1-2 June, 2011 Moose on the loose...

Cloudy days lately but we've still gotten a few things done.  We moved the solar panels out of the garden area yesterday (2nd).  Like a lot of things in NW Montana their "temporary" location stretched on for quite some time!  I'll be mounting them to the tower next week when we have some clear days.  Today it's raining so it's a good day to catch up on writing and indoor projects.

Susan has lots of reference books for different plants and their uses.  Here she's in front of the stove reading up on a current project.  She keeps threatening to write a book with fewer plants listed but more uses for each one.  (I wish she would.)  Every book it seems has a little bit of information the others don't have.  If it was all consolidated into one book and separated into different geographic regions it would make life easier.

Susan is stripping off dried parsley leaves to save for future use.

Ahh ... gardening in NW Montana!  We've been covering the potatoes at night to shield them from frost.  It really is June now, isn't it?

Susan harvesting Oregano in the garden...

... and drying it above the wood stove.  We've been concentratng on growing and saving more herbs and spices.  She's also cultivating peppergrass to try as a pepper supplement along with lemon balm for lemon flavoring.

Here she's getting ready to plant leaf lettuce.  To the left are some celery plants and the square beds behind her are where she planted carrots.  Our garden space is filling up fast.

These are celery plants.  These are one veggie we haven't figured out how to propagate ourselves.  That's on our bucket list for this year.

On the way into Eureka Wednesday we saw a momma and calf moose.  They have the most awkward gait of any animal I know of yet they cover a tremendous amount of ground quickly.

Fortunately for us they stopped long enough to take a few pictures.  These are on the telephoto setting and taken through the windshield so they aren't the highest quality.

We stopped at the tire store and raided their stack of discarded tires before coming home.  They're always happy to see us since they have to pay a fee to dispose of them.

I cut the sidewall out then we use the tires for planting beds.  I knife works better than anything else I've tried.  A sabre saw works okay but it's noisy and slow.  It takes some effort but a knife slices through much faster with no noise.  I imagine Kershaw would shake their head at the things I've used that knife for.  We pick the widest tires they have because they hold the most dirt.