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Hello once again! So after my last letter I received several suggestions that I should have posted pictures of the garden. |
| When I came home from AZ the squash had all but given up to the heat as well as the blackberries, vanilla, and raspberries. Better luck next year, right? Well then the heat worn on and it has been 19 days of no rain with temps above 100's everyday. This is what is left of my garden. |  |
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I still have some hopes for the tomatoes we are still getting one or two a week, but nothing compared to Nathen's. (For the record I think he is a BUM! He lives in the desert and has a better garden then I who lives in "green country.") |
| Even the sunflower has given up. It looked so nice when it bloomed. |  |
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Another mystery has been solved since my return home. Our chickens stopped laying eggs and after multiple searches we decided that the chickens must be to hot to lay. I looked up why chickens stop laying and the only thing I could find is if they are traumatized as I did leave them with Zeke I thought that might be the cause... but soon discovered where they were laying. The bottom of the trash can was where I found their new nest. I found 21 eggs and after the sink or float test discovered that it was not an accurate method as all 21 eggs sunk. However I did crack all open and found no foul order, it make me wonder how long eggs are good in 100 degree weather? Oh well I thought of turning the trash can up right so they would go back to their original nest, however I have not as I'm too lazy to figure out where their new nest is if they do not lay in the coop. |
| Lauren has a good friend who has a bike and so we decided that it was time to get out kiddos bikes. Zeke found a tricycle on Craig List that was almost brand new for 15 dollars. Carson has not figured out that the paddles make it go. He prefers to push it along with his feet. He will also just stand up straddling the thing and walk. |  |
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The tricycle also came with a wagon. I have been looking at this wagon for a while as our Dr. Office has one that the kids love it. I do have to say that is a toss up which one they like better. |
| Zeke thought it was about time to start teaching Lauren to shoot and went to buy her a bee bee gun for the occasion. It was a choice of a brown one with a cowboy riding a horse painted on it and the pink one. Lauren I think favored the one with the horse, but was persuaded into picking out the pink one. |  |
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We had a strange bout of illness over the last couple of weeks. First Lauren was sick for 24 hrs couldn't keep anything down and just wanted to sleep. Then a day or so later Carson had a rash from head to tow and a low grade fever. He did that again two more time in the space of a week. Two days later Lauren was sick for 24 hrs again. Weird! Shortly before all this I brought home a little orange kitten. |
| He slept with Lauren while she was sick and still most nights is in her bed. His name was Goliath; however I could not seem to remember that to call him. So then it was RD for rubber ducky. Lauren picked that one out. Now it is Doc. We will see if this one stick--so far so good. Lauren adores him and asks daily to take him to see Rachael's kittens. |  |
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During the time that Lauren was sick she got up and asked me to hold her, than promptly puked down me back. She did this a couple of times before I caught on. |
| Doc is fun and does not mind being mauled by the kids. He does object to being put in a stroller or wagon but tolerates almost everything else. |  |
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I tried my hand at making wheat tortillas. They were good however using cracked wheat instead of wheat flour had its disadvantages. For one thing you could not roll them as thin because the wheat stood out too far. They were good and not one went bad before we could eat it. |
| Not much else has been going one here, pioneer day came and went, and the activity went well. However I discovered a problem with trying to get a large crowd of people to do anything! We planned 3 different activities in the space of three hours. It took us 5 hours and only one out of the three did not have to be shortened. Buy it was fun and that is all that counts. |  |
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Our A/C stopped worked about a week ago and we had to wait two days for a service man to come to the house to look at it. He decided that the outside unit, while being old, was running well and it would only need some R-22 antifreeze to make it cool again. So 8.1 lbs of R-22 and $269.40 later our A/C was humming right along. However with in 24 hours all the R-22 had leaked out and we were with out cool air again. Upon further inspection Zeke found that our compressor had leaks at most of the connectors. |
| We did some price checking and figures out that we can get a new compressor for around $2,000. The problem is that our compressor is attached to the furnace and if we replace it we need to find one that matches up with the fittings or make new fittings. We opted to make do with window units in the bedrooms and wait until next year to fix it. The summer can't last for ever... right? |  |
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During the A/C mess we lost a chicken and I was very upset. I never found any feathers and figured she got out and one of the 6 dogs the neighbor has that are not fenced in must have eaten her. We two days later she showed up in our yard. I looked and still have no idea how she got out. Some days she is in the back yard and some days she isn't. |
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One more story before I end. At the beginning of the summer we had a fence put in as the neighbors dogs would come into the yard and dig in my garden. As I do not have a dog, I thought it unfair that I should have to clean up after one as well as deal with the mess of digging in my yard so a fence seemed like a good choice. Now we have the fence and the chickens and life was good. However yesterday morning I went out to water the garden and found the neighbors dogs in my yard. They had dug under the fence to eat, not my chicken thankfully, but the crackers I had thrown out in the yard for the chickens. I was very upset and was screaming at them for making a hole in the fence that I would have to fix and the mess they made that I would have to clean up. Zeke heard and came running out, he had thought that I was being attacked by the way I was caring on. Sometimes life is unfair and my neighbors dogs are Lame-O's.
Love, |