April 27 Friday Farming (on Saturday)

Really not much to talk about today...

Unless we want to talk about spring bulbs surviving Winter Storm Warnings.

And dogs with snow on their noses.

Another 2 days of sunshine and I'd have a lovely bouquet of tulips.

Muscari.

 Aspen trees and leaves.

The farm started out on the porch this week, to enjoy the 70 degree weather. And now they're back inside indefinitely. I need to split the tomatoes from their 4-in-a-pot configuration and give them more space.

Hopefully the weather will be better next week!

A slow Saturday morning...

Wow, what a week. Especially for one only four days long. But I made it; we made it through.

My lectures for class this week were... a push. I can't discuss history without starting at the beginning, which meant the geology of the northern Rocky Mountains. Suddenly on Monday night I'm cramming about igneous and sedimentary rocks. It was a little nuts.

Nonetheless, I achieved what I set out to this week. Gave two decent lectures. Was up at 6:15am each morning, and in the office no later than 8am. Avoided "double dipping"; working on class lectures while at work for the City. Knocked out a couple of important projects at work.

By Friday DJ, and probably the doggie, felt a little abandoned. I barricaded myself into the office on Tuesday and Wednesday nights this week to prep lectures and basically ignored them. DJ has been a very supportive husband while I try to teach this class, which I appreciate so very much.

We celebrated the end of a trying week with a great dinner at Over the Tapas; goat cheese-filled croquettes, bacon wrapped steak, lamb sliders and a steak salad. OMG, we may have a contender for new favorite restaurant in Bozeman. The best part was leaving without feeling that we needed to unbutton our pants.

From Tapas we went to Lowes to pick out tile for the fireplace, a project which is finally happening next weekend. I'd still rather tear out our entire mantle and put in built-in bookshelves and a smaller mantle, but I'll compromise on just finishing the damn thing.

Upon arriving home, I poured a whiskey drink and got in bed with a book. DJ watched "Gold Rush" (yeaaaah, the quality of television ranges widely in our house). By 10:00pm the lights were out and I slept wonderfully until 6:30am, when my internal alarm when off. It was nice to snuggle in our warm, comfortable bed for an hour while thinking through gardening plans for 2012.

Now I'm in the office with a cup of coffee. DJ went downtown to meet friends for the Saturday morning coffee date, but I stayed home to enjoy a quiet house. I'm giving myself until noon, after which I'll start working on lectures for the next two weeks.

How was your week?

Good morning moon

I snapped this photo of the dog on Wednesday morning about 7:30am. The moon is in the west, the dog is illuminated by a street light  and the sun is starting to come up to the east. 

Poor doggie. With me so busy, and DJ having late meetings this week too, she's spent a lot of time home alone. Hopefully she'll get a lot of time with her people this weekend, as it's a three day holiday.

Hard to find the words

Sometimes I fall off the blogging wagon and struggle to get back on.

There have been a lot of things going on lately, and yet... not much to write about. Or, not much I can adequately put to words. Maybe a good way to do it is go through the recent cell phone photos and tell you the stories behind them?

Lets start with this one: of my mom's birthday dinner at my grandparents house.

It's a blurry cell phone picture. If I could set up this picture again, I'd have a nice DSLR camera, with a timer on it. I'd put the camera on a shelf facing the dinner table, set the shutter on continuous mode, and the camera would capture images of the lit candles, the smile on my mom's face, and my grandparents singing "Happy Birthday" to her as she blew the candles out. Somehow the camera would capture the sound of my Grandma's light (alto? soprano?) and my Grandpa's deep baritone.

The camera would not remember the shit storm of an argument Gretchen and I walked in to that Sunday afternoon, as we came over to make a Sunday birthday dinner for my mom. I think all families have this argument at some point; failing health, elderly grandparents, working adult children, lack of in-home care in rural America, the difficult decisions that must be made. What we don't talk about is the fear of losing the ones we love, losing the traditions and memories and institutional family knowledge that comes with their impending death.

