Mr. Hawk

One day, while driving to work, I noticed something perching atop one of the high mast lighting poles illuminating the highway.

I didn't think much of it until I noticed it again, the next time I drove by.

This time, I looked much closer.

There sat Mr. Hawk (Or maybe it was Ms. I don't know for sure because I'm not sure how you even tell the difference between a male and female hawk, and he/she was pretty high.)

Over the next several days, I noticed the continued presence of Mr. Hawk. I also reckoned that he/she was spending a good deal of time there, because there was substantial hawk poop directly below the pole.

It got to the point that I would smile and wave to it every time I saw it. Of course the hawk was oblivious, but somehow, it made me feel better.

It hasn't been there for several days, now. And for some reason, it makes me feel a little sad.

I keep looking for it every time I drive by. I even put my camera under the seat of my Jeep just so I could take its picture.

You just wait. The minute I take the camera out of my Jeep is when Mr. Hawk will show up on the pole again.

But at least I will be able to wave and shout hello!

Dawn

Wordless Wednesday: The aliens are coming!

This slowly rotated over our house June 18.

We all stood outside and gawked (and took pictures and video).

But that's how we roll in Nodak!

Dawn

I can't comment on my own blog

You know you are toe lint when you can't even comment on your own blog!!!
Last week, I was going to respond to a comment made by someone who was kind enough to comment on one of my blog posts. I couldn't. First it told me that I have to sign in, when I'm already signed in. Then it showed that I'm "Anonymous" making a comment. And I suppose that, since I don't have "Anonymous" as someone who can comment, it just dumped me right back to the sign in page. Again. And again. And again.

Why did I keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result? I guess because when you get that focused on what is wrong, you CAN'T see any other way to do things.

Finally, today, it hit me. Why not blog about how you can't comment on your own blog? (No one ever said I was a rocket scientist!)

So, Katie, thank you for commenting on my beef kabobs. I hope they were as good as I made them out to be! (We really do like them around our house!)

And, I'd also like to take this time to thank every one of you who have subscribed or visited my blog. This is nothing more than random thoughts from an introvert who doesn't have a lot of friends but just needs to "talk it out" once in awhile (because writing is much easier than face-to-facing it), share a good recipe, a small laugh, and maybe every once in awhile, a deep thought. (But most of the time, they probably tend to skew toward the Jack Handey variety.)

So, what did we learn today?

#1. I am toe lint because I can't comment on my own blog
#2. I am an introvert
#3. I like beef kabobs
#4. I am not a rocket scientist
#5. I am very appreciate to all of you who take the time to read my ramblings!

Dawn

P.S. And if any of you can tell me how to fix my "comment" problem, I'd be very appreciative.

Now THIS is summer

Climbing trees and playing with the water hose! That's what summer is supposed to be about! And thankfully, my cherubs had an opporunity to do just that over the weekend.

And would you just look at those wildflowers! Despite the encroaching common yarrow, so far, so good!

Ahhh! It's nice to have summer, finally!

Dawn

75 percent of the earth is water

And right now, it seems like 70 percent of that 75 percent is flooding North Dakota homes, businesses and leaving families homeless. The flood waters in Minot are now exceeding the all-time record set in 1881. And it isn't just Minot. A photo from Rob Port of Minot shows a home in Burlington, a city to the west of Minot, barely peaking above the water. (http://yfrog.com/h812jnpj) 

You just have to pray that everyone will pull together and help one another get through this difficult time, both physically and emotionally.

And, if you can help, please donate to the North Dakota 2011 Flood Relief Fund. More information at http://www.ndcf.net/flood/.

Stay safe, everyone.

Dawn

Wordless Wednesday: TOO much water

There are no words for something like this

(KFYR TV video of house falling into the Missouri)

Dawn

Rain, water and small potatoes

I made my family help me in my personal futile exercise.

We planted our garden on Sunday.

Sunday, June 19.

I don't remember ever planting a garden that late. I know that, for the last three years, it has been in June, but never June 19.

