Sunday, April 29

Friday, April 27

Our week....

Our week consisted of Gracie finding a turtle, hubby running that backhoe again,  Schatzie checking out the new improved swimming hole, 5 blue bird eggs, a big stick, and  who knows what Gracie was looking at....

It was a busy week, the garden is all in, 6 trees transplanted, berry bushes planted~~now it can rain.
Tomorrow, Molly and I take a road trip to check out a possible "furever" home for her...as for me, I think it might be a day of tears...both happy and sad!!
Have a great weekend everyone...

Thursday, April 26

Monday, April 23

Really....


A busy day planned for us...we will catch you all later!!

Sunday, April 22

Photo Dump

Happy Earth Day!!

A couple days late with my weekly photo dump....
L to R : Hoppy Cat, Come on Molly, we're waiting,  Bailey Cat, 
A dripping Schatzie,  wadding Gracie, silly Molly

***the cats belong to the neighbors***

Saturday, April 21

I LOVE my security system....

This is my Homeland Security System....
don't believe me???
just try and break in...

One alarm...
Two alarm...

3 alarm


Thursday, April 19

What's up DUCK...

One never knows what you are going
 to encounter around this "ranch"  
As I was traveling to work yesterday, hubby called and told me he was in the bathroom and looked out the window to see a DUCK in the tree!!   "A duck!"  I exclaimed, "Did you get a picture??"  and the answer was YES!!!  A shot of a  very charming wood duck.
can you find the female???

Handsome fellow


Pelican Update...
I have received a couple emails somewhat skeptical of my really seeing PELICANS in Nebraska (all in good fun:)  I would never kid about pelicans in Nebraska.
Last saturday before the big storm arrived I risked life and limb to capture these shots. 
Well not really, but do you know how difficult it is to sneak up on 200--yes, 200 pelicans in the rain?!?!?

Here's a few shots of those pelicans on the neighbor's pond. 
this is about 1/2 of them, had to zoom in so you can tell they are PELICANS!!

Yep, they're pelicans..


Got spooked and away they went...
Linking to Camera Critters

Tuesday, April 17

Do you know...

what baby animal is referred to as a "kit"??? Stay tuned and I'll give you the answer.


If you recall last week my hubby was busy burning the brush pile. He had finished burning most of the brush and he had one more item that needed to burn..... it was time to put the sprinkles on the cake, the cherry on top, the cool whip on the pie kinda moment. It was time to burn the vintage floral sofa that was part of his childhood and yes was part of our furniture until the present day sofa was purchased.  This old sofa has been sitting out near the brush pile for nearly two years and I am sure it was home to a number of critters.  I would never sit on it out there as I feared there was probably a family of snakes living under the cushions. Anyhow, hubby came to the house to get his camera and told me the sofa was in the burning pit....
Of course, I grabbed my camera and headed to the pit. He set the pit on fire and saw a small critter flee from the sofa. The little guy ran into the garden hose container (yes, we had the garden hose handy in case the fire got any crazy ideas)






As we watched the old sofa burn hubby opened the hose container and there sat a "kit".
Do you see him peeking out from under the reel house??
 Still peeking....

there he is...
All together now.....awwwww


Yes, this is a young mink....aka a "kit" Is he cute or what??

We did try to capture him,  hubby grabbed his welding gloves as I held Schatzie. He slowly opened the reel house and the little kit scampered away, headed right back to where the sofa had been. 
So we are hoping that he made it safely back to momma.






Monday, April 16

Remember that skunk....


Told you I would tell you a story about my experience on saturday during our storm.  Well....during the storm there was a bit of a lull in the rain allowing hubby and me to venture out to investigate the dirt work that had been done around 3 of the 4 ponds on the property.  This work was done to keep the water in the pond, instead of running out the rusty old overflow tubes.  Hubby was checking out the main pond (its the pond with the waterfall shot from the last post)


 It was sprinkling slightly, so I grabbed the camera cape(this cape played an important part in the story) and threw on my hooded raincoat (with no dogs, thank goodness:)  then I headed over the hill and through the mud to the south pond. 

 This is Pond #2--filled nicely

Upon my arrival I found the #4 pond filled to the brim with water (1st time ever, the dirt work worked!!)
Beautiful reflections....
 A very cool looking pond...I think

The sun had peaked out just a bit allowing for some awesome reflections shots. Needless to say I started snapping away. As I was snapping the following  photo..... you can see it's starting to sprinkle a little heavier, so I threw my hood over my head and fumbled with the camera which of course was in it's nice camera cape. That's when it happened!!! I heard some rustling in the grass ( think you know what's coming :/...  because I had my hood up my peripheral vision was obstructed, I just figured it was the neighbors dog who comes over to visit us quite often. I continued to wrestle with my camera and the camera cape to capture the greatest photo ever (NOT)  I just keep clicking until I turned to my left and saw.......

 MR. SKUNK waddling toward me...I thought, get a photo of him, but.... I couldn't, my camera was all tangled up inside the stupid camera cape, I froze, I was  PETRIFIED!! In those few seconds I was remembering Skunk 101 ---these critters can spray 15ft and I was less than 10 feet from him. I was doomed. I just knew I was going to be walking back to the house smelling to high heaven and then having to bathe in Nature's Miracle....oh, this is not going to end well....
As I stood there waiting for the worst, under my breath I was praying "please don't spray me, please don't spray me!!" To my amazement,  Mr. Skunk just zoomed by me running down the side of the pond into a hole and I never saw him again. I don't even think he saw me....really...can't believe the crisis was averted!! As I was regaining my composure, hubby arrived, I gave him the details of the encounter and guess what he asked????  "Did you get a picture of the SKUNK?"  Argh.....

