wackie weeder

The grass in our yard is getting very tall and we don't have a lawn mower (or goats .... yet). So Art pulled out the weed wacker and cut some paths to places like the workshop, the chicken barn,the tire garden. Look how the crops are bursting out from under that gardening fabric. The contraption that looks like a lawn mower is the weed wacker. No sissy one for us. It does a super job.And, of course, his adoring audience who is intently interested in anything Art is doing out in the yard. See that one a little left of centre with the red and white blotchy face? She's trouble. I've come to recognize her because every time she's near that gate she walks right across the cattle guard. Just a brat.Art and I aren't too fussy about having a perfectly groomed yard. We like the "natural" look, just as long as we can get around. These are potatoe plants in the tires and the chamomile just grows wild around them. Very pretty, I think. Hey, speaking of chamomile. We harvested some of it and made tea. VERY nice!

she laid an egg

In this case, that's a good thing. Ladybug laid an egg today, which means she is okey-dokey. Unfortunately, she's been away from the flock so long we can't just put her back. No one will recognize her and will likely reject her, so the advice to us has been to slip her in after dark. I guess if the others don't see her arrive then she must have always been there. Seems chickens aren't too smart.

chicken update

Ladybug (our sick chicken) seems to be doing OK. We're keeping her separated from the others for now because I'm not sure she's 100% yet. She's eating and drinking and moving around well, so I think she's enjoying the VIP suite. Trouble is, she's not laying any eggs.Speaking of eggs .... Xena likes 'em. Here she has her eye on one that is about to be her breakfast.It has her name on it .... literally.

poor chicken little

The day before yesterday we found that one of our hens appeared to be in trouble. She wasn't moving a lot and standing kind of like a penguin .... with her butt on the ground and legs far apart. We watched her and she was eating and drinking and walking with a weird penguin-like waddle. None of the others were picking on her, which is unusual because chickens can be cruel that way. We left her overnight, but yesterday she wasn't any better. In fact, she had become listless. We thought maybe she had an egg stuck and couldn't pass it. I held her in my lap awhile and massaged her tummy, but couldn't feel an egg. I hand-fed her some water and she perked up a little. Our neighbour suggested we put her outside for a while, so we pulled the almost completed chicken tractor over to the garden area and put her in. Just then, for good luck, a ladybug landed on her back. That was a good omen.She seemed to enjoy the warm sun and did have a bit of an appetite. We started to think that maybe she was hurt in some way, so left her there all day. Art made a nest for her out of a cardboard box and some hay, and at bedtime we put a tarp over the tractor.

Today she is looking a lot better. Her legs are back underneath her and her tail is up in the air again, where it should be. There were some monstrous piles of poop around, so maybe the poor dear was just constipated. Who knows. I'm just glad she's OK.

surprise visit

So there we were yesterday....hunkered down for a weekend of computer programming....when the phone rang. It was Art's brother inviting us over for coffee because their sister had driven out from Vanderhoof for a visit. So we took a break and headed over. When we arrived some extra people were there.....Art's other sister (and husband) who live in Kamloops were also sitting and smiling at us. I was in disbelief for a second because although I knew who they were my brain was saying "does not compute...out of context..." Funny, eh? What a great surprise. They are 2 of our favourite people and it's always so much fun to be around them.

PS....happy birthday, yesterday, Echo!

treasures in the mail

Art and I have been very busy with this database upgrade. Art has been putting in 14 hour days for over a month now and recently I've been working with him. We're actually a pretty good team and work well together. I know doodly about Access but have quite a lot of experience from past years of computer programming. The basics are the same. Logic is logic. So, when he gets really stuck he calls me in and we bash our way through the code. As all projects like this tend to go, we were a bit delayed in getting the thing delivered to the customer. Weird problems kept popping up. We finally did get it deployed a couple of days ago, and the client has since found a bug or two. So this weekend we are putting those fires out.

