Birthday Girl!

May 29th was Kirby's 12th birthday! Mama & Papa brought the cake for supper and we had a quiet evening on the acreage. Tonight she is having some friends over for a 'sleep-over'.


With dance done for the year Kirby has been trying to find something else to occupy her time, she volunteered last weekend at the vet clinic, she had a good time and can't wait to go again. For her birthday she got 2 hours of riding lessons, just down the hill from home.

This weekend is her Confirmation, she has been busy preparing herself for this for the past 4 months, her cousin Jara Van Ham will be her sponsor, some of you may remember her as the Flower Girl from our wedding.

She has been saving her money to buy a 'Scan Disk', which is an Mp3 player as well as a mini video player, with this she will be able to listen to music and watch movies while on the go.

Little Helpers!

Since the tractor arrived there has been no shortage of help around here! The other morning Blair was up at the crack of dawn and headed out the door, I asked him where he was going and he stated. "To pick rocks!"


Its a fight for the driver's seat of the tractor.


The losers have to ride in the trailer with the rocks.


Even dad gets a turn once in a while.


This morning Sugar left a present for us by the back step. Erinn of course had to go check it out.

Man is it WET!

So far we've had over an inch and a half in the past two days and its still raining! The forecast is for rain right through the weekend.


I've never seen water sitting like this in the backyard. Carolyn's garden, which is just off to the top left is flooding out. I noticed the other day that the beans and peas are starting to poke out of the ground, they should really sprout up when the sun comes out again on Monday.


My manure will work in real nice when its dry enough to get the tractor back there. The ditch is full and starting to run over the back driveway, the plan is to put a culvert in sometime so everything can flow out the back, I was going to borrow a pump and pump it out but what's the use, there is so much water everywhere it would fill up again in no time.

Little Johnny Tractor!

"Hey Carolyn, look what followed me home today!"


"And look how it fits perfectly in the back of our truck!"

"Doesn't it look so nice and green? Can I keep it?"


"Look how much shiny and brighter it is than that old one."

Doesn't look like I will get to use my new tractor any time soon. I checked the rain gauge and we got almost 20 mm (3/4 of an inch) of rain over night and we are supposed to get more today. I almost lost a boot on the way back to the rain gauge so it is wet!


Blair was so excited when he got home from school he couldn't stop yelling, Carolyn & I could hear him from in the basement. He got a toy tractor from Mama & Papa for doing so good in dance, it is exactly like the big one. After checking everything out he watched the safety DVD and boned up on safe operation, he's already talking about picking rocks and getting the grass cut as soon as things dry up!

Rain Delay!

Last night the clouds rolled in as I was getting the load of manure shovelled off the back of the truck, than just before bed it started to rain.


When we got up this morning this is what it looked like outside. I haven't checked my rain gauge yet but they had forecasted 10 mm, my guess is we got at least that!


You can see some of the manure I got spread out, I was going for another load today but its too wet to get into the yard, so I'm gonna have to wait until things dry out a bit.


So it looks like I'm gonna finally have a day off! You can see we got another big spruce planted on the north east side of the house, I planted these big ones where I could route the water from the downspouts.

I started working the area behind the house, where the hydro seeding it gonna happen, but it was too hard so I had the sprinklers running on it. Now with this rain it should soften everything up and I'll be able to work it in real good. I had hoped to get another area seeded in front of the house, between the rock garden and the lilacs, before the rain, but only got as far as working it up and prepping it.

Undesirable!

Last night I had to drive down to the neighbours for a load of manure and encountered a rattlesnake that was sunning himself on the side of the road.


He was huge! I estimate he was about 8 feet long and probably had a 3 inch diameter.

When I drove back he was already gone but while I was shovelling off the manure in the backyard the horses at the back fence got spooked. I walked back and watched what was going on and figured the snake must of been heading back to the valley for the night when the horses came across him. I watched the horses as they slowly followed his progress, munching grass as they went, he was maybe only 20 feet from our back fence!

If you check my earlier posts you'll see pictures from last summer when Harv & I and the kids encountered one in the valley; Harv almost stepped on that one!

Country Visitors!

Here's some of our country visitors, these are the more desirable ones, we luckily haven't had any of the least desirable ones visit, yet!


Kirby feeding her horses at the back fence.


Me and my little helper seeding grass.


Cat on the back deck! Sugar comes over whenever he sees me outside, he follows me around where ever I go than when I come in the house he paws at the back door for awhile before he finally stretches out on the patio table and waits for me to come back out.


There are a ton of pheasants around this year, every evening when I'm out I can hear them crowing all around. This one just happened to walk through the yard the other morning. I think I will be buying a licence this fall since there are so many around.


