Don't fence me in!!! Yes please do!

 We are in the midst of our monsoon season. Every afternoon dark clouds appear and if we are lucky, rain will fall for a few minutes. ( I prefer an hour or more!) I love watching the lightning and hope it doesn't start any fires. We just hope we get enough to collect so we can fill up our 3000 gallon rainwater tank for the garden.

 We get some beautiful sunsets this time of year. Oh, good news! Something was eating the lilac bush at the side of our house so I put a rat trap out there. Nothing happened. The bait would be gone but the trap wouldn't be sprung. Next I put a mouse trap out there with a piece of dog food in it and for 5 nights in a row, we've caught 5 mice!!! The Lilac bush heaved a sigh of relief and is sprouting leaves like crazy. We harvested our first cucumber from the garden. The skin was so bitter I thought we'd have to throw the cuke away but I peeled it and it tasted fine. I have a yellow straight squash about ready. It is a  non stop battle with the potato bugs. We go out every morning and evening and pick them off and squash their ugly little bodies!!!! I really resent them being on my grape tomato plants because they are scrawny as it is and being eaten by bugs isn't helping them any.

 Pa is in the process of fencing in our 40 acres to keep the cows off the property. This is about the first 400 feet. Luckily half of the property is already fenced to separate us from state property.

 Wayne came over to lend a helping hand. They are taking a break after putting up the first row of barbed wire.

 Pa made the thingy ma jig on the back of the grannie mobile to hold the barbed wire. He's good at those kind of things.

 Lucy was the supervisor on this job.

 It sure helps Pa to have a helper. I don't have much strength in my hands and have a heck of a time squeezing the clips around the post to connect the wire.

After two strings were put up, Wayne felt sick from being dehydrated. He almost passed out. He came in and collapsed on the couch were I filled him with liquids. I had some coconut water ( it tastes like crap) but I made him drink it anyway and then made him a big glass of Gatorade plus water. He stayed for dinner and then we all watched "I Bought a Zoo". He felt bad that he couldn't put up the third row of wire. Pa can outwork guys half his age. Shoot! Pa can work out side in the hottest weather and keep going like the Energizer Bunny. Even being in the house, the humidity drains all my energy. I'm such a wuss but that's what you get when your body won't sweat. Pa looks like he is raining when he is working on something. I can be out in the sun for a few minutes and start feeling sick. At least if I wear a hat and stay in the shade, I can be outside in the summer. In Vegas, I was housebound all summer. I must say I am really looking forward to the cooler days of fall and cold days of winter. That's when my body feels better.
We will be so glad when Pa gets the ranch fenced in. We are so tired of chasing cows and stepping over cow poop.
At the annual POA meeting, everyone voted to get the community well fixed so we could actually use it. There wasn't one dissenting vote. We all want a huge holding tank and solar panels to make it work. Well guess what? The officers of the board had a meeting and decided they weren't going to do anything at all about it. They don't give a damn about the property owners. They force us to drive 50 miles round trip to the ice plant to buy  water. It costs us at least $40.00 a month to get water. The community well is free . What's wrong with this picture? The main goal of our officers is to make sure their friend has the road maintenance contract. They won't even take bids on the roads.Not one single penny has been spent on the well since it was put in. We can't vote the officers out because one of them controls over 300 property votes plus his own 17 properties. He basically hand picks who he wants on the board. They wont' even let property owners attend the meetings!!!! That is against the law in Arizona but no one has the money to fight them in court. Most of the property owners don't even live out here so they have no idea what's going on, they just believe what the POA president tells them.
Well, that's about it for now! Talk to ya later.

Get well card

My friend Katie is always telling me I should enter some of the craft challenges different bloggers put on their blog. As you know, I don't want to be committed to doing anything on a regular basis since I'm retired.  But today I was playing around and made some digital stamps using Inkscape. Also using Inkscape, I made the stamps different colors. Then I got to thinking.......maybe I could make my own cardstock using my flower images. Here's what I came up with.

I layered three different colors of flowers all over my digital mat on the Cameo and then printed it out. I used Chalk-AH-Lot Star Dust chalk to put a shiny glow to the entire card.
Next, I made cut files with the same digital stamp and then inked the edges with Chalk-AH- Lot Pearl Purple chalk, after cutting the stamps out.

 There's a little section at the top that I left white for demonstration purposes.

I cut out 6 flowers and chalked the edges, poked a hole thru each one, scrunched the 5 smallest flowers up to give them some grunge and make them 3-D and attached them all together with a brad. I used my Cameo to cut out the words Get Well Soon and attached everything to the front of my card.

and here's the finished project. Do I need to start a crafting blog or just stick to going's on at the ranch? You be the judge!

