1-8 June, 2012 Steve's Auto Repair Tent

Spring time in Montana??? It's been a week of rain, thunderstorms and freezing nights.  Our onions and peas are doing great but the frost burned the potatoes off to ground level.  Montana is definitely not the easiest place to grow veggies!

Our firefighter son gave us a head's up on a storm coming our direction so we set the solar panel on the camper down and covered it with a couple of sleeping pads and a section of plywood.  We also turned the solar panels parallel to the storm and put anything that could travel in one of the sheds.  Fortunately for us it went to around to the north and south of us.  We got some wind and rain but not in disastrous quantities.

 

We have had some pretty nice rainbows from all the stormy weather.  This one was much nicer in real life than it appears in the photo.

Scott looked adorable in his cammies so we posed  him for a photo shoot.

Now he's playing some Star Wars creature using his mom's shirt for a costume.

One of our other daughter's cam with her children so we got to play Grandma and Grandpa to them a bit.  Susan is holding Lincoln, our youngest grandchild.

This is his older sister, Hanna

And his older brother, Logan, (they both like pizza).

Logan and Scott decided to entertain us with some numbers on the piano

Becky needed some work done to her car.  I put a new caliper assembly on the passenger side a few weeks ago but when we were going to put new brake pads on the driver's side I found a broken CV boot.  We put the brakes on hold until I fixed that.  After Becky got the parts she brought them to me to install.  It was raining so I set up a tarp to work under.

I've installed the new boot on the outer CV joint and the axle is now ready to install.

My hammer and I got into it.  The hammer won.  This hammer has a history of attacks like this going back almost thirty years.  It once hit my thumb nearly breaking it and smashing the thumb nail in a most unpleasant fashion.  It's peeled some skin off a time or two as well since then.  I'm about ready to melt it down into a puddle of steel or at least mold it into something that's not so dangerous. Maybe a door knocker or something benign like that!

Time to grind some more chicken food.  We've been going through some outdated stored foods and grinding them up to feed the chickens.  Here we have old pasta, powdered milk, macaroni and cheese, Ramon noodles and who knows what to mix with rice, beans and wheat.  The chickens are doing well on it which is good since it saves us from buying regular feed for them. I ground about 25 pounds of feed before stopping.

Scott wants to run the mower but hasn't understood yet that you're supposed to push it to make it work.  By the time he's old enough to do it he won't want to!

Ya' gotta' love the exuberance of little boys.  We finally got a break in the rain so he wanted to go outside and check water puddles to be sure that they were filled to the right depth.

Three mornings in the last week we've been greeted by ice in the water bowls outside (for the critters)!

And this stuff on the windshield ...

And a thermometer that's telling us things we don't want to know!

Scot is checking out the contents of the package addressed to him.  On the 7th, we got two DVD's we'd ordered for him. (We ordered one and his mom ordered the other!) 

We found a two pairs of very nice cross country skis when we went to dump trash.  When people throw away something usable they'll often set it outside the dumpsters for others to find.  The pair on the left are light touring skis and the right pair are touring.  They're both waxless designs.

Another job for the rain tarp auto repair shop.  I don't know why it always seems to rain on the days I tell them to bring their vehicles for repair.

This is Stephen's car.  When he got the tires balanced they told him he had a bad ball joint so we replaced them yesterday.  We also did a little shooting.  They bought a .380 semi-auto handgun and wanted to shoot it a bit.  It's the first time I've ever shot a .380.  They're okay but I like my 357 magnum better.

I brought my office chair out in the dining area and at the first opportunity Scott commandeered it.  He's having buttered bread and chocolate milk for his second supper of the evening.  He has days when he eats enough for two kids and other days when he has no interest in food.  Yesterday was one of his hungry days.

26-31 May, 2012 Planting time, Lots of pictures....

We've been plagued with rainy weather which would be a good thing except I still have garden area to plant.  We did get some finished though.

The first thing we planted was peas.  I put the first row in using a string and hoe.  The string marks the rows to keep them straight.  I used to use mason's string but now I just get one of my fishing rods out and use the line on it.

One row was enough of that.  I dug through the storage shed and found one of my Garden Way push planters and the box of seed plates.

I used it to plant another row about six inches from the first row then planted another double row and one single row.  There's about 24 inches between them.  I'll put some wire between each double row for the pea vines to climb.  That holds the vines up and makes it easier to pick the peas when they're ripe.  At the end of the season I'll roll the wire up with the old vines still entwined then set it on fire.  The dry vines burn fast leaving the wire clean and ready for next year.

I also put in a few rows of spuds.  I had a little fun mixing red and white potatoes.  Should be interesting come harvest time.  I used the seed planter to mark rows.  It's much faster than any other method.

One of our two apple trees in full bloom.  A rabbit got in the garden a couple of years ago and girdled all but this apple tree.  We lost several trees right before they began bearing fruit so we have this "old" one and one "new" tree we planted last year.

These are bunching onions that come back every year.  They develop seed heads which fall to the ground and start new plants without our help.  Some people call them green onions because they never get large bulbs. 

One of our rhubarb plants.  Rhubarb does well in our climate.

The hen hatched out three eggs then abandoned the rest of the eggs so we have three baby chickens.  I moved the other hens and rooster into the dog kennel so that the hen would have a safe place to raise her young'uns.  I had to shovel out almost all of the straw because she kept scratching around and covering up the feeder and waterer. 

Wash day!  We moved our wash tubs and wringer indoors last fall.  Now we can wash clothes even when it's raining outside.

 

Huckleberry pancakes.  I used up the last of the huckleberries in this jar so I dumped the juice from the jar into the pancake mix which turned it purple.  They make purple pancakes with a great huckleberry flavor.

"Better lay off the donuts there big boy!  You're starting to look like me (grandpa)."

"Ha, grandpa! I bet you can't do this with your tummy!"

We took the Cherokee out for a cruise to do some exploring.  These are some of the rock formations we saw.

Same place, opposite side of the road.

Stillwater River.  It's up a little due to spring run-off.

The Indian Paintbrushes were all in full bloom.

An old beaver dam and swamp we passed on our travels.

We stopped for sandwiches and chocolate cake when we got the the Upper Stillwater Lake.  Scott really enjoyed his chocolate cupcake.

Upper Stillwater Lake (taken from the east side).

Susan picking Arnica beside the lake.

Upper Stillwater Lake

Near the south end of the Upper Stillwater Lake.  There's a large beaver lodge in the water near the left bank.

We'd been in the car for a couple of hours so we let Scott out to stretch his legs a bit.

We got a good look at a Burlington Northern freight train as it rolled by below us.

This is Dog Lake (south end).

North end of Dog Lake.  The day was overcast with light rain on occasion.

We saw a fair sized fish swim away from shore so we got out our rods and tried to catch a few.  No luck today though!

This is just some nameless swamp filled in behind an old beaver dam.  It had a nice camping area though and I saw a few gophers running around saying "shoot me" and there are probably fish in the water.  There were several old roads that looked like good places to explore on bikes so we'll probably make this our goal next time we take the camper out.