My two favorite guys ..

Last Thursday was the 4th of July and although we didn't 'do' anything, and James just worked like normal, we at least put a steak on he BBQ ..

Merlin insisted we did ..

And than he crashed .. one of those -"I can't believe I ate the whole thing"- things!
Talking about crashing, a while ago I took some pictures of his daily evening ritual ..

He settles himself half on the pillow and half on James' lap (mine won't do), and within a couple of minutes he's going, going and .. gone .. lights out!

  

He's just too cute for his own good .. when he's asleep ..

Let's see, what else .. I hiked to the Joseph Cemetery, a couple of miles down the road. 
This very interesting little cemetery, literary in the middle of nowhere, has been used since the 1800's to bury various homesteaders and settlers from the area.

The boy-scouts have recently cleaned up this historic little plot some, placed a fence around it and actually discovered a few more unmarked graves. 
They've placed a binder near the gate with interesting stories about the ones that have headstones, and of those they could find some information about.

This is a headstone for 3 brothers. No clue if they had families or how they got here. Must be an interesting story ..

We're still very happy with our beautiful deck next to the RV, from where we're enjoying the beautiful sunny summer weather to the fullest. 
We eat many of our meals here ..

It's a wonderful outdoor spinning studio as well:

           


The 'flower' border that runs alongside of the deck has been a thorn in my side since we got here. 
Nobody was maintaining it (although I think it's the girls job), so I finally started to work on pulling the weeds ..

Half-way there!

Gosh, what a bugger of a job! 
A lot of it was grass, and it's roots had formed hard, solid clumps. I didn't have a hoe, so I just used a shovel to lift them up and cut through the roots.
But, it's pretty much done now, and although it already looks a lot better, I think I'm going to re-located a few clumps of wildflowers from the meadows and plant them in there, so it will look even better!

My walks have been even more fun lately, since I now have a companion that comes with me:

This is Rosy, she belongs to one of the ranch-hands here (Roy), and she likes to follow me on my hikes.
She loves to run ahead and than hides in the grasses, only to come racing by me in a fake chase, after which she sometimes jumps half up a tree out of silliness!
She's so much fun!

Now I must mention that Rosy almost wasn't alive anymore, due to the fact that she destroyed two of the birds-nests we so enjoyed (and eating the little birds that were in it)!
It happened a week ago and I could just about kill her for it, but what do you do ... it's in her nature, I guess .. so sad though ..

One of the nests that fortunately is still thriving, is from this little Tree-swallow:

 

Rosy has tried to get to it, but these feisty little birds are dive-bombing her as soon as she gets anywhere close to the nest!
They must have actually hit and hurt her, because she is down-right skittish to go by the meadow that there in.

I'm seeing a little more butterflies but not as many as I'm used to. (Maybe it's too cold up here in the winter?)
Here's a few:

This is a Comma Butterfly, it's the same one as the one in the middle of the collage below ..

(The others are a Sulfur White, a Painted Lady, a Meadow Crescent and a Tiger Moth)

And that was all she wrote, I think, for this week. Not too exciting, just a calm, quiet, peaceful week ...
I take it!      

We haven't seen many spectacular sunsets yet, this one was one of the more colorful ones.

Pretty enough!