They Came, They Saw, They Ate

I just can't get a break!!!!! With the monsoon rains, my garden finally decided to grow. The tomatoes are/were
doing great, the potatoes were thriving....and then came the potato bugs! I was at Tom's looking at his garden and he was telling me that he was standing out side, looked up and saw a swarm of potato beetles flying in. He said they were all over his garden. He picks them off by hand, UGH! I primly stated, I didn't have any. Remind me not to brag. That same day when I went out to inspect the garden, I spotted......potato beetles!!!! They could care less about the potatoes. They want my tomato plants! I have sprayed them with Neem Oil which kills some of them but the suckers just keep coming! I've stomped on kazillions of them and even picked a bunch of them off and killed them. I could use a flock of sea gulls to fly in and eat them. Or a guinea hen. I read they will eat the bugs but not the plants. I don't know who is going to win this war but I don't think it will be me.
Something has been eating my lilac bush. I baited a rat trap and the bait was eaten but not tripped so tonight Pa put in a mouse trap so we shall see what we have in the morning. I don't know if I will even bother with a garden next year. It makes me feel like such a failure! Yeah, I know, " If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." WHATEVER!!!!!

Where the heck did June go?

Hmmmm, do you think the earth is spinning faster and making time go by faster? Remember as kids when we used to think that time just dragged by? Now days, kids tell me that the time goes by so fast for them. Just wait till they get my age, they'll be afraid to blink!

 Meet my new BFF, Lucy. She's about four months old and belongs to Wayne. We aren't sure what breed she is or what mixture. Maybe some Boxer in her? He found her abandoned by her mama and took her in. She is as smart as a whip. I taught her to sit in less than 5 minutes and two days later, she remembered and sat on command.

 I love Lucy! ( Sounds like a good name for a show!) She is such a sweet dog. Of course my dogs don't think so but when she comes to visit, by the time Wayne is  ready to go home, Tilly will be playing with her.

 This is one of Wayne's pregnant horses. He said after she has her colt and it is weaned, he will sell this horse to me for a good price. You can imagine what Pa said about that.....something about me not buying any more craft stuff. I jumped right in and said OK!

 This is Wayne's other horse. I don't know if they have names yet. He couldn't think of one for the Palomino so I'm thinking this one doesn't have a name either.

Here's a frontal picture of the Palomino. I'm hoping hay prices will go down next year but I'm not holding my breath. Can you imagine $14.00 a bale or more for hay?

I put rat traps in the garden and caught 2 kangaroo rats and one Towhee bird. I read that Towhee's like gardens so I am sure they are the ones who are eating my garden. I uncovered my green beans because they grew out of their milk cartons and two days later, I had no green beans! THE GARDEN IS A COMPLETE DISASTER THIS YEAR! I mentioned before that I was thinking of putting hardware cloth around the garden beds and then draping solar shades over the boxes. Wellllll, it would cost over $50.00 each to put hardware cloth around each bed. I don't think so! This morning, I put one bed on top of the other one, replanted greenbeans and then draped solar shades over the bed. Let's see how that works. It might be too late to plant green beans but we have July, August and September so maybe I'll get something. If this works, I am going to build more frames and double them up. And buy wider solar shades next year.

Pa went to ShowLow to meet  his new eye doctor today. He gets his eyes checked twice a year because pressure builds up. It's not glaucoma but something like it. Now that he is registered with the VA clinic here and has an eye doctor here, he won't be making twice a year trips to Vegas. Which means no more trips to Costco. Our card is expired anyway and thanks to our good friend, we now have a card for Sam's Club so I'm thinking, I just might make monthly trips to Flagstaff and stock up at Sam's. They are usually about a dime more expensive than Costco but I could visit Saver's Thrift store while in Flagstaff!!! Whoooo Hooooo!

I found an interesting product on the internet the other day. It is a milk substitute made with whey which is a milk by- product. It is by http://store.honeyvillegrain.com/instantmilksubstitutecan.aspx
It tastes just like milk to me but Pa says it doesn't taste anything like milk. I think he only said that because he knew what he was tasting. I don't drink much milk and have been using instant non-fat milk powder when I make my Pumpkin Smoothies. Tom bought a can and gave me some to try. I think it is pretty yummy! I had a chocolate pumpkin smoothie today.

How hot has it been where you live? It has been so hot and humid here at the ranch. It clouds up and tries to rain but so far we've only had a sprinkle. We are so desperate for rain but what part of the country isn't besides the east coast? We have no way to cool the house down, no air conditioning, no swamp cooler so we just sit and suffer and use the over head fan in the living room and bedroom. The heat doesn't bother Pa like it does me. It makes me physically sick since I don't sweat. I drink so much water , I feel like I'm drowning. I sleep with my hair wet to cool me down. BUT it is cooler here than it is in Vegas so I do get to go out side as long as I stay in the shade. I had to come back inside by 9:30 this morning because the sun was just too much for me while I was working in the garden.

We are headed for Springerville tomorrow to watch the rodeo. Wayne is going with us. That will be the extent of our 4th of July celebration. I'm not sure if any towns are having fireworks due to all the fire danger. I hope they are smarter than that! Gosh, it seems like Colorado has been burned off the map. We've been smelling burnt grass which we think is from the New Mexico fire which is 100 miles or so from us. Didn't God say he was going to destroy the earth by fire next time? Kinda makes you think, doesn't it? I guess He could do it one state at a time trying to get people's attention.

I've been reading the Old Testament and the one thing that keeps popping out at me is how many times the Israelite's kept turning against God in spite of all His blessings and how He kept forgiving them and giving them chance after chance after chance. God never changes, He does the same thing today. How many chances has He given you?