Big Horns Take 2

This is a continuation of our trip to the Big Horns! Laurence at Owen Creek Picnic area and campground. This is just a few miles from where we used to go to Girls Camp. These have to be my favorite mountain flower, Forget-Me-Nots!!
Prune Creek just above the Prune Creek Campground. We used to camp at Prune Creek a lot. So beautiful and an easy 2 1/2 hour drive from our house.
More of the gorgeous Big Horn Mountain scenery. Love it there!! I don't know that we'll get to go up again this year, but we sure enjoyed the moments we had!!!
You can see that the lupine is just starting to bloom on top of the mountain. I'm sure that next weekend it will be in full colors for the 4th of July!!

Laurence on the dock at Sibley Lake. It's a beautiful lake!

More of Sibley Lake!!

Alas, all good things must come to an end..... this is the view as you go down the Sheridan side of the Big Horns.

An Evening in the Big Horns.... Can't Be Beat!!

Laurence and I LOVE the Big Horn Mountains!! However, we haven't been able to spend any time there for the last 3-4 years because Laurence would spend all of his free time helping out my family with their business.
This year, we decided that even if it was only ONE night we WOULD go up!! Life is too short!!
We went up this weekend. It was great!! The mountains are just starting to really take on color. The lupine is blooming along with the forget-me-nots, sunflowers, mountain phlox, dandelions etc. It will be even better next week.

Laurence has taken up a new hobby, he is really enjoying making walking sticks from diamond willow. I am so glad to see him doing this. He has always been so good with wood and this is something he can do and enjoy without a shop or a garage..... (Don't you love his rigged up flashlight? I realized later that we had a head lamp with us! Oops!!)
Laurence with his walking stick in progress and his iced knee. (More about that later.....)
The one time I got to use his walking stick..... posing for a picture. It is feeling so nice!
More of the beautiful scenery. I just love it up in those mountains!! More pictures etc will follow in a day or so. As many pictures as we took you would think we had gone on a week long Alaskan Cruise instead of a weekend in the mountains.

Becky and Jake's Wedding

Yesterday was a wonderful day for us. We were blessed to attend Becky Pemble's temple wedding. I was Becky's early morning seminary teacher for 4 years. I came to absolutely LOVE her!! She has married a wonderful young man, Jake Rogers. I look forward to watching them grow as a family!!

A few years ago a woman in our church told me that being able to attend the temple wedding or the mission farewell for one of your seminary students was a seminary teachers payday. I believe that!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to LAURENCE!!

For Father's Day Aisling and I got a picture of all the kids framed for Laurence. I thought he would put it up in his office (because he told me he wanted a framed picture of the kids for his office), but he says he's going to put it up here. That will be SUPER!! Last year when our pie cherries came on Laurence decided we HAD to do something with them. (I usually see it as my opportunity to feed my feathered friends!!) So he picked cherries, pitted them and then made a cherry pie. So, for Father's Day Aisling and I also got her dad a cherry pitter. We hope he has fun with it!!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!

I have been thinking a lot about my dad. He died September 30, 2007. The more time passes the more I miss him.
Dad was the oldest of four boys, and his mother died when he was a teenager.
Mom and Dad met at a dance. Dad was home on break from school. They were married the following fall. Dad was 19 and mom was 17. Dad was educated to become a machinist. He was very good at what he did; able to think outside the box. He was always changing equipment and individuals to make them more productive. This was a trait that drove me NUTS as a teenager! However those skills are the skills that made the machinery and the dream of Queen Bee Gardens work.
Dad was a real tease, I love pictures of him when he is being a bit silly. That is my real dad. I served a mission for our church in Ireland. Mom and Dad saved up their money so they could come over and tour Ireland with me. I LOVED that time. We toured Ireland, visited England and Germany. What a blessing it was to spend that time with them. While we were growing up Dad and Mom would take us to the Big Horns fishing on Copper Creek. We only caught little brookies there. This is at Tongue River on the Big Horns. Dad's greatest earthly love was the bees. He loved working them, watching them, trying to understand them. Dad was an incredible ham. Whenever we would leave or the grandkids would leave he would pretend to cry. He would offer to get real tears and if you took him up on it he would produce them. Dad's last few years he wasn't particularly healthy. He was unable to do and be the things he wanted to do.

I am so grateful for those last few additional years that we had with him. I'm glad Aisling was able to get to know him.
My dad is my hero. I miss him a lot. HAPPY FATHER'S DAY DAD! I LOVE YOU!!!!!

Did I Mention We LOVE a Good Deal??

Each year the school district here has a sale of obsolete equipment. They LOVE to see Laurence coming. They know he will buy things that NO ONE else will buy. (Mostly because no one else knows what to do with them). This year we bought 6 flat screen monitors. Oh, did I mention that if you buy a monitor it comes with a CPU, keyboard and mouse? But..... the entire set up is only $5.00. GREAT DEAL!! Did I also mention that we bought 2 laser printers? Neither one works well, but both have new fuser kits in them. Oh, and also we bought 2 UPS's. The flat kind that fit in server racks. (We bought 3 server racks last time) Ummmm and a hutch to go above Laurence's desk. Boy is that all? It sure seemed like a lot more when I was hauling everything home. (Maybe that was because Laurence just happened to have a meeting that he HAD to attend [giggle]).

Great Deals.... however, as you can tell, my living room now looks like a warehouse for retired computer equipment. We got the hutch installed over Laurence's desk (it looks great!!), three of the computers will be going to Lovell this weekend. Hopefully we will get this whittled down soon. In the mean time.... know of any great garage sales we can go to?

The Rocks have a New Home!!

Oh, what a fun week we have had. Every morning and evening (when it wasn't too cold or raining, and sometimes when it was), Laurence and I have been working on our flower bed. We sure did get some really fun rocks.

Some are lava rocks and some are sandstone.

The round rocks that you see sitting on the sandstone "bowl" are found out on the mine. They are all round, although sometimes like a double-yoked egg. Their surface is rough like sandpaper.

We LOVE it, and the birds seem happy with it too!

Next Project???

The Hard (but cheap) Way to Border a Flowerbed!

A few years ago we had the opportunity to go out to an old homestead and take out some of the wood from the home, some of the plant materials from the yard and some of the rocks. Gorgeous flagstones!! We were able to do this because they were going to be mining on the property although not the house and yard. After that the entire acreage was closed off. The mining was completed a year or two ago. Laurence got permission this last week to go back in and get some more rocks, but this time we were after the rocks that the people had brought in to use for retaining walls etc. I was so glad we'd been there before, otherwise we'd never have realized the potential under all the weeds! Laurence had to clear away the limbs etc. so we could get in. (I was really busy taking pictures:).

It's hard to believe that there is an entire retaining wall under all those bushes and grass!!

Part of the wall was cemented together. It's hard to believe all the hard work they did 100 years ago! (I think the mom must have been a strong, determined woman!)

You can see the dragline in the background.
This was when we were about half done. By the time we left the pickup was riding pretty low. These will make a great border around our enlarged flower bed. More on that in a later post..... The homestead is about 1 1/2 miles off the county road, but boy is it a treacherous one now. But the scenery is incredible!

OH, My Heart!!

Our garden protector...... How come I find myself more startled than feeling safe? I know he's there (somewhere), but it ALWAYS gets my heart racing!! Snakes are NOT my favorite!!
The Square Foot Garden progresses. Tomatoes, cabbages, peppers and radishes to name a few, Yahoo!!
Some are still pretty small, the carrots and such are still pretty hard to see.