Here's what's shaking in my garden in the middle of June...

Not EVERYTHING, just the stuff I find charming and lovely.

The Jodi rose, which looks very Photoshopped in pictures but really and truly IS that vibrant and brassy!  She doesn't have a great rose-y scent, but she is such a show off that I have to love her...almost like a junior high girl wearing too much makeup.  You know she's trying, but doesn't know when enough is enough.  There's tasteful and there's tart-y, but the poor dear hasn't made the distinction, yet. 

In June, even the dandelion heads are delightful in all their starriness.  Who knows the wishes blown from this sweet weed? (Did you know starriness isn't a word? Pshhh!)

T

And speaking of stars, my very favorite flower in all the world is columbine (aquilegia for the botanically correct).

My grandma's yellow roses, dripping in dew and rain...

I don't know who's reading this, but for my closest friends and family...please plant these yellow roses on my grave.  I think Heaven will be filled with them, so don't bother with the plastic flowers...tend the sentimental old yellows, instead, and look forward to eternity.

 This is NOT Forellenschluss!  It's some sort of red lettuce and I believe I'll make a salad this week with it.  Why make a regular old Romaine toss when one can have purple leaves with oranges and almonds?!

THIS is Forellenschluss, of course, Fontie!  And now we should go fishing, because spotted trout lettuce demands we do so in honor of the gorgeousness.

Peas with raindrops.
Can you SMELL the freshness?

And then we have baby onions! They're all spindly at this stage...again, junior high boys of the garden. 

Look in the background...do you see...?

BABY CARROTS! Fluttery, feathery baby carrots who are so lovely that one forgets the orange (or purple or red) goodness under the dirt!

I'm all entranced by the water on the clothes line with the Angus cow in the distance.  When I painted the poles and propane tank this shocking green, I know my in laws had kittens, but in the spring and summer, the hardscapes all but disappear in the green of the surrounding grass! The other astonishing thing is how the purple on the raised beds and benches has mellowed into more of a blue-y color and is completely subtle.  I don't know what possesses me to try these things, but some of them work and (accidentally) look brilliantly planned.  It's just serendipity, really.

I also know that the sun on the propane tank was a little unorthodox, but there are some things in my yard that I can't hide, so I may as well make them happy to look at.  You see our cat, Figaro, who is NOT IMPRESSED by the moisture.  It musses his fur and muddies his precious paws and causes him to mold around the whiskers.  Very annoying.

Maggie and Angus made me hanging planters at school for Mother's Day.  This is Maggie's and I love the peace signs and dianthus!  It's hanging on an old picket fence behind the herb bed.

Do you know what this is?

Honestly, until I grew it, I had no idea that spinach was beautiful.

And YUMMY.

(See the purple of the raised bed ledge underneath?)

Sara H. C.!!! 

I have a tomato!

After all the hail, one hardy plant survived and managed a fruit!!!

I'm going to get another couple plants from the greenhouse this week because today Maggie discovered the thrill of home made salsa, and we're going to have to kick it in high gear on tomato production.

Thank goodness we have mountains of cilantro...

And Flo, my flamingo garden angel from my friend J.

I think every garden should have a Flo, but most especially those who plant near a single wide trailer house.

Don't you?

The Un-Father's Day Greeting...

I always have a hard time finding Father's Day cards.

They all read like a Little House on the Prairie excerpt, words extolling the kind, strong, amazing men who raised us with our feet square on the ground and full of virtue.

I just can't bring myself to buy a Hallmark greeting for MY dad that talks about all that...

I want to find a Father's Day card that is more along the lines of:

"Happy Father's Day to the man who wasn't always there for me because he was working hard to make sure I had a roof over my head and boots on my feet.  Thanks for all the spankings, even the ones I didn't have coming because I know of a few times I should have gotten a swat and you winked instead. (Yes, I DO still remember the last spanking I got...we're good.) I appreciate that you let me see your flaws, that you showed me that you could screw up, too; it made it easier for me to share mine with you and ask for help.  I know there are times in your life that you're not all that proud of...I have those times, too.  I'm glad we are in better places now; it's probably sweeter because of the struggles, don't you think?  

I think you're a better dad now than you ever were when I was growing up. This is so good! It means you didn't just stay the same, that you grew and matured and learned grace. That gives me hope that I'll be a better mom for my kids someday, too.

