trip continued.......

After we finished Bear Country, we went to The Reptile Gardens. That was alot of fun, they have many many snakes and reptiles that you will never see in any other zoos or inclosures. My favorite tho was the Praire Dogs. They communitcate by doing sitting up and letting off a bark and sitting down, they look like there doing The Wave, I could sit and watch them for hours. We saw the bird show and snake show while there. This is a must see adventure if you ever get the chance. Jessicas favorite was the bearded dragons and the other lizards and skinks they have. Im thinking the giant tortuse was also a hilight to her. Pix above bear baby and bobcat from the Bear Country and Jessica with the big tortuse (he was over 100 years old) at the Reptile gardens.
From there we went driving threw the small towns and the hills by Mt Rushmore. We found over looks that had the most beautiful views and we saw many streams and small critters along the way. We got back around to Mt Rushmore at about sunset but it was getting rather chilly so we didnt spend alot of time walking around there. We went back to the campsite and cooked dinner and toasted marshmellows, then it was pretty much time to sleep. We had such a full day we were all tired.

Continued...........

After the holiday back from trip

We left on early friday,the weather was suppost to be pretty good for the weekend in Rapid City SD. We got up there mid after noon and the wind was blowing like crazy, the KOA that we had reserved to stay at we found was in the middle of town and minimal trees around. We decited to stick with it and found a nice spot with trees. It ended up not to be to bad there but except for the traffic noise you could hear. We were gone most of the time from the campground so it worked out ok. Now the wind was an other story, we looked like key stone cops putting up the tents and so on. We found a really good resturant out side of town up twards Sturgis, the food was really good so was the service. It was nice to have a good meal after the long day of traveling and setting up.

The first day we went to a number of places, First I had to stop at the quilt shop I had seen the night before, The Quilt Connection, very nice well stocked store. I picked up a number of FQ's and a few books. Then we were off to Bear country, you drive threw part of it and then get out and walk. Many many animals to be seen, the wolf were hard to get a pix of, but the bears were right there to say hi. My favorite part was seeing the babys in the walk around area, most of the animals were out but a few were sleeping like the mountain lions. There were some newly born fox and bears, the river otters were so much fun to watch. Alot of my pix were taken the old fashion way with film, so when I get them developed I will be adding more pix.
The above pix are Jessica and Sean in front of the otter inclosure, me and Jessica in front of Mt Rushmore, and a Grizzley bear at bear country.

Continued on ........

After the rain

Sorry havent written in a few days, we have been busy with outside thing, mowing the 4 of 5 acres is very time consuming. We are starting to get a handle on it tho. We need to get back to the bedroom rentivations soon, the heating and cooling guy still hasnt come by yet.. I know hes really busy this time of year and they lost one of there plumbers so that doesnt help. I'm really hoping to get the air conditioning in before it decides to get hot. It will be totally nasty to have to work in there in the heat. Its hard to focus on one thing right now being the out doors need attention also. We have alot of the tree damage cleaned up but there is more to go yet, plus the dead trees that have been here since we move in still need to be addressed. SO many things SO little time.

We had a really bad thunderstorm last night with hail and wind, most of the hail was pea size but then we had some golf ball size ones to. It rained so hard in such a short time, and for a while we had rain going horizontal with the ground. A few countys away down in Kansas they had a tornado, that got me nervous to say the least. I had some damage in the garden of some of the plants I put in hopefully not enought that they wont come back. In less than a few hours we had 2 1/2 inches of rain. We had rivers running in the yard and lots of standing water, thank goodness it was gone this morning mostly.We didnt have to go anywhere today so we dont know how the roads are, a mess im guessing.

Jessica is out of school and has been helping do some of the yard work thank goodness, I came down with the stomach flu the day before yesterday and was down most of the day and yesterday I wasnt worth a darn. Im doing pretty good today compaired, my stomich is not hurting like it was yesterday. I dont know what caused it or where it came from but I know it wasnt from bad food no stomach cramping so that was I guess a goood thing.

