Stuff to pack in the ar

I can’t believe that it fit!

But the guys worked on it and soon everything was ready to go. But we soon realized that we were starving. We stopped at a fast food restaurant on the way to the airport at 3:30 am, but they don’t serve breakfast until 4 am. Now chicken nuggets can go a long way, but after about 10 hrs, even they give out. We went to a local sub restaurant and Kyle said that we had to try poutine.

Poutine – very popular area food

This is a French Canadian food that is a platter of french fries with chese and topped with gravy. If you’re thinking that this sounds fattening, I’m thinking that you are probably right!

Kyle standing outside one of the college buildings

I snapped a couple of pictures of Kyle at the college and then the next thing to do was to head to the Canada border and find our hotel. It wasn’t too hard to find at all,  and we found ourselves checking out the St. Lawrence river and Canada from our hotel.

Outside our hotel

After a fun meal at a local restaurant, we called it a night around 10:30. We’ve got a busy day tomorrow!

Before

And this is what it looks like after about 5 minutes.

After

I also was able to get a terrible belly ache along with it.

So the next thing that I learned was that snakes and lawnmowers don’t go well together. I wanted to re-mow the ditches and yard because it was looking pretty bad, but I also knew that the ditch was pretty wet and I would have to mow it with the push mower. Yea, the snake ditch and push  mower. But as the afternoon went on, I did see two snakes and the one poor snake got all caught up with the mower. I did feel bad for a couple of …. seconds.

While I was working on getting everything mowed, Daryl was still working on planting. Everything was going well for him until things started to go wrong. He stopped for what was supposed to be only a couple of minutes, and found out that he was spending way too much time on the mill, he finally gave up on that and was going to get his tractor home from the repair shop. Well, one thing went to another, and soon he was calling because the tractor belt broke and it needed to get that fixed now. We knew that we were going to have a tight schedule, and I guess it was too tight after all. He did get the corn all planted and only has a little bit of beans left ot plant. The Co-op came out and sprayed before the rain started tonight, so that was actually one thing that actually did work out! In the mean time, I think I better keep the chickens out of the corn until the mill gets fixed!

Working this year with Daryl’s new planter

Bulk fertilizer

So after work tonight I knew that Daryl was working out in the field planting corn, so I wanted to see if I could get the rest of the lawn mowed. I started it last night, and had a long way to go before I was done. The weather was really strange tonight. It was around 90 degrees and WINDY! Now you know just how much I love the wind, but Daryl said that it really was our friend these next couple of days because it was helping to dry the fields off. OK, whatever, but I’m only going to tolerate it for that reason. But when I was mowing, it was so windy that I literally couldn’t hear anything else on the farm. I could see people driving by, but it was so weird that with all the wind noise, you couldn’t hear any one.  So I was doing some other mowing around the yard and I waited for William to get home from his first day at his new summer job, and then I tackled the ditch. It was pretty thick and also pretty wet, so my plan was to mow it with the mower up. I was doing pretty good, and then my wheels started to spin. Good thing William was home to help push me out! From there I started to mow the grove and that was also pretty long. But I knew that I wouldn’t get stuck, so I put the mower down and off I went. It didn’t take long until I noticed that out in the west it was looking pretty blue. But I just kept my head down and the lawn mower floored. But soon I could literally see the rain coming up through the fields and then it hit and I was really getting wet. I didn’t really care if I was wet, but I thought I could hear something when I was mowing.It was one of those times when you know that you should be paying attention, but just didn’t have the time to stop and think about it. All I knew was that I just couldn’t figure it out. Well, I kept trying to make the mower go faster and the wind was howling, and I was wet – and to be honest I think I might have had a kind of crazy look going on also. Then I finally figured out what was sounding so funny. Because the wind was howling so bad, I didn’t hear the thunder that was going on all around me. The only reason that I knew that the noise was thunder was because I could see the lightning in the sky . At first I thought, if I just keep my hands on the steering wheel, I don’t think I should get electrocuted. And then I thought if I could just get this lawn mower to go in road gear, I for sure would have been done by now! So I mowed a little bit longer and then it seemed like the lightning was even closer than it was earlier and it was time to stop. Arggg. But as I was running to the house, I thought that if I got rained out, so did Daryl in the field. About 5 minutes later, in comes the pickup into the yard and Daryl was done for the night. He commented how much dirt there was in the field with all the wind, and I said that this is the first time that I can ever remember that the air actually hurt with the dirt hitting my face so hard. I was so ready for a shower to get clean, but decided that Daryl was in much more of a need of a bath! So my plan for tomorrow is to get the rest of the grove mowed and also the trimming done. Daryl’s plan is to get some more corn planted and hopefully finish up in the next couple of days. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for good weather!

