It's a Rough Morning

The picture says it all and accurately represents how the humans and dogs are doing today.  We're all a bit sluggish, sleepy, maybe a tad cranky this morning.  It's been a slog to get through it, but maybe more coffee will help...the humans at least.

There are just some days that it's hard to get out of your cozy slumber ball.

Animals of Glacier National Park

We went to Glacier National Park in early June and it was our first opportunity to use our brand new camera (more on this in another post). It took some fabulous photos, and allowed us to capture some wildlife that we wouldn't have been able to photograph with our old camera.

The highlight of the trip for me was to watch 2 adolescent Bighorn Sheep duke it out over something in a picnic area fire pit. They truly reminded me of Tito and Shaak Ti. The smaller, darker one appeared to be the dominant one (Shaak Ti) while the bigger, whiter one lurked about and waited for his chance to dart in and grab something to eat (Tito). 

We came across these two while waiting in our car (in the cold rain) for our boat trip around Two Medicine Lake (a good tour). We had seen one sheep wandering around the campground when we went in to talk to the rangers and so when we came out, I made John drive around the campground. And sure enough, we came across these two.

We got to park the car pretty much directly in front of them, approximately 30 yards away, and then watched them for 1/2 hour (John here - it was much longer than that). I think John had his fill after a few minutes, but he stuck it out to make me happy. And in the end, we were rewarded with a pretty good close-up of one of them as he sauntered away.

And while it was somewhat cheating, here's a picture of me with a stuffed Bighorn Sheep at the Many Glacier Lodge.

(John here - please note Alycias' awesome t-shirt that I got her for her birthday.  It says "I like to party, and by party I mean take naps".  Truer words hath nigh been spoken by a t-shirt)

And here's a photo of a stuffed mountain goat at the East Glacier Lodge. 

Another highlight of the trip was our walk around the Trail of the Cedars trail. It was a very easy walk (most of it on boardwalk), so I can't really call it a hike. But as we were wandering around, we saw this family looking excitedly through their binoculars. After experiences in Yellowstone and Yosemite, I've learned that you pay attention to anyone who's focused on something with their spotting scope. So we go over and see that they're excited about a duck - a Harlequin Duck. Initially, he was about 50 yards down river and the family was super excited about that (they were doing a bird count for their trip and this duck was #202). But then, he flew up right in front of us and landed in the river to continue floating downstream. I was able to get a picture up pretty close, and he was indeed a handsome duck.

While waiting for our boat tour around Lake McDonald, we also spotted a few other birds in the trees. First, a Yellowbellied Sapsucker was working over a tree pretty well. I tried to get a good picture, but he wasn't so great at holding his head still.

And then a Western Tanager. He's hard to see in the photo, but a close-up zoom shows his distinct orange head and bright yellow body.

We also saw a bald eagle on our Lake McDonald boat tour, but honestly, those are fairly commonplace to us. We see them regularly flying over the Red River of the North by our house.

One animal we did not see on our trip was a bear - grizzly or black. While it would have been exciting to see one while driving around, we were definitely glad to have not come across one while hiking around in the woods.

Finally, one last animal we encountered were hand-carved merry-go-round horses in Missoula, MT. John wasn't super excited to go on the carousel, but it lived up to its name as one of the world's fastest carousels. 

I could feel the wind whipping through my hair as we whirled around and around. For $2.25, it was well worth the trip.

Goodbye Huge Elm Tree

We had some fierce winds for several days over the last week, with gusts over 50 mph on more than one occasion.  The wind brought down a large tree branch of our neighors across the street, which led to a tree maintenance crew coming out to clean up the debris.

While they were out here the arborists with the local Parks and Recreation District (they're responsible for maintaining the trees on the berms) noticed that the huge old elm tree on the Northwest corner of our lot had a pretty large hollow cavity at the base, seen above.  They left a note in our mail slot on a Wednesday morning that said the tree would have to be removed.  The time frame for the tree removal was pretty vague though, it said "crews would be on site either later that day or within the next couple of weeks". 

My expectation of the speed of local government entities is till stuck on California time though and I fully expected them to come take down the tree at the end of that two week period (or longer).  I forget that I live in North Dakota now, city services are pretty awesome, damn responsive, and actually can get things done quickly (when they want to).  A work crew was on site by 1:00 that afternoon, there was barely enough time for us to say goodbye and mourn the loss of our tree. 