We've been so busy, in fact, that I received this parcel and didn't have time to open it for 2 days!It's a bunch of wool. I have some projects in mind for Christmas.I really MUST find time to do some things outside, though. Like get this wisteria planted. I received the live plants in the mail about a month ago, but as you can see they haven't even made it out of the box yet.

Happy Birthday, Art!

Today is my sweetie pie's birthday. I love this picture of him and Xena out in the field west of our house, with daisies as far as the eye can see. Daisies just happen to be my favourite flower and this is my favourite guy (and of course.....my favourite dog!)

our hacienda

Art and I went for a drive around our place the other day (it's kind of fun that we need a truck to explore our back yard). We drove as far up the hillside above the house as we could go and I took a video of the panorama. It's interesting that the property is so big you can't see all of it from any one location. In this clip, the barns and some buildings are out of sight and when I zoom in on the house it is partly obscured by a shed. Also, the blue thing in the foreground is the roof of "gramma's", our second house and you can see most of the pond....James Pond. Art is picking wild strawberries (if you're wondering what he mumbles right at the end there, he's commenting on Xena whipping past by calling her "Miss Rip-shitter"). Yup, that's her alright.

storm watching

That was a kicker of a storm! We could see it coming, so quickly got the chickens fed and eggs collected before the almost hurricane winds arrived. Big thick bolts of lightning were coming down on the hills across the valley and huge clouds of dust were kicking up from the tailings at the mine. Then the thunder. Booming and crashing and scaring the animals. It lasted quite a while and poured like a monsoon. The temperature dropped 20 degrees (Celsius) in a couple of hours. By bedtime things had calmed down, but I woke up yesterday morning to what I thought was smoke outside. Turned out to be fog (thank goodness).

Yesterday was another cooker at 36 degrees. Staying cool was a challenge and then last night, at around midnight, an even more violent storm than the day before. The lightning was so bright it was like someone was turning the bedroom light on and off. And the thunder....I could feel the concussion of it! And again, monsoon rains. My groggy brain said "go turn off the computers", but before I could get up to do it I was sleeping again.

Today is MUCH better and one way I can tell is, my potatoe feet feel normal again. They must be affected by air pressure or something. It's a mystery to me.

hot enough for ya?

My god, what is with this weather?! The last 3 days have been horrendous, with the hottest being a couple of hours ago....at 35.6 Celsius (that's 96.08 F) !!!!

I know it's hot all over and in some places even more scorching than here. I can only imagine what you guys at the coast are going through. Amazingly, it is fairly cool inside this log house. I have been afraid to go outside and just now am watching a storm roll in. The sky suddenly went black and there's lightning all around us. I went outside to have a look and was shocked to find that it's not too bad out there. Temperature-wise, I mean. Yes....this is Jo-Ann talking! I can't believe how much of a difference the lack of humidity makes. Mind you, tell my swollen up potatoe feet that. They don't do well in these temperatures.

I just hope the lightning doesn't start any forest fires. This whole part of the province is ravaged by the Mountain Pine Beetle and the trees are like millions of dry matches just waiting to be lit up.

round 'em up - move 'em out

I'm having fun with Windows Moviemaker. This one is just under 4 minutes long and is all about our neighbour rounding up and sorting some of the cattle he has grazing at our place. All of the footage is taken from the comfort of our house.

John McAdam

I used to have a friend. His name was Jack. He was my pal. Today would have been his 101st birthday. He used to always say how nice it was that the whole country threw him such a big party every year. I always think of Jack a lot on his birthday. I miss him.

I met Jack at the Royal Canadian Legion in North Burnaby, around 1985-86. I played on the dart team, he played on the cribbage team. He came up to me one day and asked "would you like to see a picture of me when I was 21?". Cheeky, I thought, but OK. He pulled out an old photo of himself in full Seaforth Highlander Regalia, including a bearskin hat like the Queen's guards wear. We became fast buds. Turned out he lived in a BC Housing complex just around the corner from our place, so I would walk over and visit him at least once a week. He'd make me a cup of tea (good STRONG tea, too .... not "piss-willie" as he called it), sometimes we'd play crib, we'd watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. If it was a Wednesday we'd also watch the 649 draw and I'd check his ticket for him.