But that wasn’t the case on Saturday.  It was our first graduation party of the year. Now believe me, all graduations are special and they are always fun to go to. But this graduation was extra special to us. In order to explain why it was so special, I’ll have to go back 26 1/2 years. We had a chance to first meet part of this family when I was in the hospital with Kyle. After a long labor, and everyone was settled in for the day, Daryl headed home to do chores. So while I was laying in the hospital bed, I saw two people looking around the  hospital curtain in my room. It was our soon to be babysitter, and her daughter just stopping by to say Hi! That is the beginning of a very long and special relationship with this family. Throughout the years, our boys spent almost as much time at their house as they did ours. This was not only because they babysat them while we were both at work, but you could find our boys at their kitchen table when Daryl and I were gone on vacation, or they’d be running through the hall with their jammies on to find a nice warm spot when they were dropped off in the morning before work. OK, so as the years went by and the family started to have weddings, they also were starting their families. It wasn’t long until the first grandchild was born,  and she was so small. Now when I say small, I’m talking 1 lb and I think 12 ounces. She was only 14 inches long and you could put her in your one hand to hold her. So now on Saturday I’m sitting surrounded by this extended family of ours, and I couldn’t help to feel just a little bit proud that this little girl, who was such a miracle baby, grew up to be such a lovely and wonderful person.She was standing by all her graduation items with the whole world just waiting for her to go out and explore it. Just amazing.

Graduation Card

When I was outside after work today, I decided to light a camp fire. It was looking so wet, and dreary, that a good warm camp fire was the ticket. So when I was working to bring the wood back and forth to the patio, I could hear this really weird noise. At first, I thought ‘whatever’, but soon I just couldn’t stand it anymore and started to look around. Finally I found what was making the noise. It was this tiny bird that got caught in my decoration by the fire pit. I have no idea how he got in there, but he was really scared. I ran to get my camera, and he was still flying around and pooping all of the sides of the glass! Yea, not so cool now! But I snapped a couple of pictures, and then Reno came over to see what I was doing. And if you ever think you’ve seen a bird freak out, I don’t think it could ever top this bird tonight. Reno stuck her nose right up to the glass by the bird and I thought there was no way that it could mess the inside of the container any worse – but I was wrong. It lost all bodily control when Reno was inches away from the little birds face on the other side of the glass. Then I think in utter panic – it found how to fly out the top, and then it was gone. Reno just looked at me and I shrugged my shoulders. Neither one of us had ever seen that before!

What a bad spot to be in for this bird!

I also started to plant some trees my brother got for me. Now to find homes for 25 trees! So the hunt was on to find out where to plant them. The first spot that I really liked was by the windmill, so after I dug the hole, I realized that it was not too far away from the tile line. Yea, that wasn’t going to work. So I filled back in that hole and started to look around some more. I walked our two wind breaks and filled in some spots  that had some trees that died in the last couple of years. And I even started a third row in one part of the grove. I put the rest away for the night, and I’ll look again tomorrow where I can plant more. My brother was going to take whatever I didn’t use and plant them at their farm, I think he’s putting in a new grove. When I was checking out our grove, I couldn’t believe all the pine cones started on the trees. I was trying to figure out just why there are so many on the trees. Someone told me once that every other year you’ll get a lot of pine cones – so I tried to find it on the web. This is what I found out :

Pine trees don’t produce the same amount of cones each year to throw off the insects that eat the cones. Trees do this as a way of avoiding these predators, because if they produce the cones on erratic, unpredictable cycles the insects can’t adjust to them. OK, this kind of sounds made up doesn’t it? But that’s what it said.

So I don’t know if this is true or not, but I’m telling you, if all these baby pine cones grow up to be big pine cones – I’m thinking we’re going to be in trouble!

How much $$ is in the jar?

OK, so this jar has been in the works for a couple of years, and it’s there if you need some coins to wash the car, or if you need some quick change to stop off and get a pop at the local gas station, or whatever the reason is.  Sometimes there’s bills in there, but for some reason they don’t last too long.

So what are our plans to use this money? The plan is to use it as spending money while we’re in New York. I think when you cash in coins it kind of seems like free money doesn’t it? We’ve got most of all our expenses paid for already, so it will be used on fun stuff. I guess we’ll see how much fun stuff we’ll be able to do tomorrow when William brings it into the bank. I can’t believe that he’ll be too popular at the bank do you?

I don’t think William could have gotten in one more thing in his car!

But the best part of the day was when William walked into the kitchen. I had just made some caramel popcorn and when William grabbed some to eat, he said, “it tastes just like home”. I’m thinking that for any Mom, this is a pretty cool thing to hear.