It is hard.

I was in eastern Washington that weekend, over Veteran's Day, to visit my sister for "Dad's weekend" at Washington State. Since dad was a little busy playing at Sacramento, I was the stand-in. We ended up down on the field before the game, due to Gretch's participation in a student booster group. My mom was in the area too, so we were able to snag tickets from a friend on the WSU coaching staff and all sit together for the game. In a snowstorm that looked like this:

Pretty epic. The best part was the come-from-behind victory.

And... less than a month later, 'Cougar football has reminded me why sometimes college football can be cruel. You see, the 'Cougs head coach used to work for my dad. He stayed on at Eastern Washington University when my dad left for MSU. After his first wife died of a brain tumor, he remarried and now has a son and a stepdaughter. In 2007 WSU fired their football coach (whose wife, ironically, had died of ovarian cancer the year before) and our friend was hired at his alma mater and where he played, WSU. Four years later, and about 3.5 weeks after this picture, Paul was fired from WSU.

I think I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when it comes to people we know being fired. Seriously, all last week I was weepy and had a chest ache every time I think about it. It makes me sick.

And so, it seems the only thing to do is come home and cuddle this furball, who never fails to make me laugh:

(Don't fear, she punished me for this indignity by eating one of the glass ball ornaments the next day). 

At least the doggie knows how to hang out and roll with the punches.

Guilt over leaving the pupperoni

My friend Emily is house/ dog sitting for us while we're in Europe. It'll work well; Emily grew up with golden retrievers and she's headed home to the family farm for a long weekend while we're gone, so Harlow will get to be a temporary farm dog. Emily will also be able to haul in the bushels of ripe tomatoes  I'm sure to get while we're gone. I have big plans for those tomatoes. 

But in the meantime, I feel a certain sense of guilt for leaving our dear pupperoni. She's been getting extra loves and treats for the last few weeks. She's seen the suitcases out, and I think she know's something is up.

Cuddling this morning in bed; nothing like hanging out with your wang out.  

Muddy paws?

Favorite hanging out position.

Snoozing in the morning sun while Courtney works in the office.

Someday I'll catch that tail!

Oh gosh we love this doggie. 

Hiking Blackmore

Dusty and Harlow and I hiked Mount Blackmore today, from the Hylite Lake parking lot. It's an elevation gain of about 4,000 feet; from 6,000 feet above sea level at the parking lot to the peak at 10,100 feet. 

I don't know if it was because I worked out pretty hard on Friday and Saturday, but this hike was a serious grunt. It was WAAAY harder for me than either hiking the ridge with Alli, or the Beartooths hike we did last summer. More difficult physically and really tough mentally. I also have some wicked blisters to show for it, including the bottoms of my heels. OUCH. 

The scenery was pretty difficult to look at though.

Harlow is becoming a good trail dog. She's figured out, for the most part, how far up ahead of us she can go, where to drink water from and also not to... do business... on the trail. She's also an expert map reader.

Remember when we had a puppy? This photo is about a year old, of Harlow and DJ reading the map during our Beartooths hike.

A few snowfields are still up there. We found one fun way to keep the pupperoni hydrated while not diminishing our water supply. Fetch, with snowballs.

Such a lady, with her paws crossed.

At our last stop before the summit push.

We finally made the summit, and were rewarded with some pretty amazing views. From Blackmore, looking down onto Bozeman in the Gallatin Valley, with the Bridger Range in the background.

And looking south, towards Yellowstone National Park. See those clouds forming? Yeah, I'm terrified of being on a peak or a ridge during a thunder and lightning storm. We took one more photo and booked it out of there. We got back down to the truck after only ab it of rain, but some big booming thunder.

Us, on top of Blackmore!

