First Crop

Yeah! Today I pulled my first batch of radishes. I love them and they grow so well and so darn fast up here. This year I put up 4 square foot boxes. I'll have to take a photo of the 4th one since it's in a different location because of the vegetables growing in it.

So, here's the first three gardens:






Now for the goodies. These are called Easter Egg radishes. They are so colorful; from white to pink to purple to red! Fun and tasty!



Next are the Giant Crimson laying on the right. The Easter eggs ones are in the basket.



And here's the combination of both all cleaned up and in the basket ready for the fridge. All the clippings go right into a composter that sits to the left and behind the first garden. I love that thing because it spins! Oh, the radishes tasted wonderful! Since they grow so quickly, I fluffed up the spoil, added some more soil and planted more radishes. Those will be ready in 25 - 30 days.



YUMMY!!!

A New Critter

Yes, we're adding a new critter to our menagerie. After the deaths of 2 of my beloved pets we decided we needed a new dog. Tanner has been sort of lost without Cinny so we're getting a new puppy. I'm sure Tanner will roll the puppy around with his nose and bark at her for a bit but that's pretty normal.

Anyway, I located some puppies up here, went and looked at them and chose one. A female that's 1/4 Lab, 1/4 Springer Spaniel and 1/2 Standard Poodle! I'm sure breeders of these individual dogs would have a fit but the hell with them. Sometimes their arrogance ticks me off. The whining of watering down the breeds, calling these dogs designer dogs, slamming the folks that breed these dogs, calling them names and all that noise. We'll they can take their AKC garbage and stuff it since the AKC will hand out papers to puppy mills simply because the dog is a purebred. I know that from experience because when I rescued Cinny from a pet store, we discovered through research that she came from a puppy mill in Iowa. Well, the AKC had no problem issuing papers for her and I can tell you that Cinny had a host of problems, but, oh, she was a pure bred so, of course, she had AKC papers. Pfffft! Now that's something to complain about but I never hear them raising a huge stink in that regard and as far as I'm concerned the breeders have done little to get the AKC to eliminate that practice. Our puppy is no designer dog and we didn't pay a zillion bucks for her either.

I know the folks that have the puppies and the puppies are so cute and healthy and friendly. Our new baby will be about 50 lbs max and a bit taller than her mom. When I picked her out she was only 5 weeks old. We pick her up July 2nd and then it's right off to the Vet for exam and puppy shots. She'll get spayed when we return home to Illinois in the fall.

So here's a photo of her Mom...she was so friendly.



And here's photo of Champagne at 5 weeks.



She will be a great addition to our household and be well cared for and loved. We're very excited about receiving her!

Now Back On Satellite Broadband

WOOOHOOO!. Finally, Wild Blue showed up Saturday and hooked me up. It's awesome. Darn near as great as cable broadband at home. The tech was fantastic and it took about 3 1/2 hours to do it. I'm so glad to be able to actually watch a page load in less than 3 days! HAHAHAHA.

Yesterday was my birthday, yeah, I'm now 56---yikes! LOL So we took the boat out for a spin. Well, wouldn't you know something bizarre would happen. We had to swerve toward shore to avoid an insane boater driving erratically and hit a freakin' rock. Well, that nailed our propeller. It now looks like it has fringe made of aluminum. It still functions but geezez, if you try and use higher speeds it's unbalanced so now we have to order a new one. I can still use the boat at slow speeds but if I want to go out fishing I'm just going to use the trolling motor instead. I swear, people should NOT DRINK AND BOAT.

There's this one house here that's really a corporate retreat for a big manufacturing owner and he brings these "clients" up to entertain and far too many are just idiots and get drunk and take out his boats. I was out fishing and I heard the drunks laughing and saw the boat coming out and could hear the motor cavitating. That means they were too stupid drunk to put the motor down into the water completely. That also means you have little control for steering. The housekeeper man had to jump in a little boat and go after them to fix the situation. Morons! Someday they will kill somebody or themselves. No excuse for that kind of behavior. Otherwise everyone else up here is really great.

Oh, here's where we buried Cinny. We call it animal boot hill...all our critters will be there either as ashes from cremation or buried.

Tragedy and Peace

Another pet tragedy for me. That makes 2 in less than 2 weeks. Yesterday our 12 year old Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Cinnamon had to be euthanized. She had a tumor that basically she bit into and it bled like crazy. We knew she had limited time.

