I took these pictures for the Woodman, because he was away working, and I didn’t want him to miss the beauty of his Irises.  He and his mother truly enjoy this flower, and I will admit, they are a beautitful flower!  We’re still trying to decide where their permanent home will be in the garden, but for now, they line a part of one side of the garden fence.  I think the deer do stick their little noses through and nibble on them just a bit, so we may end up moving them away from the fence.  I’m loading these photos after the Woodman has been home for the weekend, so I’m too late, but everyone else can still enjoy them.

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The garden seems to be hibernating.  The weather has been cold, cloudy, and drizzly.  When these pictures were taken, this was the ONLY sunny day, sandwiched between gloomy and cool weather.  Since we had put plants into the ground, and especially the warm weather loving plants, like the tomatoes and peppers, nothing had grown a bit.  For 3 weeks, things just sat, looked ill, cold, and very unhappy.  It’s warm now, so I’m really hoping there is still time for things to ripen up before the first frost in late September or early October.

 Kids are weeding the corn.  Tomatos are on the left, path of lettuce volunteers, elephant garlic, and the regular lettuce patch on the right.  Beyond the kids is one patch of beans.

 Lettuce, peppers, a bed that our neighbor is using, and more garlic beyond that.

 Potato patch is coming along nicely.  I think we have 4 x 92 ft of potatoes planted this year.

 Peas are fairly happy despite the cold weather.

 We never harvested the garlic last year, so it’s a very full patch this year.  I’m not sure what to expect when we dig it up.  And don’t ask me what we’re going to do with all that garlic.  I don’t know.

 Raspberries almost ready to blossom.  Hoping the wasps won’t be too bad this year.  We always have to compete with them for the berries.  Normally, we win, but it’s much nicer when there aren’t so many of them!

 First Strawberries.  I need to go up there again and soon.  This picture was taken a week ago, so there must be enough for a small breakfast bowl by now.

 Strawberry patch is scary big…4 x 46 ft, times 5 rows.  Once they start, we’ll have berries all summer.  I”m looking forward to having a freezer full of frozen strawberries and jars of strawberry jam in my pantry! Now that the sun is shining, we will have to really begin to battle with the weeds.  It’s a daunting task, that’s for sure.  
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I finally came into the house and the kitchen was clean, the kids had followed through with their assignments AND had made supper, which I hadn’t asked them to do.  I immediately felt better.  After supper we enjoyed some music together, and then I did 2 math lessons with Darien.  He lost the paper, but we did more math than necessary today, to meet our August 3rd deadline, so maybe we didn’t lose ground. 

I plan to help him with his math everyday, to try and pull his grade up.  He has failed 2 units, and if we have time, I’ll request that he be able to re-take those two tests in hopes that we can get his grade up for each unit.  I think a kid has to be pretty “mathy” to be able to read it in a book and “get it”, without additional explanation.  This kid is not “mathy”, so I will lend my help where I can.  I’m decent at Algebra, so I’ve been able to explain things in this pre-algebra course.

I finally got the pictures to load on my blog from my iPhone.  Garden pictures coming…

I want a new life. I want to run away and hide from my reality. I just spent the last 2 1/2 hours at a friend’s house using their Internet because ours is so painfully slow due to over usage on our bandwidth, and Darien needed to do his online schoolwork. I left my other kids to take care of the one kid. In all that time, he got one computer lesson done and he wrote 2 paragraphs of an essay. It was getting late, and we needed to let our friends have the privacy of their home back. I told Darien to back up his paragraph, copy and paste it to a new document, whatever it took to save it, before shutting down his computer. INSTEAD, he tried to just save the work online, but the Internet connection was giving him issues, and he ended up losing everything he wrote.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t take this child an hour to write a paragraph. I’m so angry right now I can hardly see straight, and at the same time I just want to give up. He is NOT going to finish these classes in time. He has until august 3rd that is the deadline and the last day he can submit any work Maybe I should just accept that he will not finish. He needs 60 units to be considered a sophomore next year. He will have 54. If he could finish the computer class, he’d have 59, and that could get by. The problem is that I AM THE ONLY ONE STRESSING ABOUT THIS.

Sorry, rant coming…

I don’t want to be the only one that cares about his education.
I don’t want to be the only one home raising the children.
I don’t want to be the only one taking care of the dog business this summer.
I don’t want to be the only one taking care of the garden this summer.
I don’t want to be the only referee overseeing my children so they will help with all these things this summer.
I don’t want to be the only driver this summer.
I don’t want to be the only house keeper this summer.
I don’t want to be the only one noticing that the lawn needs to be mowed this summer.
I don’t want to be the only one noticing everything that needs to be done this summer.