It was a haul of a climb, and coming down wasn't a cakewalk either. I'm always amazed at how well DJ and I manage during times of uncomfortableness. We kind of give each other our space, but keep an eye on the other person's safety and mental state. I feel like the physical pain of hiking, of doing something really, really HARD together somehow makes our marriage stronger.

Doooooog

Harlow has been in our house for nearly a year and a half now. She's awesome. I could dither on about how she makes us laugh, injects a certain level of silliness into our household, loves to snuggle, etc., but it really just comes back to her being awesome.

She does have one flaw though. Home girl cannot, and I mean absolutely cannot, stop herself from eating shit she shouldn't eat. Sometimes it's literal shit in her mouth. Cat shit seems to be her preference.

Are you grossed out? Yeah, me too.

Harlow got into something out at my grandma's farm the Friday before the 4th of July. It might have been a poisoned sick bird, maybe too much cat shit, maybe not enough water and too much fun. Either way, she proceeded to puke every 2-3 hours Saturday and Sunday. It took her until nearly Tuesday to really recover. At one point she was so reticent to eat we were giving her waffles from the table in an effort to get something, anything into her.

The alarm is going off a half hour early all this week due to workload and being out of town. And wouldn't you know it, riiight as we're about to turn out the light Harlow barfs up dinner. On the carpet. Right next to our bed. DOOOOGGGGG.

Lets just say that DJ and I need to perfect our emergency-vomit-not-in-the-toilet clean up routine. And that once your dog yaaks, you're pretty much not falling back asleep that night. Unless your DJ, in which case you're out like a light 20 minutes later. Unlike your wife, who flops around in bed from 10:30pm until 1:45 am before finally deciding "eff it, I'll get up and do something."

Dog vomit leads to insomnia, I guess.

What can I say, at least she's still cute.

A quick trip east

Friday night we threw things in the truck and headed east for an over nighter.

First, we stopped in Livingston for a drive up burger, fries/ onion ring and huckleberry shakes. Though it totally threw off my diet, it was a fun experience!

After slurping our shakes, we headed further east to Big Timber, then south up the Boulder River valley. We stopped at Natural Arch State Park, where the Boulder River had once carved an arch through the limestone. The arch collapsed in 1988.

The river, like all of them in Montana right now, was running hard. I'm not sure if, or when, we'll see a slow down in rivers this summer.

You could feel the pedestrian bridge trembling as you walked across it.

Water level gets low enough in the late summer that the water "disappears". The river isn't dry; rather, the water is coursing through subterranean channels in the limestone. The channels are caused by both water erosion, and the water creating a chemical reaction with the limestone to dissolve the stone and expand the channels.

The river goes over these falls. The nuttiest thing? People kyack off of this!

Once we finished poking around at the bridge, we continued up the valley into the Gallatin Natural Forest. Most of the campgrounds had room, though the further you got up the gravel road many camping spots were underwater. In some places you had to ford a creek that was over the road. We finally settled on this camping spot.

Where, to Harlow's delight, a creek coursed through the back. A creek with sticks in it.

As the fire pit area had standing water, it was tough to keep Harlow dry. We ended up sleeping in the back of the truck, with Harlow in the "dog taco" (tarp strung into a U shape between the back seat head rests and the front seat head rests) in the back of the cab. We stayed dry!

Saturday morning we stopped off in Big Timber for coffee, then headed up to Harlowton. Yes, the town that our dog is named after, which is, in turned, named for the guy who started the "Jawbone" railroad in Montana. Which was eventually sold out to the Milwaukee Road. We stopped at the depot.

And after poking around a bit, found out what I'm meant to do with my life. Rehab the Graves Hotel in downtown Harlo.

I mean, seriously, with a south-facing porch like this?

The hotel is not currently in operation, and the entire building needs work. It's for sale. Think I could convince DJ that our destiny is to operate the Graves Hotel in Harlowton MT?

From Harlow we headed back west, through Martinsdale and past Bridge Bowl. Harlow (the dog) was pooped!