Recycling was the plan, but....

We had received a nice piece of carpet from my brother Neal and his wife Claudia, and the plan was to remove the old carpet from our little guest room, and use their piece of carpet to replace it.....but it was 3 inches to short all across the 10 ft width that it need to be....

We found this out after removing the furniture and the bed, and pulling the old carpet and laying it out on our cement pad where we park our vehicles, and by the way it was a nice 72 degrees last Tuesday, and very comfortable working weather.

Plan B---Rory went shopping at a few different carpet and lumber stores for a remnant that measured 12 by 10 feet. Low and behold in Little Falls I found a piece of new carpet for only $80.00!

Hauled it home after a company golf outing at a course close to Little Falls.

So tonight was installation night, a warm 88 degree day and about 90% humitidy..

So again we laid out the new carpet piece face down and then laid the old carpet on top of it face down and lined up one edge and cut the new stuff to almost the exact same size.

It is so much easier when you have a template to go by.

Well, our monthly Cookie and Granola shipment, arrived from Ocean Shores today, the mail lady brought it up to our porch and left there.

As you can see the package has been vandalized....by Smarkle....it seems she could smell the goodies inside, and she mangaged to get into the corner and find some granola...which was a Super Nut Granola....thank goodness my cookies were in a tin this time...because I would have been bumming if those had gotten chowed down by Smarkle!


Don't worry, she didn't get to much and all in all the rest of the contents in the box were all in good shape....Message to Granola and Cookie maker....maybe tins for both items in the future would be good!

Yes the beginning of the work week, things at work will be slow this week, as far as sales due to vacations people take, and everyone is thinking about the weekend already. I do have a few things to get done and some people to see.

I did also work at R tonight, put in 3.5 hours, and it wasn't to busy. Things there are pretty full going into the July 4th weekend, and hopefully we will have warm weather so people can get outside and enjoy some golf and the lake.

We made it through the weekend, with just a couple little sprinkles of rain, which is good as we need some drying out. Sounds like we will see some mid 80's by Thursday.

I have some truck repairs tomorrow afternoon being done, replacing the front wheel bearings and hubs along with the brake rotors and pads. I bought the parts and I am having a local garage installing things as there are abs connections that need to be made. Hopefully they will fix the cruise control that hasn't worked since the last time it was in their shop.

Have a good week, and I will see what I have tomorrow.

High on my task list the couple of days was to get my garden tilled, in between the rows to stay ahead of the weeds. When we awoke this morning, the sky's looked very gray and I was worried, that it would rain before I had the chance to get the tilling done.

So at 7;25 am I was down in the garden starting my tiller and running it up and down the plant rows.



















As you can see I got through all the rows and even took the weed wacker to the tall grass on the garden path to the shed, and around the rhubarb plant. I need to do some hand weeding but, it looks much better, and it will give the plants a chance to absorb some more heat, when the sun shines.


















You can see things are growing well, with the last few days of sunshine.


















After getting all the tilling done it was time to head inside, hop in the shower and it was off to R for another day of answering the phones and dealing with guests. But after I got home at 5 I went to work on finishing the fence around the new pumpkin patch. Which you can see below, I did get it finished, the nice thing about this fence is that I did not have to buy anything to get it done, I did receive a donation from Crystalie's Dad of a roll of concrete re-enforcement wire, which was 5 feet tall and also nice and heavy for plants to grow on, the balance of it made from corn crib sections that I had left over form our two corn crib gazebos.


















It may not look the best but it is functional and when the pumpkins and gourd vines start spreading this will be a wall of green!

Anyhow after 2 hours of building fence it was time for grilling some chicken on the grill and enjoy a couple of beverages.

Well, it is Saturday, and I needed to do some lawnmower maintenance, so I could head over to mow the grass at Wooden Nichols.

So I got outside early this morning and took the mower deck of the tractor and removed the blades and did an overall cleaning and then sharpened the blades.
After sharpening the blades, put everything back together and then greased it all up, and put the deck back under the tractor.

After that I got things ready to go for the trip to Wooden Nichols. After that, I headed in the house to get ready for work at R, and headed over there for a 8 hour shift.

After work I got back to the farm and loaded up the lawn tractor, and I headed over to the store. Mowed grass and also took care of a couple of little jobs Crystalie needed done, and I also ran the weed wacker around the edges to clean everything up.

After we got done, Crystalie took her lawn maintenance man up the Players Bar north of the store about 4 miles on Hwy 169. We enjoyed a nice supper,and a cocktail and then headed home. It was nice to sit and relax and enjoy a meal we didn't have to fix.

Anyhow we got home, and I did some weed wacking around the yard at home, before calling it a night.

Another busy day but at least the two yards look great.

Jennifer and Matias, have a nice home over in Lakeshore, MN which is located north of Gull Lake. When they bought the place, it just had a little slab outside a sliding glass patio door right off of their kitchen.

Matias being a chef, wanted to create an outdoor dining area there, so last fall they poured a much larger patio area, and then this spring the did some landscaping and added the brick walls, along with some plants and of course some mulch.




You can see it is really developing into a nice area, this spring they also got a hand me down table and chairs from my brother Neal. Below is the far end of the patio, and there are more plans to finish that corner under the stairs.

It seems the days are almost not long enough for all that goes on in them.