I had gone to the garage and when I came back into the house it looked like someone had been murdered. Blood was everywhere---the walls, the floor, the doors. Needless to say I was shocked. I knew what had happened and I went to work cleaning. It was horrible. I was so freaked out because I was alone and the Vet is 45 minutes away. I called my husband in Chicago and at 8:30 at night on Monday he jumped in the car and drove 7 hours up here to assist.

Tuesday morning we drove to the Vet and Cinny is now at peace. We buried her on a hill here on our property. She was a wonderful dog; my fishing partner and protector. We miss her so much and so does our other dog, Tanner. But hubby and I take comfort in that she is at rest, at peace. Now she's across the rainbow bridge with Sammy and all our other creatures.

Here's her last photo:



No more pet tragedies for me this summer. The rest should be a peaceful summer.



BTW, Wild Blue FAILED to show up on Sat. so I'm still on dial up..arghhhhhh. Now they are supposed to show up this Sat.---they better.

The Beauty of the North Woods

I just had to post these photos. It's so beautiful up here in the North Woods. We have all kinds of creatures. Some that swim, some that cruise the land and some that fly.

This photo is of a small island across from my home--it's part of my daily view. It's approximately 1/2 mile out in the lake. Up in that tall tree is a nest for Bald Eagles. Every year they come and create a new family.



Here's one of the adult pair taking off from the nest to look for food.



Here's the same bird in flight looking down at the lake in case a fish makes a fatal mistake and becomes dinner!



Sometimes they fly so low over my head I swear I could reach out and touch them. Ah, but those talons wouldn't be too much fun to feel. But they are so beautiful! Enjoy!


P.S. Tomorrow afternoon Wild Blue will come to hook up my satellite broadband. That will certainly be better than this crummy dial up!

Phone test

Ok I'm testing this text to blog stuff. This what happens when one gets a new phone toy. LOL Yeah, it works. Geezez, I'm like a 12 yr old with this new phone.

Quick Post: Aggravation

Yes, here I am in the woods and aggravation is the word for the day.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon and it was beautiful here and we got right to work. The whole weekend was beautiful...until. Until I turned on our tv and discovered that someone at Dish Network screwed up our account and did not connect all the channels we pay for! So I called them. What a royal pain that turned out to be. You see, I'm having Wild Blue satellite broadband connected up here because this dial up that I'm using right now SUCKS! 26.4k SUCKS! lol Anyway because we are getting wild blue through Dish they told me I could only get the tv mess fixed if I canceled the wild blue date for connection! WTF!!!?? I said you've got to be kidding. They weren't. So, in order to get tv we canceled. Dish network's jackassery policy and inability to have an open work order and fix a problem THEY created ticked me off royally. So I yelled and told them that was insane but that they'd better fix the tv situation. Well, they fixed it. I have all the tv we pay for and got HBO and Showtime and TMC for free for 3 months and Cinemax for 1 cent per month for 12 months. Heh. Then they connected me to the Wild Blue rep and now I have to wait until Saturday for them to come out and connect my broadband. Grrrr, but worked out in the end.

Next bit of insanity was that I ordered a new washer and dryer for the house here---just like the set I recently purchased for the IL. home and it got delivered today. Of course we discovered a problem when I tried to do one last load of wash with the old set---The sump pump died! Arghhhhh. So that led to a mad dash--a 45 minute one-way dash-- on a holiday weekend to the nearest town to get the parts we needed. Geezez. Ok, new sump installed and working. So today when they delivered the new machines we discover the door to the dryer is F'd up. Geezez! Anyway, we got it to function but now there is a service order in for a new door on a brand new machine! Can we say AGGRAVATION!!?? LMAO

The third bit of just shoot me nonsense was the boat battery. Brand new battery...the second one mind you...dead as a door nail and with a bad cell and won't charge. So now we have to buy a new battery. We got the shore station in the water but have to wait until next week to launch the boat. AGGRAVATION! LMFAO

Other than all that insanity all is well. I already caught 2 bass off the dock but tossed them back because they were just under 15 inches. I got all my plants and seeds in the square foot gardens and all looks good. Today it's raining a bit but that's ok because I need a day of rest from all the AGGRAVATION!

I'll post again after I get the broadband connected since it was a real pain to even post this at 26.4k.

Take care all.