It's always sad to lose a large tree in the garden and Alycia was pretty bummed out.  It has drastically changed the complexion of the garden though, and not just the big empty space where the tree used to be.  The whole area underneath and sections of the front garden that were full to part shade are now full to part sun.  It's a substantial change in the amount of sunlight that a large of swath of the garden receives.  Suddenly plants that were unthinkable in various front yard locations have become feasible.

The work crews that arrived at 1:00 had reduced that elm tree to the stump you see below by 4:30 that afternoon.  They cut it down and hauled away all the debris, leaving only a stump and a layer of sawdust coating part of the front yard.  The additional sunshine that comes through this space and allows us more "full sun" plantings will make up for the loss of this elm tree, and we've been promised that the stump will be ground down in the Fall and a new tree will be planted in the space next Spring, but it's still sad to lose a tree.

Paprika Yarrow and Awesome Customer Service from BloomingBulb.com

I wrote about some new plants that we added to the garden last summer in this post and this post last year.  These plants were root divisions that were on (huge) markdown from BloomingBulb.com.  Sadly the Arizona Sun Gallairdia didn't survive the winter, at all.  The Summer Sun Heliopsis, Paprika Yarrow, and Caradonna Salvia are mostly all thriving whilst very few of the Zing Rose Maiden Pink Dianthus made it through the winter.

Here's a photo of the Paprika Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), planted between tomatoes in the raised bed on the left and the apple trees (out of frame) on the right.  Please ignore those weeds.

A few weeks back I e-mailed the customer service department of BloomingBulb.com to tell them that some of the plants didn't live and requested a replacement.  They claim to have a "no questions asked replacement/refund" guarantee.  And do they ever.  I got a credit for the plants they no longer had in stock and a box of Zing Rose Maiden Pink Dianthus was shipped out to my house.

Their customer service was so fast and efficient though that unfortunately the box arrived when we were on vacation and the root divisions looked pretty dicey by the time we got home, so I'm in the unfortunate position of having to request a second replacement.  But BloomingBulbs' customer service was so outstanding, I don't think it'll be an issue.  For that reason they get a full Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes two thumbs up seal of approval.  I'll certainly be buying from them again. 

An Honorary Deaf Dog?

Today we went to our first fair of the season - the Grand Forks County Fair. Similar to last year, we opted to attend the 4-H Horse Show (which occurs during the morning hours when the fair actually is not open). It was pretty hot and humid so we didn't stay too long, just enough to see the Halter Horsemanship and English Dressage competitions. However, we did notice a horse that looked very similar to our own Shaak Ti and Shadowfax...

What do you think? Should this lady be an honorary deaf dog?

Irises in Bloom

Our irises just finished blooming. The picture below is from a week and a half ago when they were at their height of bloom. They're a pretty awesome deep blue/violet color.

Here's that same picture from a week later (just a few days ago).  The irises are almost finished blooming, but also blooming are wild geraniums and daises (of unknown variety).

This area is a small mound that was created from dirt from another project.  Just a few years ago this was nothing more than some scraggly and overgrown lilac shrubs, now look at it.  All of these plants were free divisions from Alycias' colleague who was dividing her irises and thinning some things out in her yard a few years ago.  I probably wouldn't have purchased these plants on my own accord, but since they were free?  I'll take 'em. 

Too Much Sunbeam

Shadowfax spent too much time in the hot summer sunshine today.  It was a lovely warm Summer day today in Grand Forks, North Dakota and she enjoyed every minute of it. 

After baking her brain out on the back steps, Shadowfax can barely make it in the back door before staggering inside and collapsing on the kitchen floor.  Maybe we'll get her one of these sweet cooling coats, or just fill up her swimming pool. 

Spirea - Flowering Hedges

One of the things that we inherited from the previous homeowners was a hedge of spirea that runs North/South along the Western side of the property.  Spirea are fairly popular as hedges around here and not terribly noteworthy.  We kept the hedgerow and actually added to it in a couple of places to make a consistent hedge.

Once or twice per Summer I get out the hedge trimmers and actually make the row of Spirea look more hedge-like.  It's one of the few elements of "structure" in a garden whose character could best be described as wild or random or natural, depending on your level of snarkiness at the time.  In early Summer the Spirea put out profusions of white flowers and smell quite lovely, but other than that they're quite unremarkable.

It's quite a show of tiny white flowers, but only for a few weeks, then it's back to being ordinary hedge plants.  We probably wouldn't have created this hedgerow look on our own, but since it's already here, we might as well embrace it. 

I'm not sure of the exact variety of Spirea, so sorry if I can't give you a more precise name or a Latin name for this plant.