Fourth of July report....on the Seventh of July....of course!

I am so completely discombobulated by the holiday on Wednesday making it feel like a Saturday which means that this feels Tuesday-ish.  I have no idea how to re-set the chronometer in my head, so probably the rest of July will be like this...three days ahead or behind the rest of the world.

The kids and I went into Jordan for the parade on the Fourth, like we do almost every year.  The parade is supposed to start at 10 a.m., but that's really more of a suggestion than anything.  This year it started at 10:20, which meant that we waited on Main Street for about 50 minutes because we were early.

In a side note, here...
Jordan's Main Street is approximately three blocks long.  I say "approximately" because the block thing sort of gets blurry down by the library end of it.  Every year, we call friends and arrange a meeting for the parade, usually parking in the general vicinity of the VFW hall....we'd hate to miss each other in the crush of the crowd and distance of the parade route, you know.  Isn't that funny?  I mean, I can step out into the middle of the street from where we parked (yes, because there's no traffic; everyone is parked, waiting for the parade) and see who's standing at the end of Main, who's parked at the grocery store, who brought their grand babies, who had a flat tire on the way in.  There's no way we'd miss each other.  Ever.

Back to the story...

My kids are getting used to waiting for parades, so they pack all sorts of entertainment, just in case; books, snacks, toys, blankets.  We look like homeless people, hunkering down for a stay.  Seriously.
Here's our friend Eric Fitzgerald, reading a fascinating story about how the human body is put together (complete with detailed illustrations) to a child who is obviously enthralled with the whole experience.

When my kids saw their friends park across the street, they ran and hollered, "Billy Baker!!! Billy Baker and Laney are here!!!"   It saved the morning, because they were all able to play tag (I think that was the chase game) and tell big stories.

Here's about 95% of our babysitting pool, all in one spot; the best of the best in Jordan, MT.  And no, I will NOT give you their numbers!

AT LAST!  Here it comes!

What a good looking bunch of veterans!  

Conspicuously absent from the passenger seat is the guest of honor, the speaker for the luncheon after the parade.  John Fitzgerald looked all over for him....all three blocks of Main Street...but no dice. ("The Guy" as our babysitters called the missing speaker..."Hey, are you going to pick up The Guy?!" "Can't you find The Guy?!" "You LOST The Guy?!?!?!")

Here's George and Elaine Fitzgerald, in a Model T loaded down with grand kids!  You'll see more of them a little later in the post...

 Judd Gibson, driving the antique fire truck...
(It should be noted, here, that the Jordan parade is made up mostly of Fitzgeralds driving classic cars and the Jordan fire trucks from every decade or so.  But maybe you already figured that out on your own...)

Our friend (or is he?) Clyde Phipps, driving another fire truck.  My kids adore him and I don't know why because he tells them awful lies, such as the one dropped on them that morning: "You're here for the parade? Well, you're too late!  You missed it!  Too bad about the candy..."  They truly believed him.  I think he threw them extra candy, though, on his pass down Main, just to make up for it.

Billy Baker, checking out the loot before the parade made the loop and came back with more candy.
I want to say, here, that there's a special place in heaven for the cars that threw the fun size Butterfinger and Snickers bars.  

Aw, here they are again!  See the two super models in the front, with George and Elaine?  Those are Eric and Camie's little girls, Sloan and Jade, who figured out after the parade that they threw all the candy to the other kids, leaving none in their little bags.  Parades are a lot less fun when that little connection is made....

That's pretty much it.
We then went home to get ready for the Glasscocks who came over for supper-but-no-fireworks-please that evening.  I didn't take pictures of that, but it was a beautiful way to end Independence Day....no wind, not hot, good food, great company into the night...perfect!

O C Herd, party of one!

Remember Daisy?
She is in the pasture next to our house and comes to visit the bums.
And me.
And maybe to look for crumbles, I don't know.

I know.
I think she's just gorgeous, too.
:)

Day 6: From a low angle

It's tricky, getting a cow shot from a low angle without being slimed.

This is Buttercup and she was mighty suspicious...

What the cats see, when they sleep under the daylilies...

Self-timers can be fun!

Not exactly from a low angle looking up, but I used the self timer on Twilla, too!  

I don't know why I like this toy airplane against the sky, but it is one of my favorite shots!  The kids tied it to the swing set to use as a mailbox, if you can imagine.

This is Elizabeth (formerly Cap'n Barbosa) looking down from the playhouse...she just wants me to pet her. 

Day 5: From a high angle

 I bribed my model with parade candy that's being held hostage and I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit it.

Even if I had a good map I still wouldn't have a clue...

Day 4: Green

On a red, white and blue day, this is what I found for "green":

I don't know whose car this is, but it was the greenest thing I saw all day!

The same color as young lettuce...

PANIC!

I woke up this morning, feeling exactly like Calvin...

And while I was trying to take cloud pictures...

Figaro was standing guard, watching for snakes.

Two snoops, looked me over, both hoping for early morning grub.

Molly was impatient for our run and yelled at me until she was panting from the effort.

I found a new lily that had never bloomed before, that I can remember! I'm not really a lover of things pink, but this bubble gum lily is really pretty charming.

The sun rose over my sun on the propane tank, and that made me smile.