Jessica has quite afew things lined up this summer to keep her self busy, shes going to a few camps and to her sisters house in omaha for a month. The critter in the above pictures is Falcor the bearded dragon. Jessica (not pictured her friend is the lizard perch)has raised Flacor from a very small baby, He is just over a year now and growing bigger ever day. He can consume over 30 crickets a day and lots of super worms, also green leaf lettuce and fruits. He expecally likes strawberrys. In the summer we catch grasshoppers for him, there is a down fall to that tho we need to take the back legs off the grasshoppers before he eats them. Its been interesting having him around, beardies are very mellow most of the time but do take alot of time and care to keep them. Its interesting keeping him at 80 to 90 degrees all year round, the winter was a challange expecally when we lost our power. They are native to Australia and are related to the flair dragon. When he gets mad or upset or is sunning he will turn really dark, the underside around his neck he can flair out turn black and he'll open his mouth and look mean. He is a cross with a german giant so he will be on the large side, right now hes 20 inchs long. Hes colors are lemon and orange, hes getting a neckless of orange scales under his chin and hes lips are getting orange. around his eyes there is a sun burst pattern of yellow.

The pattern down his back is very pronounced with some purples and reds. In the pix above he is very pale becasue hes calm and not sunning. To me he looks like what the mythical dragon may have looked like minus the wings. on his shoulders he has an area on both sides that are fat pockets but maybe that is where the wings were attached at one time? He has scales and spiney simi sharp scales all around him, I can imagine they were sharp at one time and alot bigger. He is true cold blooded and he will pancake his body as you see in the pix above to soak in the heat of your body.

I havent quilted in like 3 days, I do have it sitting right infront of me staring at me saying sew me, sew me. I'll probably sew some today after getting some other things done. We are taking Jessica for a short or long weekend trip, I will write more about that after it happens for its a suprize for her and she may read this. I hope the weather is good tho, seems we are going to have maybe 20% chance of rain. Last year at this time we were already hot, on the holiday we had 100 degrees and it was so hot it seemed. I moved from AZ to get away from that kind of weather, hopefully we wont have that just yet here this year.

Well need to get some things done, I'll be back to write soon............

new ideas for a quilt

The couch cover I had started, I found I wasnt going to have enought fabric so I'll just make a small lap quilt from it. Now I have decited on using this fabric, I have much more of it and I'm liking the colors better for the room its going in that is all browns in the wood and the wood paneling on the walls.

Yesterday I really over did it, finished putting all the rest of the garden in, and made lasagna, cleaned the floors in the house, and went shopping. Today im really feeling it! Im taking it easy today totally.

We got gas yesterday, I almost cryed ! We filled 3-5 gallon cans for the mower and yard stuff and filled the truck, guess how much .....$110.00.

I was just sick, Couldnt belive it! Why is this, in a weeks time its gone up like almost 30 cents a gallon. It seems to me everytime summer and traveling comes around the gas prices go up. Is this so they can make alot of money for them selves. I know its not the gas pump owners that is making the money its the oil and refinerys owners. I thought price goes up with suppy and demand.... what is happening here, dont we have the same amount of oil being had. I understand there is only one company that owns the gas and supplys to all the companys no matter what there names is. What happened to not having a monopoly in this country? Where is this going to stop? /putting soap box away.

We didnt even get the yard quite finished mowing and its time to start all over again, we had 2 days of rain 1/2 inch one day and 4/10 of an inch the other, just enought to really get the grass and weeds growing....

My comment to comments.........

Ive had a few comments for my blog saying its boring, I know its no going to be interesting to all that read and Im sorry about that but this is my blog for fun and to keep family and friends up todate and share pictures with what we are doing out here in the middle of know where.

Well im going to sew for a while and relax.......write more later maybe

worked in garden

Worked on the garden today for a while, got the corn,swiss chard, carrots, beets planted. As soon as I had those planted it started raining, great bonus! I didnt get any sewing done today, had to do some cleaning of the house. Younger daughters last day of school is tomarrow so she is having a friend over for the night...2 silly teenagers in the house.

