A walk through the woods

Because the temperatures predicted for today were in the 90's and because we can, we decided to take another day to play in the high country. Still wanting to explore more of uncharted territory for us, we loaded the crew up and packed a lunch for a day trip. Near Rob Roy Reservoir, we drove up a dirt road and noted several really good camping spots. As we rounded a curve we encountered these two bull Moose leisurely having their breakfast or brunch...maybe their coffee break. I threw a picnic lunch together and water for the dogs in the truck this morning along with the camera, but forgot exactly where the camera was at first. By the time I remembered where it was, these two were starting to move. We did get some great shots as they lumbered across the road in front of us..totally ignoring us and in no hurry to get away! This alone made the trip worthwhile.
We stopped to let the dogs play and had our lunch in the shade of the trees and continued our adventure. It was uneventful after that, but I marvel at the beauty of the mountain countryside and always find it relaxing and peaceful...the calm before the storm. With a little nip in the air in the early morn and with the children all going back to school, it reminds me that the snow storms will be here before we know and I will be longing for another walk in the woods.

More summer fun stuff

Here are a few of the teapot birdhouses we made...each of us was able to have at least two and some three. Click on the photo for an enlargement.

Sunflowers this year are so pretty! My garden has produced pretty well this year, considering that I wasn't sure what I would plant and since it was my first year, I have learned a lot. Next year I will dress the cabbages in panty hose to keep the white fluttery creatures from using them as foliage for reproducing. My daughter warned me and I kept putting off the task, however I was able to harvest my first head yesterday along with the multitude of zucchini and broccoli.
The Mr and I and dogs spent this past week camping. Weather was great, scenery beautiful, bugs were plentiful and in spite of a flat tire and cured plant seeds sticking to the dogs, it was a nice few days away from the rat race. We have a big quilt show here this next week and I suppose I will do more garden gathering and freezing for winter, but we may take a day to play again before it gets too cold to do so. Kitchen remodel on hold 'til bad weather or time permits.

More fun!

This is my teapot birdhouse and I will post more later! We had fun trying to determine just how much "junk" we need on them.House for rent? All five below. Click on the image for a closer view.
And in the cabin above the laundry this was the replacement for the old wicker shade from the 70's probably. The bulb could be replaced with something more decorative, but it sure did illuminate the area and I neglected to get a picture of the others. Figuring out how the wiring would take place with the different thicknesses of china and pottery was a little bit of a challenge, but our hostess outdid all when she shimmied up the ladder to place her birdhouse on an old aspen top. We have gotten a lot braver with our endeavors and discovered that we can find a solution to pretty much anything!

We spent the weekend with friends in the Platte Valley and helped with a community garage sale. What fun! Now we hope to get out of town for a camping trip sometime before the snow starts to fall. My garden is producing lots of goodies and I will need to take time to harvest and preserve soon. Fall is in the air.

Retreat project

This is the work table filled with teapots and do dads of all sorts in bins and boxes. I cut the pickets from cedar fence boards in various shapes and we painted or stained them to our liking. After positioning them on the pickets, holes were drilled for wire which was threaded through from back to front and twisted around the spouts and handles. I was lucky enough to have a lid with a hole in it and embellished the picket with a flower shaped piece from a lamp I took apart. A chandelier crystal hangs from the spout and I am hoping that a robin will find it a fit home for feeding her babies crumpets and tea. At any rate we had a ball picking out "stuff" and again--recycle, re purpose, reuse!
Speaking of crumpets and tea..We picked our first raspberry crop tonight. After the weigh-in, we only had half pound but they were yummy over vanilla ice cream!

The kitchen remodel is on hold while we have some "us time", but we are nearly ready to spray texture and then pick out counter top and sink and paint. When you do these things yourself you must have patience!

"A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains." ~ Dutch Proverb

Retreat fun!

OK, here is the gnome house which I finished at our wonderful Elk Mtn cabin with my dear friends. There were several hollowed logs last year which we decided would make great projects for this year. I took saws, drills, construction materials and a bucket of odds and ends I had collected for embellishments for birdhouses. The "roof" I used was a piece of kitchenware found at the Goodwill with a hole in the center. We decided we could put a plant in the center. I put this in my shade garden and had been given a fern start which I decided had not lived. To my surprise, when I got home, I found that the fern had indeed lived and put up one small frond. This will be perfect for my gnome village and this is the first of many more homes to come. I will post pictures of the others my friends made later. We had so many laughs. The logs were of various thicknesses and it was a trick to use the hole saws, but with a little patience and some ingenuity we succeeded! Just to give you an idea of our workspace, this photo shows our plywood tables perched on very old saw horses. We were shaded and protected and this is next to a stream. We discovered that we had neighbors in the form of a pair of robins with 4 little babies just outside the covered area. As we laughed and sawed and drilled and made all kinds of noise, they continued to feed the babies until one fell out of the nest. The resident boxer discovered the baby and with a ladder and gloves, our hostess carefully put the baby back and we were pleased to see that it was fine and continued to be fed.