We invited him over for New Year's Eve a couple of times and he'd get so excited at midnight, running down the stairs and outside to ring the doorbell like crazy. He said it was good luck. I felt that he was such a special person in my life that we invited him to our wedding. We lived in Burnaby, but the wedding was in Victoria (my Mom was unable to travel). Because I couldn't watch over Jack the whole time, Art's brother Darcy latched onto him. It worked out great. Jack was one of the few people outside the family to be invited. In my eyes, he was family. When I showed him pictures afterwards he said "God....I look like a little old man!". I said "Jack, you ARE a little old man", to which he humbly replied "oh ya....I forgot". He was so young at heart and full of life that we all forgot his age.

There was one event in our time together that was extra super special. Prince Philip was coming to Vancouver to inspect the Seaforth Highlanders. Jack asked me to escort him. What an honour! I didn't meet HRH, but Jack did. Even shook his hand. We had been warned to not bring a camera, but once we were there people were whipping them out left right and centre. What a disappointment because I'd had the perfect shot of the two of them. Art made up for it by taking some pictures of us back at the house. I'd never seen Jack looking so proud.

I never met any of Jack's family, but when he died and we were at his funeral, I noticed that the picture of him at the front of the room was one that Art took that special day. People were asking about the picture, as no one knew where it came from. They were also curious who I was because no one knew me, but Jack had my picture all over his apartment. So I told the story. His family appreciated it.

So, I've got to dig out those pictures and scan them. I'm not sure why I felt so compelled to write about Jack today. Maybe because it's his 101st birthday.

Happy Canada Day

Wow! It's been 24 hours without rain (in this past month). Maybe we'll get some summer now (???) Mind you, except for the few days that we took off to visit with our guests, Art has been pretty much cooped up in his study programming. It's much easier to do that when it's crappy outside. He's hoping to be finished soon.

Not only have the garden, chicken house, fence, driveway projects (as well as that paint job that's still incomplete) been put on hold, but we have been unable to live up to a commitment we made to the local rockhound club. They are hosting next month's "Summer Camp", to which about 100 rockhounds from far and near come for a week of fieldtrips and fellowship. We have missed 3 or 4 exploration trips with the club to search for suitable collection sites. There's another one on Tuesday. Maybe we'll get to that. Apparantly, conditions haven't been too great out there. There's still snow in the mountains and a lot of flooding in the valleys. We may be very limited to where we can take people.

Speaking of rockhounds ..... our little kleptomaniac is becoming very discerning in her thefts these days. She swiped something yesterday and was carrying it around in her mouth (which is a very common occurance).When I made her spit it out this is what I found!Jaysus-murphey, I hope she didn't swallow one of those points! She really can't be trusted to wander around the house on her own.

Graeme & Terry

Graeme & Terry only stayed for 2 nights, but they had fun while they were here. Not only did they witness our bear visitation, but they partook in another monster puffball extravaganza .... .... and went on some ATV rides.Terry was a little tentative at first, but it didn't take long 'til Graeme was eating her dust!

this one's for you, Kevin

We've had houseguests for the past week. One evening, while Sara & Kevin were here, there was a black bear in the pasture. It was dusk, so we couldn't get any good pictures. After that, Kevin and I both were glommed to the windows hoping it would come back. Well, Kev....that guy didn't return....but this family came through the day after you left.

sweet X 3

Sweet looking....tasting....and SMELLING!Sara & Kevin are here. The visiting and cooking abounds! Unfortunately, some kind of a bug has struck Sara and she spent last night and today sick as a dog (jeez, I hope we didn't poison her). She really doesn't have the best of luck when she comes to visit us. Last summer she wrenched her back so bad that she was barely able to move after only being here for one day. Here she is, flaked out again.

housework is very tiring!

