Steven of the burnt legs came home for holidays from the army. Harley and Charlene were duly impressed with a real live army man. Steven camo'd their faces and put them thru some PT it was pretty good. Steven also proved that the army can teach anyone to shoot- come on now steve-o you know you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn before! god the excuses! something wrong with the gun, I never used one like this before...i heard em all. NOW on the other hand he picks up a gun that he's never used before and scores on every shot. I was impressed(not easily done) All photo credits go to harley this time cuz my camera battery was dead.

miranda caught some nice pickerel down at willow on the weekend, about six or seven pounds.

charlie brown and harley built a lean-to, and almost had us convinced to let them sleep in there...almost. instead miranda decided to move one of the log warehouses and fix it up into a little cabin for the kids. we'll probably wait and do that in the fall when it's cooler and no bugs.

I'm taking duane from work and one of the local pilots fishing down there tomorrow.

and sis i detest asparagus but miranda either likes it or just likes to grow it. anyways most of it bit the dust(literally). I snuck up on the kids when charlene was reading to her little brudder.

Charlie's weekend for sure. She climbed a tree, drove the truck and her corn came up like gangbusters. We start 'em young driving in our family. rebecca learned when she was four and was quite good at it. Charlene did ok too with mom's help. and I didn't catch a thing, although I only fished for about 20 minutes. We re-built the fire pit, but I'm not happy enough with the design yet, so I didn't cement it in. ya gotta find just the right rocks, it could take some time.

we didn't start on the gazebo either, but miranda put up a temporary tee-pee a temp-pee if you will. If a tee-pee is made just right(this one is) they are awesome, no matter how bad the mosquitoes are outside there are none inside, and if one comes in, the thermals from the fire shoot them right out the top. I might make it two years in a row with out using bug dope. I hate that sh#$ worse then the bugs. Our corn, cucmbers and watermelon are doing ok as is the asparagus...asparagus? what was she thinking?

Another willow weekend in the books. It was very hot, 30c on saturday 29 on sunday. Half the corn survived. oddly all the watermelon made it and asparagus did as well. nothing else made it.

On the off chance that nothing would make it, I started another batch of super-speedy corn, so I can have my corn on'a cob before summer is over. Miranda wants to build a gazebo where our teepee used to be and we are going to make a permanent fire pit with local stone and mortar.

I 'm looking forward to all that hard work in that hot sun.
The moon coming up thru the trees was pretty cool.

our first trip of the summer went off without a hitch, that's Lone Mountain way in the distance looking downriver. Next is me on the cultivator and last but not least, getting the garden ready is a family affair and even coleman got in on the action. We planted corn, cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes and watermelons. we started most of the stuff in the house at home and gambled that we wouldn't get another frost(i think we may have lost that bet as we had a frost here in simpson sunday night).

I knew mike was getting married again and was toying with the idea of crashing it, but ultimately decided not to. Thanks to sis for putting up pics it was great, I literally haven't even seen a pic of mike since i left- so it was cool. Congratulations bro! second time seems to be the charm in our family. As far as me coming down to new scotland it's gonna happen either this year or next, gotta be before 2012, you know the whole end of the world thing- Frank, batter up!

coleman found charlene's chips and started feeding them to cheeto, one at a time(maybe we should have named her dorito instead of cheeto) he had fed her the whole bag before he thought to try one himself. he hasn't had chips before. and of course the pics are out of sequence.

and cathy to answer your question, harley is miranda's baby sister. she stayed with us for a couple of years when she was a baby, and spends a lot of time with us now, which is why she shows up inour blog on occasion. i probably never explained who she is before, so everyone, this is harley. harley this is everyone. kind of awkward like at a party or something, i apologize for my social faux pas.

well, the ice is gone and the ferries are in, next weekend our summer begins, although with all the snow we've been getting you'd never know it.

Up top, we've got the coolman. in the next pic, the smile is still there but the fender is gone. Harley wiped out on her bike, she skinned her knee and gobbled some dirt but was okay and back riding the next day.

we had a few big cumulo nimbus move thru the other night, and miranda took some pics.

snow on the toys...grrrr. it's been like that off and on plus 17 one day snow the next.

and finally the scourge of the neighborhood. back soon with some fishing pics!