Traveling and the Miracle of Life

March 25. We traveled to St. Johns today planning to visit the Great-grandma's, but didn't get to visit with either. One was sick with a cold, and the other wasn't home. So, we stopped at Fina for pizza and headed for Jessie's house.





I think Jessie was glad to see her folks, she'd talked to them every day she was here, but it's just not the same as seeing them in person. We got to see their huge garden plot all plowed up with Allis' old plows and Jessie was excited to show them the seeds she got for them here at the drug store.





On the way home from Andy's John saw a cow giving birth so we stopped to watch. The mother was all alone in a field along the highway and was close to the fence where we got a good view of the event. This is the first time I've ever see a cow give birth and it was so cool! The calf was still at first and we worried that it was okay, but with lots of licking from the mom, it soon started stirring. Its attempts to stand had us laughing, he tipped over and fell flat the first few times. We named it Norman and cheered him on in his attempts and soon he was up and searching for his first meal. Here he is doing a headstand as he falls over on one of his first attempts.

And here he is after he was able to stand. It's amazing to me that this took such a short time.

A Busy Day

We helped John pour sidewalk this morning. It was COLD on the shadowed side of the house! We got it all poured and I only had to shed a tiny little bit of blood scraped off by a rusty bolt to get it done!

Then Jessie and I played a few games and devored a batch of yummy kettle corn. We helped John wash the pickup, Jessie inserted the coins in the machine, turned the knob and stood by in case Pa needed any help. I took this shot of her from inside the warm vehicle, looking through the pink soap!




Love this shot of our little glamour girl! No, she's really not wearing dark lipstick, it's just dark chocolate, LOL!

Spring is here!

The weather continues to be cold and breezy and so we went for a ride to find us some spring! We saw this gorgeous tree in bloom and stopped to take a few pictures of it.



While on our ride, John created a new game to play with Jessie, he asked her if she knew where we were when we'd been riding around for a while and if she could guide us home. After showing her north, south, east and west and she'd spotted flat top, she started guiding us down and across town until we ended up at a location where she recognized where we were and knew her way home. She did a good job of finding home! I think it's a great way to teach a child directions!

This afternoon Jessie and I made some jewelry while her "kids" took a nice long nap. Here she is checking on them and they were still sound asleep. She's making sure I don't make any noise while taking my picture and wake them up!

Jessie's Visit

Jessie is on spring break and came to spend a few days with us. One of her favorite things is to play the organ. She makes up her own music and comes up with some really good sounding creations!



The weather was cold and windy today, so we went shopping for seeds and then spent most of the day inside playing and watching TV.

5th Anniversary

Some of the family got together today in honor of Dad and the 5th anniversary of his death. We visited his grave and cleaned a bit and replaced the old faded flowers with fresh new ones.



Then we all gathered back at Mom's house for BBQ'd steaks, cooked by Sharla's fiance, Jaron. Yumm, were they good!


Mom had some excitement recently at her house, she came home to find the back yard and her woodpile and beautiful apple tree on fire! A call to 911 soon brought the fire department to her aid. Her neighbor had been burning weeds and I guess a spark got away and ignited the woodpile next to her fence and leaped up to start the apple tree on fire, then spread out across her lawn. Luckily, the house and her sheds didn't catch on fire!



The poor tree looks bad and Andy pruned some of the worst looking branches. We'll have to wait and see if any life is left in the remaining tree. The wood pile is a loss but the lawn will recover.

Poinsettia

My little poinsettia plant that I got for Christmas is still growing and looking pretty. I was trying to get a good picture of the tiny little tomato seedlings that just came up and they are sitting right next to my poinsettia so I shot it too. The camera refused to focus on the tomatoes, the dirt looks good, but the plants are all blurry so you get to see the poinsettia instead of my seedlings.

New Fence

We've decided to replace the open picket fence next to our house. We're going to put in a solid brick wall, about 6 feet high. The need for a sound barrier brought us to this decision, hopefully it will block the noisy dogs next door a bit!

Food for the Soul

We made our annual pilgrimage to the 20' falls today. I love to go there when the snowmelt is coming down the stream. The awesome roar of the water and the sheer force of nature at work as the water plunges down the sheer drop is always amazing to me and I love to sit and watch and listen. Awwww, food for the soul!

The first picture is taken from down below the falls. The water isn't at its highest peak yet and I was able to get up pretty close to the falls and could feel the spray on my face! The second picture was taken up the hill at the level where the water falls off the cliff.