I’m still sitting in my car writing this blog post. If I just sit here, I don’t have to face my reality I don’t want to go into my messy house. I don’t want to face my messy kitchen. I gave the other two children instructions to clean the kitchen while I was gone with Darien. I don’t want to have to come into the house and find that they didn’t do it, and listen to their excuses of “he/she didn’t do thus/such, and so I couldn’t do my part of the job.” I don’t want to have to be the only one thinking of consequences for lack of follow through.

I’m tired of having everything resting on my shoulders.

Maybe I’m too intense about everything. Maybe I need to “chill”. I just want my kid to get through high school, and then I want him to be able to get a job and support himself. That’s all. I don’t think it’s really very much to ask.

Thank you for listening.

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Every year on Father’s Day weekend, Colville hosts a Rodeo!  Since my daughter is thoroughly, and completely a “horse girl”, I thought it would be fun to check out what other “real horse people” do for fun.  I’m glad I did!

 Cowboy hat, plaid shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots (can’t see them), great friend, and a dog!  What else does a Rodeo girl need??

 I dragged the boys along.  I think they enjoyed the bull riding the best!

 When we first arrived, I felt like I was in a story book!  There were cowboys and cowgirls EVERYWHERE!  Not all of them were rodeo competitors, but people were just in the spirit of coming to a rodeo, and dressed for the occasion!  I loved it!  It completely had that small town feel, good wholesome entertainment, and country music was blaring over the loud speakers.  This is my kind of place!! As I took everything in, lyrics from country music songs began to fill my head!  The “girl in the ticket line with the mini skirt” was there…the “boy with the stain on his shirt” was there…the “big green tractor” was there…people who lived in “the house that built me” were there…and I’m sure lots of “broken hearts” were there!!    I grabbed a bag of kettle corn, after passing up ice cream cones, cotton candy, hot dogs, and barbecued ribs, and then headed towards the stands.  There were people dotted all over the stands, and everywhere we looked was someone that we knew!  How cool is that?  It’s another perk of small town life!  We found some friends, and claimed our seats.  Before the show began, two more groups of friends found us in the stands, and we had a large group of familiar faces surrounding us!!

 I had some mixed emotions about the other events.  The barrels were fun to watch.  Seeing a horse turn on a dime,  and lean into the turn like a seasoned motorcycle rider taking a tight turn was quite impressive.  But I did not like the calf roping events.  Those poor little creatures, lassoed at the neck, just to have the horse and rider abruptly stop, resulted in a terrific pull, often spinning the calf around in the air, twisting the head behind it’s body in a very unnatural and painful looking angle.  Whenever a roper “missed”, I was secretly glad!! I also didn’t really like seeing the horses bucking around.  I didn’t seem to mind the bulls, because they are mean, but the horses seem like innocent victims.  I’m sure I’m just a softie. I will say that I’m looking forward to my next Rodeo, and will definitely go again next Father’s Day weekend to the one in Colville.  Kaelyn wants to ride the different events in the rodeo, barrells, poles, etc., so I guess I better get used to this environment!!

I will probably never witness anything like this in person again in my life.  It was one of those experiences that you only see on National Geographic Channel!!  I was driving home, and was on the very last stretch of the road, when I came around the bend of the corner.  Flying through the air was a HUGE Red Tailed Hawk, with a snake dangling in his talons.  I could see him flying, against the blue sky, gaining altitude with his soon to be dinner lifting over my head.

But then he saw me, and before all the details of what was happening actually registered in my mind, the bird dropped the snake, and it flopped onto the ground, just a few yards from me.  The hawk landed in the tallest nearby tree, and both of us surveyed what just happened.  Reality began to take hold, and I couldn’t believed what I just witnessed!!  If the angle had been eerily perfect, the snake would have descended into my open window and landed smack in the middle of my lap.

Curiosity got the best of me, and I wanted to see if the snake was alive or dead.  The hawk and I both had the same wish…get to the snake first, but he let go of his desire, and promptly flew away when he could see that his dinner was gone, and another predator, bigger than himself, was on the scene.

