Weekend recap

Early morning hunt for eatable's in the forest with Olive.

Olive took a shot of me takin a shot
of the twisted trees...

Olive. Just as nutty as me!

Sunday morning's fog and morning walk...

Infrared IRChrome shot.
IR picks up more light and works

well on foggy scenes. IRChrome sees green

as red.

Cherry blossoms in the fog

Dandy-lions...

Multiflora Rose

Virginia Pinks

Wild Strawberries

Pheasantback mushrooms starting... I wasn't the only one interested in them!

It was warm and humid Sunday with occasional showers but I got a lot of gardening done. I hauled buckets of dirt from the old manure pile to patch up holes in the yard. I cleaned the gardens around the house and added dirt from that old manure pile to enrich the soil.

I dumped the old dirt out of my 3 containers I have for geraniums and refreshed them with new dirt. 

The mules all walked up for a grooming and I had an assembly line going. Each one walked up to me, got curried and then I tapped them on the rear end to move them along for the next in line. 

Last but not least. The first hummingbird showed up as well as the first Oriole. 

Tweet Tweet....

Wonderfully Full Sunday

 Early morning text:
Hey, when Aiden wakes up and has breakfast, we are so Up for a Birdie Hike!

A walk with Olive and her little boy was what I'd been looking forward to for a while. Aiden's reaction when he sees a large bird now is a riot. When he sees or hears a goose, he becomes so exuberant that it seems as if he just discovered a live dinosaur.

The morning was chilly and overcast, but we went anyway. Aiden rode in a backpack that mom wore. Aiden adores it, he is up where he can see everything we can see. Here is 30 seconds of fun with Aiden. We even got to hear Peepers!

The photos are nothing to write home about, I just took them to put together some bird photos for Aiden to be able to see.

Apparently he loves bird videos, so mom or dad plays them for him when he needs a distraction.

It was too nice in the late afternoon not to be outside, so I headed up to the little pasture above the Buckthorn woods and started to work on two large dead limbs that had fallen a couple of years ago. 

The wood was dead enough for me to use my machete to bust things up and pile it for burning on top of the weeds I'd pulled.

When I finish with this, the mules will stand under this tree again for shade on warm days. They can catch the north breezes and stay cool.

Piles of weeds and branches to burn.

View looking north on a section I still need to work on.

I think I have actually made some progress over the past 5 years that I've been working at this. It is a lot of hard hand work, but 6 or 7 years ago, you could not see through this section because of the overgrowth of Elderberry trees and Burdock.

Somewhere I have a photo of mules threading their way through the Elderberry forest that shaded the ground in the spot. You will just have to imagine it. This year, I plan on picking both elderberry flowers and berries. 
Apparently they make great tea for your immune system????

Olive was looking for some access to them last year. 

So I got way off track. 

Sunday's sunrise and sunset were stunning and I guess that is another reason I like these longer and somewhat more temperate days.

And that's a wrap.....

Looking west from the porch:

Looking north from the back door:

Mules and Veggies

Eddie and Megan brought me veggies from their garden! How lucky can a mom get? I got these wild colored carrots along with Swiss Chard and garlic! Oh...YUM!

Today I blanched the carrots and froze some and put a variety of them in the little dehydrator along with another tomato and an apple. 

My thought is...I won't run the little dehydrator with just one tray of anything. I like dried apples while hiking so I chopped one up and tossed it in along with the tomato that needed to be processed. The carrots will become strange twisted colorful shapes as they dry.

I'll put some onions, carrots, tomatoes, and green beans together in a packet for dumping in a stew or soup later this fall or winter.

My morning was fun. I did the grocery thing at 7AM then chores, and this afternoon I'll be introducing my neighbor Olive to our mules. She is a master Chef and also a mom who works for MOSA with is an acronym for Midwest Organic Services Association. I think she can work from home. 

She and my ex neighbor Terri work together. 

Any...way.... 

Olive spent time cooking and doing the Master Chef thing all over Europe and I imagine .... everywhere? I don't know much as we haven't had time to talk about all of that. However, she used to be a groom and rode/exercised horses in Europe. 
I'm thinking this could be a really great friendship in the making.

She is my neighbor on the ridge. She likes foraging, hiking [night hiking or day hiking], riding, and cooking. 

Could I learn something from her? Oh yeah.

Face it. Being a Caregiver for a very difficult spouse is tough. So I'll forge friendships. Those friendships KEEP me sane.

~~~~~ 
2pm rolled around and Olive came trotting into the yard. I had gotten my two gals, Sunshine and Siera out and had saddled them. 

It is that time of the year that they somehow find burdock and manage to get it in their tails. So I was finishing that.

Olive fit in my Simco saddle just fine and we went over the 'how' to operate Siera. She's easy. She is very lazy, so a whoa works well.

I got up on my little red mule and we headed towards the hay and oat fields to ride in between the strips of corn. 

Siera did her normal thing like turning towards home when she thought Olive wasn't paying attention. I let the two of them work it out. Siera won't bolt or run off, it isn't in her nature. She'd rather stay with the other mule.

Anyway we circled the fields and then I asked if Olive would like to try some hill work. We went down into the neighbor's woods and rode down the steep trail and into a dry run. We sat on the girls and chatted down in the deep woods for a bit, then returned home.

We were so busy chatting and talking Mule/Horse Talk and getting to know each other...that I only took one photo.

I think this sums up everything.

Olive asked if we can do this every Tuesday. I'm like....um, yeah! Of course, with weather and schedules permitting.

It will be nice to exercise The Fat Bottom Girls together with another enthusiastic person.