No. I don't have high expectations.

But I figured we had the seeds, we had good intentions, so we may as well take advantage of the time between the rain showers and get some seeds in the ground.

We planted onions, carrots, peppers, oregano, basil, pumpkins and corn. I will be happy if I have some carrots to harvest.

My daughter said, as she was reading the instructions on how to plant corn, "Well, Mom, it says to plant in late spring. It's STILL late spring!" (Always the optimist, she is!)

So today, it's the first day of summer. It's cold and raining and there are flood warnings all over the place. People have lost their businesses, their crops and livestock, their homes. And it just keeps raining.

My heart goes out to everyone who has had to, and will have to continue, weathering all the water that Mother Nature is throwing at us. Your strength and courage is admirable.

So planting a garden that doesn't grow is pretty much small potatoes.

And I didn't even plant those.

Dawn

Hunk of Meat Monday: Beef kabobs

The original recipe for this came from a flier I got from the Beef Commission. I have tweaked it a little and made it my own, based on what my family likes. But this is definitely worth the prep time cutting up the veggies and meat, especially if you get your 13-year-old son to help cut up those nasty onions! (I'm sorry, son! I really didn't mean to make you cry!)

You will need wooden skewers for this, if you don't have metal ones. (We use wood all the time, soaked for just a bit, but not so long that they start splitting when you put the meat and veggies on the skewers, maybe about two minutes.)

Beef Kabobs
Marinade:
4 Tbs vegetable oil
2 Tbs lemon juice
2 Tbs water
4 tsp dijon mustard
2 tsp honey
1 Tbs oregano
1/2 tsp course ground pepper

Kabobs:
1 1/2 pounds of top sirloin

1 small onion
1 medium red pepper
1 container fresh mushrooms
1 can large black olives

Combine ingredients for the marinade in a large bowl. Set aside.

Cut up sirloin, onion and red pepper into bite size pieces. Slice mushrooms in half. Drain the black olives.

Dump the sirloin in the marinade and stir to coat evenly. Add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and coat evenly. Put in refrigerator for about an hour. (You don't have to, but really helps to soak up the juices.)

Place a piece of meat, an onion slice, a red pepper slice, a fresh mushroom and a black olive on a skewer. Repeat until the skewer is about full.

Repeat until you have used up all the meat. Typically, there are more veggies than there are meat pieces. Guess I should buy bigger sirloin! But I use the extra veggies to make, usually one more all veggie kabob, just in case someone wants more veggies.

Here is a plate-full of kabobs, ready for the grill! This recipe makes about 9-10 kabobs. Grill for about 7 minutes a side (less if you like your meat more rare).

It's just enough for a family of four, when you have a daughter who won't eat them anyway, so really, it serves three, if you also serve a side of cheesy broccoli and rice (I use the packages of rice with the dried cheese and broccoli already mixed in because that IS something my daughter will eat) and a bowl of grapes, with a promise of a yummy specialty ice cream (Bison Crunch) for dessert. Still....don't expect leftovers!

Dawn

The terror of tiny race tracks

We  laugh at our Springer a lot. He is a food stealer, a glutton and an opportunist.

He is ALSO one of those dogs that will chase reflections from your watch, pots, mirros, you name it (including flashlights and those little red laser lights).

We used to have a wind chime my son made out of spoons hanging on the back deck, but he would stand in the dining room, lunging at the reflections for hours on end, and my husband was worried he might go loony. (GO loony? I think he's already there!)

So when he became The Terror of Tiny Race Tracks, we just had to get it on video!

My daughter loved every second of it. (That's her giggling!)

Hope it makes you smile too!

Dawn

How I used up my bonus bucks

So, I went to the greenhouse the other night, with $42 worth of bonus bucks just itching to get used.

I had no trouble -- What. So. Ever. -- spending them. (Creative use of punctuation, isn't it?)

