New floor!

The old floor. Old carpeting. New in 1996 but after many years of hay chafe, puppies, children, and spills, it was way past due ... the time to go.

The Tiny house was getting a face lift! Moving things out wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The loveseat sucked though. Rich helped but it he nearly fainted from sudden loss of 02 and exertion.

Imagine the look on my face as I saw the layer of DIRT under the carpet and worse yet, the fine layer of dirt under the carpet pad. 

Once upon a time our living room looked like this:

Mr. Morris is modeling the living room...or as we call it, the West Wing. Dark paneling, brick wall and partial brick floor. 

Now?

It looks like this:

I'm sort of diggin' the uncluttered look. After all, IT is a tiny house! I love the new floor. I skipped around, twirled and danced on it in bare feet much to the amusement of my husband last night. 

IF anyone has a wonderful idea as to how to convince my husband to get rid of that OLD trunk? I'm all ears. For now I moved it into the kitchen area to use as a folding table for laundry. It also makes a nice place to do some still life photography, so maybe it isn't so bad.

Some other thoughts. The floor is lovely. I CANNOT see the seams!

Below they marked the seams and said Charlie was not allowed out on the floor for 3 hours while the glue stuff dried. 

After I removed the markers, I can't see any seams.

Crappy shots with the cell phone, but let me say.

I love it!

It actually feels like wood on my bare feet! 

I'm just having the most wonderful 'Up' day.

New flooring on Wednesday and a partial Solar Eclipse adventure today!

What more can a person ask for?

Hot Humid days

Gosh when the fog in the morning rolls up out of the woods and inches across the land ... you know it is going to be one of those hot and humid days.

Charlie has nagged me each day to take a walk. We are okay as long as we stick to the heavily canopied woods but walking out on the gravel road is like subjecting ourselves to an oven. I imagine more so for Charlie who really is close to the hot ground. It literally takes only minutes for his tongue to drop out and for him to start panting. He gives me a sideways look as if to say "Get me outta here!"

I generally find a deer path and go into the woods.

Now super hot muggy awful icky days are also pretty darned good for Infrared photos.
I don't like walking in the valleys when it is so miserably hot as there is no breeze.

But I've found a way around that. I can create my own special kind of breeze.

I put a water bottle on the bike and one in my waist pack along with my little pointy shooty IR camera and away I go.

Those puffy clouds and blue skies really make for interesting patterns.

Today we had an amazing sunrise with fog.

I took this with no filter but edited the color from bright flaming red to this. I just liked the shapes and tones.

Being a total goofball, I decided that I'd just see what I could come up with in Infrared.  This was just before the sun came over the trees.

The shot below is zoomed in. Not sure if it is better or not, I was just intrigued by the fog that was moving through the old pasture.

I wonder afterwards if this would have looked much better in black and white. I can always edit them that way but I think the 'blue' wouldn't have shown up as the 850nm filter wouldn't have picked up the light reflection of the leaves.

Looking at the black and white converted version, I think I like it better. Less distraction of colors and more emphasis on layers.

Off I go. They are coming to put in the new flooring today. I think it will be a dusty mess and it is too hot to be outside for Rich.

I'm tickled pink over the thought of a 'new' floor!

Flowers. I like them.

Hen & Chicks

Above is a birthday gift from a very thoughtful neighbor. Over the years she has added some amazing florals to my porch and garden. I've always admired this sort of set up for hen and chicks, but always passed as I thought it was too expensive.

I have several hen and chicks growing in log crevices and on rocks. This one is like a beautiful center piece.

My neighbor professes to have a brown thumb. Indeed she sort of does, but she has a wonderful eye for adding to my collection of flowers. Last year a lavender plant showed up on my stump with a note when my MIL died. 

Another year some beer and Gerbera Daisies showed up.

Flowers have a way of making me smile. My Grandmother Pearl loved flowers. Grandpa only let her have a small area for her flowers. She managed to have the most incredible flower garden in a tiny space. 

Moon flowers were my favorite. I have yet to grow some of those.

At one time I disliked geraniums. But my MIL always had a wonderful mix of them on her porch or later on her balconey. I'd cut the spent flowers for her and learned to have an appreciation for them. 

This year I have 3 colors of geraniums. I potted some exotic pink ones in an old pot I inherited from her balconey.

White ones in an old galvanized pail that was used to collect maple syrup by my father in law's dad.

For me this year, the flowers have it. I can be close to the house yet still outside working in the tiny gardens and watering those flowers in containers on the porch.

The Hen and Chicks I moved to the Forest Garden are doing well!

I couldn't resist a bit of playing around in the woods. The shade is nice and the breezes were warm but tolerable.

I didn't plan on a moderate drought this year, so hauling water daily to water my seedlings is an extra chore, but one I don't mind.

