A nice full rainbow .. apparently they're symbols of hope .. how appropriate!

Well, we're still here, the end hasn't come yet! It's a strange world though, getting stranger by the day. 
There are some hopeful sounds from Holland that they feel the curve is 'flattening', but here in America we're still very much in the 'accelerating' phase of the disease. 
New York had it's highest death-toll over the last 24hrs today, a scary 950! That's just for the city!

We're a week into the stay-at-home order now, and for us nothing much has changed yet. Austin is still working for us and we're all doing and feeling well.
We're actually thinking that we might bring some guys back so James can work on the roof. We feel it might be possible to stay away from each other far enough to make work possible, especially since they all will be outside. We'll see..

I've been diligent to go for my daily walks, getting some fresh air in my lungs and trying to build up some muscle and most importantly, some overall resistance!

It's fairly sunny lately but the winds are bad and often very cold!

When the sun is out more and more insects are starting to buzz around ..

I came across this beautiful hawk the other day. Too far away to get a really sharp shot but nice enough ..

                           

                              Harlan's Red-tail Hawk

I'm trying to keep busy and to not check the news or social media too often, but it's hard to not want to know what's going on all the time.
My mind also just doesn't want to focus on anything too long, it jumps all over the place ..
I do a lot of puzzling and reading (a lot of blogs of course) and spend quite some time cooking and baking.

I've made these little mini apple pies before, they're very nice, apples, sugar, cinnamon .. comfort food!
I have to start watching what I eat though, I'm 'comforting' myself a little too much ..

The new house now has water. It is being pumped up from the tank below (next to the old house), somebody came out to install the pumps and everything that goes with it.

But the most exciting thing that happened this week was the arrival of the grass-seed!
The hydro-seeding company from Boise was still doing business as usual, although I doubt they fall under 'essential' services, and showed up early Thursday morning with a big truck and a whole bunch of seed!

It had to be filled with water on arrival, so the guys here had connected the sprinkler system from the well up above, down to the meadows below, and James had found the correct parts to connect it to the truck's in/outlet.

There was a little hiccup when the system stopped working after only 30 minutes into the job, but it turned out it was out of gas (duhhh ..) so a trip to Riggins solved that problem and fortunately they could proceed ..

What a cool system! It goes so fast!
     

They sprayed everything from the barn up above all the way down to the shop below, and unto the area in the front, the back and below the new house.
Most was done with the 'big gun' that was mounted on the truck, but some of the more detailed work was done with a hose and by hand.

They used different nozzles on the gun to spray up close and for far off.

Who on earth came up with that terrible color green though, god only knows ..

They also did the area around the old house where the tank had been placed, as well as where they'd taken out the trees before and had created a path to the new house.

Even our new and improved 'run-way', that we'll use when we leave here in October, got a shot!

They only had just enough seed, in fact they were a little short (I actually thought they were a little 'heavy-handed' at times), but the most important areas are done. 
Hopefully we'll get some spring-rains in the coming weeks, but just in case that will not happen (which of course is 'Murphy's Law), we're going to bring the old fire-truck, that's sitting at Brust, down the hill for the duration. 

At least, that's the plan, now if it only would stop snowing!