70 MPH Winds !!!!

My trip to Flagstaff was cancelled due to my friend's daughter being flown to Phoenix. She is a diabetic and had a huge crisis. Well, family always comes first and there will be other opportunities. Think of all the money I saved!
I planted my scallop squash plants and watermelon a couple of days ago.Pa replaced the dead blackberries and added another grape seeing as we couldn't tell if our current grape was alive. Right now with the winds howling at 70 mph, probably nothing will survive. I did cover my strawberry plants with some shade cloth and am holding it down with cement blocks. I watered everything heavily before the winds struck.

I'd been promising Pa's sister some cards so made 28 of them this week. I'll send them to her when I go to town on Tuesday to pick up the mail. I must confess that I "borrowed" most of the sayings from another web site but I made my own graphics and cut files and cut them out with my handy Cricut machine. The swan, tiger and whale were cut using card stock as the base layer and vinyl for the top layer. I've found that if I have some intricate cuts to do, vinyl holds up better and is easier to stick on the card stock. Since sister goes thru cards like we do t.p. I'd better get started on some more. I used a resizer to make my pictures smaller and boy, did they download fast on the blog. Hope you can see them ok.
Man, oh man, this wind is driving me crazy! I have experienced more wind in the past 3 months than I have in my entire life total! It's impossible to do anything outside. I had to close the windows to keep most of the sand out. The four dogs got hair cuts this morning. Maggie was covered in tiny ticks again even tho she has a flea and tick collar on. She got her second bath of the week, this time with tick shampoo. I've got to search the motor home for the tick spray.
Pa will be heading for Vegas at the end of June for his two doctor appointments. I found a place where I can get my mamo in Springerville with no dr. referral so that will save me a trip to Vegas in the near future. My mom had breast cancer twice, once at 70 and once at 80. Luckily, they found it when the lump was the size of a head of a pin so radiation took care of that after the lump was removed. So that makes me very aware that I need to have a yearly mamo. You women out there, make sure you get yours also!!!
I've lost 5 or 6 of the 14 pounds I gained. Wouldn't you know that Pa is making fudge as I write this ! Who's side is he on anyway? Hopefully he will hide it somewhere so I can't find it in a weak moment. I was going to make him peanut butter cookies today but will wait till he eats all his fudge. For dinner tonight, I am going to pressure cook a couple of chicken breasts. It only takes 8 minutes after the pressure builds up. How cool is that? I should use that thing more often.
Oh Lord, help me !!!! The entire house smells like chocolate............

I GOTTA PEA !!!

And Arugula

 And radishes

 and potatoes

 and strawberries

 And a grave yard! No wait a minute, we enlarged the garden already and we are going to grow some things in bags of potting soil. I just couldn't face shoveling another truck load of horse manure and having to borrow the roto tiller again. So we will try this and then in the fall, dump the bags of soil and roto till them under for next year.

Can you believe this is what we woke up to on Tuesday morning? Maybe it was Wednesday.....whatever. It rained off and on all day and then into the night and we woke up the next morning to snow. It didn't freeze so it didn't damage my garden. We had our usual wind this week also. I happened to glance out the window and was shocked to see this.....

Good heavenly days!!!! For the first time in 16 years of marriage, Pa's inner child managed to break thru that hard crust and come out to play. It was a sight to see. I was almost afraid to go outside and break the spell.

Well, it's back to work. We have been putting up gutters on the house. Now is that an experience. Pa and I managed not to get a divorce but it was touch and go for awhile. For the rest of the guttering, he is trying to do most of it himself.

Ain't that purty? I'd post more often to my blog if it didn't take so long to add pictures. It takes a little over 2 minutes to download each picture. I can do one at a time or a bunch at a time but it still takes 2 plus minutes for each one to download. And I do know you all love to see pictures.
Next Saturday, if nothing comes up to cancel, my friend Katie, from Holbrook, and I am going to Flagstaff to check out the shopping hot spots. It takes at least an hour to get to Holbrook and then two hours to get to Flag. It will be a long day but worth it. I'm not interested in malls, I'm interested in craft stores, and thrift stores and a good place to eat.
Speaking of eating, I gained 14 pounds living in the motor home. Isn't that disgusting? In Vegas, I never craved sweets, not even chocolate. I've gone back on the HCG diet and have lost 4 pounds. I am doing 2 miles a day on my exercise bike. And I am craving chocolate like crazy!!!!! Pray for me, pray for me hard! I am having such a hard time sticking to the diet this time. It doesn't help that lettuce is 25 miles away. I use Romaine lettuce in place of bread , even for tacos. I went to the little IGA grocery store in Saint Johns and all their Romain lettuce had turned yellow and the iceburg lettuce was rotten in the bag. I flagged down an employee and asked if she could check the back room for fresh lettuce and luckily they had some. I really didn't want to go another 45 miles to Springerville just for lettuce. One of the downsides of living in the sticks. But let me tell ya, all in all, it is worth it. I love it out here.
I'll let ya know how my trip to Flag goes on Saturday, so stay tuned!