I have 3 yellow Iris that have bloomed, not as pretty as the purple but its nice to see them anyway. Im going to plant some more flowers, hope they do better this year than what I planted last year. The marigolds did well around the garden ( used to keep the rabbits out) but the carnations never came up, guess it was just to hot for them. Its a whole lot different planting things in dirt than in sand. For one the sand is so much easyer to dig in than the dirt that turns to cement it seems. But the sand drains so fast that you have to water more. Any way im going to try some straw flowers and maybe the carnations again. I'll get live plants of marigolds for the garden again. I have yet to plant the watermelon, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and snap peas.

We havent worked on the house inside since it has been warmer outside except to close up the one wall where we took out the window and we had to put up new walls for the out side of the studs and new felt paper over it, we are remodeling the bedroom, we had to take the walls down to bare studs and fix a lot of termite damage. The walls had no insulation in them and the room got very cold in the winter being on the north wall. The footer board 2x6 that sits on the cement blocks of the foundation was termite eatten and pretty well gone, we had some one come in and jack the house up and fix the foot board and the kick board. We have a little less than half of the room down to studs, plaster and slat board is not fun to work with at all. We are hoping the heating and cooling guy will get here and put in the air conditioner unit soon before we need to work on the room again. Right now we need to get a handle on the outdoors, grass and trees and weeds. We had about 1/2 an inch the other night and im not sure what we had tonight. With all the rain we are having a lot of weeds and the prairie grass grows like crazy. Naturally we have 2 kinds of grass the prairie grass that is tall normally and the buffalo grass that stays short to the ground, we like the buffalo grass it really doesnt need to be mowed. But the prairie grass does or it goes to seed and the seeds stick to every thing like socks, pants, dogs hair. But if you keep it mowed its not to bad as grass and it fills in real nice.

Well going to run for now will write more soon.........

working outside

On 5/14 we worked on the garden some more it was a bit warm, as we were working on it this storm started building to the east of us. It only took a matter of min to get really huge. It never did hit us, it was moving north and east. about an hour after taking this picture I could hear thunder coming from the storm. As you can see we can see for ever on a clear day. The colors here are so vivid all the time, there is very little polutions in the air. We had 1/2 inch of rain that night just enought to take the dust out of the air and make everything so green and bright.
I had 2 yellow iris come out today 5/15. The purple are much prettyer but any flowers are nice to see.
Just one more day and we will have the fence up and will be ready to plant. The fence is used as much to keep the wild animals out but to keep our dogs out also. My large dog millie loves cucumbers and will grab them at any chance she has. It was ok last year we had plenty of cucumbers to feed an army. and tomatos wow we had so many I got a rash from eatting so many. But I love being able to just walk out to the garden, pick a tomato and eat it right there.
I planted snap peas last year and the grasshoppers loved them the best we really didnt get any, same with the carrots.

I worked on a quilt that is going to go on the couch as a cover, after getting part of it done ive decited im not going to have enought fabric to do the whole thing so im going make a lap quilt from this one and start a different one for the couch with fabric that I have lots of. Its going to be many trips around the world.

As we were getting finished with doing the fence, I was listening to the song birds at sunset, they sounded so pretty, living in AZ I had forgot what it was like to have so many birds singing in the evening.
Well im off to bed ...........more later ..........

Mothers day

It was a warm day here today, we worked on getting the garden in and got about half way done. We enlarged the garden from last year and moved areas that its to be in. The area last year was in front of the chicken coop but so many weeds grew there I couldnt keep up with them and the grasshoppers were thick. In moving it we hope we wont have the weeds and as many grasshoppers to deal with. The folks that owned the farm way back before 1900 had a clothes line up in this area, im not needing to use it now so we removed the pole that was like 10 feet in the ground (no tornado would have even moved it). The soil is pretty rich no matter where you dig so we should have a pretty good garden even in this area.

Im working on a new quilt to put on the couch as a cover, I decided on an around the world pattern done with scrappy sorta look. I'll be able to use alot of my smaller pieces of fabric this way. I had gotten alot of sample fabrics that will work just right.

My daughter is making dinner for me tonight, spag/w meat balls. Its nice not haveing to cook for one night.

