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| Balsam root |
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| Pine cone "buds" |
All the wild flowers are in bloom now, including paintbrush which I saw the first of yesterday up on the south ridge. The yellow balsam root and arnica are everywhere, interspersed with the purple lupine. White flox and prairie stars dot the green grass. There are other yellow and white flowers that I haven't yet identified, but they all work to make the landscape so incredibly colorful. Even the ponderosa pines are brilliant with their red pine cone "buds."
I realize I have been mixing up my terms of "mulch" and "compost." It is a compost bin that JB built, not mulch, and it is already 1/3 full! I cut the grass in the yard and a couple areas where I had pulled out the shrubs, and dumped it in the bin along with leaves from the balsam root and other flowers that got in the way. Also, we have been saving the coffee grounds and tea bags, so I scattered those in along with a little cardboard. Larry and Elsie were up Wednesday evening and brought two dozen eggs. (Time for another angel food cake!) Elsie says that she scatters coffee grounds over everything - her lawn, flower beds, garden. Anywhere she is growing something. And, speaking of growing, our onions have popped up! And there are little mounds along the potato rows, so we should see their green sprouts very soon. I never thought gardening could be this exciting. . .
The weather has been very cooperative, so we have been working outside every day. Yesterday got up to 68, but there was a nice breeze to keep us from getting too hot. JB is working on filling the trailer with chippings, which we will take down the road and use to fill in ruts and holes in the road. I have been cutting out undergrowth and adding to his to-be-chipped pile.
I took out my Mom's old green kitchen table from the bedroom where it had been folded down and was being used as shelf space. I washed it off and set it up where our round wood dining table was. That green table is at least 62 years old and I have always loved it. My first memory of it is in the kitchen of the student housing where we lived when my parents were attending Washington State University (just "college" back then) in Pullman, WA, when I was about three years old. Dad had somehow come into ownership of a donkey, and we needed to keep it in the kitchen for a few days until he could drive it up to Spokane to my Grandfather's place. Mom and Dad used the chairs to the table to block the door to the living room, but one morning it got out the kitchen door. Dad was still in his bathrobe and took out running down the street after the donkey. Now my Dad like to sleep in the buff, so there he was running after the donkey with his bathrobe and everything else flopping about. I'm sure the other students talk about that to this day.
Another specific memory of that table is my Dad and I sitting at it and listening to "The Lone Ranger" on the radio when I was in grade school. The last I remember of the chairs was in the early 1960's, but the table has been used for various duties ever since then. It was even my crafting table when we lived near Chicago. Now, once again, it is a kitchen table. I have seen the retro furniture like it that is being made now, so I will be on the look out for chairs to match. We are giving the round dining table to Elsie as she really likes it. It is a beautiful antique that belonged to JB's Grandfather, but we simply have no room for it and no one else in the family wants it. Kind of sad, but I'm sure it will be very appreciated in Larry and Elsie's home.
Thought for the day: Be aware that as soon as you put a period at the end of your definition of life and the force behind it, you have only defined your misunderstanding of them both. Unknown
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