How many flowers do you need?

If you're going to make clover necklaces for you, your little sister, your little brother, your pony, your sister's horse, and three kittens, how many flowers do you need?



At least two buckets worth.

At least somebody wants to help me with the garden.

I was beginning to wonder if I was on my own on this. But it appears he'll even help with the mechanic'n.

Flower garden progress.

The flax (in the rear) and the zinnias and sweet peas (in the foreground) are shooting up.



And speaking of shooting up, these flowers (I cannot for the life of me remember what I planted there) were not even peeking out of the ground one day and the next day I took this picture. I can't wait to see what they are. Super plants with capes, I'm sure.



I wish the picture were better so that you could see how tall they were - some of them were over six inches.

It is hot.

The goat kids know just how to handle it.

The skunk.

I found out who has been eating our cat food.

I knew it wasn't the cats. At our old place, between the owls and hawks, there wasn't much left for the cats, so I'd gone from supplementing the mothers to feeding all of them. Since we moved here (and brought all of the barn cats with us), they've disdained cat food. There are so many rodents around that even the babies are catching them.

I've been faithfully putting out cat food, just in case, but until about a week ago, it didn't get touched until the dog found it. Suddenly it started disappearing - and then the bag in the shed got torn. Strange. When I walked into the shed and saw this little cutie out of the corner of my eye, I've got to admit - I was thrilled. I've never seen one so close up. I froze so as not to activate anything I didn't want to activate, backed out of the shed, shut the door and went to ask Matt what to do about a skunk in the shed. I'm not up on all the country protocol yet.

According to him, this was my chance to redeem myself from my mouse cowardice. You see, skunks don't bother me that much - as long as they don't bother me, if you catch my drift - but they are not to be trusted around chickens, so my husband told me that we'd have to move it. As in catch it and transport it. And this was my chance to redeem myself in his eyes. Crappy excuse to get out of having to catch a skunk, if you ask me.

He said that since it was a young skunk, it would not be producing its trademark smell yet, so I was safe to walk in there with a dog kennel and gloves.

Tell me, would you walk in and pick this cute animal up?



Feisty little thing. I walked into the little shed, shut the door, and shooed it into the dog kennel. Turns out that while baby skunks may not have activated scent glands, adolescent skunks are beginning to activate them just fine. While I didn't get the full-on skunk smell, I got rotten onions mixed with sulfur. Then I loaded it into the back of the truck and asked the girls if they wanted to help me re-home it several miles away. They were game.

When we got to the drop-off point (I found a fantastic hill with lots of downed trees and tall grass for shelter), I set the kennel on the ground and the girls opened it up.

It came out cautiously and danced around for a few minutes.

Then it scurried off into the grass.


And so, according to Matt, I have redeemed myself. So when the mouse ran across my foot tonight as I was in the middle of a late-night baking session and I screamed (like a girl), I resolved not to tell him. That lasted five minutes, then I ran upstairs, woke him up and said that the mouse had run across my foot. I may have questioned the mouse's parentage in my retelling of the story to him. But I caught the skunk - not him.

The mouse.

The house we're living in now sat empty for five months. This meant that we have had to deal with spiders and moths and ... mice.

Just one family of mice, it seems. We saw the mother mouse one night and had no luck catching her that night - or for the next five nights. She (I am simply assuming it was a 'she' based on the age of the mice that came after she was gone) came out every night, late at night.

Mice, I don't mind. Mice in the house, I do mind - not so healthy. Catching her and moving her outside would not have been a kindness. Between fighting with the voles and outside mice for a new home in an unfamiliar environment and fleeing from the constant threat from cats, she would live in terror for a few days, max - our cats really are very good mousers. So when I saw the mouse in the kitchen in the middle of the day, and we both froze, I called to Hannah to run get Aradia. Aradia caught her in a millisecond, and that was that.

Two days later, the juveniles started coming out. Three of them in three nights. There is only one left now. Last night Matt and I had it cornered in the bottom of a file cabinet. He grew up 'dispatching' of animals. I did not. So when he scared the mouse out my direction, I hesitated - in a manner of speaking.

According to him I screamed like a girl as I jumped out of the way of the cute little mouse with the big ears and it got out of our carefully laid trap. I reminded him that it has indeed been a girl he's been married to for the last eight years. And that I may have screamed at a mouse that he would have killed with ease, but I birthed three babies, a feat that would make him scream like a girl should he attempt it, thank you very much.

So now we still have one little mouse running around and me with a reputation - that I am fine with - for being too soft to kill.

Heavy load.

Remember when I said that the fruit trees at our 'old' house would get a heavy fruit load this year?

The apple trees are already being weighed down by the small green apples. I can't imagine how heavy they'll be when the apples are three times that size.

Want to see the cherry trees? You have *got* to see the cherry trees. They're already ripe!

Well, they were. The birds got them. Picked clean.

The back of the tree still had some cherries on it, and tart as they were, the girls still couldn't stop eating them. Tastes like summer!
The cherry trees down in the orchard seemed to be faring a little better, so hopefully we'll get some of those.


Even the pine tree is over-producing this year.

This is my favorite fruit tree on the property. I was calling it a plum tree, but I think they're official name is Italian Prunes. Or something. I love the fruits, but that's not why this is my favorite tree. They're my favorite tree because they like to throw a surprise party at the end of every summer. Hidden away in the green leaves, growing bigger and bigger are these little green prunes. Plums. Things. Delicious things.

Can you see them in there?

Then, all at once, overnight, they're dark purple, soft and juicy, ready to eat. I fall in love every summer. Regularly. (pun intended - it's a good thing to be regular, don't you think?)