Monday, September 1, 2014

A Year in Photos

There is a lot to catch up on, so this is a year in pictures...

Our Miracle Worker cutting steel pipe for fencing... In cattle country, it is the property owner's responsibility to fence out cattle, not the cattleman's job.  So, this will create a nice delineation of the property one day.

We had tomatoes in great abundance last year, so I decided it was time to try my hand at making jam.  Oh, tomato jam is the best!  You must try it, and on homemade pancakes!

 
 Our watermelon was greatly anticipated all year long.  It was worth the wait!



Since the tomato jam was a perfect delight, I decided we needed to harvest our prickly pears and make cactus jelly.  By the way, this is only a tiny sampling of the number of cactus pears needed to make an 8-jar-batch!

Delicious.

 Our homeschool moved along without a hitch.
 
To keep myself somewhat sane, I had to do some creative work.  These are stamps I designed and carved myself.

Craft cards stamped with some of my designs.


This is one of my favorite watercolors, a black throated-sparrow.  The watercolor painting is 2 1/2" x 3 1/2".

This is characteristic of my bookworm, reading is one of his pleasures!
 
A school 'field-trip' to our Grand Canyon.  That's one of the beauties of homeschooling, you can have a very flexible schedule and go in off-seasons to places like this!

Love apples and apple trees.  We plan to plant a small orchard of various varieties in the near future.

A swallow-tail butterfly sipping in the moist garden soil. 

My little herpetologist, doing what he loves!

Installing our water lines, which took a good month to accomplish since we put in about 700 feet worth of trenches.  All total, including electrical lines, we put in about 2800 feet worth pipe.  And we're just getting started!

Erecting poles for our homestead entrance, which will someday have a nice sign designating who we are.

That's us!

Burning off piles of accumulated dried shrubbery after a major rainstorm.

A view from under our native trees on the property.
You tend to love trees in desert climates!
Notice our fence (complements of MW) is starting to go in!

And here is a metate my oldest found on the side of our driveway.  What a find!  It must have been uncovered when Miracle Worker ran his road grader through to put in the driveway.
 
The dogs helping themselves to a drink of rainwater.

Miracle Worker discovered 'Frog Heaven' (after Duck Dynasty's Jase's comment of having found frog heaven), so he brought the family to see.  Much to the delight of the boys, they got to attempt catching frogs.

...And kissing frogs!
He wasn't too receptive to the idea, much as he loves herps.


And that, my friends is a brief photo journal of the past year or so!

There is so much more to come.  It is an on-going adventure of a life-time, literally.  These things do NOT happen over night!
Thanks for stopping by!

2 comments:

  1. Well that all looks like wonderful progress on all fronts my friend! I was so excited to see this post in my feed this evening. ;) Love coming here to read-- seem to always learn something.
    today it was "metate" a new on me! Do you ever find arrow heads there on your property?
    love the herpetologists expression in that last photo!

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  2. Hi Patricia, thank you so much for visiting! We haven't found arrowheads, but this metate is the third or fourth we've found out here on the mountain.

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