Today

Today Myk worked for Dave again. We almost see him more, hear from him more and get more work out of him since he "moved out". Anyway Dave is putting up new lattice under the deck so Myk helped a lot with the digging part which made the rest go much faster.

Then Tanya and the girls came over. Adrianna is mobile now. Not walking, but getting around. She had a blast in the dog water bowl. And here is a picture of her with her sister. We had a nice little visit.

If Only

I come from a long line of gardeners. Now granted my ancestors did so out of need, but still.....my great-grandmother was way before her time. She was drinking green tea in the 70's and taking extra vitamins. She had two gardens besides flowerbeds. They drank organic milk from the cows they raised and ate the rabbits that they grew. Everything that I am reading about what is good for us is what she did. Her daughter, my grandmother also had a garden and raised chickens. I look back on what I remember and think it is too bad that I didn't develop my own gardening interest while they were still alive. All that information lost. So here I am following in their footsteps, but having to reinvent my own wheel.

Garden Update

As you can see it still grows. We are still just eating spinach and lettuce. But it won't be long and we will have zuchini. There are at least four baby zuchini on the plant. :)

Neighbor's Cows

So my neighbor raises cows. And here is a picture of the ones he has now. The other day I returned home to my husband telling me I had missed the excitement. The cows had escaped. Cars were honking at them and that spooked them. They came up our place and then crossed several pieces of property with my husband following them. He tried to call the neighbor, but no one was answering. Finally he was tired of following the cows so he went over to the neighbor's house and pounded on the door. After several minutes of pounding someone finally woke up and they went and retrieved the cows.

How They Escaped

We have been wondering for a couple of days how they escaped. Tonight I was taking the camera down to take pictures of the garden and lo and behold look what I saw. The fence is not fastened. Lucky that they hadn't escaped again since then. And yes, we locked the gate.

The Coolest Thing

I have the coolest car and it does the coolest thing. I knew about this when I bought it, but had forgotten. When you unlock the car with the fob and then hold the unlock button down it also rolls down the windows. This is a great feature when we are having nice warm summery weather like today. The hot car air is already being released before I get in. Got to love the Mini.

A Quiet Week

I had forgotten how nice it was to NOT have to run all over the county. I go to work, I come home, and stay there. I like it.
I did see Myk briefly today. He has not turned himself in on his warrant. Says he intends to on Monday. Actions speak louder than words at this point in time. He looks good and not like he has done nothing but party the last week. So I guess that is good. I just hope he takes care of his legal business soon, but I have no control over that. He did say he had called his PO and his attorney today, so he is touching base there.

Free Day

It was one of those days when there was nothing I had to do. That seemed to motivate me pretty well. I swept and mopped, vacuumed, unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, cleaned the sink and countertops, folded two loads of laundry and have a third on the line. Then I went to my brother's house, the bank, the movie store and Costco. Came home, took a nap, cooked supper and watched a movie. "Two Weeks". A pretty good girly movie.

Lawn Mower Gods

So the lawn mower gods were again conspiring against me this last week. I had a couple different days that had some free time. Great I could start on the neighbors yard. The first thing I did was put diesel in the lawn mower. Lawn mowers don't run well on diesel. The brakes don't work on our other mower so that is not a good idea for me. I am not a good mower driver and need to be able to stop. Then I thought I would buy gas for the neighbors mower and do her upper field. Got the gas, but her battery was dead again. I was not meant to mow. Dave came home and drained the diesel and got our mower running again and put a charger on hers. So I did get most of the mowing done yesterday. Thank you lawn mower gods.

Garden type news

We ate the whole radish crop and replanted. We've been eating spinache and lettuce. My neighbor brought me some more radishes as he has more than he knows what to do with. We'll take them.
Last weekend I got a flat of strawberries at the local farmers market. Made a batch of jam and ate shortcake. It was wonderful. Then this week I found another stand with huge berries. So I bought a flat there yesterday and made a batch of jam and we had shortcake. Yummy.

For the Moment

I am an empty nester. Myk decided he didn't want to live by the rules of the house and so he has moved. Kind of. All his stuff is still here, but he isn't. It has been up and down and all around. But I'm okay. I had my head wrapped around this last week. And I do believe that where one door shuts, another opens.

Up, Down, All Around Again.

So Myk has opted again to not go to recovery court. That means there is a warrant out for his arrest (he says he is turning himself in on Monday). Also he is moving out. As far as his mom is concerned he is out, but his stuff is still here.

More Wildlife in the House

So this morning I hear this squeak noise. My first thought is oh no they caught another chipmunk. So I sit up and get hit by a bird. Behind the bird are the huntresses. Minnie goes outside and I put Mica in the living room. Then Minnie is scratching at the door. When I open it she has feathers in her mouth. She knew I wasn't too happy about it and decided to do her sit in the chair thing. Later after I got dressed the bird again starts flying around my room. It must have run into a wall and stunned itself because I was able to catch it and put it outside where it flew off into the yonder.

Wildlife

We are so enjoying our wildlife. Right now we seem to have small wildlife. We know there are deer in our woods but we think Minnie keeps them out of our yard. So here is one of a pair of chipmunks that we have been watching. This may even be the one Dave rescued from under our couch.

