More flowers down at the river.

The mesquite is in full bloom all over now. Just loaded with bees going to make mesquite honey. Darn good stuff but spendy. A couple of ranches sell only this honey. Blooms smell heavenly.

Haven't the foggiest Idea what these trumpet shape flowers. Down here at the river is the only place I have seen them.

The pink locust are getting a bit faded now. Phillip took this, almost stepping in poison ivy to do it. He didn't see the stuff but I saw it right away. Nasty stuff. I can get it almost just looking at it.

Granny.

River again.

That was one of the first hot days this year when this was taken. Not quite hot enough to wear shorts yet but then again it is still no-see-um season so long pants really are needed. Had to spray on the nasty stuff to keep them away. The dragon flies do the best they can but there are just too many for what few dragonflies that are out right now. Only saw 2 of them so far this year.

Phillip and I were walking up the road and saw this guy crossing the road. He was fortunate in that no one came down to the river crossing while he was in the path of eminent extinction otherwise, kaput. He left his shiny trails all over and had crossed and recrossed the road a few times. I don't know if he is playing a game of I dare you or what but he better make up his mind to land in a secure spot pretty soon because if a car don't get him a bird will. Do birds like slugs? I don't know but if they do, he will make a tasty bite.

These were growing right by where I was sitting. I don't know what they are but they look kinda like snapdragons. Lots of mint growing along side them. Smells minty there especially when the mint is walked on.
It was cooler today and not quite as smokey because the winds shifted again and is blowing the smoke away from us.

It's time to hit the sack so good nite,

Granny.

One of THOSE kinda days.

Nor enough strong backs to do the shoveling either. Phillip got the rest of the chicken wire on the back existing hog wire fence that seperates the property next door to us. Had to put it over the hog wire so the bunnies can't get thru. He also put a 2X4 under the gate so the pigs can't root under the gate. When we went out this morning we could see tracks all over the place where they were looking for a place to get in. So far so good. Went to town and got bird netting for the tomatoes. Phillip has the frame work up and now we got to get the netting put on. Birds got the other tomato that was getting ripe while we were in town. Damn things.

A real good way to discurage tailgaters, I think.

This is a picture of th Crown King fire that we see from our place taken yesterday. It has traveled down the side of the mountain faceing our place now. They think it is mostly under control this evening. It was still windy but much cooler today. I hope so because there is supposed to be high winds tomorrow. The dark ridge you see in the foreground is the mountain on the right side of Fossil canyon looking up stream. They lost something like 12, 000 acres in the fire, but even though a lot of very rich people have summer homes up there, no homes were lost. A good portion of the owners live in Phoenix and just summer up there, and most were not in residence yet.
The past few days the wind has kept the smoke going away from us but the wind today has carried it toward us so is quite smoky now.
Granny

Flower time.

Poppy Thistles

Wild blackberries

Don't know what these are but the butterflies sure like them.

I like em too. Such a bright flower but no smell that I can discern.

They found another flashlight bomb down in the Phoenix area. This time at a Salvation Army store. Two people were injured when a guy switched it on. Not too seriously. People just have too be more careful. You couldn't pay me to switch on a stray flashlight now for anything. I doubt if I would do it even in a store. They said this one was more powerful than the others have been. Seems like they are just perfecting them yet. Who knows what the dirty buggers will come upwith next.

Most of the stuff Phillip planted has started to come up. The tomato plant we got had a couple of small tomatoes on it and the birds pecked them all to hell. He has got to get some netting put up if we ever want to get any for ourselves. Had to put rain gutter screen over the chard and beet rows to keep the birds from eating the plants before they get a chance to grow. Gotta go to town tomorrow and get some screening. Got to cover the squash and cukes too so they won't get eaten as soon as they show out of the ground. Pit's with the birds. I'm begining to hate the darn things around the house.

Granny.

It's the truth.

Tha top pic says it all. Good night.

Granny

Hey! It's a great life if you don't weaken.

Seems like it was just friday. Oh well!!

Phillip has been busy. He canned 6 quarts of stewed tomatoes from the ones we got last thursday. He likes to do it so I let him. ( Ain't that nice of me?) Anyway I have been trying to work on the pictures. I finally found a program to find and eliminate the duplicates. I downloaded it from the www.komando.com site. The gal who runs this site makes sure there are no bad things attached to sites before she recommends them for download from her site. She does have one to put captions to the pictures, but I don't know if I want that one or not. I will have to check it out. The one for the dupes is called " visipics" and it did the job. Got rid of almost 2000 dupes we got from backups of our photos. Some were duped 5 times. What a mess that was. Now I have to recheck and make sure the ones kept have been worked on as far as lighting, contrast and so forth. I know some of the discs might have been before inhancement was done. I had trouble adjusting the lighting on some pics and so did Phillip. Also some pics were deleted before they were treated but were on the discs added to the computer. I just put all backup discs in the computer to make sure I got all the pics we took, hence the dupes. Anyway, I have been busy with that kinda stuff. Some day I will get the whole works organized , captioned and put on a dvd. Going back to the laptop and do that while Philip works on the garden.

