Spring Garden Pictures

It's been a typical Spring here at the homestead, jam packed with activity. So many seedlings to plant and the seeming never ending garden fun. 

The path past the greenhouse is maturing perfectly and the hanging baskets have just started to produce their first blooms. And of course there's at least one photo with Shadowfax's outdoor lounging bed.

The lupine have begun lupinating.

The first of the clematis have started clematisizing.

We'll try to post more, we promise. There will be many more flowers and garden things to post and we'll do our best to not let garden tasks or work get in the way. 

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Shaak Ti Does Hot Yoga

This is Shaak Ti performing the difficult "Warming My Junk By the Fire" yoga pose. This is an advanced pose, not for beginners.  

Shadowfax looks on in admiration from her dog bed.

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We're Still Here

We're just hiding from you. We're lounging on the back porch in the last warm Fall sunbeams, soaking up the good weather before winter arrives.

Don't fret, we're not hiding. It's just been the typical cornucopia of excuses in why we haven't posted in months. You would think that with staying at home we would have more time, but it seems like we've been busier than ever.

And it hasn't helped one bit that John got an actual job. As in a real job, where he has to go into an office every day and work. It's been...an adjustment. That's an understatement. It's like saying 2020 has been difficult. An understatement. 

So we'll do what we always do, give you a cute deaf dog picture and promise to post more frequently. I think you all know what to do with that promise.

Stay safe and stay healthy. This too shall pass. Pet your dogs and hug the people in your quarantine circle. We'll get through this together.

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Mid Summer Sun Naps

When the heat of Summer hits you, sometimes it's best to not resist the powerful sunbeam.

We nap hard here at the homestead. On our elevated beds in the sun.

Some locations for napping are better than others. I personally wouldn't sleep right next to the downspout but we've learned over the years not to questions Shaak Ti.

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Expanded Pool Hours at the Homestead

We had a very warm day on Saturday. On very warm days the backyard pool at the homestead is usually open and ready for business.

The lawn needed moving though and we had to empty and close the pool for a few minutes. Shadowfax was outraged. Her solution was 1) get in empty pool 2) lay down in empty pool 3) look as sad as possible.

Management fielded her complaints and opened the pool as fast as humanly possible. 

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Sharing the Dog Bed

Shaak Ti and Shadowfax generally prefer to have their own space while napping. But every once in a while they tolerate some sharing.

On the back patio the other morning, sharing a dog bed seemed to be acceptable.

It was pretty warm out though. The mid-morning sun was already strong and the pups made a hasty retreat inside where it was cooler. 

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Storm Carnage and Clematis Blooms

We had a big storm roll through on Thursday afternoon. The wind howled and the rain lashed down for a few hours. There were numerous lightening strikes, a few transformers were hit, and there were reports of minor damage throughout town.

We lost a limb from the Norway spruce tree in the backyard. It got hung up on the fence and one of the new clematis trellis.

It was a good sized limb and took a little while to chop up and wrangle into our compost bin. We were lucky to just have a branch come down. A few houses away a tree came down and crushed the cab of a parked truck. Nobody was injured, but it was a decent mess to clean up.

While we were out taking pictures of the storm carnage we snapped a picture of the lovely clematis blooms. This is Clematis "Killian Donohue" that we planted about two weeks ago. It seems very happy in its new spot.

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Shaak Ti the Plant Lover

Alycia was strolling outside the other day and looking at the plants and asked me "Why are these 2 plants struggling?" That's pretty simple, because Shaak Ti uses them for a pillow. Here she's using the patented "one plant for my head and one plant for my rump" technique. It's very advanced.

Sorry for my shadow in the picture, but it was the only way that I could get the shot without waking up Shaak Ti. She usually hops up when a shadow passes by. 

Shaak Ti, she's always had a special connection to plants. We've posted before about Shaak Ti and her plant friend. She's always had a unique relationship with both indoor and outdoor plants. 

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Sacked Out Dogs

We're nearing the end of fireplace season here at the homestead. Overnight temperatures are forecast to stay above 40 degrees starting this weekend. Not to worry though, the end of fireplace season coincides with the start of outdoor sunbeam season.

Shadowfax is enjoying one of the last fireplace warming sessions of the year, sprawled on her dog bed complex. She does well with the transition to outdoor sunbeam season.

Shaak Ti had a pretty big day, thus the little bit of tongue sticking out. Her two normal walks plus a bonus walk with Alycia, along with her standard schedule of squirrel barking. Luckily for Shaak Ti the squirrel barking is still in person and not with Zoom. She'd be pretty bummed about that. 

