June, first half

The next step of getting water down the hill, after burying it under the patio stones was putting it under the grass on the section of lawn where we mow/bike/run/play. One day it magically disappeared underground. Although Matthew and Nathan insisted it wasn't quite a magical experience, to me it seemed like it was. One day it was up. The next day it was down.

Nathan is getting to be fairly busy. So he thought Matthew was ready for taking over the mowing. Here Matthew is driving around for practice, until he older brother thinks he's ready for the blades to be turned on.

Trying to grow romaine hearts in water. It was really cool watching them green up and start to grow. Too bad they got moldy so fast. It was fun while it lasted.

Matthew helped me set up the irrigation lines.

Almost all the cute baby fuzz is gone!!

Melanie got a free bag of straw from her employer next door. To mulch "her" strawberries, which are starting to really flower. We are hoping for lots of juicy berries soon!

Lots of hot days in early June resulted in lots of days in the dips in the pool.

I got to spend many hours spraying the filters clean in my battle with the algae. Kill the algae. Clean the filters. Scrub the pool again, add the algaecide. Vacuum the pool. Clean the filters. Mix up the order, do the whole procedure more frequently. It's not that much fun, really.

We got a four-way splitter in order to keep up with our irrigation options.

Preparing to put the chicks in the barn,Matthew set up the old hens outside. They are not nice to new birds, so we can't keep them together. We had one hen free range for months, so we are optimistic that if they are safe at night that they will keep away from the hungry animals in day.

Drawing with mud.

A neighbour gifte us lots of her grown kids' old toys, this car included. You can pedal it to drive it (only Evelyn has small enough legs to do it now)

Or you can get a sibling to pull you -- way faster and funner!

Nathan giving Matthew lots of detailed instructions on how to do the mowing. Matthew gets to do the flat sections while Nathan keeps an eye on him and does the line trimming. Melanie says to me "you never told me all that when you asked me to mow! It would have been nice to know all that!". Don't ask me all the special instructions, I'm just winging it when I mow. I'm glad we have a resident expert now!

Getting the line-trimming done.

While the younger crowd just plays around.

Matthew joined them after and dried up with them too. The patio stones get pretty hot in the sun, so if you get cold, it's easy to warm up quickly.

Sometimes I find random photos on my phone. Here I'm cookin' dinner and left my phone/camera on the counter

The lupines in bloom!

Potatoes are starting to come up! (Actually, when we planted them some had sprouts over a foot long! So they were "up" the day they were planted!)

Jumping right in. All the kids are pretty comfortable in the water.

All my boxes of hand me down, or passed on free from other families, clothes has been in diaper boxes for years. The boxes have been slowly degenerating. So I decided to throw them out.

I've been clearing out the storage room downstairs, so the pine shelves got moved to the bottom of the stairway, where there is enough room for two of them. After purging lots of items we aren't likely to need, it looks like it can fit!

Camping preparations! We are so tired of this covid lock-down nonsense. We figure, it's time for a weekend in the bush. If we are worshiping only as a family, we could do that outdoors too! (The irony is we can't get a canoe the weekend we like, so we delay it a week and church opens up the weekend we are gone! :p )

Leaving chick-care instructions for our chicks in the garage. That way the old hens can safely use the garage yet, while we are away.

They need the extra room they gave them. But they are also jumping up to the top a bit. Hopefully they stay in, so they stay warm enough! It's gonna be a bit chilly.

Evelyn helped me get some weeds under control before we go.

Yay! So many plants are coming up!! We have a fence up around the rabbit attracting plants. Not staked at the bottom tightly, but hopefully enough to deter an over eager rabbit. After all, there are lots of us running around, which is also a wildlife deterrent.