At 40 yards

humans + 1

squirrels - 1

Missed one earlier

Squirrel infestation about to come to stark end.

Cecilia aka Calamety Jane "sighting in" her new squirrel gun.

When we were young and living on the farm, every spring we would patrol the ditch banks

for "ground squirrels" aka gophers.

Calamety Jane was a crack shot with the 22 then and she hasn't lost her touch.

We have a pretty good view of our garden, about 40 yards away, from the deck.

She took a few pot shots at the squirrels before we "sighted the air rifle"

I painted a spot on a box and she hit it almost dead center.




I decided to make it more realistic and made a target of one of her squirrel photos.

While "Zeroing" the scope, quite of a few of the shots missed the mark.

(bullet holes marked with daises)

Until.......

With the scope zeroed in-----

Zowie! two shots through the same hole.

She cajoled me into trying to better her results,

I shouldn't have even tried, I missed the box twice, and almost missed it on the third shot

(hanging my head in shame)

Calamity Jane rides again!

Look out Squirrels, Jane's Trigger finger is itching.

squirrels

Yesterday after seeing my corn dug up Sid and I went up to Southern States and bought "squirrel repellent". Man it smelled so bad. I went around the garden and then up and down the rows with the corn seed; I did spray some plants also.

Soooooo what was in the garden this morning having their breakfast, two cute little squirrels.
Sid and I took back the smelly repellent and got our money back, bought some more corn and headed to Walmart where they sell air guns. I hope to improve my aim this week. I used to be a pretty good shot.

Swallows

The barn swallow is a neat bird. In Abraham I loved having them mud up my house because they loved mosquitoes. They would fly around and nip mosquitoes right out of the air. Well this morning as I was coming up from the garden I noticed this one sitting on my wooden post outside the sun room looking to see if anyone was about so he could fly to his nest.


Next he flew up to the roof, still looking around. Cute aren't they. You can even see the mud in his or her bill.

I didn't realize that he was waiting on his mate that was mudding on our outside light above our stairs. Isn't that going to be great, all the bird poop on the stairs. It isn't like it will be two swallows, they bring back their little ones all summer long. But I guess the upside is..... we have mosquitoes here they can eat.

I was coming up from the garden to tell Sid that the squirrels are digging up our seed corn and eating it before it even sprouts. Or if it does sprout they dig up the root and eat it and leave the top laying on the ground.

Grandpa and Stevie

Steve came in just before he picked up Baxter and Ceci for their piano lessons and asked if Stevie could stay with us. She didn't want to because she wanted to go to Aunt Tina's, but she hadn't come in yesterday morning for her piano lesson so unhappily she stayed for her lesson. But happily after Grandpa said he had bought some new lights that she could help put up. The motion lights on the house don't always work and she loves to help grandpa.

First of all Stevie marked the place to drill the holes. Grandpa told her what had to be done and as you can see she went right after it.

Grandpa drilled the holes and put in the screws and Stevie did the rest.

Here are some close ups of the last light.

Boy can that girl swing a hammer.

The finished product.

Here's the big pay off. A great big hug.

The lights worked great after the sun went down. All for $11.95 at TrueValue. One of their sale items.

Relaxing

Dad resting and enjoying watching the garden water after planting his shrubs on the side of the house.

Looks happy doesn't he. I had just finished planting another tomato plant, two rows of beans, one row of green peppers and three rows of sweet potatoes. The Bainter children asked for potatoes so I threw some yellow and white potatoes in the ground after cutting the eyes. Hope they grow.
He moved his chair under this big cedar tree, lots of shade there.
I'm still trying to take panorama shots. I'm sitting under the cedar tree taking this while Sid is seeing where the water is.

Dad and the Honda

Dad always likes to make things easier and better. Look closely and you will notice that he used two of his plates and used the wheel holes to make a shovel. It works great.

He took it off when he was going over the ground the first time. He raked the heavy weeds off first. Now Trudy needs to tell me what they would like planted so they can enjoy the garden also.

You can tell I planted my tomatoes today. I used my shredded paper and then put potted soil on top. As Sid Jr would say, "that is ugly." That may be but it sure keeps the weeds down. The worms like it also. I do need to go and buy more potted soil though. I used most of it to plant my patio blueberries awhile back.

Our New Honda

Saturday we woke up to cloudy skies and 80 degree temperatures. Good day to garden. First we went grocery shopping and on the way stopped at a Honda outlet. Let me back track. A couple a weeks before we went to Oregon I received about 100 walla walla onion plants. I didn't have any place to put them so I put them in one of my patio blueberry containers. They have been growing together ever since. So here was a great opportunity to get them in the ground.

Here is Sid after a few rounds with our new Honda. It tills pretty good and leaves the soil really fine and ready to plant. Of course being so small it takes longer than a big tiller but it does the job.

Steve had already had a big day. He and his boys had worked on their tree house and then had gone swimming with Stevie with her birthday party. When he saw Sid out tilling he went up the street and got a friend's tiller and came back to help. You notice that Baxter took over from Grandpa and then he and Steve tilled. If you look you can see some of my onion plants that I planted where Sid tilled.

Sid finished cutting off limbs of the pine trees, Baxter had done the upper part of the garden, that were hanging in the way.

Because it has been raining all week the ground was soft and it clung to the blades of the tiller. About every two rounds Baxter had to stop and clean them off.

Here are the three of us, Baxter just about to start tilling again, Steve tilling and me planting. I planted about 4 rows of onions. My tomatoes are still on the patio ready to go in and then I need to buy some green peppers and I have my Shirley sauce ingredients.

We quit at sunset. A big rewarding day.

Cake made with diet soda

Yesterday Trudy came in to visit. She asked dad and I if we had ever heard of cake made with diet soda. Zane had made one and it was so good their family had eaten the whole thing. Today I had a sweet tooth and decided to try it. This is yellow cake mix with only one can of diet orange soda, no eggs or oil, just soda. On the weight watchers this is 2 points. I mixed it up wrong, I mixed it with the beaters instead of a spoon. But it tastes pretty good.
As you can see I added a spoon full of cool whip for another point. But it was sure good. Next time I will cook it a bit longer.

You can do the same thing with a brownie mix and diet soda. People like the diet cherry coke, and diet Pepsi or even diet cream soda. You need to cook 10-15 minutes longer . Be sure that your brownies are cooked through, especially in the middle. Sometimes the top will appear done, but the very bottom will still be very gooey.