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The View Inside the Greenhouse

Here's what it looks like inside our greenhouse right now. It is chock full of all manner of plants in various stages of growth.

We're in the process of hardening off the first set of plants. Hardening off consists of bringing the plants outside and exposing them to increasing duration and intensity of sunlight and natural conditions over the course of a week or so.

It's a necessary step to ensure that these little plants don't get transplants shock or stressed in their new digs outside. It involves a whole lot of hauling pots/buckets/flats of seedlings outside in the morning and then back inside in the evening, but it's worth it. 

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Some More Spring Blooms

Yesterday we posted some pretty flower pictures that were taken last week. Spring blooming bulbs aren't known for their longevity but here is what they look like now. The daffodils have lasted longer than expected and the tulips are just unfolding.

The yellow daffodils, yellow/white daffodils, and red tulips look great together. We're definitely going to plant more bulbs this fall and expand this area for next year. 

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More Spring Blooms (from last week)

We've been so caught up in garden working that we've fallen behind on blog posts. No surprise there! These are some bulbs that were blooming last week.

These are yellow daffodils that we planted in the front yard. Their bright yellow blooms never fail to cheer me up.

We planted some smaller bulbs in the backyard along the greenhouse. The greenhouse are is looking great with a few early Spring blooms.

These are dwarf purple irises. The Shaak Ti photo bomb is just an added bonus.

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Earthquake in Boise, Idaho

We had just wrapped up dinner here at the homestead yesterday evening when there was a substantial earthquake. Seriously, here in Boise, Idaho. It took me a few seconds to place into context what was happening, it just seemed so out of place. "We're not in California, but gosh this sure feels like an earthquake" (internal monologue has been made PG rated).

Interestingly enough we had watched a local PBS program a few days before about geology in Idaho (there's some pretty interesting stuff here) and they mentioned the last big earthquake in 1983.

There's a great comprehensive write up at the USGS here, you should check it out.

Earthquakes do happen here, but they are rare. From the USGS:

Historic seismicity in the immediate vicinity of the March 31 earthquake is sparse; no earthquakes of M5+ have occurred within 50 km of this event over the past 50 years, and the most notable historic seismicity in the region occurred about 100 km to the east on the Lost River fault zone.

Nothing was damaged here at the homestead and everyone is OK. Neighbors are a tad freaked out but they are all OK as well. Yesterday was indeed an interesting day. 

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Exercising at Home During a Quarantine

Routines all across the country and the world have been changed as of late. Our local YMCA has closed indefinitely but has offered online classes for folks to exercise at home. While John has gotten his exercise through a number of outside projects at the homestead, Alycia has tried to participate in online yoga classes.

Alycia commented that this was a reminder of why she doesn't do yoga at home. Apparently it's difficult to get a relaxing stretch when you have doggy toes and a tail in your face.

And yes Alycia's shirt says "No Goats No Glory". Good luck finding a cooler goat related yoga shirt than that.

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Greenhouse Seedlings Progressing

We're in the midst of strange times, bewildering and anxiety producing. In these unusual days we are glad that we still have the simple pleasures of preparing plants for Spring planting, nurturing little plants through their first few weeks, looking forward to sunnier days ahead.

This is the scene from the greenhouse a few days ago. Many seedlings have germinated and are getting established.

They're in their tender stage now. Keeping a safe temperature and proper watering is critical and we water a few times a day, mist frequently, and monitor vigilantly. It's good to have something to take our mind off all the events transpiring outside the greenhouse.

We hope you are all well, your family and friends safe and comfortable. And even though it may only be a few moments of distraction, we'll try to keep posting regularly.

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Spring Blooms - Crocus

It seems early, but our first blooms are popping up. It's great to see this splash of vibrant color after a long gray winter.

This Fall we planted some bulbs in a few spots around the front yard and are already being rewarded with colorful blooms. Yellow and purple crocus, the first daffodils aren't far behind.

There are a few spots throughout the neighborhood where daffodils are already popping up. Our dog walks through the neighborhood are colorful in Spring as we look at all the blooms. 

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Spring Forward Causes Pushback

Here at the homestead there has been some resistance to the time change. Springing forward isn't always well received.

Shaak Ti is none to happy about having to get up an hour earlier and has decided to spend the day hiding under the blankets. Maybe now she can understand how us humans feel after a decade plus of her waking us up before dawn.

