Looking up

An agave update. You will have to zoom these in to get a good look.

My how time flies!!

I thought I'd update you on the agaves. These are the 2 that are under Phillip's bedroom window. They were just about up to the eaves last week.

This is the big one that was about 2 feet above the edge of the roof last week. It's about 4 feet above now and starting to put out the lateral bud stems now.

Seems like the world is suffering from rampant hysteria from something or other right now... Flu !...schwein flu maybe...I've heard it said that it is a cultured virus because it's so unusual...Who knows ? A lot depends who you are listening to at any given time...It was forcasted to wipe out a good portion of the US...Killed at least 2 Americans...Meanwhile a myriad of other hazards killed off hundreds of unsuspecting people in the same period...Can't believe all you hear and damn sure not everything you read...The government has the world heating UP at record pace, and the economy falling DOWN at the same breathless rate...One thing for certain, looks like we will live to move onto the next hysteria du jour...

We got wetted...Rained for 4 days straight...Got a good soaking...Did the garden and flowers more good than all the tap water we put on them...Phillip got some of the weeds out of the cactus bed this morning while the ground was soft...Lots of mud right now, but drying up fast...Had to get the chard picked last night and got mud logged doing it...Second planting of chard was 3 different varieties in one pkg...The resident squirrel ate some of the tops off he couldn't begin to eat it all...It sure is good stuff though...Maybe it gave him a belly ache because he graduated to the seeds under the bird feeders...I think the oriels and the finches like the hummingbird feeder just as much or more than the hummers...Some scarlet tanagers come for a sip or two as well...

The hummers don't seem to be as plentiful this year...A couple of guys moved into a new place above us...They have a beautiful yard in the making...They may have got their feeders up first and the hummers hang around there more...I still think that home-made feed for them must be tastier than the stuff you buy... Got the bought en stuff with the last feeder I got...Got to get that all used up then go back to the home-made stuff next year...

Had to go the doctor for my annual check-up last monday...Hooray!! I'm still alive...We went on up to goldpan while we were in the vacinity...Tried a different spot because of the time frame...NADA, nothing, zilch... Can't get gold where there is'nt any by darn...Now we can look at that place and say" been there, done that", and file it away with all the other dead zones we have tried...

Bill, Did Ame check out the link I left on the May 15 post? Granny

Here is  a video of some panning I did a while ago.  I actually found a piece of gold big enough to be seen by the video camera, not a bad day down on the creek.  When I get a chance I want to check out the sucker tube that Grandma mailed me.  Thanks Grandma!  Hopefully I will be able to upload some "sucker tube" video action with a pan full o' gold.

New Growth

As you can see the Agave has grown way above the edge of the roof. Better than 2 feet above the roof edge in fact.

These are the other 2 that I posted as they were just showing the flower heads. They sure do grow fast. I thought we just had 4 going to bloom this year but 1 more on the end of the house decided to bloom also.

Hard to believe.

You gotta see this... http://www.signspro.com/eric-art
Check it out. Granny

Just Finished

This stone is a ruby Phillip found on the tailing piles...It wasn't thick enough to orientate to the star, and not clear enough to facet as such. So I faceted the top and left the bottom flat...I think it turned out ok...It's 9X7... Granny

Back it up

Happy Mom's Day, sorry to hear about your C drive going down, that's a bitch. It must be the time of year for losing hard drives. Ame has a Western Digital that had about 750 gigs of her pictures, art, music, and programs, basically everything she had. It stopped loading the other day, and we are not sure if she will be able to recover that stuff or not. There is a local company in Hayden that says they will try, to recover, but if they can she has to buy another portable to put the data on. I suggested that instead of getting a single terabyte like the last time get a couple that will hold maybe 500 or 750 gigs. One can be her work horse and the other can be just for backup. Now what hard drive should she buy? Who knows which brand is most reliable? We have had a DiskGo Edge, 400 gig, for about 4 years and it has been a total work horse, the whole time. I just fear that it may be one of those deals where you are convinced it is the greatest thing out there then you get a hunk of crap that fails in the first few weeks. Also DiskGo is not very well known, as far as I can tell. I hate to take such chances with the storage device that holds so much. 

Gosh, things were so much easier when I knew absolutely nothing about computers. I went online one day around Christmas, looked at Hard Drives that were external, "Oh, look! This one holds 400 gigs!" Never did any research on it, didn't even know how to. I bought the DiskGo, on Amazon, from an Auto Parts store, somewhere back east. Absolutely no clue what I was going to end up with. Now having been all over inside and outside of our computer, I think I have less confidence that I can get it right than I did back then. 