Sara and Kevin are arriving today from Vancouver, so yesterday Art and I did a major scurry-flunge. What a daunting task! Art and his intrepid helper, Xena, are taking a much deserved break from vacumming.

wacky weather

We have been getting the craziest weather up here in Central BC. Every single day, for something like 2 weeks now, it starts off beautiful. Sunny, blue sky. Not so warm, though. Hovers between 10 & 14 C. Then by afternoon the black storm clouds roll in and it starts to pour! There's even been some thunder and lightning. On Saturday, the storm was coming from the direction of Burns Lake and it must have damaged the tower on Sheridan Mtn., because we were without the internet for half the weekend. One of the fortunate things about being up high on this hillside is we have line-of-sight to that tower (about 25km away), so are the only people in the area with high-speed internet.

This weather definitely makes it easier to stay inside and Art's been working like a dog to meet a deadline with his database upgrades. I've been cleaning up the house, getting ready for company to arrive later in the week. It's just as well we aren't outside because the black flies are horrendous. We are even keeping Xena in the house. We let her out for 5 minutes yesterday and she was begging to come back in. She was being attacked mercilessly by those #&@%$! It must have been torture for her and she was listless for the rest of the day. Now, she only goes out to do her business and gets a light rubdown with repellant before-hand.

gun? what gun?

On Art's blog there is a video of the fence construction in our back pasture. At the very end, Walter and Shannon spot me taking their picture. What Walter is saying is "Is that a gun? I thought it was a gun." Now, I don't know what would make him think that.

Maybe he's remembering last year when he came through our place unannounced, riding an ATV. I didn't know who it was, so put my boots on and chased after him. When I caught up and saw who it was, I was relieved, but he said that he was scared for a minute. From the look on my face and my demeanour he said he was glad I didn't have a shotgun in my hand. I guess this will be a standing joke from now on.....that and Art stealing Audrey's ladder.

cowboys ..... and girls

After the new fence got built the cowboys started coming through. We just never know when we're going to see this out the window.And today they were prepared for rain. These cowgirls were a bit far away by the time I got my camera, but I'm sure we'll see them again. I have just one question ....
.... where does one get an oilskin duster in PINK?

Party Gay revealed

Okay, OKAY. Here's what inside the box .... (phew)

a new fence

Those cows I keep talking about are not our cows. They belong to a neighbour and we allow them to graze on our land in the summertime. That's why it's a little frustrating that WE are fixing the fences all the time. The current area that is enclosed is about 20 acres and contains our gardens and all the buildings....the 2 houses, 2 barns, workshop and 7 or so sheds. It really doesn't need to be that big so last year we asked that neighbour to build us a new fence, essentially cutting the area in half. That would leave more land to graze (and less for us to mow) and also create a corral for when he wants to sort or round up his cattle. A couple of days ago he did just that.

This is his tractor and fence-post-pounding-contraption. His daughter, son-in-law and helper gave him a hand and within 3 hours time they had contructed a skookum 300 metre long barbed wire fence with a gate in the middle.We are now separated from the other house, but that's OK. No one lives in it.

please HELP !!!

Does anyone out there have a good remedy to keep black flies from biting dogs? Those little *&%$# things are really bad right now and they are eating our little girl alive! She is wearing a citronella collar but it does no good at all. We just spent 10 minutes squishing probably 100 which were burrowed deep into her fur and biting her delicate belly and armpits. Now, she's blonde and they're black and I couldn't see them until I ran my fingers through her fur and clouds of them came out. I pinched them dead as fast as I could and each one was full of her blood. When we were sure we had them all we looked up and both windows in the room were suddenly covered with the ones that flew off her and escaped. They met their end with a good dousing of OFF. But we can't put that stuff on her. So, what do we do?

I called the vet in Burns Lake, who I'm happy with for the most part. I'm confident in the doctors and the assistant is good, but she tends to never really have time to talk for a minute. I always feel like I'm getting the bum's rush when I call there. I can appreciate that they are probably very busy, but this is my suffering puppy we're talking about and I want a little sympathy. Anyways, she wasn't really any help. So, I guess my next step is Google. Whatever did we do before Google?

you've heard of Watergate?

