A little late, but.....

I just had to share my favorite pic from the 4th of July this year.No particular reason, I just like the way it turned out. That is my oldest son in the pic. Those horses got so close that the wagon almost hit my car.

Anyone want to try their hand at a caption?

Gracie the lifesaver.

It's a good thing Gracie is posting because try as I might to think of an uplifting post or something that sounds happy I just can't this week. I am in a full blown funk of negativity despite still making good progress on my book. So instead I leave you with a Friday Funny.

flowers bees like

I was soooo concerned about planting flowers that bees liked this spring. I only got a few reported favorites and figured I could add more next year. I might as well not bother. The bees like the microscopic flowers on trees that I never knew had flowers. They like the tiny blossoms on my Virginia creeper. They like the blossoms on the weeds. They are not interested in my poppies. They are not interested in my columbine. They are not interested in my irises, my lilies, my lupine, my lavender, or anything else that I purposely planted for them. They DO however love the lambs ear that plagues my yard. This invasive flower has taken over every flower bed along with certain parts of my lawn. My bees are ALL OVER IT. They love it and it blossoms forever. Who knew?

Heck to the yeah!

If you have read our blog long or read previous post or even just know me you know that one thing that absolutely gets me livid are crimes against children. I go all Wild West justice and honestly want to tar them myself. These thoughts have put a huge gap between my little brother and I because he is against the death penalty where I think that sex assault of a child, murder of a child, kidnapping of a child. Any crime that is done with the intent of harming a child should be a death penalty offense. Yeah that is harsh. It is brutal and I am sure some people think I am way too extreme in that thought but I have seen too many walk after their 7 years and then rape and kill a child because the anticipation built so much. One person that fires me up is Warren Jeffs. Having spent quite a few years in Utah and having become LDS you learn about the FLDS. I am the first to say "Live and let live." I may think the idea of sharing my husband is crazy but it's not my place to say. However when making a girl a bride at 12 or making an underaged girl marry her cousin comes up I want to punch someone. Anyway Jeffs' trial in Texas has been going on and he decided to represent himself. His defense: Everything I do is protected by my constitutional right to freedom of religion. If you speak against me you are a blasphemer and are going against God. He came off as a wingbat. Luckily the freedom of religion he tried to claim did not trump the rights of the girls he victimized and today he was found guilty. I hope the book is thrown at him. A Texas prison as a pedophile will be exactly what he needs.

Teenage girls and car shopping.

Can any activity be more futile? I won't even go into little Monkey and her still nutty sleep patterns!

Twitchy update

Can you guess which one is Twitchy? No? She's the little black one in the front. I can always tell which one she is because she is still smaller than the rest, her tail is always down and she doesn't hold her head as high as the others. Besides those things, she is absolutely normal. When I told her story to the lady at the feed store where I bought her, I was offered a job, lol. She was amazed that Twitchy lived through her attack and that I actually put the effort in to save her. I just hope she can bulk up enough to make it through the winter.

Helping at the fair

I was asked a few days ago if I would help with the canning department at the fair. I am unsure exactly what I will be doing but as long as I don't have to judge, I am happy to help. Especially since I can myself, I am really looking forward to seeing what kind of things other people can and how to dress it up for fair. I will take lots of pics and let you all k now how it goes!

Garden update

I went out of town for a week and my garden went CRAZY! My pumpkin plant has probably eight little pumpkins, this one is the biggest.

I have four or five little tiny watermelons.

Three deformed peppers, all on one plant.

Three of my sunflowers blossomed overnight. I will get better pics later.

My potatoes grew enough that it is time to add another box to the top. I couldn't get any closer because the bees get pretty pissed off when we mess with anything in the vicinity of their hive.

And I saved the best for last. This is my crazy, fast growing, gigantic tomato plant. All of my tomato plants have several green tomatoes on them but this particular plant just exploded. It is the same type of tomato, it gets the same amount of sun and water, but for some reason it is over twice the size of the other plants.

My corn is doing well but the wind keeps knocking the stalks down. I am going to build up the rows with more dirt tomorrow.

One of my chickens got out of the pen and made a dust bed in my new radishes and ate quite a bit of my lettuce and swiss chard. She's lucky she's one of my best layers or she might have ended up as soup. If she doesn't stay in the chicken pen, she will have to live in the empty dog run until after the harvest. My peas and beans doubled in size while I was gone and my onions are starting to blossom. (Do they need to be harvested before they do that?)

My carrots are almost big enough to start eating and my Jerusalem artichoke is getting a little bit taller.

The Monster List for FMS and feeling rather out there.

As I try to figure out this thing called Fibro (And pull Gracie along because I am pretty sure it is what she has too since she has never been able to get diagnosed either.) I discovered a fellow sufferer who turned her high-octane exhausting career into a wonderful job where she gets to be home but still make money and she helps those of us who suffer with her. She became the Ask.com guru on FMS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She keeps up on research and posts valid tips and things stemming from that research to help us in our own journey's. She has what she calls "The Monster List of Fibromyalgia Symptoms". It has over 60 things related to our lovely life. Some even are their own disorders or diseases. At last count I have 43. I am afraid I am developing another. I feel very frustrated. I feel like such a frumpy failure some days. Not trying to complain and my hubby tells me I am being silly but some days I am lucky to keep track of the girls and cook dinner. I am usually in shorts and a tank. I don't wear makeup. Being raised by a single dad until I was 16 meant that learning girly things never really happened. My amazing guy tells me often how beautiful I am and how amazing and I am so lucky I have that in my life because if I had someone who had no patience for this and who expected some perfectly coiffed barbie all the time I would feel even worse. Ugggg..... That is one of the rough things about this illness. It is ever changing and because we have to limit ourselves and completely change how we do things it means that we learn very quickly if those around us truly love us for better of for worse. I am lucky. I know some who aren't.


On another pity Lila party moment: I had a moment today where I was reminded yet again how very different I am from some of the people who should be closest to me. I don't know how it happened or why but I seem to be even farther away from some of the people I love. I do love them, so much. My life is about love. I just seem to have nothing what so ever to relate to them with. About the only thing we seem to share anymore is a love for my girls but even then it is rough because what we value is so different that often blind trust has resulted in some situations that haven't been ideal. Humph..... This trying to vent but also be respectful is a precarious line. I want to have good relationships with everyone I love but I also don't know how to do that most days. I am happiest at home or with my husband exploring somewhere, metal detecting, shooting, doing what we do. My faith is so important to me yet places a wedge because either they aren't sure they believe at all in anything bigger than themselves or they aren't sure they like what I believe. How do you find a place to heal old wounds to the point of closeness when you are so very different?

Crazy bees.

It is HOT. I am not complaining, we had too long of a winter to complain about the heat once we finally get it. But it is so hot that my bees just hang out on the hive in the evenings enjoying the cool evening temps. My queen comes out onto the porch and her secret service guard bees freak out and get VERY aggressive. The crawl all over her and sting everyone (me) that gets close. She is really causing them some serious stress. I would hate to have their job.

The first time I saw this, I completely freaked out and called my big brother (once again big bro comes to the rescue) to ask if my bees were running away. We finally decided it was simply too hot to stay in the hive once the outside temps cool.

Makes for a cool pic, but the bees are certainly more on edge when Queen Anne is taking risks.

Oh, by the way, Orajel works very well on bee stings : )