The only thing that I know for sure is that I gotta' have the stuff backed up, and have most of it done already, but I have so much more to do. A few months ago we caught an extremely vicious malware virus and it, got past two different security programs, and was not detected in the full computer scans. We lost  ability to update the security, and any updates for that matter, [that's where we detected it first] then we could not load personal settings, finally we couldn't even load windows, and I had to hook up an old computer to go online to find the fix. We had to download two other programs [trail versions] to isolate the worm and destroy it. 

After that scare we backed up the C drive on DVD, it took up about 13 discs but worth it to know that we have a second chance if we lose the thing. I will someday get another computer, and I am determined not to repeat the mistakes I made the first two times. I think that the biggest mistake that I made was not knowing what I would be doing with the computer and consequently ended up with much less than I needed. I did it with the first computer when I bought the basic box no guts. Then after finding out that we needed guts to do some of the things that we wanted to do we bought a bigger box and it had some guts, but the guts were incomplete and we soon found that we needed transplants and lots more guts. If I would have learned my lesson the first time I could have saved hundreds of dollars by having ordered the box with all the right guts and not have had to pay more later and install them all myself. On the hand I would not have the hardware knowledge that I have after installing  Sound, TVtuner, Ethernet, and better Graphics cards. I recently had to replace the CPU and while I was in there with the Mother Board all exposed I decide to double the RAM. The fact that I learned how to do that stuff is great and all that but I wonder if I could be happier with all the money that I would have saved by having built the box with all the guts I needed in the first place.

OK,  so,.. two things, the back up thing being one, and the getting the right box with the right guts is of course the other. Oh, and I guess I should throw in there how important it is to do monthly dust removal, if you have as much dust in the place as we do. The worst thing to do to that box full of expensive guts is to let it get clogged with dust and dog fur.  I can only assume that the heat build up from clogged fans shortened the life of the CPU. 

I put all those upgrades and add ons in the box so we could have the means to run certain programs efficiently and do all the stuff we needed to do, but I soon saw what it was really all about. I walked in one night, and saw Ame doing homework, although I had to wonder how much work she was getting done. She had two different instant message conversations going, an online homework aid, she was drawing on her tablet, and she was watching live TV in the lower right hand corner of the monitor.  I had to put my foot down on that crap when she brought home a crappy report card. She was clever though, and tried to get away with a lot of crap by blocking the monitor and doing the stuff she thought she could get away with. One evening while she was supposed to be doing just homework, and nothing else, I happened to see her type " Just a minute, my parents are in the room!" When I finally got to the bottom of it I found out that all the kids were using the same online dictionary that was an instant messaging thing, so they could look like they were doing what they were supposed to be doing all the time talking back and forth to each other. That did not go over too well, and she lost many computer privileges for some time for trying to pull the wool over our eyes. I have since installed a VGA multiplier and a 25 foot cable to the TV so now I can push one button on the remote, while we are watching TV at night and I'm seeing just what she is doing on the computer. She is getting much better grades this year.

Well maybe someone can help me out with a suggestion as to what hard drive to buy. I think that online backup cost too much, and we have bandwidth limits with HughesNet. 

Can you believe this?

These agaves above are the ones in pictures 2 and 3 on the last post.

This agave is the one in the first picture in the last post. It is now just 6 inches below the soffit. Phillip is going to try and pull it out away from the roof with a rope and stake it so it won't go thru the roof. Want to see just how high it will be before we leave.

Wow! You talk about a weird brain echo...I had a good one the other night... I dreamed a man and a woman come to the house and wanted to talk to us... They said they were gathering up people who they believed deserved a second chance in life... They told us they would take us to a deserted island and there we could start over...We would be getting a healthy body before we went... The one condition we would have was to leave everything except that which was on a list that they would give us... This island was a large one but there was no conveniences on it... No power, phones, roads or anything... It was completely native and we would have to survive as such... They said anyone in the family could go if they were willing to give up everything they had now for perfect health and a new lifestyle...They would talk to them...They said this world was going to go through some drastic changes and and this was our chance to not be a part of it... Because what we have now was going to be destroyed in the chaos, and our chances of survival were slim if we remained... They didn't know exactly when this was going to happen so we would have to be prepared for a long stay on the island...We had exactly 3 months to sell everything and gather things on the list...If we were willing to go, we would be picked up with all our supplies and transported to the ship...On the list were things we would need to survive until we could build homes... Tents, camping supplies,basic foods, first aid kits and so forth...(forget the camp stove and lantern, no gas on island) Temperate climate so no winter clothing...Building supplies like tools, nails, ropes, hand saws, stuff like that...Mason tools, buckets, tubs, and many other things I can't remember now what...How to books, hobby materials, Treadle sewing machine and stuff to make clothes.

