Why I wake early

In the summer, I wake up without an alarm or even a nudge from anything else. My eyes open and my body says 'Wake up'

On these hot hot days I'm generally out the door as soon as it thinks about getting light out. Sometimes Charlie and I take a walk to on the gravel road to greet the day.
In some ways I think this is the best part of the day.

At least it is right now. It is cooler and the Air Quality Alerts aren't so bad.

Olive's Flower Garden

Mary Oliver says it quite well so I don't have to.

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety---

...
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

 

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.

Afternoon break

After a morning of phone calls from Gundersen, emails to Rich's PCP doctor at the VA, and a visit to the nursing home along with PT for Rich, a heart monitor reading and lunch out....

We finally got home around 3pm.
Rich needed a nap.
I needed something, but wasn't sure what that something was. I think I needed a distraction of sorts from all the busy-ness, or busy mess, as I call it.

My neighbor came down with her daughter and we talked about scheduling our septic pumping/inspection for the same time and how each of our schedules were crazy busy. I suggested we shoot for a time that the guy could do both places at once and between the two of us, we'd manage to have at least one supervising 'adult' around.

As we walked back along the driveway, I asked Allie if she'd like to go looking for bugs.
After all the crazyness of the day, I felt like a break of sorts.

Off we went.

Armed with her pink net and bug box assortment, we headed off.

We found an alarming amount of Japanese Beetles everywhere. They were decimating the wild grapes along with some other plants that I'm not that fond of, like a burdock.
Allie captured several and put them in a vial. We noted that they 'pooped' a lot.

Allie thought there might be some interesting insects in between a row of field corn.

Actually we did find something interesting. Some Bug Drama. One insect eating another one.

I had my Olympus camera with me and the macro lens on it. I put it to good use. I can say that these insects were very very tiny!

We came through the short row of corn and found a fairly large area of milkweeds that were full of action.

The monarchs were too swift for me to catch a shot of. I'll have to go back in a field and sit still with a long lens for that.

We hiked the large hay field and Allie ran trying to scoop up insects with her net. She did get a couple of white moth like insects and it was a dual effort to get them into her 'bug' box.

Allie chatted the whole time about bugs. She loves insects.

I don't know how long we were out there walking around, but I do know that it was such a welcome break from all the other 'stuff' going on.

And I know we both enjoyed it. I got some wonderful macro photos and Allie got some neat insects for her collection.

Return to Tainter...Land

Tainter Hollow is an interesting area. It has more than one very steep narrow valley and a creek named Tainter Creek that runs through it.

The roads are gravel roads and there are many little bridges that cross Tainter Creek as it twists and turns.
There is Tainter Hollow E., Tainter Hollow W., and Tainter Rd. Tainter Rd is closed still.

I had a bit of time yesterday and it was gloomy and raining. I couldn't do garden work, yard work, and my shoulders and forearms needed a rest from all the weed whacking I'd done. I asked Rich if he'd mind if I went down to Tainter Hollow to look for wildflowers to photograph while he took a nap.

He shrugged.
I put some things in the Subaru and went to Tainter Land.
At one of my favorite bridges to stop and take photos, there were surveyors marking out sections on both sides of the road. Orange paint markings were in the gravel.
The floods of last year caused a lot of damage to our many 'Tainter Bridges'  [one of the reasons that Tainter Rd. was still closed].

Dang. I felt too self conscious to share the bridge with them, so I drove on.
Up the road a ways there is a dairy farm pasture.
Here I found Besse and Wilma, they looked a bit perturbed that I'd interrupted their "udderly" fantastic conversation.

Harriet and Fern, meanwhile were looking rather sneaky about something. I wonder if the girls were planning something, or just really curious about the lady in the muddy Subaru.

I circled around back to Tainter Hollow E. and headed back to the Public Land entrance.

I'm not sure the bridges will do very well if we have any more flash floods.

Tainter Rd is closed due to the culverts being washed away and the road being destroyed in one section. The other bridges all suffered damage from log jams last September.

I parked and walked the footpath through the tall grass along Tainter Creek. In the early spring this is a nice walk. Starting in May or June, the grasses and other plants are nearly as tall as I am and can make for a less enjoyable hike.
However I found two nice places to admire Tainter Creek before I turned back.

Give me a whole day and another person to go with and I could really have fun exploring. Tainter Hollow is in such a place that there is no cell phone coverage and a GPS won't get satellite reception. Not an issue for me unless my husband needs to get hold of me.

I headed out and passed a residence on Tainter Hollow W. This person's house/cottage is built on the hillside and has stilts supporting part of it. I often wonder how it stays on the hillside.
Anyway this was parked on the road next to the creek.
I shot it through my review mirror.

Sort of overkill for a trout creek right?

My time was up, I needed to head back home.

I got a peek at a few critters along the way.

When I got to the top of Hinkst Hollow, I did pull over and compose a shot. This is one of the straightest roads in our township. And the view is always amazing to me.

Normally you don't get such vistas where I live. But there are a few to be found.

I didn't get the wildflower shots I wanted. Nope, not at all.
Instead I had a very interesting drive.

It was nice to have a small break.

Here is hoping that the rain and gloom ease up. Notice that most of the fields are not worked up. Our farmers are way behind in planting. And those that did plant corn have some very yellow sickly plants coming up.