Beautiful Summer Day!!

After a couple of days of wind we finally have a great day and look what is blooming, a new lily plant I bought to replace one the mice did in, I could not believe how big the flower buds were getting, thought the plant was going to topple over with the weight of them, then looked out the window yesterday morning and here it was...the first bloom!! The "Swoopers" must have found a new place for their nest as they have stopped trying to get into the house, I see them just flying by, thank-goodness, it was getting to be a chore to get in the front door without them coming in too. Have been trying to make a decision on what color to paint the wooden railing coming up to the front door. The safe and boring pick would have been white but I wanted something a bit different so decided on a pinky brown color, I know....it is hard to describe...painted a piece of board and sat it on top of the railing to look at for a few days....maybe the paint should have been a bit lighter...well I am going to go for it, if I think it is too dark I will get some more white paint to mix in the original color for the second coat (seems I am always doing that) I got a couple of planters that fit over the rail and have them planted...and there they set...waiting for the rail to be painted...so it is get out there and do some painting or forget about it until next year....I am getting a paint brush as we speak...also have a another problem, a spider has laid her eggs in her web against one end of the railing but I see they are hatching this morning so if I start at the other end hopefully they will be hatched and gone before I get to them. Well am on my way to paint....or put the planters up...and wait until next year to paint....

The weeds say...yup....summer is here!!

What have I been up to?? As you notice...not blogging....It seems I have been doing nothing but trying to play catch-up since the weather finally decided to get with the season. Everything is so far behind. We finally have all the shearing of the animals finished and I got a couple fleeces ready for a fleece show but now to get at the rest of the fleece sorting. Remember the garage that was going to be my place to sort etc. etc.??....well is still at the stage it was last fall...my patience is wearing a bit thin...so Monday when it was raining RH was wondering what he should do...I asked him if it was raining in the garage...and if he had gas for the bobcat....no it was not raining in the garage and yes he had gas for the bobcat, so now the floor is leveled in the garage and we had a load of gravel delivered so now he is out putting that down on the floor and then comes the infloor heating whatever that was given to him when he helped build a chicken barn a few years ago. The cement man is supposed to be giving us a quote on the cement and finishing....what is taking so long on getting the quote???...his computer is not working properly...and he just might have to sit down and figure it out himself...I really feel bad for that poor man!! Meanwhile we were given one of those garage/tent things, the cover needed replacing and for a while I was getting so excited as a company said they could make me a plastic cover for it and I would use it for a greenhouse...but we got a replacement cover and moved all the fleece into it that was in the garage....there is so much stuff in it I can not set the sorting table up. The painting of trim in the house is on hold while I try to rescue my flowerbeds that the mice demolished during the winter. They did a lot of damage and I lost most of my bulbs so have been replacing them and have you ever noticed....it does not matter how bad the weather is...the weeds still grow...so have been trying to get them under control too. The good thing is the garden got planted and it is up, the only damage from the last snowfall is the bean plants had just come up and although we covered them most of the beans froze so have to plant some more. We had used evestroughing pieces to cover the rows of the peas and beans and when we took them off we lay them down beside the raised beds....and wow!! what great gopher traps they are!! have been teaching Maxx to go check the garden occasionally and when he goes down the gophers hide under the evestrough and he can turn the trough's over himself and get them so at the moment there have been no gophers in my raised beds, I hope they have got the message that the garden is not their grocery store!!I have also been spinning a bit each day as I am so behind on the fibre front, have been carding the llama fibre I had washed and dehaired at the mill with some merino and silk and so far have one spool spun up and will start a new one today, am spinning it very fine so takes a while and am slowly knitting on socks, had planned to knit four pair a month but at the moment am really behind and fall markets are going to be here before I know it. Still have not discovered what bird left the egg on my doorstep, am beginning to think a nasty bird robbed someones nest and dropped the egg on the step and was disturbed before it could eat it. The little birds that were looking for a nesting box....I thought they were looking for a box....but it turns out they were cliff or barn swallows and they do not nest in boxes, their cousins the tree swallows took over the nesting boxes, well the cliff swallows are back and have decided they should nest in my house and there has been discussion about that and my answer is no-way...and the sad looks are not going to change my mind...their names are The "Swoopers". Found them sitting so sadly on the evestrough by the front door during the rain the other day. Everytime we go out the door I am afraid they are going to swoop into the house. Well off I go to water the flowers and the garden and tend to a few more weeds.