I bought a bunch of orangeish-pinkish wave petunias to go in front of my tiger lilies. As I was planting them, my daughter complimented me on my "style." I felt pretty good about that, because she has a better sense of style than I do. I frequently ask her if "this is my color" or "that is my color" when it comes to clothing. Turns out, yellow is not. Green is. Who knew? Not me! At least not until my little fashion-sense monkey told me!

But I digress.

I also bought this nice little plant stand/hanging pot combo....

for the front porch...

And the plants in the top and bottom pots....

I also bought a bunch of purple alyssum to plant in front of my chewed up but slowly returning Moonbeam coreopsis.

All in all, I was pretty darn happy with my purchases, and how far those bonus bucks went. My only gripe? They were out of purple fountain grass, so I decided to go with big yellow marigolds instead, even though they aren't really my color!

Dawn



Wordless Wednesday: The grandpa I never got to meet

I love this picture. My paternal grandpa is the guy in the middle. What a cool looking crew, eh?

One two lip

One two lip. Ha! Ha! I crack myself up. I thought that was a funny play on the word "tulip."

Do I hear groaning out there?

Come to think of it, I don't really think it's very funny either, that I had exactly one tulip bloom this spring.

See? This is it. It's that little reddish, pinkish thing in the background.

It was so darn sad, I ended up camouflaging it with marigolds in pots that I bought for a plant stand on the back deck, but it turned out that the pots just looked goofy in the plant stand because they were too small and tall. So I brought them to the front and tried to make that one poor tulip look all special and stuff.

It probably just ended up getting lost in all the pots and rocks and bricks and solar lights, but I really think the late-day sun and shadows gives it all kind of an "artsy" vibe.

And nothing, not lack of lips or excessive rain, can dampen my spirits, because I still have $42 worth of "bonus bucks" that I can use at the greenhouse. I just have to spend $84. I don't think that will be a problem.

However, these two lips are saying, "I probably won't be buying tulips."

Dawn

Hunk of Meat Monday: Roadside Chicken

This is the best tasting chicken. Moist. Delicious. Easy? Not so much, but since my husband is the "grill sergeant" I am more than happy to share the recipe link...

http://tvwbb.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/4880069052/m/9740028563

We sometimes grill a whole chicken, sometime parts (wings and legs and thighs), but no matter how you do it, it's all good.

Yum!

Dawn

New bed

We got a new bed at My Two Acres. Not the kind you sleep in (although my almost six-foot tall, 13-year-old son has definitely outgrown his single bed and needs a bigger one, but we can't find the right kind, but that's another story). It's a bush bed, or rather a tree, bush and pond bed. And maybe some flowers thrown in too, after the pond gets put to bed.

Click on the picture to actually be able to read the words!

This particular bed took a good part of the afternoon and evening to dig up. Even though we have had plenty of moisture, the ground is full of clay, so it tends to get pretty hard, pretty fast. In fact, my spading foot (I'm left handed, but apparently, I'm right-footed, which explains a lot about me, but that's another story too) is still a little tender. Jumping on a spade to get it into the ground repeatedly apparently either caused a funky ligament pain, or I whacked that part of my foot (you know, that big bone thing that smarts like the dickens when you whack it) but I did not know I whacked it. There are no visible bruises, however, so I'm guessing  a ligament issue, rather than a whacking one.

The really exciting part about all this is that we bought an old red farm pump at a garage sale a few years ago, and this year, we're going to put it in this bed, approximately where the one arrow is, and the water from said red farm pump will cascade gently down some rocks into the waiting pond, where the other arrow is.

We thought we'd try a solar pump with this set-up, rather than trying to dig in wires and stuff. Hubby's doing the research on that, and since he's an engineer, he knows what kind of pump it's going to take to make it all recirculate properly. Right now, he's kinda busy with the water coming down the Missouri, so the pump step might take a while. I'm glad we got as far as we did, because I think my spireas and dwarf willow are much happier in the dirt than in buckets. (I got them for Mother's Day.)