Speaking of which, one of the best things you taught me was how to almost cuss when something goes wrong.  (I use it a lot, these days...)  "You low-down, no-good-for-nothing, dirty, rotten, counterfeiting...(censored after "counterfeiting")"  

You taught me how to make beans, mix a whiskey and Coke, tell a good story, saddle a horse, give great hugs, see the good in people, read a rain gauge, drive a vehicle (bless your heart, we both lived through THAT) and appreciate Waylon Jennings and J.R. Ewing. You showed me it was alright to cry over animals that are hurting, get mad about cars that won't start, be scared of rattlesnakes and cook without a recipe."

Thank you, Dad.

I love you!

Dear MaryBeth,

I've been on my hands and knees grubbing around in my flower beds, pulling weeds and trying to talk the roses into blooming because I'm weary of all the little blue spring flowers, lovely as they are.  (Flax, salvia and iris all bloom at the end of May.  I look out my window and there are only purple and blue flowers, very calming and elegant, of course, but my heart is just crying out for something yellow! Then, in July, the only things that bloom are yellow and I have to apologize to the blue flowers for taking them for granted...)

When I weed, I think.
And I remember.
And I worry and pray and solve world problems, although by the time I come in to have a drink and write down all my brilliant thoughts, they're gone...pppffft!...like balloons that got away from a birthday party.

Today, though, I was thinking about my friend Karen Yost who made the mistake one time of asking me to weed her daisy bed by the back door.  She really should have gotten my gardening history (none) before she set me to the task.

First, let me say that Karen is like a mom to me; she and her family opened the door and let me live with them for several summers when it became apparent that I, like a stray cat, was not going to leave so they may as well put me to some good use.  I was in my 20's, very lost in a way, and trying to grow up backwardly...life happens like that, sometimes.

Anyway, she showed me the flower bed, asked me to weed it and then went to innocently off to work in town.  I had absolutely no idea what was a weed and what was a flower, but I wanted to do a really good job because I cared so much for her, you know?  I worked on that bed all morning, in the hot sun, weeding my heart out!
And everything else.
When she got home, that was the CLEANEST flower bed you've ever seen.
There wasn't a speck of a green thing in it!
No weeds!
No daisies!
Nothing but dirt.

Now that I garden, I can only imagine how her heart must have just fallen in a big, sad puddle inside at the devastation of her flower bed.
In fact, I call her every year, now, and apologize for it.
EVERY YEAR!

Bless her heart, she told me that she'd been getting tired of the daisies and had wanted to put in something different there, anyway.  Like in Emma..."Daisies are such drab little flowers..."

I don't know if she replanted them or somehow I didn't pull everything out by the roots because the next year, the daisies were back with their happy little faces.  It wasn't until I started trying to grow them here at my own home that I knew how much she must have missed them!

Karen also introduced me to raspberries, but that's another story for another day...

I hope your little garden is doing well.  I love reading about it in your dad's blog!  Your mom says that you weed every day, so I know that we're probably weeding at the same time some days. (If you ever have someone help you, make SURE you interview them a little to find out if they can tell a bean plant from a weed...)

Love from Montana!
The Farmer's Wife

Easily Astonished

Some things blow my mind.

Do you realize that all music...ALL music...is made up of only 11 tones?  Mozart had the same things to work with as Paul McCartney as Willie Nelson as my daughter. Think about all the songs and tunes through time and culture....all of it from 11 tones.  

Telephones...

I know it has something to do with impulses through the wire, but seriously, do you ever stop to think of how many zillion impulses are being sent and not scrambled? AND that it still sounds like your voice when it gets to the other end! Cell phones are easier for me to comprehend than regular old wall phones.  

We have this secret code called "the alphabet" and with it, books are written, ideas sent to others, thoughts saved in hard form.  Twenty six letters...that's all we've got to work with.  Next time you pick up a magazine or book, think about the fact that we only have 26 letters to use in combinations! (I know.  Someone is going to send me the 26 squared information.  But STILL!)

I understand applying paint or pigment to canvas and other things, but I still, still, STILL am completely in awe at how someone could look at a big hunk of rock and with fairly primitive tools, create a 3D figure of a person like Michelangelo's David.  What kind of brain can DO that?  What outrageous gift of talent is THAT?  I can't even make Playdough look like a human! Or a cat.  Maybe a snake.

Don't get me started on the pyramids in Egypt...

Nearly every day, I find something that astonishes me to my toes...

Spider webs shouldn't work, but they do.

Microwaves...what's up with THAT, by the way?!

Yeast; it's alive, but it looks like it's just plain old cooking matter.  

Maybe this is why I don't really read a lot of fantasy or science fiction books...

Real life is already full of unbelievable, wonderful things!

