Haven't heard much from me, have you? It is because we went 4-wheeling in Colorado!
The mountains were high with many to climb, the waters were cold and the colors were beautiful!
We found old mines and mining towns:
The guys found old trucks to examine and determine the types... although I think they may be still guessing on this one:
And they found neat... machinery...
We even found a town for sale!
Steve is considering buying it just so he could be mayor! I, on the other hand, want the house in the background - to heck with being a mayor's wife!
And of course, Steve found trouble to get into... you know him:
Thankfully, I was not there to take this picture. Joan, my sister-in-law took them!
Take a look at this one:
That is my sister-in-law's shadow on the bottom left hand corner. But could you make out what was on the top right hand corner? Well, I blew it up for you...
Yes, he is still nuts! I told Joan if he had the common sense God gave a peanut he would give it away!
He is still alive to tell the story - I guess you should ask him about it, but I am glad I was not there to see it.
We put in over 180 miles with 4-wheelers, Rhinos and 4-wheel drive trucks. Oh my gosh did we have fun! It was a fantastic trip! What would we do differently next time?
Bring dust masks!
More pictures to come... stay tuned!
This morning we went out and planted trees. We planted Lacebark Elm trees, Althea (aka rose of Sharon), and we planted Bald Cypress trees. We planted raspberries and are still contemplating whether or not we want to plant a Washington Hawthorne or not.. I don't think so, so we are waiting a bit on planting those. They are gorgeous, but they have thorns...
While we were near the pond planting our Cypress trees, we were able to enjoy these:
See that yellow cone in the middle of the flower?
When it is mature, this is what it looks like:
Here's my guy... in the t-shirt (that he never wears)... I have actually only seen him in a t-shirt several times in our 35 years of marriage, but today he donned one and off he went on his toy:
He was working on our pond aerator and he actually got it installed. Now our pond can dance!
Well, maybe not dance, but it can thrive again for sure!
He is still working on the pump house:
Right now it doesn't look like much, but he is going to build an outhouse (non-usable one thankyouverymuch) here and put the pump and fishing poles in it. I can't wait to see it done - it will be cute! It will be complete - with a slice of moon and all! If you look up in the middle of that spool, you will see the beer bottle holding the spool down. I guess that is what it is doing anyway - why else would it be there? Right?
We felt very accomplished when we got it working. It has been quite a task! Do you see that long line from the bottom left of this picture to the top center? We had to rent a Ditch Witch and dig a hole to bury electric line to run the air pump. Then we had to cover the hole back up again... and believe me doing all of that was 180 foot of hard work - mostly for Steve!
Then Steve had to build a weight to hold the aerator down on the bottom of the pond. Once he did that, we had to tie cable/rope to it and drag it across the pond and stop it in just the right place - the center. Lots of sweat and tears has gone into getting that aerator going... So when we saw the bubbles it was quite rewarding! I think we both felt like we had accomplished something huge!
The reason we had to have an aerator? We have had very little rain this year - we just got a bit over an inch last week, but we are exceptionally dry. In fact, look at Steve measuring below. Do you see that black line just below his fingertips? That is the level the pond is usually at when it is full. It is down 44" after an a bit over an inch of rain!
Anyway, today was a good day - we got a lot accomplished and he grilled burgers and I made fried tators and onions to celebrate. And we finally ordered our first pay per view movie EVER to sit back, relax and enjoy. Heck I might even break out the popcorn.
Off I go!
