dogs in the other. Which meant that they got all tangled up every three steps and I'd have to stop and free them before the dane had all his legs pulled out from under him and he squashed one of the corgis. That lasted for all of 5 minutes before Zay decided that walking was more precarious than being held. So needless to say, our walk didn't last long.

So that night was topped off by the wonderful experience of Meara having her first late night spell of inconsolable crying. It struck at around 12:30 am and I was up with her until about 2. Fun stuff. Now I'm up way earlier than I want to be with the two big kids. At least Meme is still sleeping. Thank goodness for the little things.

a wonderful discovery

oooh boy....I finally found it. The mysterious Queen video that I'd only ever seen small clips of here and there. I can kind of see why it wasn't featured on the two main Queen music video compilations since some of the camera work is less than stellar. However, I care not. For a die-hard Queen fan such as I this video is a wonderful thing to behold.