(Side note, here: The kids and I just finished listening to A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle in which the characters tesseract, travel in the fifth dimension. It made my brain hurt, just trying to think about dimensions...time isn't really linear because it only goes one way.  Good GRIEF!  I'm still working on the idea of a phone made of string between two tin cans...)

Postcards From the Mountains

This is what the top of the world looks like in the first part of June...

(Just us and the bears...we saw sign, but no bears, thank goodness!)

The new growth on the trees...
They seemed to hold their little tree-y fingers out to show me how lovely it was to be so verdant!  I admired them outrageously and took their pictures for my "friends back east" who don't get to admire trees very often.

 Indian paintbrush...
little flames in the rocks.

Perspective...

This was looking down off the mountain into the Swan Valley.

One can't see the cars or the mansions or the shacks or the advertising; 

I felt my soul plump up, you know?

 Hello, Swan Peak, you gorgeous old mountain!  I never imagined I'd be looking you in the eye...

 More valley,
more plumping of the soul and quieting of the ego.

For my friend Patricia, who takes nature pictures of Florida...

I think this is wild aquilegia (columbine).

 Dicentra (bleeding heart)....

Should we go fishing?

This was a great spot to practice casting...
I almost NEVER catch anything, but I have fun casting!

 Lupines and their friends...

I want to say this is a trillium, but I'm not very good with alpine botanicals...

 Flathead Lake...
I should be on a sailboat in the middle of that bad boy, but not this trip.

And this is how we say goodbye to the mountains...

with tears in our eyes.

Scenes from Grampa and Grandma Jasper's house!

When we go to Bigfork for a visit, we don't usually do anything really spectacular...

We play with the "cousins" next door, Cece and Quinn...

(How handy is it to have BUILT IN COUSINS?!?!)

We don't wear shoes.  18 hours out of each 24, we're barefoot!  

 We dress up as well as down...

Take time to watch airplanes take off and land...

Maybe have a gin and tonic or two with Auntie Sara...

(Kindred crazies seem to find each other, thank goodness!  You're also looking at the crew of the Whisper Go! Thistle sail boat, minus the Major Captain, Sir.)

 We eat outside a lot...

(Amendment to that statement...we eat a lot, period.)

There's time to explore things like muskets, slugs and the intricacies of hockey games on t.v....

We ride bikes...

We usually find water of some sort...

This is Flathead Lake.

Look how clear the water is!  I love the leaf shadow on the rocks, below...

We find pirate ships...

...and sail them to parts unknown.

Even the scurviest of pirates have to eat!

Hot dogs and potato chips, no plates, silly hats on the Fitzgerald article...

Mermaids....
("He's taking all the SUN!")

C-o-l-d....very c-o-l-d...

We hike...

We're happy in the mountains...

Cauliflower and Chocolate

One of the best things about having a blog is that it's a ready-made soapbox.  In my case, soap FLAKE box, but still...

And I'm dragging it out, now, so brace yourself.

It took me the longest time in life to figure out an honest truth:
I don't have to like everyone I meet and they don't have to like me.

It's nice if we DO like each other, but it's not a requirement for being a good person. God made all of us with very distinct, unique personalities and we also received our share of annoying traits and quirks.  Some of us He lent more than our share.  And some things just don't go together, like cauliflower and chocolate.  Doesn't mean each of those things aren't perfectly delightful on their own....they just don't compliment each other or even sorta need to be in the same meal.

(Don't you love it when a blogger gets all figurative and you're not sure if we're still talking about people or if there's going to be a recipe inserted in the next paragraph?!)

I had to learn that about people.
Some people are the cauliflower to my chocolate.
I don't HAVE to like them.
What a freedom!
There's someone else in the world who adores cauliflower!  I don't have to!
I DO have to be respectful and polite toward them.  Everyone, even cauliflower, deserves that much.

I've found that I can not like a person, yet still have sympathy for them.
Poor cauliflower who got picked too young...
I still don't like them, but I get that they have stuff that may be making them bitter to me.
Whatever.
I'm not going to feel guilty about THEIR issues.  And....this is the best part...THEY don't have to feel guilty or responsible for MINE!

It's okay not to like someone.
It's fine for someone not to like me.

God made us different.
HE loves cauliflower AND chocolate!

That's all.

Bouncing off my soap flake box, now...

(In case you're wondering, I'm allergic to cauliflower.  It makes me throw up.  I've tried it with cheese, raw, cooked, dipped, fried...everything.  I get wretchedly sick if I have it! Makes the symbolism a little more poignant, huh?  I didn't even think of that when I first started writing this, but now I'm laughing at the appropriateness!)