We rode home through the woods, the same road we tried to come in on when we tried to get to the falls on March 8. Most of the snow has melted since then, although we did hit a few spots where there was snow on the road and some pretty muddy spots. Thank goodness for 4-wheel drive! We had a fun trip, it seemed so good to be able to get to the woods again! I'm looking forward to some camping trips this summer!

As we got to the turnoff to our street we could see flashing lights approaching from New Mexico way and stopped to see if it was more of the big trucks. Sure enough, it was another group of three and this time I got a picture of the truck as it went away from us and you can tell more just how huge the load the truck is carrying is!

A craving for squash!

Mel and Ruth gave us this winter squash last fall and I have been saving it for a moment when I just had to have some fresh squash. That day came today and we cut it open and I cooked a bit of it to eat some for a snack. Yumm, a little butter, salt and pepper and it was perfect! We had more of it later that evening with our supper. I'm going to save the seeds and try planting them this summer.

Where are they going?

We've been spotting a lot of trucks like this one traveling through town lately. They pass through in groups of three hauling thse huge things. John thinks they are blades for wind power generators, and they do look like that's what they are. They are really big, so huge that part of them hangs off the back end of the truck! Wow! We met this group of three on our way home from a trip to Show Low to see Dr. Flake. I wonder where they are headed?

Trip to New Mexico

March 15. John and I had cabin fever today and so we got sandwiches at Subway and rode out to Red Hill, New Mexico. We found the old house there remodeled and lived in and the old station has been turned into a land sales office. I always thought the place looked like it would be neat to live in, even though it's so far from any civilization. Now, everywhere we looked we could see signs of habitation, new homes going in and mailboxes set up by the highway, Red Hill isn't in the middle of nowhere anymore!

On the way back home, we stopped to look at a rock garden we found and visited years ago. It's such a cool place, it sits on the top of a hill and is surrounded by trees on the hill below and it's hidden from your view until you top out on the hill and suddenly you are there among all these beautiful rocks. Here are a few pictures I took, I think this first one looks like the face of a bearded man.

Charles sent us this picture of Nikki this morning. She is on a Girl Scout mystery trip this weekend. The girls loaded up in a bus late Friday night and drove all night and ended up at Disneyland! What a fun surprise this must have been for them. Can't wait to hear all about the trip from Nikki! Someone took this picture with their cell phone and sent it to Charles.

Snow!

Andy and Jessie came by to visit with us today, we had a good visit and a yummy lunch at Arby's. Jessie wanted to show her Dad how she could climb up in the locust tree so she retraced her steps up the tree. Wow, was she high up! I'd say 12 to 15 feet up.



Just minutes after Andy and Jessie left we looked out our window to see snow flying by!

Spring Fever

I've got spring fever! Even though it was cold and windy today, I added some compost to one of my square foot gardening boxes and planted a some sugar peas. I covered the box with plastic to keep it warm and hopefully my seeds will sprout.



This is the only sign of spring in the yard so far, this little bush has budded out.

Poor Old Tree

This tree is probably close to 100 years old! It is in the pasture across the street from us and one day last fall we looked out to see half the bark gone! By the next day the rest of the bark had also disappeared. I'm so sad that this happened, the horses that live in the pasture did it and I am so afraid this grand old tree is going to die. I have thought about putting paint on it to see if that would protect it, but I'm not sure the horses would leave it alone.

I'm up to date now!

I finally updated my laptop! I have been putting off updating to XP SP3 for a LONG time now, I was scared the computer was going to blow up or something and it's been running so low on disk space that I didn't dare. I backed up and moved things off and took the plunge and it was so easy and took only a few minutes to upgrade and I didn't have any trouble at all. WHEW! Why did I wait so long??

Here's my dropping for today, one of John's scratchboards that is going to hang on our wall for a while. We'll be taking it to the show we're going to do in July, but until then, we can enjoy it! It's the old Rhoton Barn in Show Low, it's fallen down now, but I remember driving by it all during my childhood and it looked much like it does in the scratchboard.

Wagon Ho!

This is a photo of a picture John made and gave me for my birthday a few years ago. It's made entirely of wood, except for the cloth background. Some of the pieces are tiny and thin, like the reins, I'm amazed that he could shape a bend into them! I just love it!



I got to go on a tour of Casa Malpais this morning. They are doing some stabilization work and just back filled the room I helped excavate. It was kind of sad to see the room filled, but the walls were collapsing and it needed it. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me to get a picture of them getting the dirt to the room in a pipe from the plateau above, across a deep gorge and over to the pueblo. Quite a feat!