It may not look like much right now, but I think it's gonna rock (and have a bunch of rocks in it, too). Even in its bare state, it's a nice addition to our front yard. I'll share another picture when it's all done.

Dawn

It's her birthday, but I get the present

The first drawing of my little monkey's 9th year. She finished it this morning and gave it to me. Giving gifts on her birthday. Now that's an awesome kid!

Happy 9th birthday, Monkey!

Dawn

The things you can learn listening to 9-year old girls

I had a unique opportunity this past weekend. My daughter had a sleepover birthday party with five of her friends. This was the first time we had such large group of little girls sitting around the dining room table all at once, talking about all the things little girls talk about.

They were doing art projects that involved putting little plastic thingies onto pegs in the shape of flowers and turtles and cars and stuff. Once they were done filling the pegs, I got the job of ironing them to "glue" them together. The laundry room is out of sight from the dining room, so I could listen to the conversation without LOOKING like I was listening to the conversation.

What do little girls talk about? You name it. They covered everything from vegetarianism to ghosts in a couple of hours.

Of course, being an employee of a farm organization that promotes all kinds of agriculture, including our livestock producers, I was very curious to hear what they were saying about vegetarianism. They all knew what a vegetarian is. Can't say that I did when I was 9, but those were different times. But none of them said, "I don't eat meat." In fact, one of them said, "I could NEVER be a vegetarian. I love meat!" (You GO, girl! I thought to my smiling self, safe in my ironing sanctum.)

The ghost conversation was starting to creep some of them (and judging from my daughter's indignation when she said, "Ghosts are NOT real!" she was the one about creeped out the most), so I came out of hiding to suggest that perhaps they find a topic that doesn't scare anyone.

The topic? "Heartthrob" (do they even use that word anymore?) Justin Bieber. I couldn't help but smile when one of them proclaimed that she "loved" him and was pretty sure she could steal him away from his current girlfriend.

That pretty much scared me! (Not really. I actually giggled a little when she was talking about it.)

But what a learning experience for me! I'm starting to think that the best focus group a communicator could ever hope for, would be a bunch of 9-year-old girls at a sleepover party.

Dawn

June is Dairy month

Thank a dairy farmer this month (and his or her cows) for producing the raw product that makes all the wonderful foods that make our bones strong and teeth strong!

It's a tough job to be a dairy farmer, because those cows need to be milked every day, at least twice each day. That's at least 730 milkings a year! Think about that for a moment. Most of us have our day jobs and spend our weekends doing other "stuff." Dairy farmers don't have that luxury.

So, dairy farmers, I salute you for your dedication to doing an outstanding job. THANKS for the cheese for my nachos, the ice cream sandwiches and the yogurt I so dearly love.

Dawn

Luck 'o my little Irish monkey

I was weeding a flower bed last night. My daughter came out to just hang out. She was looking in the dirt for bugs and stuff and fiddling around with the clover that was in my digging path, when suddenly she asked, "Mom, how often do you find four-leaf clovers?"

I said, "Almost never. Why?" (Wikipedia estimates about 1 in 10,000.)

"Well, this is one, isn't it?" she asked.

I looked at it and, BLARNEY, she had found a four-leaf clover.

I had never seen one before.

She asked, "Well, what should I do with it? Bury it by the tree?"

"No! No! No!" I responded. "We need to take a picture of it."

While I was taking a picture, my husband came home. I told him our little monkey had found a four-leaf clover. He was amazed. He had never seen one either. So he got out his camera (a fancier one with a macro lens) and took several pictures.

Then, we put a piece of clear tape over it to keep it in place on the sheet of paper. I don't know how long it will keep, but at least we will have it for awhile.

I don't have a lick of Irish in me (the kids get it all from their father), and I'm wishy-washy on whether or not I  believe in "signs," but with all the flooding going on in the state, I hoped that this was a sign that things are turning around and going to get better.

And, of course, we already knew it, but we're lucky to have our little monkey, too!

Dawn

Wordless Wednesday: Muh-muh-muh-muh-muh-muh-muh My Gerbera