I'll write more later im going to sew for a while.........

getting started first blog

Hi, I live in Nebraska, out in the middle of now where, most people would just die living out here. The nice thing about being out here is the quiet, the dark nights, and the peacefulness of having no traffic, no people. Of course we have 4 legged kind of neighbors, the wild life is rich, we see turkeys,deer, many rabbits,many many birds, skunk, possums, badger, and lots more on a normal day. So now your thinking that could get very boring after time, Naaa, we keep busy with the house that is 77 years old and the 5 acres of land around us. Its so beautiful after a spring rain, everything is bright green, the flowers are just coming out. I have purple Iris just in bloom now that are just so beautiful. The trees are putting on there leaves, its such a renewal after a long cold winter. We are working on getting the trees cleaned up after the terrible Ice storm we had this winter twice. The grass is already a foot high from all the rains we have had, we are finally out of the drought hopefully.
The first week here 2 years ago we saw our first tornado that as about 20 miles from the house. We had just jumped into the truck to go to Mccook shopping and on the way we heard tornado warnings for the area we were driving thru. Ekkk. there is was a small tornado just to the north of us maybe half a mile. I got so excited, got out the camera and started shooting. The tornado never did touch the ground but It was so cool to watch from our safe vantage point. It finally ended up roping out and being pulled up into the cloud.
We haven’t seen one since, but we have had some mighty powerfull storms. A year ago March we had lightning hit the house, well the lightning rod that is. Yes all along the top of the house there is lightning rods that if your house get hit they will hit the rods and direct the energy to the ground. We had a direct hit which every thing that was on and running and not on a surge protector got fried. Microwave, electronic stove, and a power supply on a computer, tons of light bulbs. The sound was horiffic, it sat me right up in bed. All our buildings have rods on them. Oh yes the other buildings… the barn, grain building, wash house, chicken coop, and tool building.
The barn is straight, you must be saying shouldnt they be straight, well not all barns expecally the older ones stay that way they start leaning eather to the south or to the north becasue we have some high winds that come thru here. We have lots of trees for wind brakes so in the house we can’t tell really when the wind is blowing hard. There is a long line of evergreens on the north side that are used for snow and wind brakes. If we didnt have that we would have snow drifts up on the north side of the house really bad. As it is the November before last we had a 9 foot drift on the north side of the house from the Thanksgiving blizzard. This winter we didnt have a blizzard but we did have 2 ice storms that were really bad. There was as much as an inch of ice on everything. The temp stayed right at 32 degrees so we had little snow with the first storm 4 days before Christmas, but the second storm that was jsut before New years we had both snow and ice. Driving is almost impossible, we slid into a few ditches due to the ice on the gravel. A good wind can almost push you over when your on the ice.
We went and picked up my baby pom puppy during the ice storm it was a very long drive under those conditions. Every things was coated so even walking was a challange. But even with the bad weather I wouldn’t trade in living anywhere elce.
I have live alot of other places and no place matches or has the peacefulness that living here has. The last place I lived was Yuma AZ, had both of my daughters there and came to hate it. It was so dry and hot in the summer, the winters were nice but we had to work all winter so mostly you see the nice weather from indoors. That is one place I’d never tell anyone to live. We had days in the summer of 120 to 130, man nor beast can deal with that heat. We have had some hot days in Nebraska but they don’t last for months on end like they do in AZ. I guess there are some that like it and some that just live there for what ever reason im not sure.
So anyway now we are mowing and cleaning up the front yard, also getting ready to plant a garden. Last summer we had our first garden here, I had tons of vegetables to eat, tomatoes out the ears, squash and cucumbers. I had some compatition from the grasshoppers, they ate there fair share but we also fed the grasshoppers to my daughters bearded dragon, he got really fat and sassy from them. Its amazing you know how hard it is to catch a grasshopper well he has no problem, lightning fast! We dont use any chemicals on the garden so we can feed the bugs to him saves on buying crickets by the thousands.
With all this one of my main passions is quilting so there will be alot here having to do with that besides my maybe daily or weekly blogs on what were up to here in our corner of Nebraska.
I will post more later its getting late.........