Shadowfax is more adaptable but equally unimpressed with losing an hour of sleep. Perhaps she understands instinctively that Spring means the re-emergence of powerful sunbeams. Probably not, but we do give her credit for enjoying a good sunbeam.  

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Seedlings Started in the Greenhouse

We started seedlings in our greenhouse mid-February, doing a few dozen of them every day.

The process has been to start them under the fluorescent lights with the blue heating mat warming them from below. Then as they germinate and establish their first true leaves, we'll move them to the South shelf which gets only natural sunlight and also has a blue warming mat underneath. Eventually when they get established enough, I'll move them to the upper shelf and remove the fluorescent lights.

We'll try to continue to post pictures as the seedling starting season continues. So far we've started veggies; tomatoes, celery, various melons, gourds, cucumbers and both annuals and perennials; several kinds of petunia, calibrachoa, celosia, coleus, salvia, various marigolds, and portulaca. Each shelf, two on the left (North side) and one on the right (South side) is about 11 feet long and I'm planning on filling them completely with happy little seedlings.

Seedling planting and germinating season moves quickly and we'll do our best to post updated pictures as our new plants emerge and start to grow. Have you started seeds this year? 

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New Greenhouse Pictures

We're rapidly approaching Spring here at the homestead and seemingly getting busier by the minute. It has come to our attention that we haven't posted any pictures of the greenhouse - our huge garden project that we chronicled last year.

The greenhouse is in midst of its busy time of year. We spent last Fall and Winter getting a feel for the space and seeing how the temperature would change based on weather. In the picture above you can see the electrical plug (small white box on the middle left side) that runs to the outlet on the porch as well as the hose connection on the far left side of the greenhouse. This was one of the cool features of this design, it's "plug and play", one outside connection for power and water and the whole greenhouse is ready to go.

Even though the hose is attached to the greenhouse it's been too cold to leave it permanently connected. We attach the hose to the back porch connection, run water and then disconnect so the hose doesn't freeze solid.

There were a few things inside the greenhouse over the Winter. On the bottom left are three dianthus that were potted up when the greenhouse was installed. We didn't find a place to plant them before Winter, so they went into the greenhouse to serve as plant guinea pigs. In the middle are two longer white oval pots that were on the front porch last Summer. They have verbeena, calibrachoa, and petnuias. I brought them in to see if the would survive (they did) and how they would look the next Summer (to be determined).

We also set up some fluorescent strip lights to provide extra light during seed germination. Between the strip lights and seedling heating mats (the blue mat on the shelf under the seedlings) we're hoping for good germination and growth.

The greenhouse is a tight space, 8 foot by 12 foot, that doesn't lend itself to easy photographing, so this is the best we've got. This is one last picture from just outside the open greenhouse door.

We'll share some more photos of our seed starting setup in the future post!

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Snow Day at the Homestead

We're having a snow day here at the homestead in Boise, Idaho. No it's not like the snow days in North Dakota where we'd get a foot or two of snow, sub zero temperatures and blizzard conditions. Here it's just a pleasant snowy day, a few inches of accumulation and some slushy footing for a little while.

The dogs aren't taking any chances though, and they're certainly not going to fret over trivial matters such as the amount of snow. They're just going to get all warm and snuggly under as many blankets as we can pile on top of them.

We'll rest up for now. There are some slushy and wet paws in our forecast this afternoon.  

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New Dog Collars

Alycia had a convention in Orlando last Fall and spent some time at Universal Studios and Disneyworld. Naturally there was some gift store browsing.

Shadowfax got a cool new Star Wars collar.

 

Shaak Ti got a collar from Harry Potter World at Universal Studios. Alycia got it at the Magical Menagerie and it says "Magical Menagerie" on it.

I know, I know. It's all backwards, I know better than anyone. Shaak Ti is a character in the Star Wars universe and she absolutely should have the Star Wars collar...they just didn't have her size. But if there was ever a creature that belonged in a Magical Menagerie it's Shaak Ti. 

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Shadowfax Approved

Shadowfax can easily be described as a heavy chewer, she's easily plowed through dog toys designated as "tough.

The green stick in the picture is her Goughnuts Dog Toy (Amazon link here). We don't endorse many products here, but this stick is really awesome, we've had it since 2014! We even wrote about it back in 2014. Five plus years is an eternity it Shadowfax toy-time. If you have a power chomping pup who destroys toys, you might consider a Goughnut for them this Christmas. 