Company!

 We had our first over night guests. Pa's best bud, Steve came with his family from Salt Lake City. The Razor is one of the toys he brought along. That puppy can go!

 He brought his own Taj Majal to stay in. Boy, that toyhauler is every bit as nice as our house. No wonder they stayed in there instead of the house. That thing can do every thing except knit baby sweaters.

 Steve rode most of the way on his Harley. He was a little sunburned and wind blown but he was happy to be here.

Here is Pa and Steve and Steve's grand daughter standing in the toyhauler section of the fifth wheel. It has it's own TV and beds and a picnic table built in. How cool is that? Steve bought property a couple of lots down the road from us. He bought it at our recommendation and thank goodness he liked what he saw.  Other than looking at the property, no one did much exploring but considering that they traveled for 15 hours to get here, it kind of caught up with them and everyone was exhausted. Unfortunately, they were only able to stay for two full days because people had to be back to work on Monday. That is a long trip for only two full days. We can hardly wait for Steve to come back when he can visit longer.

 While Steve was looking around,trying to find his property markers, he found this old abandoned camp site. It was on the property behind his. By the look of things, it had been there for quite a few years. The tents had completely returned to Mother Earth and mostly what was left were the tent poles.

 Lots of tent poles. There were at least two tents there and they looked like they were huge. I don't know if it was a meth lab or what. People have found a couple out here.

 There were a couple of aluminum chairs, a camp bed and suit cases with no clothes.

 Why would someone just leave all this stuff out there to rot?

I finally found a use for my truck. I went this morning and gathered up all the tent poles that were lying around and some cement block and brought them home. I am going to use them in my garden to make shades for the plants. Now, normally I would not take other people's things but you could tell no one had been there for years. And nothing was in good enough shape to be used for camping ever again. Ya know what? I actually sniffed around to see if I could smell any dead bodies. and yes, I did have my gun with me.
I sure hope the weather gets stable soon. Some of my garden seedlings are in bloom, like the scallop squash, tomatoes, and pepperocini's! Amazing how something could bloom in an inch of soil. Maybe I can harvest some baby scallop squash and BBQ them on the grill. My pepperocini's actually have peppers on them already. When I transplant them outside, they will probably go into shock and die. I stuck a couple of tomato branches in water that had broken off and they have roots on them. I had no idea that you could take cuttings off tomatoes and make more tomatoes.
Pa went to town and got water in the Toad mobile. One of our resident snakes came out to say hello today. I'll post pictures later.

Cool with WIND!

How was your Mother's Day? Mine was very nice. I met a lady on a crafting forum who lives in Holbrook, AZ and we had been emailing each other. She and her husband came for a visit yesterday. We had a lovely afternoon and talked crafts for hours. The day went by so quickly. Such a lovely couple! When you are a crafter, you never run out of things to talk about. She and I are going to go to Flagstaff one of these days and she is going to show me all the hot spots to shop. Turns out there are two Goodwills, Michaels and Joann's plus Savers. What more could a girl want?  Ok, a Hobby Lobby would be nice, as a matter of fact that would be awesome. I will have to start a writing campaign to get them to come to Flag. I wrote to them for years begging them to come to Vegas and after 20 years, they heard my plea.
Speaking of crafts, I made this guest book the other day. The outside is real wood, thin enough to cut with my Cricut. I used heat and bond to iron the wood onto cardstock to give it some body. I cut the words and the wolves out of darker wood and glued them onto the front. I made up the inner pages for people to sign when they come to visit. I have a Bind it All and that punched out the holes for the wires to go thru and then it closed the wires. My first attempt was a disaster so this was my second attempt and I am very pleased with the way it turned out. My friend Todd, another person I met on the craft forum gave me the idea.
I got up early this morning before the wind started and planted my 50 strawberry plants, a row of cabbage and two rows of carrots. At least I think I got the carrots planted. The wind started up before I got the seeds covered up so they might have blown over to New Mexico. I guess we will have wind till the end of May. We did have a few days of no wind which we enjoyed very much.
Pa got over his food poisoning and is feeling back to normal. He and I managed to drag, push, and shove the generator back into the shed. He needs to make a water run but we have to wait for our SS check to come in Wednesday so we can put gas in the water truck. Having a once a month income is very inconvenient sometimes. But it sure is nicer than having to go to work!!!! We both love retirement and recommend it to everyone. ha ha.
A new crew is supposed to show up today to finish up the house. We aren't holding our breath. I don't know how they are going to paint with all this wind. I think this crew is from Kingman. The no show guy was from Apple Valley, California and we never did hear what his problem was for not showing up four times. So we shall see.

Pa's got the collywobbles!

