Mid-June and tomorrow's a full moon?!

I didn't know what I should title this post, so I thought I would make up a rhyme. Maybe it's a little lame, but sometimes I can be a little lame too ;o)

The view from the back yard by our garden

I am totally finished with my Rocky Mountain Jaywalkers. I've also started another pair of socks with my Lorna's Laces Grumperina sock yarn, finished one and am turning the heal on the other. (No pictures of those yet because I am a bad person that doesn't always take pictures when she should).

I like them a lot, but sadly when I put them through the wash their color faded a bit. Admittedly, I had thought the colors were a little too bright when I first started them way back before I really had figured out how to knit socks, but as I was working on them I really grew to like the play of the colors and their crisp color. I should take an after picture to show you the difference I suppose, but I don't ever get around to such things.

We have been having a lot of fun playing with baby kittens lately. I got them a bunch of milk replacer to boost the amount of food they are getting from their mother though. She is a wild cat (well, she is also a wilde cat, but that is just a special breed of kitty that comes from our farm), so she doesn't like spend as much time with her kittens because we might come around and want to pet them. Usually, our mother cats have been the friendly sort and like to get petted and payed attention to just as much as their babies, so they are always hanging around and the kittens get well fed.

Sadly, on Sunday night a raccoon came into the barn and reeked havoc in our cat's food area and killed one of our little babies. We occasionally have visitors in the barn that enjoy eating the dog and cat food and if they cause real problems we end up having to deal with them, but normally we let things be as long as real problems aren't caused. (like the time we had about 4 or 5 skunks coming into the barn every night to eat the dog food--yucky) I have to tell you though when I found out about the creature that came into the barn on Sunday night and killed one of our precious little kittens, there was not a smidge of regret when we got out the 410. We weren't able to catch it yesterday morning, so I spent the day with the kittens in the house feeding them milk replacer every couple of hours and wiping their little milky mouths and feet. (let's just say, the kitchen floor needs a good washing after those little milky paws went wondering around until I could get a washcloth on them) Last night we went into the barn to set our live trap, but noticed that things were knocked over in the cat food area once again. Dan went up into the haymow and saw it scurrying down into the wall and we were able to get rid of it right them and there. I am not a fan of killing creatures just because they come onto the property (some people around here will do that), but once an animal figures out that it can get a meal at the expense of a little defenseless baby, it will continue to do so and that is when we have to defend those little lives.

Montana's is right in front and Dakota's in the background

Thankfully we have a couple of dogs around our house that scare off most of the critters and really when we do have a raccoon, skunk, or possom coming around it causes me to worry that they aren't in their right mind and may have rabies-otherwise they would have stayed away.

Ummm . . . we also are in the process of putting a new pump in our well and getting it piped into the house. We used to just use an electric motor that pumped water into a cistern that then was pumped into the house, but because cisterns aren't allowed anymore really for people's drinking water, we had to replace it with a new system (not a new well (its been going strong for many, many years-our area has a lot of water underground), but a new pumping system) It is actually sad to see our old pump go. We would plug it in and it would use the old fashioned pumping stuff that could be attached to our windmill. We had actually been hoping to someday fix the shaft that had been broken many years ago, so that we could just use the windmill for our pumping our water again--but we still would have had to have used the cistern and that can't be ;o(

And that is most of what we've been up to lately-oh, and this coming Friday I am going to be singing and playing guitar/piano in the evening at the Mushroom building in my town (if you aren't from here you might not understand, but we have this building that was built here in the 30's that is shaped like a mushroom and used to be a gas station way back when they just had a little building that the service people would wait in during the day. It was donated to the city a few years back and they made the it into a little spot where we have live music on Friday nights in the summer and the historical society sells ice cream cones, popcorn, and lemonade for fundraising). Wish me luck!

A couple weeks ago an old friend of mine played her harp!