I had to put some 'fake' flowers in the basin of the Old Man's head. Real flowers would have withered away in this wind and heat.

In a way, I am happy that I didn't decide to do a large veggie garden this year. The lack of rain and the heat would have made the work much more intense.

My garden this time last year:

It was rather impressive. 

Rich keeps telling me that he will till it. But he has forgotten that the tiller is partially broken and lives at the neighbor's house now. My neighbor has tilled for us for the past 4 years.

I just don't have the heart to ask him to do it for us in this heat.

At least if we do get some tilling done. The garden will be much smaller but I will reserve an area for Zinnias and other colorful flowers to admire. 

If it were left up to me, I'd have flowers and plants to work with every day.

I have such a hard time resisting all of those bright colors.

Have a wonderful Monday.

My June week is filled to the brim with fun and exciting activities.

Ahem.

Who am I kidding?

It looks to be awfully hot and icky this week with a chance of humidity, clouds, maybe some rain, and chance of viewing a partial eclipse of the sun on Thursday!

Flowers....I just love them!

Summer Daze

 

It is that time of year that I go for early morning walks and bike rides or whatever tickles my fancy when I wake up just before dawn.

I do like summer just for that reason. My days start when the glow starts outside. I don't like to sit inside and just wait for late morning to occur. I usually have walked the fence and checked the stock tanks by 6ish and visited with the mules.

The peonies have started to blossom like crazy and I do love them for those days that they offer sweet smells and vibrant colors. I have only pink. My husband thinks peonies are icky flowers and would mow them all down if he could. 

What can I say?
Yarrow, Peonies, Irisis, and Verbena are my choices for right now.

In the summer I love to have every flower I can cut and stick in a jar or vase all around the house. That is just me. The more, the merrier.

That brings me to the veggie garden. To tell you the truth, I'd like a much smaller garden than I've had for years. For whatever the reason, I just am not into the huge garden this year.

I know a woman and her husband who have been doing the Farmer's Market in town for 20 years. I decided this year to let her do the gardening and I'd come on the weekends and pick my produce from her display.

I'm even going to trade some new jars for some produce next week.

I bought some Giardiniera from her Saturday and put it in my Italian cold salad. Wow!

I came away with some real goodies from the market. It included a wonderfully fresh picked package of spinach. Even the other half enjoyed a spinach in his salad.

I came home with a raspberry/rhubarb pie to boot from the Mennonite Bakery. 

I was done with my busy morning by 9am.

Everyone who has hayfields has their hay down to be baled. First crop looks a bit thin and we need rain. 

I had to haul water out to the 'Forest Garden' with the 4 wheeler. 

Hmmm. Looks like I had visitors!

A gift that arrived in the mail the other day was two bags of toys.

I could not resist messing around with them. They were kind of cute in that I could bend their arms and legs!

During the hottest part of the day, I read a book on the porch and watched birds. Not productive at all but pleasant.

If the weather people are correct, Sunday will be much nicer and chances for rain will be the topic for the week.

We do need the rain on for the hay fields. 

My lavender is getting ready to blossom. This is my first year of overwintering one lavender plant and growing a second one. 

The Sage I planted last year somehow survived the winter and came back in a huge mound and is ready to blossom too.

Today? 
More dry winds and heat.

The Hike

Let me start out by saying that I planned this hike for a very long time.

Last year my CrossFit coach, Josh Brown asked me what I had for a long term goal. I said I wanted to do the Tromp and Chomp that had been held every year at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve. I am going to plug our gym CrossFit Viroqua, because truly ...I think CF has helped me stay strong both mentally and physically.

I studied the previous Tromp and Chomp maps and even downloaded the map and placed it over a regular trail map. Distances that could be run were a half marathon or an 8 miler. 
No way was I sure I could 'run' those trails up and down and all around, but I sure could come up with something.

So I decided that to celebrate becoming a 'Senior' citizen and age 65, I'd do the T&C by myself. I thought I'd take Charlie.

Charlie is pictured here at a rest stop we took. You can see that he is not a Big Dog. But he has a sweet heart and loves to hike.

This is how we did half of the hike. 

Charlie is half min Daschund and half Pekenise. The result is very short legs, short snout, and doll eyes. He will overheat easily and with those tiny legs, he tires easily. 

The first 2 miles of the hike were in the Kickapoo River Valley and baby, it was hot and windless. We hiked along old 131 with me giving Charlie a 'lift' for a good part of the first two miles. I didn't want him to overheat or get ill as we were walking along a blacktop trail.

We took one nice long break after passing the ponds where kids and camp counselors were observing their charges in canoes who were hollering at each other.

Charlie loves tiny pieces of apple, so we always share on a trail break. I let him cool off at the Artesian Well before we hit Little Canada.

We met 3 horse back riders and a father hiking with his daughters and their dog. Otherwise we were on our own.