Day 3: Clouds

Wispy, wish-y morning clouds, gently beckoning the sun up for another day on the prairie...

Day 2: What I Wore Today

Not really....

I would LOVE to have worn this, but in actuality, I wore this to run in this morning:

And this to live in, this afternoon:

(Yes, bare toes...shoes are sort of pointless at home in the summer.)

And I'm VERY GLAD that tomorrow is a cloud picture.

Dear Marybeth,

You wanted to know what I was growing in Montana?
Here are some photos with explanations!
It has been brutally hot, this end of June, so some things are very happy (tomatoes and zucchini) and some things are very sad (peas and cucumbers).


This is the zucchini; I think perhaps in your area they're called summer squash (?).  They have the most gorgeous orange-y yellow blossoms (that are edible!) and they produce baskets of little green squash per plant.  I have four zucchini plants which is considered insane around here.  Seriously.  When these babies start putting out the veggies, people lock their car doors for fear of being zucchini bombed, which is when an anonymous gardener who is swamped with the squash leaves a grocery bag full of them in your back seat. This happened to me, once.  Now I'M the zucchini bomber! (It's considered much kinder to first bake the zucchini into bread before leaving it in the car.)

Here are the zucchini plants with their friends the carrots (on the edge of the bed) and zinnias planted in the middle.  I know; zinnias are flowers!  But I love to blend the two !  More on that later...

Little carrots! I had just gotten done thinning them, took this picture and realized I needed to thin them more, yet.  I hate thinning carrots.  It's hard to decide who's going to stay and who has to die.  And it takes FOREVER.  By the time I get done, there are little carrot carcasses laying about and I'm thinking, "I can buy carrots...WHY am I growing them?!?!"  But home carrots actually have flavor, where boughten carrots are really rather bland.

Baby cucumbers....aren't they CUTE?!  I go out and check them every day, smiling at how they are so tiny.  My cucumbers are unhappy.  I think it's because I amended the soil in those beds this spring and perhaps got it a little "hot" with too much manure.  Either that or they're just mad about the weather being so blasted hot.  I can't tell.  But where the zucchini are growing wildly, the cucumber plants are just sitting there pouting and staying stumpy. Yellowing on the edges of the leaves, even.

I think spinach is beautiful.  I love to eat it in salads, I love to watch it explode in the garden...one day, nothing; the next day...SHAZZAM! spinach!

Tomatoes....personally, I think the smell of tomatoes is the smell of summer.  These are little pear tomatoes which will be used for sauce, not eating.  My cherry tomatoes are just setting on fruit and I'll show you pictures of them in another post.  I'm the only, only, only one in this house that eats tomatoes and I have at least eight plants.  I can't help myself!  Part of the reason I plant so many, though, is because tomatoes are delicate, needy things that die easily in this part of the country.  They don't like wind (it blows 20 mph almost every day, here), they need lots of water (it rains once a month), they desire a perfect soil (ours is sandy and needs amendment constantly) and they won't produce unless all these elements are just so.  Also, my dogs lay on them.  That tends to inhibit growth.

I have some herbs.  This is the cilantro.  I make a lot of pico de gallo in the summer and like middle eastern dishes, all of which call for large amounts of cilantro.  This little plant re-seeds itself in my herb bed, but every year I panic and think it might not, so I buy a couple plants just in case.  Then, about 2 weeks later, it's everywhere and I feel so foolish for doubting...but one never knows!  I think it has lovely leaves, all scalloped and fringe-y.

I tuck vegetables in with my flowers wherever possible.  This is a whiskey barrel planter with dahlias (not blooming at the time) petunias and a little patio tomato plant.  The tomato is very happy, the flowers are very happy and when I can snack as I weed, I'm happy, too!

I'm embarrassed to show you OUR pumpkin plant.  Maggie and Angus, my kids, were supposed to be taking care of them but they are not as interested in pumpkins as they are toads, so I'm watering them occasionally and apologizing for the lack of care.  That's salvia in the background because, yes, the pumpkins are planted in a flower bed....

This is a poppy that volunteered to grow by the woven wire fence....I love poppies, with their tissue petals and stubborn will to grow in awful spots.

Columbine, raising its face to the sun. This is my favorite flower.  They look like shooting stars!

Flax, which only blooms in the morning.  The birds love the seeds and I love the true blue-ness of the blossoms.  There are very few honest-to-goodness blue flowers...have you noticed that?  Most are purple-y!  But flax is blue, blue, blue.

I have calves that are named for flowers....here are Poppy, Buttercup and Johnny-jump-up.  Poppy gets in my yard and I noticed this morning that she's been eating the lettuce...how NAUGHTY!  We will have words, later...

Here's my pergola, with the garden beds at each corner.  There's a picnic table under it that we use for just everything...the kids take color books and projects out there, I read and pot plants and have snacks, we have picnics, the dogs lay under it for shade.  There are solar lights strung so that when the sun goes down, the tiny white lights make a soft glow and we can stay out even longer.

That's all I have for right now.
I need to get busy watering because it's supposed to be 97 degrees today, a nice break from the 104 degrees of yesterday, and the plants are gasping!

Your friend,
Mary

Day 1: Self Portrait