What a difference a day makes!!

This is what we woke up to this morning, same view from same window...please let it stay for a few months. I just lugged all the potted plants back outside so they could soak up some sun for a bit and we had put evestrough pieces over the rows of peas and beans when the snow and cold hit, I just went down and took them off and everything looks o.k. Then look what I found on the front step...someone left me a gift...but what do they want me to do with it?? Hatch it for them?? Should I run to the store and get one of those little incubators like they use in schools?? I could not believe it...I thought...that is a funny looking rock...it was not a rock...it was an egg...was she in a hurry and could not make it to her nest?? I do not need the stress!! Well better go soak up some sun before the clouds move in....and ask around and try to find out who is missing an egg....

Snow Days...in June!!

What can I say.........this started last night and continues today!! Baa and humbug!! We have been shearing llamas and alpacas all week, we had started with the two male alpacas but then we did not have the right blades for the clipper so ordered some to be put on the bus for the next day and went on shearing the female llamas...thank-goodness as the females have a large barn to get into out of the weather. The boys do not, there is no sense having a barn for them as one would go in and stand in the doorway and not let anyone else in. we have the small brown male in with four llama geldings and one alpaca gelding, he is so timid and the black gelding is such a nasty boy, usual when they are gelded they calm down but not this thing, am so tired of the screaming and fighting. We went to see grandson #3's performance in the play Aladdin, when we left home it was raining hard and cold and on the way back home we ran into a snowstorm and roads were bad, worried all the way home about the two male alpacas, llamas are o.k. as we just shear their blanket...alpacas are naked. All the way home we were trying to figure out where to put the brown Alpaca so he could stay warm and dry, then remembered that we had a small shelter that we use for the goat weanlings and it was not in use at the moment so as soon as we got home RH managed to halter him and put him in the little shelter. I was worried he would be stressed in a new area...no he was happy as can be...he is a loner and so happy to be by himself. The black gelding was o.k., he was with the llama boys.
Now my poor garden, the peas and beans had just come up, they were late because it has been so cool out, what to do!! Finally I thought of the evestroughing we had not put up on the garage yet, the peas and beans are still small enough if we turned them upside down over the plants maybe it would save them so that is what we did, now hope it works. The trees we do have are loaded down with the wet snow and almost flat with the grown, will their be any hope for my berry bushes that were just flowering. Had finally planted the daisies out in the flowerbed, they were getting so rootbound in their pots, the bed is at the front of the house and there is not much snow there so hopefully they will be o.k. Thank-goodness the rest are still in their pots and I could lug them all back into the house. Is this ever going to end!! It went below zero last night, we needed the moisture but could it not be a warm rain??
Now on the happy front...I finally have the crochet scarf blocked and took it's picture before the bad weather started. I am still working on the thin as sewing thread llama yarn I bought on cones, still have lots left, is so much easier to crochet it, knitting takes forever and is hard to knit as the yarn splits so easy. I wanted to do something different with the ends of the scarf so made up an edge....reminder to self...if you are making something up.....and have to repeat it.......WRITE DOWN WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!!! The first edge went great....the second one longer as I had to figure out what I had done on the first one. Well might as well go snuggle down with a cup of tea and knit a bit.

Gone to the birds!!

