T R A N Q U I L I T Y

The Robins hatched out... They have a nest on Tom's shack..... He watches them every year.... as they hatch and grow and fly away.


As we were having a cup of coffee yesterday Mr and Mrs Goose came out of the woods with their new brood. They were heading for the river but stopped by so I could take a few pics of their family...... Than after their photo shoot, they went on their way.......


As all good mothers are sitting on their eggs, Mrs Mallard and Donald, are here running around our yard all day and night. This is the fourth year of this behavior. I don't think she is fertile, but every year she keeps Tom running around and watching her like a hawk.... trying to find her nest..... ; )

ALL the other female ducks have quit coming in for quite awhile as the Mallards and Wood Duck drakes, are in every night for their corn feed.....


A doe and her last year fawn joins the ducks every evening. Mag and Lilly lay in the window and watch as there outside friends come and go..... As the sun sets all is quiet except for the sound of the frogs singing under the star-lit skies.


When morning comes, the birds all sing "get up, get up you sleepy head" as the sun comes up over the tree tops. Than I get a big lick in the face which confirms...it's time for Mom to get up.

Tom wants his coffee as he doses in and out of consciousness. Maggie wants Lilly to go out outside and back in so she can have some dog treats....

Soon everyone in the house is back to sleep.......and I get to enjoy the tranquillity of the morn.......

O P P O S I T I O N A L

Oh My!!!!!!! Where oh where have we been....????????

Pretty much right here. Tom is more challenging these days... He has become "OPPOSITIONAL" so I have to watch my reactions to things...... even closer... It's a guarantee he will do the OPPOSITE of anything I say. : (

One morning he woke to telling me he was going to cut a vent whole in the wall in the living room. I asked why and he said for air.. ... I said why can't we just open the windows for air? The good news is ........." he hasn't brought it up again." : D

Nobody said this was going to be easy.... He told me the other day that the thing that makes him the maddest about me is that I don't never "remember" anything. I did turn my back to him before I chuckled to my self.

Tom got to go fishing for a few days with someone I trust. I think he needs to get away now and than as I'm sure after awhile I seem more like a smothering mother hen and he feels as he is losing himself, his memory and independence, it's his way of fighting back?

We stay busy... we are always working on our yard... cleaning, brushing, digging, and expanding, mowing or fixing something.

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He says... "I need to just listen to you as you are always right.... " BUT than there goes that oppositional attitude when we are in the middle of something....

Like putting the deck back on the lawn mower after he beefed it up and changed the blades...... It didn't go on till he did it the way I told him it went. Convincing him is the hard part. The sad part is...he has done it dozens of times before.....

OR taking the tire off the lawn mower when he blew the tire out...... He told me he took off the other tire when it needed fixing so don't tell me how to do it..... I just couldn't see how pounding the tire "on" with a sledge hammer was going to get the tire "off".....

So yesterday "HE" decides to make the trench that drains our yard of pond water needed to be dug out more..... He is not use to doing the actual manual labor like digging so he got crabby fast. He stopped a few times and said he needed a back hoe, but he must have been able to "reason out" that, that was not going to happen, so would start digging again.....

Well this is what his attitude got him today...... he did it to himself.... I just stood there and watched and than burst out laughing..... After he got over the shock he started laughing too..... Nothing like an old mud bath to chill a guy out....



Gotta Love That Face!

The Winch.......

TRAVIS...... This is for you!

Tom decided to switch out the winch on his 4-wheeler yesterday... I had other things I wanted to do outside which included a walk with the girls....

It wasn't long and Tom hollers "MOM!!!" ..... I am not liking the sound of his voice..... I detected anxiety. I knew what he was trying to do and so I was trying to be invisible.... It didn't work.

I went over to see what he wanted... "I just want you to watch as I take this apart so you can tell me how to put it back together......." OKAY! I really don't want to do this...... I don't even know "what" he is doing...

All I know is he has some parts that are his and some parts are Ryan's.... which at one time equaled one working winch... on Tom's 4 wheeler.

Now Tom's part of that winch is broke but Ryan's part still works so what I think he wants to do is put all of Ryan's parts back together and than switch out the mounts as we have to use Tom's as Ryan's won't work....

Confused? Me too!!!!

So Tom brought the winch into the house. We started in the laundry room on the bench. Parts were coming off... I am clue-less... I ask questions and he answers with a frustrated voice... (Like I should just KNOW what's going on) He tells me what the goal is... It didn't seem too hard....

LATER...... We ended up on the kitchen table with our project.... I now know every part inside a winch and how they go back together.... EVERYTHING Tom touched fell apart till every little piece was apart. There are springs, and gears and washers of many sizes that fit into other do-hinkies that had to line up with that which-a-ma-call-it and than got mounted to that thing but it had to be lined up just so to slip into place when holding this thing so it didn't slip apart again and than get the holes to line up so the bolts will pass through all the pieces to hold everything together.....

Did I mention the gear grease.... all over Tom, Me and the KITCHEN TABLE and anything else in the vicinity?

It took ALL day but in the end we got it all back together and back on the 4 wheeler and in working order..... NOW

Only one problem left to fix.... It unwinds but doesn't wind up.... He has been messing with it for about a month..... THAN he had a light bulb moment...... There is this thing that plugs in by the ignition... It came loose one day.. He shoved it on in a hurry... He pulled it off to examine it and one of the prongs was bent over. WALA...... Now it works......

He walked around calling himself an idiot for about an hour... IF it didn't make himself feel better... It did me... J/K ; D

He thinks I can fix anything and knows everything and at times almost demands it of me.... He depends on me to be his brain and mine and I don't have enough for myself some days let alone share... "sigh"

Not A Dull Moment!

Working in the yard in the spring, usually brings some unusual events that make it FUN where we dwell......


Lilly found an inhabitant under the cover of the riding lawn mower.... I thought she had a squirrel till I heard a mean growl..... I carefully lifted the cover till I exposed this little critter..... What a cutie!







He had to go find a new home as it was time to get the rider in running order...Tom changed the oil, charged the battery, beefed up the deck and replaced the bent up, distorted, twisted old blades. Put some gas in and she popped off on second try and purred like an old cat........



The lady where we buy the blades said "bring them in when they are dull and we will sharpen then for you" I said " I think these are beyond sharpening... He thinks his lawn mower is a brush hog..." Poor thing didn't know what to say ;-/

I was teasing Tom about our yard growing again this year... He said "No not this year...It's as big as it's going to get"

SO on that note, today we were clearing brush in the woods to make our YARD bigger..... I know, he can never make up my mind! Things change from day to day...Some days it's moment to moment.

Tom "seemed" pretty with it today.....we actually had a good time clearing brush. The girls were helping by pulling brush back off the pile ........ They are still learning. We all headed for the
house at the end of the day....



But I looked back as Tom wasn't with us... "Ummmmm I don't think that's such a good idea dear."



I got a few buckets and we got it all out. Had to use some of the Ducky's pond water. He seemed please with what burned before I came and ruined his fun... So it all ended well today!