As I looked at all the stuff on the list I wondered just how we could ever collect all the stuff on it... They said if other members of the family decided to go then the list would be split up amongst the whole family... I was wondering how many of the family would go...

Next thing I knew we were on this island. I don't remember how or when we came to be here...

The Island was a fabulous place... Tall timber, rivers with fish, mountains in the distance, small lake where we were camped... Log and rock cabins being built by the family... I was planting the seeds that were on the list...Water diverted from a stream to the garden... We had a chicken coop made of logs and a pigpen made of logs... We had 2 cows and lots of dogs...The whole family was there, even Margaret and 2 of her kids...Some of her family didn't come and neither did Weldon's family... There were a lot of people I didn't know on this Island as well...They were up in the hills and on the other side of the lake...

Now this was weired enough but when I looked up into the sky I could see the Earth sitting out there as plain as day just like it was a moon. I know we weren't dead because there was no one here who had passed on before... The shock of seeing the Earth in the sky woke me up... Darn it.

I made a comment on the last post to Jake's comment. Hope he got it... I will pass tips on as I remember them.

Phillip has a couple of pairs of birds fighting over his bird house. There is room for 4 families but looks like one family to a side will be in the end... They are packing in the stuff...

We have 2 feeders and the birds can empty it in a couple of days... Lots of seeds on the ground so Phillip won't refill it for a while so they can clean up what fell to the ground. Some of the little devils just rake the seeds out to get the ones they like best first... Some of the finches and oriels take sips from the hummingbird feeders...The tiny birds that have nested in the cactus in the front yard like the lettuce Phillp planted... They were out there picking at it even as he watered it this morning...

First radishes are gone and the second batch is about an inch tall...The lettuce is almost gone and the second batch is a good 2 inches tall...Squash setting on and the peas and potatoes are blooming...Pepper plants are blooming and the tomato plant has 3 tomatoes on it. One as big as a ping pong ball...

Phillip finally got the old faceter fixed up so we can both facet on a machine at the same time...

He had to make a new pan for it... Works good...Only thing now is, I hope we don't need a lap the other is using.

Granny

Absolutely furious

I cannot believe this. W.R. Grace has gotten away with hundreds of murders. Less than three months after the trial began, it is over, and the executives acquitted of all charges. This is truly a travesty to Libby. A horrible ending like this reinforces the reason I am a Christian...the next life is the only place crooks like these will get their justice.

Revolting Development

This is an Agave. Before I tell you about the pictures, I gotta tell you I had a major computer crash. Lost my C drive and everything on it that wasn't backed up on discs. I just had installed the new IE 8 disc a few days before and when my AVG virus definitions downloaded and installed, the whole thing went tit's up. Had to F10 the thing to get it started again and found C drive wiped out. Had to restore back to basics. Just now getting things back to normal. The top picture is what the agave looked like sunday when I took this pic. Lost the other one when the thing looked like the ones below.I wanted to show you just how fast these things grow. The stem on this sucker is over 6 inches across. I should measure what it is around.

Today this guy here is almost as tall as the top one. This pic was taken last sunday. This next sunday I will take pics of the same ones and post them . These babies will have to be cut off before we leave here because they are under the eaves of the house. So far we have 4 going to bloom this year. There are lots of little ones that have come up all around the big plants. I was watering my new flowers coming up in the new beds and dropped the hose into one of these agaves. Sliced a hole in the hose and had to tape it up. They make excellent break-in guards.

a burglar would get sliced to ribbons if he fell into one of these. Needle points and sharp as a razor.

I got new flowers galore coming up from the seeds Bill sent. Going to bring up a few small plants with us when we come north. I think they will grow if planted in a protected place.

I lost all the Granny cartoons I had drawn up to post here on the blog. Makes me mad. I will wait til I get back from up north to draw new ones. All the pics I took since last fall are gone. I did back up Phillips pics because I was making them into a movie on the lap top.

Beginning to heat up down here. Phillip and I went back up into the mountains and did some more panning in a different spot. Didn't do too bad either. Will post pics of this spot later.

This spot makes a guy wish they could just lay back in a lounge and listen to the creek and the birds sing, while the rest of the world sailed right on by. Big pines, ash, box elder and elm trees all around. Just heavenly. Granny