I started with an early chamber meeting, and then back to the office working on some projects and also some emails to follow up on, and then I had another Chamber Chowtime to go to at noon. Where I got an email from my other employer R. and they wanted to know if I could come in for the early evening shift, as the worker who was supposed to work was out ill.

I told them yes, and showed up there at 5:00 pm for a 3 hour shift, actually ended up there till about 8:25pm. After that, I got home and grilled up some bratwurst for supper, which Crystalie waited for so we could eat together.

Now after supper a little TV, reruns and some computer time, and soon it will be time to get some sleep.

I know that everyone has a busy life, and the hours and minutes seem to fly by each day. The key is to enjoy some little things each day and not to take them for granted.

After 3 dreary cloudy rainy days, the sun peaked out this afternoon and evening, and we enjoyed a beautiful evening. The next few days look to be pretty decent based on the forecast, but we will see if the weatherman is right.

Anyhow, think of one of the little things you enjoyed, and enjoy the rest of this day!

You may have noticed some things have changed on my blog page, it is undergoing a facelift with the help of my daughter, Misty, who is a web designer. She offered to change it up some as a gift for Father's Day and I said sure.

So we are under some construction for a little bit! So bear with us both!

Today, I had to go pick up my lawn tractor at Jennifer and Matias's house. Just down the county road they live, is an Alpaca Farm. On my way there I saw that the herd was out closer to the road and I stopped to get a couple of pictures.

As you can see they were out enjoying the grass, and they have recently been sheared.

While I was on the road way taking a couple of pics the owner, yelled form the barn and told me to come up to the barn, where she was. So I hopped in the truck for a closer look and went up and introduced myself. I went in the barn and got a closer look at a bunch of them. They are curious in nature like the llamas, so you can see they were checking me out.

I did have a nice visit with Jan the owner, we talked about Llamas and the Alpacas and shearing and the wool, and how she utilizes is it, which right now she has a bunch of it to go through and sort for processing.


















Below you can see some of this year's crias, cute aren't they? They look like little llama cria's. I know we will have to take a little road trip with Crystalie, and go visit the Alpaca farm again...

If you would like to visit their website it is

http://www.brookviewalpacas.com/





























Maybe we can even have another meal prepared by the Latorre's!

In the pictures below you can see the garden is doing well, we have plenty of rain and when it is sunny the plants are growing. We could use some more warm days, but the forecast here is for lots of rain in the next day or so.

I accepted a construction job, that my brother Bill and his wife Kathy, wanted to do, it is building a deck around their above ground pool. So I loaded up my trailer with my assortment of tools including my radial arm saw.

I headed to the cities on Saturday morning right away, and arrived at around 9:00 am, the materials were on their way so I unloaded my trailer, and got the saw down to the work area.
The weather forecast called for rain off and on all day and I wanted to protect my saw and tools from a lot of rain.

Bill and I constructed a shelter made from some of our building materials and a tarp I brought with me, below you can see it is getting well used, and no sooner we got it put together it began to to rain, and it rained off and on all afternoon.
The pool is a 19 sided circular shaped polygon, and you can see this shot of the setup for the first ring around the pool. The post is trimmed down about 9 degrees on each side to compensate for the angles and to get the brackets attached to the post more securely.

I got home from work today and found a little styrofoam box with a label on it on our deck. At first I thought it was something Smarkle hauled up form somewhere, but it was a package.

Inside the package was this Father's Day gift from my daughter Raquel and her husband Eric, and featuring of course Miles!

The last couple of days we have had some wet weather which we needed, to keep all the new plants growing in the gardens and also all the plantings Crystalie has made.


All in all we got about 1.3 inches of rain. It was a good soft rain, and hardly any wind, so it couldn't have been more ideal.




Tonight, the 16th, it cleared off late afternoon and now the sun is shining and everything is glistening and you can almost hear the grass grow.

As you see our new Trixie, and Samrkle and Tootsie are getting along pretty good. Today Crystalie, said Trixie took a nap on Tootsie's back while they were laying around out in the backbarn.

Below,is a billboard that features the talents of one of our Son-in-laws...Chef Matias Latorre, who is married to daughter Jennifer. I first saw this a little over a week ago, and I couldn't get a picture of it due to traffic at the intersection of Cty77 and Hwy 371 just north of Brainerd.

Chef Matias works at Madden's Resort one of the finest resorts in Minnesota. That is him in the background! I am sure he is getting some teasing about this billboard, but he works hard and deserves it!

Crystalie brought home a new addition to Coffee Lake Farm today, this little female cat is 9 weeks old and was born on April 1st and had the name Trixie!

Trixie is used to people and also to dogs, although she is being a little timid so far around them and Smarkle is not to sure about her either.

Our new neighbors down by the mailbox, there are actually two families, of these Canadian Geese, so driving on Cty 10 by the lake is going to be hazardous.

They have found a nice dry and sunny spot, and of course waterfront property!

Well, Jennifer those seeds and onion sets we planted are starting to peak through the ground, I noticed it yesterday and took some pictures today after getting home form work at R. today!

Above is a Zucchini plant coming up....

Crystalie, spent some time snapping some pictures of the flowers in her flower garden next to the little greenhouse. I do not know all the names but see if you might recognize some of these!
Purples and blues seem the predominate colors, but there are some other colors prevalent.