We have Cowgate .... with water. The cows are driving me crazy. They keep walking across the cattle-guard and I seem to be forever out there screeching like a mad woman and flailing a stick at them. I do not know what their fascination is, but they group all together right over it and lean more and more forward until one of them steps through. Then the rest follow.And of course they always wait for the torrential rains to do this. I think they do it for laughs, just to see me running around in the mud with my flip-flops and no jacket. We got so tired of it, Art put up this make shift barricade. Cows may be dumb, but they are incredible engineers. See how they are plotting and scheming?During the night they managed to get one end of that board down .... and it was wired to the fence !!!!


Speaking of torrential rains. This looks a lot like Carol's weather report, except we ARE getting rain. And lots of it. With pockets of blue sky tossed in just to throw us off.It doesn't take much of this stuff to turn our driveway into slime .... all the better for chasing cows.

karate kids

On the May long weekend there was an invitational karate tournament in Fraser Lake. Our nephew, Conrad, is an instructor and also competes (along with almost every young member of this entire family). We were only able to attend for a few minutes and I'm very sorry to have missed most of it. But I did record one match where our grand-niece, Ashley, won Silver in the Kumite (sparring). She's the one on the right. These are just a couple of the hi-lites from her fight (my gosh, I love how her opponent kicks!).

more hummingbird fun

Art took this picture of me filling the hummingbird feeder. They were so unafraid of me that even while I was holding it they would light and feed. I could feel them brush my hand.The picture and this video were taken almost 3 weeks ago. The hummingbirds were very active. Almost frenzied. Look how they compete for this feeder while there are 5 other feeders in the immediate area.
Currently the hummer traffic is almost nil but I'm told that's because they are nesting. In a little while they'll be back with a vengance and I'll be ready with camera in hand.

And this picture I took today. Just look at it. How much more perfect could it be .... if it were only in focus ?!!!!! Geez Louise! Oh, the background's nice. Very much in focus. Carol .... get up here with that camera of yours!

becoming friends

I never thought I'd see the day, but Blackie and Xena are becoming buds. But it's kind of like watching little girls and little boys play. Blackie is a bit of a priss and Xena just wants to wrestle. Xena offers Blackie her favourite ball by slamming it down in front of him (almost beaning him with it) and Blackie is entirely unimpressed.

And here's a first.Chickie, on the other hand, is quite a lot less willing to let the dog come near. I suspect it will always be that way.

grad class of 8

Xena graduated doggy skool. She wasn't valedictorian or anything (pooping on the classroom floor 3 weeks in a row doesn't really go in one's favour), but all in all she came out a star in our eyes. We just have to keep working with her to reinforce what she's learned, but the thing I am most impressed with is that she comes when called. Even if she is out in the field and starts chasing the cows, she will stop and come back when called.

We've had to do a little extra work with her regarding the cows, like taking her up to the fence while on leash. Art also takes her out amongst them on the ATV. These are yearlings, so are pretty brave as well as curious. They will actually chase HER. Unfortunately, that gets a bad game of mayhem going, so we can't let it start.Even though Xena has been working hard at learning to be a good dog, she also gets lots of cuddles .... especially from "dad".

my mistake

Apparantly I am misinformed. The Endako River is not back to normal "by a long shot", Art tells me. Terribly sorry .... my mistake.

It has gone down a LOT, though.

garden update

Not much to tell, really. We are way behind on getting the garden planted. We've been so busy lately we had to "schedule" it. Sara and Kevin are coming to visit later this month, so we are booking off from the rest of the world for a week or so. It'll be like a vacation for us and we can catch up on the fun stuff.

The garden got a couple of truckloads of sand put on top and just when we were shopping around for some topsoil to purchase we discovered that we already have all that we need. Our nephew told us to go look between the barns, under the grass, and sure enough ...... look at this beautiful stuff!Art brought a few bucketloads over to the new garden with the skid steer.But that's as far as we've gotten. We've decided, in the meantime, that rather than go to all that work and try to till up that difficult clay we will just make the whole thing a tire garden. There are so many advantages to doing it that way and the ones we've already planted on the other side are doing so darned well that we're thinking "why not stick with a good thing"? Besides, the way those blasted cows keep breaking through the fence, they'd just trample a normal garden and that'd be a tragedy. They don't seem to mess with the tires.