I didn't get any shots of the skunk---spray or photo.
Bet you didn't expect this ending did ya!!???  :)



My next post will be about me asking hubby if he took a picture of his little critter encounter last friday!!
Til then, enjoy your day!

Sunday, April 15

Survived the storm...

Yesterday the Weather Channel predicted that our area was in for some nasty weather. In fact, they gave us a Tor-Con rating of 8 to 9.  Meaning we were pretty much assured tornadoes would be part of our day. I didn't leave the ranch yesterday to observe if there were any "Storm Chasers" around, cuz that's a sure sign you're going to have some tornado action. However, Weather Channels Jim Cantore,  was in Lincoln, so that meant it was going to be serious. Serious enough that the annual RED/WHITE game was cancelled.  60,000 people attending a PRACTICE football game in dangerous weather would not be a good thing. Gotta admit those Husker fans are devoted ones!!

Anyhow, I spent most of the day gathering items that I felt would be needed in case we needed to make the mad dash to the cellar :)  All the cameras were charged. Hard drives, lap tops, that special notebook with all your important numbers, a couple changes of clothes, raincoats, shoes, water, dog food, leashes, my purse, hubby's wallet, and a few other items were all placed in the camping cooler. I thought the cooler was a good idea--you can sit on it and everything inside should remain dry--at least that was my plan.
Think hubby rolled his eyes at me a couple times as I was preparing... but ya just never know. I'm glad my efforts were for not.
Shot taken at beginning of rain

our own waterfall...rain runoff from the fields above the pond.
 Pond rose around 3 feet!
 We were in dire need of rain


Gracie telling me I need to come in and get out of the rain.

Water ready for a possible power outage, bath tub was also filled.

Cooler packed with needed items. 

Our safe spot is behind this freezer--under the stairs
as you can see also had towels and blankets
dog water and bowls, we were READY!!
Our weather radio went off a number of times warning us of flash flooding and thunderstorms. We were fortunate that at least we didn't any tornado warnings for our immediate area. I think it was around 1 a.m. when the world outside finally calmed down, the storm had passed.  We were blessed with 2.5 inches of rain, very little wind and NO TORNADO!!

Tomorrow I will share my story about taking photos after the storm!!

Friday, April 13

Pelicans....



Okay, I really can't believe I am going to share this story, but I know my blogging friend Sandra at Mapsnapper will get a HUGE laugh from this craziness. Tuesday as I was in the bathroom preparing to get ready for work I glanced out the bathroom window and saw some very large birds flying overhead.  I go running out of the bathroom yelling for my hubby to come look out the front door at the big birds. Now mind you, I have just gotten out of the shower and am wrapped in my towel, hair dripping wet, but of course I grabbed my camera as I exited the house.  I am standing in our front yard taking photos of PELICANS wrapped in a towel!!
Oh my dear Lord, I have gone mad!! (Sandra, I can hear you laughing:) My shots are not so good, but I thought the story is kinda funny. Anyhow, here a couple of shots of pelicans flying overhead in Nebraska. I suppose the funny shot would have been me standing in a towel taking photos of the pelicans--thank goodness hubby doesn't leave his camera on the kitchen table!!
P.S. so glad we live in the country otherwise I might just might need to get counseling!!

Thursday, April 12

Clean Up Continues....

Clean up continues here on the "ranch"  Hubby has cleaned the tree row of metal debris and old wood. Today was "burning day".  We have a large burning pit out back and  I looked outside to see it raining and hubby  had a fire blazing. So, I did what every crazy photo blogger would do....I grabbed the camera, reached for my rain coat and jumped into my boots for today's photo frenzy.
A very welcomed rain...

Drops of rain on our pond

reminded me of the lava flow on the Big Island of Hawaii

So toasty warm

the rain gave our young maple tree a refreshing shower...

the orange glow in the middle of the shot is the fire...was experimenting with the camera, I like it!!

Love the various colors....

Friday, April 6

Metal Scrap Yard Trip...

Yesterday was a first for me as I was able to tag along with the boys to the metal scrapyard!! I can now proudly cross that event off my bucket list :)
 
A little history about the reason for the trip to the scrap yard. You see, in May of 2004 a F4 tornado went thru our property (we don't own it then, but our friend did) Experts say that there were at least 2 massive tornadoes with several smaller ones inside the huge cell. These tornadoes were on the ground for 52 miles and cut a swath of destruction almost 2.5 miles wide. Our property took a direct hit, destroying all the out buildings, leaving our little stone house with severe damage, but it was standing.  At the time of the tornado our property was all grass and pasture land. Our friend (owner of the property at that time) spent years picking up debris from the storm.

Last spring we decided to farm a portion of the property and in this neck of the woods they are able to do control burns to rid the land of the grass. With all the grass burned off it revealed another chapter in the tornado story. Before the crop went in last year we spent hours picking up more debris, including, wood, roofing metal, toys, frying pans, pots, a bag full of snakes :(  You name it we found it. It was sad  knowing  that all these items were once part of someones life and now it was piled up in a heap here on the ranch.

Yesterday the boys loaded up the trailer and away we went with our "tornado junk". 
The following photos are how I saw it....The ScrapYard Trip!
The Capitol Building in Lincoln
yes, even a kitchen sink!!

Mass of wire

mattress springs

removing copper wiring

Hubby doing what he loves...

the heap

old tire and rim
 Following photos taken at the Metal ScrapYard
the claw

adding to the metal pile

old and forgotten
working hands

wanting for the pay out...

another load headed to the pile

payout in hand




for a job well done....

Once we returned home the boys headed back out in search of more treasure