A Dying Breed

I thought I'd show you the wolf sculpture that will go with the Trapper John is working on now. It's hard to get a good photo of metal sculptures, the colors just seem to blend together, but hopefully you can tell what he looks like. The wolf is built mostly of old rusty traps. He named it "Dying Breed" and thought the name was appropriate as it could mean either the wolf or the trapper that trapped them, as both are a dying breed.

Trapper in progress

John is working on a new sculpture now. He's making a trapper to go with the wolf he made a while back using mostly traps. He's using a lot of the "pre-art" we picked up on our trip down south and is looking pretty cool! I took this picture today, so he can see proportions on his trapper.

View

The view out my Kitchen window. John just finished up a new base for the spoonfish and got him all installed in the front yard. He looks like he's just jumped up out of the water into view. Pretty cool! Also in my view is Fraiser Crane. Don't you love his eye!

Sunrise through my curtains

This is a photo taken at sunrise. I liked how the sun made the bottles behind the curtain show up.

Rearranging

More moving around, I put this shelf unit in the guest room, it used to be in the living room, but got kicked out when we remodeled. The bed frame is an antique, I'm not sure where it started out, but it was in the old house at the ranch when I was a kid, my Uncle rescued it from there and I got it after he and grandma passed away.

My not so pleasant neighbor

This neighbor isn't so pleasant to have around! There are three of them and they bark incessantly! So frustrating, they make me want to move!!

Exercise, we all need it!

My exercise ball, I need to start using it again!

Beautiful Eyes

I just love horses eyes, they have such long gorgeous eyelashes! This horse is named Santana and he lives in a pasture across the street from us. He's a good neighbor to have, I love looking out my window and watching him and his two companions.






This is Misty, Jessie's favorite horse. Last summer, she had Misty trained to come to her when she called her. Now, Sultana won't let Jessie visit with Misty, he gets jealous and pushes her away or bites her when he catches them trying to visit. I guess he wants to get all the grass and bushes Jessie feeds Misty!

Blankies

The beginning of a new month and a bit closer to spring! We visited the great-grandmother's today on our way to take Jessie home. She had a good visit with them and received this beautiful handmade quilt from her Grandma as a late birthday gift. Grandma asked Jessie if she was going to retire "Blankie" (a quilt she made and gave her several years ago), but she said no, she isn't ready to put her away yet. Blankie accompanied Jessie everywhere when she was a little girl and provided comfort to her when she was sad or hurt. She wore out the first Blankie, (now retired and saved in her closet) so Grandma made her a second one, and that one is now worn and threadbare, but Jessie still loves her Blankie and she still accompanies Jessie on visits to our house. (You can see a corner of Blankie in a photo in the last post, Cutie is laying on her edge.)

Growing Up

Jessie is growing up so fast, it seems like every time I talk to her she sounds older. Last night for the first time ever at our house, she spent the night in the guest bedroom! I'm sure having her very own TV to watch in there had nothing at all to do with it, LOL. I kept listening for her to come in and sleep in our room and had her regular little bed all ready for her, but she didn't need it. Sigh, I'm not sure I'm ready for her to be so grown up!

We noticed the water was running in the drainage that comes from the 20 foot falls so we thought we'd take a picnic lunch and ride up and see it. Forgetting about snow we took the scenic route and found a nice plowed road, until it ended here and the last 4 or 5 miles to go looked snowpacked! We decided not to try it and instead followed the plowed road in to see Red Cabin Ranch Estates. There were some nice lots, but it looks like most of the best ones are already sold. We ate our picnic lunch by a pond, sitting on the tail gate of the pickup. It was sunny, but cold and a bit breezy. Jessie had fun throwing rocks onto the frozen areas of the pond to see if they would break through. We wondered if the ice was thick enough to walk on where the rocks didn't break the ice, but didn't want to risk falling into the freezing water so didn't try it out.

Jessie and Cutie watching TV and checking email at the end of the day.

Curtains and Jessie

Finished up the curtains today! Yea!

We picked up Jessie this afternoon after school and brought her home to spend the weekend.

We explored the garden and talked about how it's almost time to plant again and then she amazed me by climbing up about 15 feet into the Locust tree! What a girl!

Birds

For a while now I have been hearing the birds sing and when I stepped to the window to look out one day, there was this big bird sitting on the fence post looking right at me. I ran for the camera and of course by the time I got back with it turned on, the bird was gone. Since then I've been stalking the grape vine, waiting for him to come back. So far, I haven't caught him, but today, I did get a few bad shots of some birds on the grape vine.

Everyone needs a wizard!

February 25 . Here's my dropping for today, a whimisical little wizard that sits in my garden.