White Peony

Here is a picture of my white peony. Yes, I know it is dark pink/reddish. I bought a white peony though. I guess that means that my trend of getting something other than what I bought has followed me to this house.

Coolness

I have been trying to take my camera with me in case I see something interesting to take a picture of. I had brought it back in the house when I took the picture of the baby woodpecker and that is where it stayed. Naturally...... So yesterday I went to the movie store and as I am pulling into the driveway there is a mama duck and she must have had a dozen ducklings with her and they were so cute. Then Suzy (an old high school friend of Dave's), who works at the movie store, came running out and herded them back over to a swampy area that they must have come from. It was so cool, but I didn't have my camera with me.

Garden

So we ate all the radishes that we planted. They were pretty tasty. Last night we added spinach to the list of what we are eating. We did plant more radish and corn. The corn that has come up has started to turn a little yellow.....hope it makes it with the sun we are now finally having. The second planting rotted before it came up...bummer. The third planting is still iffy. I saw bees in the raspberries so that makes me happy.

Rollercoaster

For some reason, and I have no clue as to what it is, Myk woke up Thursday morning and had a major change of heart. Or somewhere along the line he had his own epiphany. Came home, apologized and said he was staying at home and following the rules. That includes staying in recovery court. He did say he felt stupid and didn't like how much money got wasted on people being wasted. He then stayed home all Thursday and that night. Friday he saw his treatment provider and his PO. He knew he was going to do some detention time when he went to court Friday afternoon and he was absolutely fine with it. A totally different attitude than all the other times he has had detention time.
For me this week has been a rollercoaster of emotions. I am still taking it one day at a time, hoping for the best, but not holding my breath.

Turmoil

I am very sad today. My child has come out of in-patient acting exactly the same as he acted before he went in. That begs the conclusion that he is using already. My mom is missing money and we are sure THIS time. My brother thinks my child took it and wants to kick his ass. But hey he isn't mad at me....just needed to call and let me know that. Then my husband is sure he has money missing out of his wallet (especially in light of Mom missing some) so it is all boiling away. Sometimes pots that are boiling explode. I'm just so excited to be looking forward to that.
NOT!

Garden News

Tonight we ate radishes out of the garden. It is the first things. And they tasted pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

The baby

So the baby woodpecker came back yesterday and has figured out how to eat from the suet feeder itself. Naturally by the time I got the camera he was gone. Today he came back and let us take many pictures of it. I was within five feet of him and he wasn't batting an eyelash. He must not have a fear of people yet. This is a picture that Dave took because his camera takes closer pictures than mine does. I just think it is very cool.

Myk

So Scott told me that I needed a picture of Myk on my blog. I thought so too, but all the ones I had available to me were not the kind of pictures a mom puts on her blog. So I had to wait for him to return home so I could take a picture. This one isn't too bad and it shows the table Dave just made to go with our chairs on the deck.

Wow

I am sitting at my desk watching the birdfeeders. A daddy woodpecker has brought a baby over to the suet feeder and is feeding it. Now what is strange to me is that it appears that the baby is bigger than the parent. And yet you can tell that the feathers are much softer and it doesn't know how to eat the suet from the feeder. Very cool.

HR answered

I sent an email to HR to have clarification on the policy of family members working together. Today I got response that says family just can't supervise each other. So that means Myk's job is not in jeopardy. Very good news indeed.

Myk is home

I picked Myk up at 8 a.m. We came home and then got his cell phone reinstated. Then we got some bad news this morning. It seems that there is a rule at work that family members can't work in the same dept. I'm not so sure, but we shall have to see where it goes. Myk could be looking for a new job. He made it to treatment and then came back to our little town. His girlfriend then broke up with him, but he didn't seem out of sorts about that. He has a call in to the Oxford House that his name is on the list. Time will tell on that. Now we just have to fit in his five NA meetings a week and we should be good.

Changes

So Myk will start having treatment on Tues. and Wed. when he gets out tomorrow. He'll also have to attend five NA meetings a week. That and his normal court appearance and PO visit. That kind of hinders having Elizabeth on Wed. So this week we took her today instead.
She spent the first hour making a birdhouse with Grandpa. Afterwards she decided he did most of the work. But with a little analysis she decided that maybe she did a lot of the work. Proud of her accomplishment. So this is a little show of her birdhouse building.

Building of a Birdhouse

Family Dinner

We had a family dinner tonight. Adrianna seemed to really enjoy Grandpa getting down on the floor and playing with her. From the picture you can see that my mom's french bulldog Phoebe enjoyed it also.
We enjoyed a big pan of lasagne with salad and garlic bread. It is always nice to break bread as a family. We don't really do that often enough.

Birds

We have several feeders for our feathered friends. For some reason at this house we have finches. When we lived next door we never had any. Very strange. Dave was very patient and got this shot of some on the thistle feeder.

Yard

The flowers are blooming in my yard. It actually looks very nice right now. And it only can get better as the summer comes on. These are a couple of irises from my yard. I am pretty sure they came from Mrs. Brown down the street. She is an avid gardener. When she does thinnings she puts the plants out at the end of her driveway. When my yard was just new I took just about everything she put out. Now that my yard is more established I leave her plants for other beginner gardeners. :)