Turkeys

We have been enjoying seeing turkeys behind our house...Richard has seen them in our yard twice....this time he took pictures of them from out the window....

This is through a screen, so looks a bit fuzzy..but look at all of them!

Sure enjoy seeing and hearing the turkeys!

Sunday

Due to all our garden harvests, the huge barbie project has kind of been on hold..these had gathered in the spare room and I shall deal with them soon...mostly happy meal toys, etc  and more etc ha!

My two fave rocks I have found..believe I had the fish on here already, the little pig one I found in front of the Old Jail Museum and hid it in an indention in the foundation on the North side of the Home Advisor (Lemco) building..he looked cute sitting in there!

Last Week of July

A many headed sunflower!

I really like these white pumpkin/gourd things...I think it may be more of a light yellow when it is ripe....Fall is on the way!  The Queen Anne's Lace makes it look pretty!

Going to have to investigate to see what gourd this turn into..

When bugs sleep and stuff...took these pictures late one evening this week..Have seen Japanese Beetles and Bumble Bees sleep inside the Rose of Sharon blooms...

Freaky Friday

Yesterday I dumped out the tote of doll bits and pieces to see if Cinderella was hiding in there....she wasn't, but oh boy doesn't this look great? headless, armless, legless dolls...there is Prince Charming missing both of his legs!

There was a little plastic cow tangled up in Ariel's hair...oh my..

at least I have an equal number of heads and bodies missing heads! Ha!

and they all look so happy! Ha!

Inconsiderate People

Have had these pictures on my camera a while....We went down to the cabin on July 12 and mowed/had dinner...we had everything looking really nice. at dark, a family showed up to stay in Westy's cabin......the guy didn't come on down to turn around (I guess because we were there)...The next afternoon, a storm came through town and knocked down a lot of branches, etc. Lots of wind/rain.  So we decided that evening to go see if everything was ok at the cabin. Well. You could tell people had been in and out of the road down to the river....and when we got down towards our place, we had to wait for mr. visitor man to come on our from turning around at our place so we could go on down...isn't this dandy? wish I had a picture of what it looked like the day before! The jerk made all kinds of ruts with his big dually pickup! He didn't even "follow" the road and cut his turns short and generally made a heck of a mess..I just wonder what kind of people do that...so rude...the actual road is at the bottom of this picture...yes, would still have been muddy, but why did he have to drive where we had just mowed? and you can turn a pickup around at Westy's, so why did he even have to come down there at all?  Loser!!

We have had two loads of gravel delivered now....hopefully everyone can stay on the gravel, but not sure they can manage to do that...

On a brighter note, here is a sunflower picture I took this morning in the garden!

Wordless Wednesday

Tuesday Randoms

I have been meaning to get these on here....Sarah makes the neatest "cards" for us for occasions..using the kids handprints or footprints..the first one is my birthday card and the second on was Richard's Father's Day card....I think they are just amazing!

Tiny mushroom...took this picture a week or so ago in our yard.

Yesterday we canned 14 quarts of dill pickle spears and 14 pints of bread and butter pickles, pictured here..

Vienna Rocks! If you haven't checked out their facebook page, do it! Ha! What a fun family friendly activity!  I found this rock at church the last night at VBS....decided to keep it as I think it will look so cute at the cabin (inside)  

oh, and I know the artist! 

The rock thing is a lot of fun for people...I know it'll subside some probably when school starts, but hope it continues in some fashion or another....

Busy Day

Has been a busy morning here.........First I stained this awesome picnic table Sarah and Matt got for us for the cabin..

Will put the protective coat on later tonight or tomorrow...I think it looks great!

This is only part of the cucumbers we will be dealing with this afternoon!

updates to follow....eventually!

Pickles!

We started with  a sink full of cucumbers this morning....after I made a bunch of cucumbers and onions, we started working on making some dill pickles..

Cut a bunch of them into spears..

Trying something different with them....Richard had been told to put a grapevine leaf in with each quart to help them stay crisp.so we gave it a try on four of them...

Water bath for ten minutes!

We made seven quarts...

Aren't they pretty?

Thursday

Picture of the garden taken several days ago....you can see the corn raised itself back up for the most part...

Shasta Daisy

Last night's sunset...

I planted cosmos this year...first year in a long time. I decided to plant both purple-toned ones and orange-toned ones. When they started coming up, there was this other plant mixed in with them, or so I thought! I knew what the stems/leaves of purple cosmos looked like....this other plant I wasn't too sure about....this was in a newly disturbed area..So I kept an eye on the plants and decided to "weed" them out....I did several of them before I decided to just wait and see...and sure enough, those were the orange toned cosmos I was pulling up! Not my smartest move! Ha!

Canning!

Yesterday was spent fixing up a bunch of cucumbers and zucchini and turning them into sweet relish..So I made two different recipes at the same time. I added red pepper, green pepper, onions and carrots to each...ended up with 8 pints of zucchini relish and 13 pints of pickle relish...

ground onion!

the zucchini one cooking away!

and the cucumber one!

21 pints!

these are so pretty! makes me want to have a hot dog, or better yet a bowl of ham and beans! 

Mute Monday

Riding Off into the Sunset

I have been working on these Barbie horses on and off for the last couple of weeks...they were a mess, of course! Their manes and tails needed tamed!!

Looking better after some tlc.

The light one is called Sun Runner....of course I still have the boxes! Ha!...somewhere on there it talks about styling it's long mane....yeah, that was a lot of fun! not!

and the dark one is Star Stepper..

Back of the boxes....all that styling sure looks like fun!

and here they are ready to head West...literally! believe the clasp of the saddle may be broke....I honestly didn't work on it too hard...and I am missing the "decorations".....they are downstairs no doubt, just didn't go to thee trouble to locate them. Will do that another day..

Goodbye Star Stepper! Broken bridle and all!

Hope Emily and the others have as much fun with these as our girls did...they truly did enjoy their toys!