Mile 4 found us deep in the wooded canopy and things were so much cooler. Charlie alternated from being carried and leading the way on his tiny cord. 

The amazing part was that Charlie sets a pretty darned good pace. Our fastest mile towards the end of the hike was something like 12 or 13 minutes. 

The terrain is a bit challenging in places and there is a lot of hill work. But it isn't as steep as my daily walks.

Map [free phone app called Map My Walk ~ which works for runs, bikes, and hikes]:

Mile 5 to 6 was the ickiest. It was sandy and grassy and in the valley so it was hot and buggy.

We had another long break where we shared another apple, drank water out of his blue peanut butter jar lid, and chilled in a shaded spot that had a breeze.

Things I carry in my back pack. 

A water bladder which was filled to 1.5 liters. 20 ounces of water for Charlie. Apples, snack bars, dog treats, emergency blanket, whistle/compass/thermometer combo, Pepper Spray for offending dogs [never used yet], a lighter, Duraflame Fire Start, and a tiny kit for cuts or wounds. 

IF a person is reported missing on the nearly 9 thousand acres, they will search for you. 

The latest tech is used and they did find a lost person this spring with a heat seeking drone! 

The layout of the land is pretty simple for me. However I have hiked and ridden it since 1996 so I have an understanding of how it all fits together.

By mile 7, I knew we would make it. Charlie was cool as a cucumber and the breezes were blowing. He was on a mission.
It must have been the apples because somehow the dog treat bag slipped out of my pocket between mile 5 and 6!

I even thought how it might be sort of fun to bring my sort of mountain bike out this summer and try some of this with wheels. A mule would be so much easier but since I have no way to transport them, I guess I won't!

If you would like to laugh, here is a 7 second video of Charlie at MILE 8! Obviously I must have carried him too well for too long!

The tiny dude was on a mission! 

I jokingly have called this a Charlie WOD. Workout of the Day.

I would do this again with any brave souls but really...nearly 9 miles? Uffdah!

The best part? 
Having my tiny dog along to keep me company. We had many short conversations and he loved the 'lifts' because he could use his eagle eyes to watch for Chipmunks who had the audacity to laugh and chatter at us.

As far as this particular hike? I would suggest it in early spring or early fall for cool weather if you are on foot. 

We had a blast and all of my work to increase strength and endurance paid off. I was not exhausted or even sore at the end of the hike or the next morning.

Life at 65? 

Yeah, it is good.

This and that

 

Charlie sunbathes in the Forest Garden.

It isn't that obvious of a garden quite yet. There are little places here and there that have flowers, a bucket, an old chair, and pieces of strange and random looking wood.

The sun shines through the canopy and offers sun dappled areas that move with the sun.

There are small areas of surprises here and there. One has to look for them.

The transplanted ferns are doing well and the flower seeds of different varities are coming up here and there. I'll be putting in some shade wildflowers in the next few days and will enjoy the surprise of color if I get that.

The garden is in the middle of the forest mule pasture. I do know that the mules and deer share trails but generally they keep their distance. I've caught mules and deer in the same large open pasture on the trail camera, but almost never have they been together in close proximity in the woods. 

Here are a couple of crappy shots of the cosmos and other flowers coming up in the Forest Garden.

Those tiny toys are markers for where I have planted seeds. In a week or so, I should be able to safely move them out. Maybe the dragons and unicorns like it in the forest though....

Not a great shot, but there are two green bean plants coming up! This is an experiment that probably won't work well. 

My husband [and probably others] question my sanity about doing this. The area won't really be a Garden in the orderly sense of the word, but a mix of plants and flowers to relax and gaze at in unexpected places in the middle of a forest.

And as it was pointed out to me, the deer and other wildlife could destroy it in one fell swoop.

So be it. For now it is a fun project. 

My veggie garden will be reduced this year to what I can manually dig up. Corn, beans, lettuce, and carrots. These are the main things I freeze or dry for the winter. I will purchase tomatoes if I want them and other veggies at the Farmer's Market this year.

I'm concentrating just once on flowers and fun for the summer.

Have a great and wonderful start to your June.

Heading out for m Birthday Hike. 

Hoping for a bit of awesome fun on the trail. 

My morning rush hour:

That is funny

So here I was on my 'high' horse ranting a bit about programs that allow anyone to go ahead and swap out skies.

FStoppers came out with and article 'Is Sky Replacement Ethical in Landscape Photography?'

And then I go ahead and do some wicked fun stuff with Infrared. So my conclusion is. If photography is art for you, do what you wish. If it is documentation photography, then stick as close to the real thing as possible.

Some days I am documenting things like fungi, slime mold, and wildflowers. Other days I am looking into a wild and strange world with colors than the eye cannot see. 

Infrared shots with a 665nm filter and I used a filter called Nostaligic from DxO Color Efex.

So really. Who am I to say anything?