Spring in Minnesota . . . do the water droplets give you a clue??? It's been wet . . . but we've still been having fun!

Doesn't the saying go . . . April showers bring May flowers? Well, here's what May showers bring. Here are some very small lady slippers that are blooming in the ditches right now . . . the wild flowers around here have been blooming like crazy. Every time the dogs and I walk the Bowstring trail we find new flowers we've never seen before. Very seldom do my pictures do them justice, but I thought this photo was one to share. We are awaiting the blooming of the large pink Lady Slippers that just fascinated me last year - I had never seen so many in one spot, they usually bloom around the 4th of July.

With all the rain and cool temperatures we kept postponing the planting of the vegetable garden. The previous owners here had had a vegetable garden, but had let the sod take over, so our neighbor borrowed us a good old fashioned pull behind plow . . . so all Dean needed was a tractor. See the photo below, he didn't find a tractor but thought our little Toyota Tacoma could do the job and it did! We plowed, then borrowed a pull behind disc, so after lots of driving around in circles our garden was ready to plant. By using the truck as a tractor we ended up plowing a lot of extra ground. We planted all sorts of goodies though and we put in a LOT of pumpkin seeds in the area leftover after we planted the veggies.

We ended up planting 20 lbs of seed potatoes . . . I'm hoping we'll be successful with them. This property many years ago was a potato farm, so something tells me they may all grow if the deer, geese and woodchucks let them. We planted all the standard fare . . . beans, peas, lettuce, carrots, radishes, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, spinach and LOTS of pumpkins. Everything is coming up nicely, now if we could only have some dry and warm weather. It has been raining steady for the past couple of days. Today they are forecasting 1/2" an hour! Once the rain stops - let the weeding begin! The house came with a root cellar so I'm looking forward to putting something in it. I made rhubarb jam for the first time this past week, and that was fun.

Despite the rain we have had some sunny days here and there. LuAnn, Jorge, Derek and Nicole camped about an hour away from us over Memorial Day weekend. So on a "rain day" they came up to the house to stay dry. Upon their arrival the sun came out, so the kids enjoyed an afternoon of four wheelin' on the trails. After dinner we set out to do some Geo Caching. For those of you who've yet to hear about this sport, I'll fill you in. People hide "treasures" (usually a rubbermaid container filled with things you'd find in your junk drawer - nothing of real value, key chains, pencils, toothbrushes, toys from happy meals, fishing lures, that kind of thing, it will also have a log book in it and sometimes a disposable camera), anyway the person that hides the treasure will make note of the GPS coordinates and post them on www.geocache.com. Anyone can go on the site put in their zip code and the geo caches (treasure) in your area will pop up. If you have a GPS then you enter the coordinates into it, and follow it's directions to get you to the "treasure". We did a little geo caching in WI, and have taken it up again here in MN. Anyway we thought Derek and Nicole would enjoy the "hunt". We printed out three in our area, and set out to search. We ended up not finding the first two treasures, so we were a little disheartened. But Nicole wouldn't let us give up! She said we'd search until after dark if we had too! Such enthusiasm!!!!!!

Well, they say the third time is the charm! Here we are with the third cache. It was hidden in the deep dark woods, but Nicole found it with the help of Derek's good GPS reading. When you find a cache you must write in the log book. Then you can feel free to take something from the box, as long as you replace it with something. It was a hard choice for Nicole but she ended up taking a plastic leopard :) We added hand warmers and a small bottle of soap . . . things you might really need in the woods in MN :) We had a lot of fun! This last weekend we went in search of a "dog" cache, which had dog treats and toys in the container. It too was hidden in the deep dark woods. This is a great way to learn to use your GPS and realize how accurate they truly are.

We've been doing a lot of fishing, come rain or shine. When in Minnesota you have to do as the Minnesotans, so we've been Walleye fishing a lot. Here we are with Lonnie and Teresa, they live on Lake Winnibegosh and live and breath fishing. They've taken us out twice now and we've caught our limit both times. Winnie has a slot limit this year, so we've had to throw some real nice fish back - but it's been fun to fill out and have fish frys each time we go. This last weekend we perfected the art of fishing with a worm and single hook . We're looking forward to the time when the Bass begin to bite. We have a lot of wilderness lakes near us that we'll begin to fish then. They are beautiful and for the most part you only have to share the lake with a Loon couple or a beaver. On Winnie you have to share the lake with a LOT of fishermen!

Here is Miss Millie awaiting her "prey" - poor Mr Meow. Mr Meow is one of my parent's cats, which we took care of while they were in CA this spring. Millie loved to "babysit" Mr Meow while he was out in the yard. Nothing kept Millie in line like Mr Meow, she was so focused on him she couldn't get into any other mischief.

It's been a fun spring with the dogs . . . we've had the bad times - porcupine quills to pull out, and an encoounter with a skunk. But we've had lots of good times too - Millie swam across the Mississippi river at Lake Itasca, Solo has learned that he loves Vanilla ice cream on a spoon, they've been out in my parent's boat, just to name a few new experiances for retired sled dogs. They are finally enjoying a truck ride! They really didn't care for that until just recently.

We've had a pair of geese raise a small family on our ponds, they have four goslings. Millie chases them every so often to keep them on their toes! Yikes! She's also been having fun mouse, snake and turtle hunting. She is a busy 3 year old.

We are enjoying the ponds and the fields this time of year, they abound with wildlife - muskrat, ducks, herons, geese, eagles, etc. We have Barn Swallows nesting everywhere, plus Bluebirds, Hummingbirds, Cedar Waxwings and Finches.