Month: May 2020

It’s been interesting to look at the COVID statistics for different states over the past few months, particularly as things start to “reopen”. In Montana, to date there have been a total of sixteen deaths, which is impressive compared with the 48 other states (only Alaska has fewer). Today I was looking at the graph of deaths over time, and I noticed something troubling.

On April 3, one fewer person had died from the virus. Obviously that means someone was either resurrected, or has become an undead infectee. It’s either a miracle… or the start of a (very slow) zombie apocalypse.

We have a lot of things growing in our yard. A lot. Over the winter, when most of it was dormant, it was hard to know what was dead, what would come back, and which were weeds. Now that things are greening up, we’re starting to see some cool plants and flowers blossom.

On the eaves of the forest is a patch of… something. Maybe these are weeds, but they look cool.

We have some enormous flower beds along the sidewalk and courtyard, and a gazillion tiny flowers are appearing.

I was picking dandelions (they’re everywhere) and it seemed like a couple of honeybees were following me around. They seemed to like the dandies, and got a little frustrated when I kept pulling them up and tossing them into a bucket. One of my little friends gave up on the dandelions and decided to go for this little white flower instead (see him just right of center?).

Now we’re deciding which plants to pull. There are a lot of dead and half-dead ones, and a lot of others that are just plain ugly (and may very well be long-time weeds). Ahh, yard work…

This package came for Pepper today:

You can pretty much tell by the packaging that it’s gonna be amazing.

All over the Flathead Valley, the cherry trees are in full blossom. There was a bit of a scare with a late frost a few weeks ago, but it looks like the trees weathered it okay. Our orchard is looking great.

I know very little about how to grow cherries, but with some hired help, we’ll get through the season. I’m excited for late July, when they’ll be ripe and ready to pick!

Finally! After a long afternoon of working in the yard, I enjoyed a nice relaxing soak in the hot tub.

Mission accomplished!

A few weeks ago, Kyra and I did some prep work on the hot tub. At the time, things didn’t turn out so well, and we learned that the motor was kaput. After some research, I ordered a new one online. I also ordered the myriad of chemicals one needs to keep the water in balance, and then sat back to wait.

Over the last few days, the online orders have trickled in and now I have all the stuff I need. Kyra and I cleaned out the spa (again) and I installed the new motor. It proved to be all sorts of adventure, as house projects tend to be for me, but in the end everything seemed ready to go. I filled it with clean, crisp well water (again), set the temperature, and walked away.

To my delight, everything worked and the water warmed up. It’s currently sitting out there at a nice 102 degrees. I still need to play around with the chemicals, adjusting the pH and alkalinity and all that, but I’ll get it sorted out.

Tomorrow we plan to go out on the lake, and after a few hours of that cold water, I suspect a soak in the hot tub will be pretty nice. I’m looking forward to Hot tub, part 3.

When we moved to Montana last fall, the trees were just starting to turn color. The larch were absolutely stunning, practically glowing yellow against the dark green of the pine and fir. This was the view of our backyard last October:

Larch are the only coniferous trees to lose their needles during the winter months, and let me tell you, once they do… they’re ugly. They look dead, with a bunch of spindly branches.

But as spring comes around in earnest, they’re starting to bud and the light green leaves are, again, an interesting contrast against the other darker trees in the forest.

Pretty soon it’ll look like a real forest again!

One of my favorite things to do is go out to a restaurant for lunch or dinner. In the midst of all this coronavirus hullabaloo, I’ve missed that. We bought a bunch of gift cards from local restaurants, just to provide them some support while they were closed. Now that Montana (and much of the country) is re-opening, it’s time to use those cards!

On Monday, we started out with lunch at Cove Pizza in Polson. We were the only ones in the restaurant, which felt a little weird.

Then it was dinner at Outback Steakhouse in Missoula. (No, we didn’t drive an hour and a half to Missoula just for that… we happened to be in the city anyway.)

On Wednesday, Kyra and I took a jaunt up to Bigfork for lunch at Rosa’s Pizza. (But I forgot to snap a photo…)

Today we were up in Kalispell, so we dropped in at Mackenzie River Pizza.

Everyone was being respectful of social distancing and all that, so it seemed fine. I’m excited for things to (gradually) return to some sense of normalcy.

It’s been several weeks, but the house painting is finally finished. The crew we hired took a little over two weeks to handle the walls and cathedral ceiling, and then we took over to paint a few rooms without high walls. Add a few more days to “air out” the house and clear the paint fumes, and here we are. We’ve officially moved back into the main house, which was kind of funny because we had to pack up our stuff at the party house (where we’d been living), bring it across, and unpack it. Then we had to set up all the furniture again, since it had been moved and tarped during the painting. It was almost like moving again… okay, maybe not quite that bad.

In any case, after all the hassle, it looks pretty dang great. The mint green is gone, the horses are gone, and the color accents the wood trim well.