Granny.

Somrthing to think about.

Somrthing to think about.

Volunteer day again.

We got talked into volunteering at the Congress food bank since Phillip seems to be a favored box packer. We had to be down there at 6:00 this morning, so had to get up at 4:00 in order to do it. Figured it the old gal who talked him into it could do it every month then we could too. I did pretty much the same thing I do at the senior center up in Yarnell and Phillip did a lot of unloading the truck and then setting up the food to be distributed . Stuff done a lot different down there in the distribution end. Down there they had a lot of perishable foods that they don't have in Yarnell. They got in boxes of tomatoes, lettuce in heads and large bags like packed for a resturant,celery, cabbage, potatoes,spinach packs, kale, strawberries, peppers, bananas, onions and some salsa tubs. Very little can stuff down here. Pinto beans and rice had to be packaged as well as sweet rolls and cookies from a local bakery. Sure don't see that up in Yarnell. Anyway the people take their own boxes and help their self to whatever they want. They weigh the boxes and check the names off the list then Phillip took the boxes to their cars. After all the people had gone thru, the head gal told us to take what we wanted out of what was left. Got a half box of tomatoes, some red potatoes, a few onions and 2 loafs of bread. Don't get anything up at Yarnell for your troubles. Sure a different way of doing it. In Yarnell they get beans, rice and lots of can stuff and milk, and cereal.
Anyway after we got done with the Congress food bank we hot-footed it up to Yarnell to do our duty there. Looks like Phillip got stuck with being a volunteer box packer both at the church and the senior center again. I guess he will keep doing it for the senior center anyway since the old gal there seems to think he belongs. She was really having a confused day today. Can you believe Phillip calls her sweetie?

Got 4 forest fires going here in AZ and one you can see from the house. Had to evacuate an old mining town that people are still living in. That's where the fire we see from the house got started. Been up in the 100's in some places already and looks to be a bad fire season if we don't get the monsoons again this year. Woods are really dry and they have already banned camp fires even in the forest service campgrounds. In fact no open fires of any kind anywhere.
We haven't been doing any prospecting because the woods are too dry and we have had winds almost every day since it got hot. Went from the 70' to the high 90's in just a couple of days up here on the bench.
Yep!! Today was a long day. Didn't get back home til 3:30.
Time to take a bath and hit the sack.

Yeppers!!!

Then that's when the fight started.

So true, so true.

Granny

The signs of Spring.

The poppy thistles are blooming all over the place.

So are the primroses.

Phillip has most of the garden planted now and we will have to pick up some tomato and pepper plants sometime this week. I want to get a rhubarb plant as well. Can't seem to find any asparagus plants down here but our neighbor has some growing and he had to get them online from a seed co. Oh well.

Fence is really strong so the pigs shouldn't ever get in. If they ever should then Phillip will become a basket case.

Granny.

Settled in and trying to get down to biz!

Wow, I've been incognito over the past few weeks.  I was in a whirlwind of trying to finish up my schoolin' and get moved up to Montana.  Well I pulled it off and I think I still have my sanity intact.  I'll get back to y'all in a few weeks to see how the ol' sanity is doing.

So I was able to get everything wrapped up at Colorado School of Mines and relocate to Montana.  Dad and I split the driving into two sections because we didn't hit the road until after 1 P.M. when we left Golden, CO.

It was nice to get some rest, plus we rolled into Billings right around lunch time.  Steph was making some tasty Mediterranean pasta and oatmeal cookies.  It was a nice combo of smells to come home to!  As an added surprise she made a sign for me.

That was really sweet of her, but unfortunately we couldn't stick around.  Dad and I unloaded everything from the truck and set up the bed in the main bedroom.  I unpacked the microwave and it's components and gave Steph a kiss and said "sorry hon, I gotta get back on the road to get Dad back to Noxon."  So we spent a night in Billings and it was back on the road.  I spent a nice full day with the folks (too short though) and then I was back on the road again to my new Montana home.

When I got back to Billings, I sighed when I looked at all of the boxes that filled the kitchen area "where are we going to put all of this crap?"  Well, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.  We gave a bunch of stuff to St. Vincent and recycled some of our stuff.  Some articles were plain junk so they went straight into the trash bin.  There is still a little bit left but 90% of it is taken care of.  All in all I'm pretty proud of what we were able to get done.  We have to have this place in tip-top shape as we have Steph's folks flying in from Cleveland, OH.

