Looks like Elsa showed UP

It's the second weekend after Easter, and someone's Facebook wall reports the nearby airport received 7.8 inches of snow last evening/ this morning. I'm not sure what we got as ours drifts so much and our ground was already saturated with rain, but there's more than there needs to be out there, that's for sure. 

So what do I do first thing on a snowy Saturday morning when we don't need to be anywhere? Grab the camera and size up the nemesis:

Plenty of ice on the driveway.

Plenty of snow everywhere else!

It was also, surprise, colder than I anticipated it being. The first trip out was predawn light. After I warmed up by the fire, I looked outside again and said, "dang it, look at that sunshine! I should be out there NOW!"

Dada said, "so go!"

Bah.

Since we like to try to get veggies going from seeds, they need 8-12 weeks of a head start before they get put into the garden. That would put us right at Memorial Day weekend, which is the official frost-free date where we live. That means this weekend we have to get cracking and buy the seeds, make space for the grow lights, and get our buns in gear:

So I thought I'd check out the garden site that will be receiving seeds in 8 short weeks:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaack!

It's deep, and wet, out there! Check out that moat around the garden. =/  That is not part of the plan!

And then here's the same creek Carrie and Muggin played in. Looks slightly different now with Seussian bushes...

The upside down boots on sticks above are Carrie's from her spelunking excursion with Muggin. They're supposed to be drying out, but the dimwit left them outside so now they're probably frozen to the sticks. And the house.

Anywho, here's the rest of the sunny snow. And may it be the last of it until 2017 or something!

Fancy Big Sucker at work

 

Well, our resident Big Thing got busy and churned up enough dirt for a garden. These were taken the last week of May. Dada put our Fancy Big Sucker to work and still had to rent a rototiller to finish the job. But now we have a garden plot:

 

 

And now we have a moat:

 

 

Haha! Okay, this was taken today- June 28. You see tomatoes, a pepper plant, a watermelon plant, and a canteloupe plant. We'll see who likes having a lot to drink, that's for sure!

 

The apples are coming along and some are blushing rosily. It'll be a fun fall of applesauce and apple chips in the dehydrator, methinks.

 

This is the moat creek behind our house. I don't remember the name of it- I'll have to hunt it down. The cattails in the middle of the picture are usually in the middle of the creek and the vegetation you see on this side of them is where the creek bed starts. This is almost a whole day after it's stopped raining. Every time I glanced out the window yesterday to watch it rise higher I thought of Anne of Green Gables and her "Lake of Shining Waters."

 

We're supposed to have rain again tomorrow and much of the week, but as you can tell from the last photo, it's a gorgeous and sunny day here today. We'll take it!

 

 

 

 

Friday at the beach

Someone had worked very hard on this lovely sandcastle we saw on Friday. We parked our stuff right behind it and admired all the minarets and fine details.
 

 

As you can see from Muggin, Friday was NOT a hot, sunny day at the ocean. It was pretty windy and cloudy, and it was approaching high tide. The kids did their best to dig a moat and barrier to protect the castle, but alas, a lot of it had crumbled by the time we left.
 

 

The poor Damonator was so tired and sandblasted that we covered him up, and he fell asleep like this!
 

Now THAT'S the sign of a good vacation!