Party Gay

When we bought this place the previous owner left behind a lot of stuff. Even in the barns there is quite a mish-mash of junk. We found this the other day in the chicken barn. I didn't open it.

this way or that way....?

.... coming or going....?

cluck, cluck, oops

Have you ever seen an egg with no shell? That's what this is. The outside is dry and smooth, but it's like a squishy ball of jello.Apparantly this can happen when the chicken isn't getting enough calcium in her diet, but that isn't the case here. Or it can happen if she gets a scare and lays it before the shell has a chance to form (the last stage of it's development). Kinda weird, that's for sure. We didn't eat it, though. The shell is protection from bacteria and we didn't want to take a chance.

finally, some blossoms

I love lilacs. Their aroma is delicious. These (plus 2 others) are finally blooming, but aren't quite filled all the way out yet.Talk about hardy plants. Do you remember back in October when I showed you a picture of how they grew all fresh leaves because the weather was so mild? Shortly after, the snows came and I was afraid the shock would kill them. Well .... apparantly not.

what's the matter with this picture?

The wind here can be very bad sometimes. It caused this hummingbird feeder to spin around so much that the bottom unscrewed itself right off! And of course the sugar water went all over the veranda. Geez.

I eventually did find the bottom, out in the yard. This is what it should look like .... except red, of course.

flood report

Rivers are funny things. Sometimes they don't make sense .... to me, anyways. Remember Art's post last month about the Endako River turning into a lake? Well, even though the Bulkley, Skeena and Nechako rivers are flooding and the lakes are very, very high, the Endako River has gone back to normal. How is that even possible? I don't get it.

But, no matter what happens, we are safe and snug here at Xanadu. Our little ranch is high above the valley, on a south facing hillside. If the flood waters ever get anywhere near us then there are much bigger problems afoot. It would be time to build an ark.

this one's for you, Sara B.

spin-ooch!!!

staining a log home

Here is what we've been doing for almost 2 weeks. Staining a log house on Francois Lake. Art's brother Tom built the log shell. His son Conrad put it up on the site and completed the construction. This is before and after our stain job.2 coats inside and out (in some areas outside there are 3 coats) and a clear coat over it all. We also put 3 coats of urethane on the entire upstairs floor. There is still a bit of work to finish....the inside window frames and the outside of the dormer. The rains came, so we had to stop.

This job was a lot of .... LOT OF .... work. We were up at 4:30am every day and not home until 7:00pm, with an hour's commute each way. Mind you, it certainly was less stressful and much more beautiful than commuting from, say, Chilliwack to Vancouver. Every day we would see more deer than you could count on two hands and twice we saw a black bear with her cub and a cow moose with her brand-new calf. There were 2 loons that came almost right to our shore a couple of times, and some kind of sandpiper type bird that continued to visit. I don't know what he was, but he did this cute little bobbing-curtsy thing while he walked along the water's edge. So, I guess there are definitely worse job sites around. We were pretty lucky.....not to mention TIRED!

Here are some more "during" pictures. They are a bunch of stills that I put into Windows Movie Maker. If you think the duration of each shot is too short, let me know. I can lengthen them. I see the quality is somewhat diminished when put into "movie" format, but I wanted to give it a try. And I don't need to write a storyline, do I? (except maybe to explain that one of me with a white nose ..... now whatever you're thinkin' .... stop! I'm just showing that one should always wear a mask when spraying paint.)

PS: YouTube seems to be having difficulties and if they don't smarten up I will just remove this video and post all the stills individually.

just checkin' in

You may not hear from me for a few more days. We are busy staining a log cabin on Francois Lake. It's almost an hour's drive (one way) so we are up at 4:30am and not home until almost bedtime. Today was our 3rd day and there's several more to go. I'll post pictures and will write more when I get a chance.