Delighted, I'm sure...

I was thinking today about the little delights in life...the ones you keep in your head like private celebrations.  Do you know what I'm talking about?

Those moments that only YOU are thrilled about, the surprises that make you want to pump your arm "YES!" but it would be too difficult to explain to everyone in the room why it's such a big stinkin' deal that you found the new container of sour cream in the refrigerator at exactly the moment you needed it.  Or when the mail comes and peeking out of the pile is Bon Appetit AND Runner's World.  THAT'S delightful.

Perhaps some people are more easily delighted than others.  

Do you think?

Today I noticed that I had at least 5 of these occasions.  In ONE DAY!

I'm thinking I need to get out more...

The hay bale unrolled perfectly, this morning.  It was lovely to behold.  After fighting with these crummy bales for weeks, one had the graciousness to unroll the way it should.  

"YES!"

I accidentally made perfect hummus without noticing because I was so irritated by opening a $20 bottle of glorified apple juice.  Dipped into it, eyes popped wide...

"YES!"

Found an actual blooming flower when I cleaned out one of my flower beds! Nothing else has the guts to put forth a petal, but the squill don't know that it's too cold.  

"YES!"

I finished reading MY bookclub selection from...get this...JANUARY, while waiting for the school bus.  I've been working on that wretched mystery for a-g-e-s.  It is finished.

"YES!"

Four good songs in a row on the radio...

"YES!"

See what I mean?  

Delights!

Tiny, personal joys!

I hope your day contained at least 3 delights.... 

I hope you recognized them...

"YES!"

Coffee grounds aren't working...

It's that time of year, again.

I'm all out of Mary Kay Super Spackle and Moisturizing Miracle Cream.

*sigh*

And I mean ALL OUT.

I've been eyeing the foot cream for a couple weeks, wondering if that just might....

but, no.

I don't think I'm ready for that much minty, rejuvenating tingle.

There's all sorts of information on the internet about home skin treatments.

I swear, I'm not making this up....these are actual things that people have sworn work!  

For cellulite...mix warm coffee grounds with olive oil, rub it on the offending body part, cover with Saran wrap for 20 minutes. 

For puffy eyes...beat egg whites until they're stiff, then dab on your eyes, letting it dry for 15 minutes.

For fine lines and crow's feet...mash up grapes, obtaining juice to apply to your face.

I'm not saying they don't do the trick.  I'm just thinking they'd make more dishes to do than they're worth.  And THEN I'd have to crack a raw coconut to obtain the milk to heal my dishpan hands.  

The good news, though, is that my friend Traci just sent out the "official" email that proclaims that she's starting her Mary Kay business!  Huzzah! She'll be amazing, because she knows and is related to 65% of the population east of the Mississippi.  Pink Cadillac by September!

Mary Kay parties are tricky in Eastern Montana, because they often have to be scheduled around things like branding (come give vaccinations and get a facial), school bus runs (four cars at one spot...instant party), or a combination of that sort of thing (stopped to pick up the kids at the bus on your way to town to get vaccine for branding).  I've been trying to figure out a get together to see the products and have a visit, but it's not working so well.  I think I'll order online.  

If YOU want to visit Traci's website and see what she's got, go to:

http://www.marykay.com/tracileeg/en-US/Pages/default.aspx?lcov=1

Or meet her at the bus stop.

True Confession #412

I'm tweet impaired.

It's true.

I cannot, for the life of me, come up with anything clever to say in 180 CHARACTERS (including spaces)!
I'm more of a "1000 word essay"  kind of girl, really.

I thought using Twitter now and again would make me a better, more succinct writer. I read Homer Hickam's tweets, which are witty and interesting, and marvel at his tweet-talent!  Will Middlebrooks, a player for the Red Sox, has funny, honest tweets that make me laugh out loud. And my friend Michele sort of says things that run through my brain but I can't get out.

It's probably a great social platform for people who are trying to promote their products or careers.  I have cows to promote, which gets a bit monotonous, and I think my career has stalled as a stay-at-home mom/wife/rancher/blogger.  It's not really the place for me.  I can't figure out the hash tag business, retweets get mangled, can't bring myself to conserve on characters by typing "u" instead of "you".
Seriously!
"u" almost hurts me to look at!

Do you tweet?
Or, as my description says, squawk?

Once in a while...

I catch something cool with my camera.

This was at a party, all sorts of action swirling around...the light bounced off the balloon just right and the focus was amazingly dead on.  It's accidentally, serendipitously cool to me...