I was even able to squeeze in some time with my fellow physics professor colleague at Rocky Mountain College.  He helped set me up with an ID badge and keys to the lab.  I hope to spend time this summer preparing my lectures and going through labs and working out the kinks before I subject my students to them.

I ran around all the government offices in Billings to get set up with my residence requirements (it would be nice to go hunting this fall without getting soaked with out of state fees).  So my ol' truck now has plates from the fourth state I've lived in.  I've had it for 15 years, still running but I think the days are limited.  I'm going to save up for a down payment on a new one when the paychecks start rolling in around September.

I do not start my new job until August.  I've been getting all kinds of 'jabs' from my buddies ranging from "slacker" to "house husband."  I just smile and say "well, I have a job waiting for me, how's your search going?"  Heh, heh, hee hee!  I can take it but I can dish it out too.  So, I will be the house husband this summer but I definitely will not slack.  This could be the last free bit of time I have until I retire or take sabbatical.  I'm going to make the most of it.
          First I would like to have all my lectures written out so that I do not have to do this in the fall.  I've had so many prof's in the past that are just as bad if not worse than students when it comes to last minute cramming.  I've seen them right before class getting frustrated trying to throw their lecture together.  Typically the first part of the lecture is good (this is the part they were able to complete just before the start of class) then 'wing' the rest of it (which is done from memory, and 'on your feet' thinking).  I hopefully can avoid that scenario by preparing lectures this summer.  As I mentioned before I would also like to run through the labs so that when students come up to me and say "this doesn't work."  I'll at least be familiar with the setup to give them some help.
         Second I'd like to get started with a few grants and proposals.  My primary job is to be an effective educator, but the college would also like to see some research.  I have a few ideas of things I think would be interesting, but they will take money and to get money I have to type up a convincing proposal.  I don't think I will be able to write a full proposal this early in the year but it couldn't hurt to think about it and type up a few drafts.
         Lastly I would like to squeeze in a bit of fun.  I would like to do some reading that doesn't involve math or physics.  98% of the books I've read over the past 12 years have titles like "Analytical Mechanics" and "Electronic Materials and Devices."  I would like to read something just for kicks.  Also, toward the end of July I would like to head up to Noxon to visit with the folks a bit longer and get some fishing time in along with some possible huckleberry picking.

Well see.....

I hope y'all out there have an awesome summer and can work hard and play harder!

Mama said there'd be days like this.

Damn near every week.

Granny.

Spring is here.

Here are a few shots of the spring flowers we took the last time out.

Tried to post them yesterday but they just wouldn't load up for some reason. Hate this new format.

Mama said there'd be days like this.

It's either that or you haven't tossed the darn stuff out and and now when you are looking for that something you will never find it in all the junk. Happens all the time. One way or another.
Went and bought new hinges. Could have sworn we had some out in the shed. Don't remember tossing them out but can't find em either. I suspect one of us will come across the darn things when searching for something else.

Monday isn't the drag now when the weather is begining to heat up. It can be a real drag in the winter when we are trying to take people out on rock hunting tours. Means getting up at 4 or earlier to meet people and get going. Now the only day of the week we have to get up early is our volunteer day for the seniors, and that's only one day a month. Most of the time I'm awake about 5:30 every morning anyway. If you have anything to do outside, then it's best to get out and do it before the sun get very high up. From 10:00 on, it's best to be indoors with all the fans going or down at the river.

Still trying to get my pictures organized. What a mess. Puter problems, program problems and problems with my smarts. Some day I'll get them organized if I live so long.

Granny.

Right on!!!

Hell! I can even nibble in the moonlight as well.

You've heard the old addage" mad as a wet hen?' Well can she be madder than this wet cat?

And a big amen.

Granny.

PS Happy Birthday Dave.

Yep!!!

All so true, don't ya know.

Been trying to get all our pictures organized. Been using the photo shop organizer. What a bummer of a program. I tried to make a slide show of some of the catalogs after I got all organized and deleted dupes then found out the dumb program says it cant find a good portion of the pictures. It keeps browsing everything on the computer then says the files are missing. Bull, I can see the pictures in the catalog but can't make a slide show or burn them to a DVD because the program can't find the pics. I'm about ready to trash the whole damn idea of making a DVD of all the pics we have taken. Rats, what I need is a program that I can use to organize, clear out dupes, and put the captions with the pics so I can make a DVD. I went to all the trouble of adding captions to the pics then find they don't print with the pic. What a drag.
Granny

It's Been a dull day.

It was a puter day. I wrote a bit on my bio. then did some more photo organizing. That stuff taks some time doing. What were you up to today?

Granny.

Oh yeah!!!

Good Job.

Congratulations Dr. Jason Stoke.