Pa made it home about 9:30 last night from Vegas with a generator that should work. The mother board was fried. Now how can it be fried after only being used for an hour or so? Anyway the poor guy ate some tacos in Winslow and immediately knew something was wrong. He managed not to barf until he got home. We unloaded my houseplants and left everything else in the truck.
This morning all the food he bought at Costco with our expired card was dumped all over the kitchen so I could sort it out, divide it out and freeze it. He also brought some chicken breasts home from Liberio Mexican market. The wonderful meat department manager always gives Pa the chicken breasts for 99 cents a pound even tho the going price was $1.69. He even threw in two containers of their chicken marinade. Then there were the onions for 20 cents a pound whereas they are close to a $1.00 a pound here. Shall we mention the asparagus that he got at the 99 cent only store for 99 cents? Here it is $3.99 a pound. Yes, there are things I miss about Vegas. Pa mentioned how awful the traffic was. Here at the ranch we might, might see a vehicle go past our place every two weeks or so. There actually is a rush hour in Saint Johns when the workers at the power plant get off work. Maybe 30 cars or so?
Pa went back to bed while I sorted thru all the meat. When that was done, I planted my potatoes and watered the garlic and shallots I planted yesterday. He didn't feel well enough to unload the generator. My gosh, it takes two oxen and Paul Bunyan to move the darn thing.
Mercy, we had a slight scare this morning. We thought Tilly had wandered off and got picked up by an owl or hawk. We called and whistled forever to no avail. I asked Pa if he checked the truck to see if she got in there and he said he had. Just as I was about to burst into tears at the thought of losing MY dog, I glanced in Pa's truck and there was her little head peering out the window. He looked in my truck which was the one he took to Vegas but didn't think to look in his. Turns out he just opened his truck long enough to put something in there and didn't notice Tilly jumping in at the last minute. Good thing I found her early because it is supposed to be in the mid 70's today and she would have been toast. Every morning, she is at the window checking out all the rabbits eating their breakfast and there is nothing better she'd like to do than go after one. I thought that may have been what she did and lost track of where she was. With no water out here, it wouldn't take long for a little dog to expire.
Oh, for Mother's Day Pa brought me home some Portabella baby mushrooms and some chocolate covered strawberries and two chicken breasts from El Pollo Loco. (Now that is one place that I do miss!) In that rough exterior there does beat a tender heart. Way to go Pa!

Garden Part 1

 Earlier this week, I borrowed Tom's rototiller and on the one non windy day of the week, I got my garden rototilled. I ran over the garden plot 10 times with the rototiller, plowing in the three loads of horse poo, a bag of vermiculite, half a bale of straw, a big bag of Miracle Gro garden soil and 20 pounds of 16-16-16 fertlizer. Then we put 50 gallons of water on the plot, let it soak in and then rototilled again.

 We fenced in the entire  garden area and installed two of our raised garden beds. Making your own containers is so much cheaper than buying them ready made. We made ours for around $10.00 using 6 foot long, 6 inch tall cedar fence slats. We put two together making them 12 inches tall. I have one more left to put together. I dug out the soft earth all around the garden by the fence to make a walk way. That dark spot inbetween the two beds is where I planted my onions. I made a raised bed and then hollowed it out a bit and planted the onions. I figured that would help to hold in the water. Other than potatoes and shallots and asparagus, that's all I can plant until the end of the month. We have a 250 gallon water container right by the garden to make for easier watering. If we ever get our gutters up and if it ever rains, we will have lots more water.

 Hmmm, you can't see it here but there is the walkway all around the garden. I sure hope we have success in our first year of gardening. I am going to start stocking up on canning jars just in case. And before they go up in price. Good grief! We went to Springerville on Wednesday and bought groceries. We may have to give up drinking coffee at the prices these days. It is always sticker shock to go grocery shopping here. We were so spoiled in Vegas with the 99 cent only stores.

I made myself a clothes pin bag using the fabric my friend sent me from Australia. Their cotton fabric is much better quality than what we have in the states. It just feels thicker.
I was planning a trip to Vegas this week but talked myself out of it due to the price of gas. Good thing too because Pa will have to make a trip this week instead. Vegas was the only place we could find that would work on our big 17kw generator under warranty. Generac's customer service is terrible. Their attitude is
" Not my problem, man". The guy in Vegas was more than happy to fix it under warranty. So now Pa can pick up my house plants at our neighbors and maybe make a quick trip to Costco and get some hamburger and olive oil. He can also pick up two gates at my friends house so we can start enlarging the dog pen. While he is gone, I will plant my shallots and asparagus.
It is supposed to be in the 70's today but was freezing this morning. We had to have a fire in the stove to take the chill off the house. The bird bath was frozen. The birds have found the bird bath after all so we can watch them as we eat  at the kitchen table. Now that the table is done, we don't eat in the dining room anymore.
Life in the country can be exciting but it is mostly like life anywhere. Mundane with chores to do. Every day goes by so quickly it makes it feel like the earth must be spinning faster. Where does the time go? Everyone you talk to, young or old, says the same thing. The days go by so fast. I remember when I was a kid, I thought the days were soooo long so it surprises me to hear a young person say that the days are going fast for them also.
That's our exciting (mundane) news for now!