This Mama Mallard has 9 babies! Busy, busy, busy ..

I think this blog has gone to the birds ...
It seems I've been taking nothing but bird shots this week. Oh well, there are worse topics, I guess.

I must have the only Hummingbird feeder in 3 miles or so, since I've got about 5 of them fighting a constant war over it!

Every now and than they share, but they're feisty little things and will break out in a fight at any moment ..

This Tree Swallow that I mentioned in a previous post, has a nest, dangerously low (Rosy!), in a fence post in the meadow in front of us.

I had to stand out of sight behind a Pine tree, to have them relax enough to continue feeding their chicks ...

    

 There's at least 4 or 5 in there, maybe even 6!

The wildflowers of Spring have made room for those of Summer, and the hills look so pretty everywhere you look ..

This next one is a Sagebrush Mariposa Lily:

 

The one on the left below here is a Deerhorn Clarkia (I can see antlers in that one!) and the one on the right is a Showy Larkspur ... I think ..

        

Last Friday we went to Grangeville once again. James was missing a part to continue working and we were both up for a little break.
So down the (bloody) hill we went again ..



This time though we took a different route, Center Canyon Rd, which made a huge difference in 'scary-ness' .. !

The route is the same until about halfway, just before the 'front' one becomes hair-raising (for me), but by than we turn onto a much more gradual and slightly wider road, that slowly eases it's way down the canyon following Center Creek, and eventually ends up in Cottonwood.
It's a much, much, much better road to take the RV down this coming Fall! I'm so relieved! 
It's like a heavy weight has been lifted from my shoulders! 

Life is good!

 

OK, 15 miles past Cottonwood we than pull into Grangeville.
It's a typical country-town, not much cutesyness about it, but it has everything we need and I start to like it.

It's basically just main street with a few side streets, almost all of which turn into gravel about half a mile in.

On one of those side-streets we found this jewel of a coffee shop:

O my goodness, it's so cute and quirky and funky, it could easily be somewhere in any big city!

The coffee is excellent and the pastries even better!

Guess where we'll end up whenever we'll be down here?

We also went for another round of golf, had a nice lunch at the (only) Mexican Restaurant and did groceries but I didn't feel like taking any more pics .. hey, I had the day off!

One of these mornings we woke up to mooing .. mooing? Yeah, mooing! 

A small group of cows, and a few bulls, had knocked down a fence somewhere and showed up in the driveway and yard, right next to the RV.

Of course that's not supposed to happen, but fences are knocked down over here on a regular base.

Roy, the Peruvian ranch-hand here, is on a never-ending quest to check and repair fences.

Since the ground is very rocky they can't put posts in the ground, so he builds a small platform against the fence pole, which he than fills up with (very heavy) big rocks:

Nice job!

Talking about nice jobs, James has moved on to the guest quarters in the basement.
He has build a new wall to create an extra bedroom, which makes the recreational room a lot smaller, but it is still very usable.

As you can see they flooded last winter, and the bottom 2 feet of the drywall has been ripped out and will be replaced.

The bathroom will get a new shower and toilet, and all the floors will get new carpet and/or vinyl.

   

Still a lot to do, but he's nicely on schedule, and on budget, after this first month of work. 

(Yes, we've been here for a month already)

Great job hon!

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!

Although the weather has been very good this week, temperatures around 72, we're getting thunderstorms almost every afternoon/evening.
It doesn't last long though. After some very dark clouds, some nice thundering and a few crackling light-claps, the sky brightens, the sun comes out again and everything dries up quickly.

 

I guess that's the mountains for you. Those heavy clouds collide with the hills and have to rain out to get over them. Or something like that?

Something else typical rural Idaho is the next scene, that I witnessed from my side window:

Marianne and Wade 'working' the steers. Whatever that means ..

♪ Move 'em on, head 'em up
Head 'em up, move 'em on, see 'them dogies rollin', rawhide!♫

Rollin', rollin', rollin' ..

Unfortunately I don't have a horse, so I'm just walkin', walkin', ...
These are pics of  another of my hikes, this trail is circling the house on the back side, looking towards the valley below:

 

It's where I came across some more deer .. a little fuzzy, but aren't they a cute pair?

And a few more birds, of course, like this little Yellow Warbler:

 And a (sharp pic this time!) Western Bluebird ...

Somewhere along the creek I came across some honest-to-god Rhubarb!

It must be a very old plant, a leftover from an old vegetable garden that belonged to one of the Homesteads that used to be here.
Look at that, I picked myself some nice stalks!
 

I happened to have some strawberries also, so I made a sauce, and the rest I used in these pretty little hand-pies.
I remembered having them at the Amish in Ohio, and how much better they upheld with 'saucy' fillings than regular 'big' pies, who always go soggy and ooze/fall apart when cut.

 Look how perfect! Much easier to eat and very portable too!

 


Let's see, not much else for this week, I think.

Oh, we went 'down the hill' for grocery shopping and a material run, and we stopped for coffee at White Bird.

We sat outside on the terrace where you have a great view of the 'floating' bridge over White Bird Creek.
The opening of the bridge in June 1975 completed the multi-lane Highway US 95 44 years ago, following ten years of construction.
It starts it's climb from here, up to the White Bird summit at 4,245 feet above sea level after which it descends to Grangeville on the other side.


After coffee we drove over that summit to the Grangeville golf Club where we played 9 holes, followed by an excellent lunch at their deck.
It was beautiful weather and we really enjoyed our day 'off'.

(The road back and forth put the fear of God in me once again though. I'm so not looking forward to having to leave in the Fall!)

On a lighter note, these Irises are flowering in the border next to the RV. Aren't they gorgeous?

James is feeling a lot better, although he still has a lingering cough, and he's making steady progress with the master bedroom suite.
He's pretty much finished pulling all the electric wires ... spaghetti!

Now if everybody could make up his/her/their minds about this renovation, things would progress a lot faster, but as it is it's a rather slow process with a lot of different opinions (the girls, Sam's, Ronnie's), we are caught in the middle, and nobody is making any decisions fast.

It's a little frustrating to have to do things twice, or to change things that were already done ..

Oh well, it will get done eventually .. we hope.