I drove up to the snake and he promptly coiled himself up and swayed his body gently in each direction.  His eyes were piercing my own, and his tongue was in motion.  I edged the car closer, and he struck at my tire.  I took a good look at that snake and was horrified to see a triangular shaped head, skinny neck, and the behaviors of a Rattle Snake.  I was told there were no Rattle Snakes where we lived, but this was a living, breathing, very rattle-snake-like creature, and he was just under a mile from my house. 

I grew up in California.  I know what Rattle Snakes look like, and I know what they are capable of doing.  I DID NOT want a Rattle Snake that close to my house.  But while he had the mannerisms and look of a Rattle Snake, he didn’t rattle, and that was very puzzling to me.  I backed up the car and pulled forward again.  He coiled, swayed, spit his tongue, gave me the evil eye, but he did not rattle.  I threw a few pebbles at him.  He was not happy.  But he made no sound at all.  Something wasn’t right!

I called Daryl.  I knew I could take care of the snake and squash him, but if he wasn’t poisonous, I didn’t feel any need to kill him, so I wanted a second opinion.  Soon he arrived with our friend Rob, and both of them confirmed that they thought the snake was probably a Bull Snake. 

 If you look closely, you can see a bit of blood on his mouth.  I’m sure he had struggled with the Hawk, before experiencing his rude landing.  He did not like me one bit, and acted in a very evil manner towards me.  He actually should have been thanking me, because I saved him from becoming lunch.

 See that head??  That is triangular if I’ve ever seen triangular!

 I was quite happy to be safely up in my vehicle!

 A picture of the girl who was tormenting the snake with pebbles! We ended up guiding him away from the road and into the woods.  He took refuge under some bushes, in the deep grass, and hopefully found his way home!  It was a bad day for the Hawk, a good day for the snake, and a mixed day for me.  I was glad he wasn’t a rattler, but I don’t like knowing that there ARE snakes in my neck of the woods. Ewwwwww!  
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Again, these photos were taken a few weeks back!  I was excited to see blossoms on the strawberry plants.  It means only one thing….berries are coming!

 When these really get going, we will have a hard time keeping up with picking them!

 The one that actually enjoys his time in the garden!

 Albino Pea Plant.  I think there was something wrong with him afterall, because he did end up dieing.

 We had a nice time together!  More garden pictures to come!  
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I just discovered that I have 6 drafts waiting to become actual blog posts.  I take pictures with my iPhone and then blog them with an app to blogger.  Then I finish the post on my computer by doing the typing and story telling on a regular keyboard!  So I have 6 groups of pictures, all waiting to become posts!!

A few weeks ago, when the river was still so low, we took a walk along the river.  It was a bit cool and cloudy, but the kids had fun looking for fish hooks in all the rocks.  It was a bit windy and it started to sprinkle right before we left, but it was a nice and refreshing walk overall.

 This is our “jumping” place, where the kids jump off the rocks and into the water during the summer.  I may have mentioned before how glad I was to see that there are no large, hidden rocks, under that dark water.  They can jump all they want with no worries of striking something under the water!

 Kaelyn was the chief fish-hook finder.

 The sky was warning us that rain would be coming soon!

 When it did rain, we took cover in the car!

 Self Portrait!  I just had my hair done the day before, so was getting used to the new highlights!

 We drove around a bit after the rain started, and there were these sweet, little yellow wildflowers.  I wanted to get a picture, and was completely delighted when I took a close look at this one!  I loved the raindrops on the petals, but on closer inspection, I realized there is a tiny spider walking down one of the petals.  I’m going to enter this photo in the fair!  I wonder how it will do.  I think it’s a great shot! (and with my iPhone at that)!!  
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I put my post in my private journal.  Too negative for public consumption.  Suffice it to say I am not a happy camper right now, trying to get my oldest to finish his first semester of school work from this past year.  We have a deadline of August 3rd.  If it’s not completed by that date, he gets a zero.  He MUST do 7 lessons each day, 5 days a week to make this happen.  He barely gets 3 done.  I have to sit right next to him and tap him to keep him focused.  I’m just so tired of doing this.  This has been my experience with homeschooling.  It has not been a good experience.  I can’t wait till it’s over and I can put homeschooling behind me.  It has been nothing but a struggle the whole time.  I have no energy left for my other two children, so now they’ll go to school as well.  This is not how I imagined that it would be.  This is so not the way I wanted things to turn out. 

 Spiral tower…

 Fortress…

 Fortress again!!

 Tower…

 Tower Details…

 King in his Castle…

 Throne…

 Happy King on his Throne…