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Japanese Maple - Emmett's Pumpkin

We planted a couple of Japanese Maples (acer japonicum) in 2017 when we moved to the homestead. They took a year or so get fully acclimated and last fall they had some interesting colors. One variety that we planted, Emmett's Pumpkin, is an upright Japanese Maple that is closer to medium sized shrub than a small tree.

We really wanted this particular variety because it's main feature is turning bright orange in Fall, thus the name Emmett's Pumpkin. Last fall we weren't terribly impressed with the color but figured since it was the first year it might need more time to fully produce spectacular color.

This year it put on a terrific show of orangey-pumpkiny goodness. We look forward to many more years of fall foliage from Emmett's Pumpkin.

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Evening Snuggles

Yesterday was pretty typical evening here at the Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes homestead. We snapped a quick photo of the dogs getting all snugly.

This pose lasts until feet or legs fall asleep and the people have to stand and get the blood flowing again. 

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New Birds at the Homestead - Evening Grosbeak

Fall migration saw a new bird (new to us anyways) pass through our area. These evening grosbeaks stopped by intermittently for a few weeks for some snacks, likely on their journey south. We hopefully look forward to seeing them again in the Spring.

This is the evening grosbeak,they're pretty striking. We had rose breasted grosbeaks on a regular basis in North Dakota, but this was our first time seeing the evening grosbeak. 

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Long Term Forecast

This is the forecast for the next 5 months or so.

Compelling indeed. We've said it before and we'll say it again, these dogs have a pretty rough life here at the homestead. 

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Fall Grape Harvest

When we bought our house a few years ago it had two large established grape plants on the outside of a South facing fence line. The grapes made a nice visual addition to the fence, softening the hard line of 50+ feet of wooden fence and gave us some fruit too. Our first Fall harvest was modest and we made enough grape juice to fill two gallon containers. 

This Spring saw much more rainfall and we deliberately irrigated over the Summer with our flood irrigation a few times per month. As a result the grapes got much more water on a more consistent basis. This translated into a whole lot more grapes that were much sweeter than prior years. These are 5 gallon Home Depot size buckets.

Alycia's parents also bought us a cool Christmas present last year - a Stainless Steel Steam Juicer (Amazon link). We had actually found this online a few years back and bought one for them and they enjoyed it so much they figured that we needed one as well.

The juicer makes the process much simpler and tidier. Fill with water and grapes and set on the stove on high. Then it took an hour or so of steaming and we had about a half gallon of juice and some steamed grape mush (which we happily composted). The grapes are dark, Concord-ish. They're sweet with lots of seeds and will probably be turned into some grape jelly forthwith.

The end result of a few hours of picking grapes and another several hours of tending the steamer was about 6 gallons of tasty grape juice. It's in our chest freezer for now and we'll make some jelly and unfreeze the rest periodically throughout the Winter for a fresh, tasty treat. 

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Fall Snuggling Season

Fall snuggling season is officially upon us. Warm and pleasant days with cool nights quickly changed today with highs barely into the 50's. We're on the edge of a weather system that's bringing multiple feet of snow to northern Idaho and western Montana. We're just getting cooler temperatures and a few rain showers.

Cooler temperatures and the change of seasons means we start taking our napping configurations a little more seriously. Shaak Ti is a pro at this though, she knows how to snuggle in her dog bed.

Fall is also know as "tuck in the dogs 30 times a day" season. Shaak Ti and Shadowfax both enjoy snuggling under an array of blankets.

We hope you're nice and warm wherever you are. 

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Shaak Ti Being Shaak Ti

Shaak Ti. She's a pretty special dog. Her silliness is consistent and daily. Napping, walking and being a goofy little pup, that's her daily routine.

We've managed through some bouts of upset tummy over the last couple of years (more frequently in the last several months) and now she's back to eating regularly. We may be purchasing a rotisserie chicken per week to add to her meals, but it's totally worth it.

Napping in the sunbeam, napping in the dirt (that's why she looks brown in the photo above), napping in the mulch and occasionally napping on an actual dog bed. This dog, she just kills me sometimes. 

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Cuteness Overload

Sugar alert! Be forewarned if you have blood sugar issues you might want to stand by with a shot of insulin to counter all this sugary sweetness. We recently got a new doggie nephew.

His name is Yeti, he's a chihuahua mix of some kind and just a puppy. Here he is posing with our human nephew Jace. Yeah that's pretty dang cute.

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