A Wet Walkaround

It's wet this morning and gloomy and quiet but peaceful.  This is the first official summer vacation day for my sisters and other local teachers.  

I'll bet a lot of them are sleeping in as the rain pounds the roof.  With a school year behind and a whole summer ahead, it's a good time for the vacation crowd to sleep in. 

My son, the teacher AND coach, is not sleeping in on his first official day of vacation.  He's in Missoula with his friend and fellow girls' basketball coach Woody Ward.  They've been attending a basketball camp at the University of Montana since Sunday. 

So, maybe Willie will get to sleep in tomorrow. 

As for the retirees here at the Lovestead, it was up at 4:30, as usual, only to discover no Foster in the house and a sliding glass door open just enough for Foster to head outside.  

He wasn't completely soggy when I called him and he came to the house, and he was probably pretty happy to go do his morning business without waiting for the human crowd to get up and let him out. 

Somebody didn't push the door hard enough last night, I'm guessing, and Foster probably didn't notice that until nature called. 

The rain let up briefly while I did my chores, so I took my camera with me and snapped a few shots around the place. 

Bill finished the construction portion of the garden fence yesterday by installing the gate. Excess woven wire above the boards still needs to be cut or maybe not.  Maybe if some deer tries to jump over the fence and has that wire scrape its tummy, it will go tell all the other deer to stay away from there. 

After horses were out, Kiwi joined me for a walk down the lane where hay on both sides and at the end is thick and wet this morning.  It will be a while, I'm sure, before all that farm equipment comes back out again for the 2016 hay harvest. 

This has been a year of early happenings nature-wise, but we cautious North Idahoans have played it safe transplanting garden goodies which don't react to cold.  

We've done all the right things, it seems, waiting until June to put those starts out in the ground, so what do we get?  A weather forecast predicting patchy frost tonight around North Idaho, especially the Selle Valley.  

Guess who's gonna be covering up cukes, tomatoes and sweet potatoes!  The person who posted that weather forecast commented that we really should wait until the Fourth of July to put all the garden in. 

Sorry, that means there's no point cuz when the first frost of September comes, nothing will have matured. 

So, today I'll find a way to protect those vulnerable plants and hope for the best and maybe even not a frost.  Sometimes weather predictions are way off base.  Hoping that's true this time. 

Today is a big birthday day for folks in their 70s----my oldest brother, my guardian angel and WhatsHisName. To my oldest brother and to my guardian angel, I wish the best of days.  You both deserve that.  

To WhatsHisName, the obnoxious, egotistical tweeter, I wish this day, which makes you a day older and which begins a new decade for you (is it 70?), infuses you with a dose of wisdom ample enough to match  your chronological age

I do not wish you ill will, WhatsHisName, but I do wish you would learn to behave and conduct yourself with at least an ounce of the maturity the other two birthday boys have displayed throughout an their entire lifetimes. 

Enough said. 

Happy Tuesday.  Happy Flag Day.  Sweet dreams to all who sleep in today. 

The manure-pile garden on the west side of the barn still has a few weeds, but it's starting to look like a garden with its beans, dill, potatoes, marigolds and sweet taters. 

Another Sweet William at the Lovestead.