I can not believe the month of May went by that fast!! What have I been doing?? Trying to kill myself off...that is what!! I am still doing the house cleaning, painting trim around windows and doors and let us not even mention cleaning all the venetian blinds on the twenty-one large windows in this house....and there are not blinds on all the windows.In the laundry room I had to stand balancing on the corners of the dryer to reach the window to first paint the trim then wash the blind and then the window and the screen....at one point I had thought maybe I should have hooked a water bottle...some pain killers...and my cell phone to my belt just incase I fell off the dryer. Well got that all done but when I went to use the dryer...somehow...and who knows how it happened.....when I turned the dryer on the drum inside was hitting the top of the dryer lid...have to work at getting these extra pounds off I guess. RH said he would have a look at it....a few days later when he ran out of clean clothes he finally got at it and with the help of a 2x4 he managed to pop the top back up so yesterday was spent washing clothes. Got the garden all planted and things are starting to come up and the trees are leafing out and the grass is finally green, I have to go to the greenhouse and get some more lillys etc. to replace the ones the mice did in on me. What a mess they made, have been waiting to see what I have left. We have taken pieces of pvc pipe and put mouse seed in them and placed them in the flowerbeds and the raised veg beds and so far they are under control. When I said sister Jeannie that I had the garden all planted and got the mouse seed out...she said what!! now you are growing mice!! I said it is not that type of seed... Then I had that beautiful white poppy last year with the purple center, when I bought it at the plant store the poor little thing was sitting there with no label on it and wow!! it was the best buy I made. I sent a picture of it to my Aunt in Washington and she sent me a seed cat. from down there that had seeds I could buy to grow them. So I ordered a pk of the white and a pk of the pink and red. When it came time to plant them and I opened the pk thinking I would find...like..poppy seeds...and I would just plant a few...all there was in the pks was this bit of dust..so planted it all. I had them under my grow light and they came up and last week I potted them in their own pots....how many plants did I get???? I have sixty-one little poppies sitting under the grow light...what can I say, a few will not make it as they were pretty small but it looks like I will have a poppy farm. I had started some dahlias from seed under the light and they are complaining bitterly as it is so crowded, maybe I should get another light...but then you know what would happened...yup...been there done that...had a whole ping pong table full of plants one year...lights hanging from the ceiling...plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling around them...I will confine myself to one light.
Now today we were going to start shearing the llamas and alpacas but it rained last night so have to let them dry out first, good thing RH cut all the grass around the place the last couple of days. I don't know how it can be 25C one day and then drop down to the single digits the next day. RH took off with the recycling stuff so that will be out of the way. We did not get the floor in the garage last fall as we ran out of warm weather so we have to get that done but before we could get at it we had to find someplace to put everything that we had stored in the garage...mainly all my gift fibre. A friend gave us his tent/garage thingy but it needed a new canvas cover, we finally got the new cover and last week put it up beside the garage. RH got all the frame work up, I had said to him becareful of the little evergreen, he was the only tree on the whole quarter section and the cows had chewed him down all those years and we brought him up to the yard area and he has been so happy and grown so well, RH said he is o.k. I have left lots of room for him....wellll...I went out later to see if he needed help...he said he had to move the tent legs as he had them too far out....but....I said what about little tree..his branches are sticking into the tent!! So he had to move the legs again. so we put the canvas topper on...in the wind...we managed to get it up over the top all the time I was thinking we could be flying away in a hotair balloon with no basket any moment. Well when we got it over the top we realized we had it the wrong way around and had to take it back down turn it and put it back up...in the wind!! But it is up and we moved everything from the garage into it. Then Friday we went over to friends and RH sheared their five llamas and I helped them sort the fibre...that was our holiday, now onto ours.....we have forty plus animals.
One day these little birds arrived on the deck looking for a nesting box, so had to drop everything and get the nesting boxes up. It was so funny how excited they and their other little friends were about the boxes, the flying and flipping around, doing a happy dance in the sky. I was down at the garden watering when they were trying to make the decision which box to chose, we had put up four of them, grandsons had made them at scouts one year and I was gifted with them. I took some pictures of them. You know me...I wanted to run out and buy enough lumber to build more nesting boxes to put all around the yard. Controlled myself...so far...
Not too much on the fibre front going on, did get a scarf crocheted but have not taken a picture of it yet, it is blocking right now and of course the steady sock knitting in odd moments. Well better get back to the painting and hopefully the shearing if the weather clears up, have to get fleeces ready for the upcoming fleece shows!!