The wet spring has given the grass a real boost. I used the power mower because ours was too tall for our reel mowers. After that I trimmed around the yard and garden. Our trimmer uses short pieces of string instead of long rolls. You can buy the string pre-cut to length but it's a lot cheaper to just cut it from a spool yourself. I always cut a large handful when I get ready to run the string trimmer. I'd never buy another string trimmer that uses the short strings like this one does.
Susan got the first harvest from our garden this spring. This is mint. We're drying it to use primarily as tea although it has other uses as well.
My potato patch needed weeding so when the ground dried out I gave the hoe a workout. I'll let the ground sit a few days then hill the plants.
The raspberries are looking awesome this year. The wild strawberries are ready to pick but our domestic strawberries will be awhile yet.
I took this photo of the polar panels to show the rainbow behind them.
It looked much brighter in real life.
We had a couple of the kids come up on the 4th to help us celebrate. We spent the afternoon shooting then had a great meal and shot fireworks later in the evening. We went through a pile of ammo in about two hours of shooting.
Scott had mixed feelings about the fireworks. He didn't like the noise but liked the colors. Here he's looking over the trash left from the night before. It was easier to clean it up the next day than to try to pick everything up at night. It was late when we finished and the mosquitoes were thick and hungry.
After mowing with the power mower and trimming we do the whole thing again with the reel mowers. Scott got his "mower" off the porch and helped us out a bit.
We're hoping to take a week long bicycle trip soon so Susan found all the parts to put one of the bike trailers back into its original form as a child carrier. She found everything, put it all together then we took Scott for a short run to see if he liked it. He did.
The next day we took off riding to Eureka. On the way there we lost a nut off one of the screws but I had a replacement in my bike bag so we stopped along the highway and I put it on. We can't keep a helmet on Scott. He's figured out how to remove it himself and won't leave it on.
He does like the trailer better than the bike seat. He has more room to relax and play. It has pockets where he stashes his bottle, books and toys and when it's nap time he just rolls over and goes to sleep.
He woke up when we stopped at the grocery store in Eureka. We let him out to stretch his legs and he immediately climbed into the bike seat, pulled my handlebars over and tried to operate the controls. All during this time he was making his "motor" sounds like it was a motorcycle.
It was hot (upper 80's to low 90's ... which is really hot for around here!) so we stopped for a break at a creek on the way home. Scott took turns sitting on grandma and grandpa's laps.
I wet my bandanna in the creek and wiped it over my head to help cool off a bit. The creek was almost back down to normal but the water was still just a little bit cloudy from snow melt and the spring rains. Susan waded into the creek to cool down. We rode about 26 miles round trip.
We parked the Cherokee at the Fortine Merc. and rode to Eureka from there. When we got back we bought a couple of gallons of gasoline for the generator then stopped at the church for water and headed home again. Scott fell asleep a mile from home so we brought him into the cabin while he was still in his car seat. He slept for a couple of hours after we got home.
He and Odie are pals. Odie is very protective around him and enjoys the attention even when Scott is crawling all over her.
I needed to grind more chicken food so I got out the grinder and the beans, wheat and pasta, ground it all up and mixed it together to feed the chickens. The pasta and beans are old and outdated so we needed to make room for some new food stores. Chickens make great garbage disposals and it's a lot cheaper than buying regular feed for them. I ground about 35 pounds of grain.
Susan and Scott playing the piano together. Scott watched a movie with us last night that had a lot of teenagers in their own bands and now thinks he's a rock star. Now he "sings" while he plays.
The first couple of times he played on the piano was while he sat in Susan's lap while she was playing. I was just seconds too late for this photo today. When Susan left to fix dinner, Scott got down and ran to get his bear. He then put the bear in his lap while he played the piano. He just took it off his lap a second before the camera took the photo. (I truly hate that lag time!)
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