Nothing beats a prairie sunset. This picture doesn't do it justice however, it almost takes me breath away every time.

Seeing Green!

There's still a lot of brown around here but we are slowly turning it green!

Carolyn's dad let me borrow his John Deere so we could get some ground worked up for planting.

Here we are planting the lilacs along the front.

With something like 100 of these it took us a while to get them all in.

Blair taking a break on the tractor.

Almost done!

A couple of bigger evergreens along the west side of the house, hopefully these will break the wind when they get a little larger.

It's Alive!

Things are finally getting growing around the ranch.


Thanks to my neighbour I got our irrigation system up and running, now I just have to run a lot more hose, one just doesn't cut it!


Is that grass I see?


The trees we planted last month are doing really good, yesterday we noticed white flowers on them.

More Trees!

Today I took advantage of the sunshine and got some more trees transplanted.


These spruce trees we got from mom & dad, we planted them along the west fence last spring before the house was even started, they were hard to find due to the weeds and grass growing along the fence.


I planted them on the south side of the mound, they should do well here because the water from the yard tends to run along here.


I put four of the larger spruce that mom & dad brought on either side of the septic tank, these ones should do good too since they will get the run off from the northeast eave's trough.


Here's one of the one's we planted before the snow, this one has leaves already, the rest are just budding.


Carolyn got her solar lights out, it looks very picturesque when its pitch black out.

Another Busy Weekend Ahead!

Its dance recital weekend! Carolyn has been busy all week doing hair & makeup and shuffling kids back and forth to practice Monday/Tuesday, rehearsal Wednesday, and recital started Thursday night at the Esplanade. They had another showing Friday night and the last one Saturday afternoon. I spent the week training so I missed out on most of the excitement.


Erinn's dance is called "Zipadedoodah".


Blair's is "Getcha Head in the Game".


Kirby is in two, this one is her dress for "ROCK in the USA".

Wonder Woman ready for her "I Need a Hero" dance.

I didn't get my rain gauge out in time but we got a good dump of rain which starting on Wednesday night and lasted until Friday afternoon.


This moisture should be good for my freshly seeded grass and the trees. They got the irrigation up and running last week but I have yet to tap in.


Some visitors at the back fence, I had a good time watching that little calf jumping and running around. The Black Angus bull standing there looks menacing but the kids can go right up to him and he'll eat grass out of their hands while they are patting his head.

Busy Week(please)end!

This past weekend was very busy, besides working the yard, seeding grass and hauling manure we managed to celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary on Sunday. The celebrating started at 9:30 pm and ended at 9:45 pm when we went to bed (to sleep!).


While Carolyn and I were busy working in the yard Erinn was busy working on her hula hooping.


For our anniversary I got Carolyn not just one rock but several. Don't be deceived, these things were huge! Carolyn helped load the small one and I hefted the rest into the back of the truck, with the bumper dragging we drove them home. On the drive I commented about it seeming silly that we are hauling rocks from the city out to the country when we are surrounded by them, Carolyn's reply was, "Well they were free!".


I managed to get the pooh rotor-tillered in before church on Sunday afternoon, then, after getting the kids off to bed we ventured back out and got the spuds and the beans planted. With only 4 rows planted Carolyn picked up some peas and planted them as well. Next year she wants to make the garden twice as big, next she'll want a green house!


Since our trees aren't big enough yet this is the only watering I can do in the yard without the neighbours getting exited. They have been forecasting rain however last night we only got a five minute sprinkle, I might have to start doing more of this in the yard.

After getting everything planted and watered we finally sat down on the back deck and had a glass of wine to celebrate our wedding anniversary but after the busy day we were so beat that it was short lived and off to bed we went since both of us had to return to work the next day.


Last night we had a little visitor come spend the night at our house. This is Trinity, she is Carolyn's brother & sister-in-law's newest addition; now Ben has a baby sister and the girls have another girl cousin, now they are are only 2 behind to catching up with the boys (on the Zimmer side they are still up by 3; poor Blair!).

This week will prove to be busy as well with both Carolyn & I working Monday to Friday and the kids with their dance recital on Thursday, Friday & Saturday. Lately we've been appreciating going to work for the relaxation!

That's a load of horse sh@#$!

Well actually that is a load of horse pooh!


We picked up a load for $20 from the neighbour's place, just down the hill.


He loaded it with his bobcat and I unloaded it with my shovel. I know what your thinking, "he's pretty good at shoveling that stuff!"


This would be the garden, now I just gotta work it in and Carolyn can't plant the spuds.