Friday

I was on my way to Home Depot to get some dirt for the garden when I passed by these... I had forgotten they were there.  I stopped, pulled into the drive, and took a shot to show you, as they are truly remarkable.

I'm making these extra large so you can see them.

 

I cropped this one down further, because it is just unreal... the curly wool on the bison... the facial expression on the longhorns... but I could not get the cropped photo to load, despite three tries.  Biggify this and you will see what I mean. 

Keith says he welds the steel together after making it in parts... whatever he does, it's incredible.

 

I was on my way to look at some hay that someone had for sale about ten miles from us.  The hay turned out to be decent... horse-quality hay... so we are laying in a dozen bales tomorrow just in case... something comes our way during the winter... a dozen won't go far, but is a little stash. 

 

We thought about getting 20, but frankly... right now we have nothing to which to feed it... it's just a feeling I have.

It will be delivered sometime tomorrow afternoon.

 

On Sunday Keith has a church charity golf tournament to play in, and tomorrow, I am going back to the Henry's Plant Farm in Lecompton.  I went there on the Kaw Valley Farm Tour last year... it is the most beautiful place, planted in extensive perennial gardens, with ten greenhouses, and many animals kept on display.  They are having their "Summer" Garden Party, as it was way too hot to have one in the summer this year.  They have scores of varieties of mums for sale, so I am going to try to get two new ones at least.  I stopped at Home Depot this evening to get some dirt to plant my last perennials (that have sat on the deck since July).... but they had closed the garden center at 7.  I went by and paid partially for the hay, and came on home.  I'll be up early tomorrow to do chores and drop off eggs and start out for the "real" country near Lecompton.

 

I'll have pictures of the beautiful gardens tomorrow night!

 

I leave you with a funny photo from the game cam this week:

 

 

I'm sure glad I wasn't to the south side of that tail when it went up!

 

 

A Roaring River

I ran to the post this morning to get a few groceries, and to take pictures of the Missouri River, which is going to be at flood stage later this week after they open the floodgates further up in South Dakota. 

Here is is from Riverfront Park in Leavenworth, which was originally a ferry landing.

It is very, very full, and moving very fast.

I would not like to venture out on it right now.

That's the view north, or upstream.

When we lived in Leavenworth, we lived one block over from the riverfront, which was on a high bank where we were.  There was a row of houses on our alley that faced the river, and we were the next houses.  We always took Oscar daily up to Esplanade, 

and Nicky the cat followed us.  There we would sit on a bench and watch the Missouri roll by at the bottom of the hill.  Hidden by a fold in the hill were railroad tracks.  Since I had grown up within the sound of the railyards in KCK, I loved to hear the trains coming day and night.  Once Oscar broke loose and disappeared down the hill and gave us a heart attack... he was very naughty, and would not come when called.  Thank heavens he reappeared and followed us home with Nick.  

 In the meantime, Keith was home working on these:

This gives you some idea of the layout.  The deep bed from last year is on the left. The foreground is the potato bed.... the arbor in the middle, with hyacinth bean growing at it's foot again... and on the other side, the two mirror beds.  As you can see, the inside bed, which will be for bramble fruit... stretches all the way to the compost bins. The yard-side bed will be another perennial/annual bed.  Yes, we have our work cut out for us.  To make it worse, there is a new iris bed under the maple tree at the north end of the garden.  There is now, as of this evening, a mirror bed across from it. 

I sprayed the Ozine in the big henhouse this afternoon, and then spread a bale of pine shavings on the floor instead of straw.  Fifteen minutes later, I remembered why I didn't use pine shavings for bedding... the smell was overwhelming.  I'm hoping it will dissipate over the next few days.  I am putting the feed up in the cans at night (the feeders, rather) so the mice are still mighty disappointed, and going to be mighty dead, as I have spread packets of poison. 

We finally knocked off at 6:30, worn out from the high heat and humidity, showered, and ran down the road to the new diner outside Tongie.  It was so nice to sit and be served dinner instead of cooking quickly and running back out to work some more.  So what did we do?  Came home, I did the watering, and Keith went back out and finished a bed!  Now he is going down to Sonic to get us some treats for our hard day's pay! 

As I went out to lock up the bantams (always the last to go to bed) I took Gertie, because she rarely gets to go in the henyard.  I had already closed the gate to the pasture.  There, where I had just been 20 minutes before, hung in the air the smell of a skunk.  Gertie began to bark wildly and I said a quick prayer that the polecat wasn't still there under the weeds. 

As we came out, I could smell it just as strongly in the yard.  I called out to Keith, and he turned around and said "I smell skunk!".  Gertie ran for the north fence barking, so we think it went that-a-way, away from a succulent chicken dinner!