Meeting the Cows

Some calves in one of the corrals. Why are they looking this way?

Because they've noticed Desert Girl, who's noticed them and come toddling over in her little pink-flowered irrigating boots.

She can make manure look so stylish.


Most of the calves are scared, but one decides to size up Emma.

Maybe she really isn't all that intimidating and is worth a closer look.

And closer yet.

Desert Girl reaches out her hand as a peace offering.

Hmmm, this could be interesting.

Desert Girl seems to like meeting the cow.

In fact, she loved it.

She turns to see the other calves watching her.

Uh oh, have they figured out that they're bigger than me?

Nah, I'm fine and life is grand.

Oh, does the cow want to play? I'll head right over.

I know all about slobber.

Should we have a staring contest?

Hee, hee, I did it.
Oh my.

Garden Cricket

Note: If you are visiting this site from Britain or one of the commonwealths, do not expect to find a post about a game that is played in said areas. There will be no talk of wickets, tippy-go, slogging, or "last ball pending soup."

I have no idea what any of those mean.

I'm not sure that I will ever know what they mean.

Do you know what they mean? If you do, leave a comment so I can give you a virtual high five. And then we'll wonder why you know what you know.

Anyway, back to my garden cricket:
We've been busy in the garden, and there are no shortage of worms and crickets there. I think this is in the genus Gryllus, the field crickets. The Bugguide website can help you identify insects, although it helps if you have a little background in entomology to get started there. (And seriously, I mean little. I've never had an entomology class, but I'm starting to figure it out. Not just identification, either. Insects are exciting. And there are so many left to discover and name!)

I thought I'd let Desert Girl get a closer look. She was quite interested, runny nose and all. (Fortunately the runny nose is gone now. That was a constant companion for over a month this winter.)

"Aw, mom, you shouldn't give me such a yummy treat to eat!"

If you're worried, no, she didn't try to eat it. But a couple nights later we had a cricket in the kitchen, and she chased it all over for a good ten minutes, catching it and then losing it. Eventually the little cricket lost in the battle with Emzilla. So we dipped it in chocolate and ate it.

Or did we?

Playing with Water

A couple weeks ago we had a wonderful, warm Saturday morning, and we met up with some other moms and kids in the playground. The kids went down the slides, hung out on the swings, chased each other around, and did all the normal playground stuff.

Then one of them wanted a drink. The water from the water spigot is usually delicious--cold, mountain water. On this particular day, a hose was attached to the spigot. And that hose meant it was time for even more fun.

While the bigger kids took the end of it, little Isaac and Emma found a leak in the hose that was just perfect for them. The next series of photos show them exploring the leak and figuring out how to stop it. They might be little, but they are already learning to be good at managing water!

Aha, the water is stopped with Isaac's foot.

The cat Alaska stops by to watch the little kids.

Meanwhile, here's what's going on at the end of the hose.

Aron is taking a big rock to the "construction site."

It's hard to believe we had such nice weather the kids could wear short-sleeves and sandals. It's back to snow today. It has definitely been a tumultuous spring, which I guess has made us appreciate the nice weather even more!

Footprints

We are getting a little tired of all the snow, but to look on the bright side of things, Desert Girl is still fascinated with it.

Here she is doing a little happy dance out in the snow.

Then she started realizing that she was making footprints and decided it would be great fun to walk all over some fresh snow and make lots of new footprints.

It's wonderful when the entertainment is cheap!

Oops! Sometimes walking in the snow can be difficult.

Desert Girl is no quitter. She got up and started right back to work making more footprints. She's gotten a lot better on uneven ground, but still has that cute little drunken sailor walk.

More snow coming tonight...

Dirt is Good

My helpers aerating the soil in the garden. We've planted some peas, spinach, and red beets. It's probably too early for the spinach and red beets, but we just planted one square each. We're back to the Square Foot Gardening method. It worked well enough last year and I really like the tidiness of the system. Not that I'm a particularly tidy gardener. As we were cleaning up the garden, we found onions, carrots, and red beets from last year. All still edible. And the cilantro has done a good job of reseeding itself.

Check out Desert Girl's irrigating boots. She was the only one in the family that didn't have irrigating boots, and I just couldn't resist. I imagine that she'll get some pretty good use out of them this summer.

Desert Girl is building up her immunity by eating some dirt. Dirt is good.

The New Treehouse

The strong winds knocked over the old tree house, so we decided to build a new tree house. We also found another location (one I could supervise better with less effort).

It's a big Lombardy poplar stump. The tree was cut down a couple years ago to about three feet high. Most of the interior was rotten. Nevertheless, it has already started sending up new growth, some of which is over 10 feet high.

Desert Boy and I gathered materials, some from the old tree house and some from various junk piles. Then we got some hammers and nails. Oh yes, I musn't forget: Desert Boy got a ladder. He really wanted a ladder for this tree house.

Attempting to pound in nails. It didn't go so great, but he didn't smash his fingers, so I'd say we did well.

After about an hour or two of work, it was snack time. I have a feeling, based on the joyous expressions my kids made, that snack time and the tree house are going to be integrally related. Snack time was special--fruit bars. You can't get better than that.

Desert Girl managed to get up into (onto?) the tree house all by herself. She may turn out to be a climber like her big brother. (She has also already fallen out of the tree house, so it's probably a very good thing that it's only 3 feet high.)

She quickly mastered how to eat a fruit bar.

We did a couple other modifications (do you like the Private sign?) and then called it a night. We still have lots of work to do. And Desert Boy can't wait to paint it.

Wouldn't you like a masterpiece like this in your yard?

Running around with our Heads Covered

We had a somewhat quiet weekend, but now we're back to lots of busy-ness. Desert Girl likes to stay busy, busy creating little tornadoes wherever she goes. One of her favorite activities is moving clothes around the house. Carrying them on her head keeps her hands free.

I think she may end up excelling as a multitasker.

Or perhaps she's going to be moving to the Middle East some day.

A Flurry of White

The winter storm warning we were under for the weekend didn't amount to any snow falling in the valley, although we welcomed a little rain. Apparently Desert Girl was ready for a little white floating through the air. When I heard heard her wake up from her nap, I walked in and found her in the midst of emptying the Kleenex box. She had already made a lot of progress. So I did what any extremely sane mom would do--I ran out of the room to get my husband and camera.

Being discovered didn't slow her down. Not one bit.

But she did have the decency to check if she was in trouble.

Then, taking a lesson from her big brother, she smiled big to show off how cute she was. I was already won over.

Back to work! There are a lot of Kleenex tissues in one box, and Emma wasn't going to stop until she had finished the job of emptying the entire box.

More.
And more.
And still some more.
A flurry of white.
And she's still not done.
Now she's decided that one at a time isn't fast enough; she's trying to get handfuls of them.
What kid hasn't done this? Or at least dreamed of it? It even looked fun to me.
Finally done.

Is that all?