Early June Update (And a Bear!)

I'm sorry for the long spell with no updates folks. When the weather warms up finally, there is just so much to do! Around my house, and with several of my other jobs. And with daylight from 5 am to nearly 10 pm, that doesn't leave many hours for computer work and sleep once I come inside. :) So thanks for your patience! Here's three videos from the past week though so you can catch up a bit.

The weather has indeed warmed up after our last snow fall about two weeks ago. And now all that 700+ inches of snow from this winter is coming down out of the mountains and flooding a lot of the low lying areas. 

Then a look around my garden now that I finally have everything planted, and much of it starting to grow. If the weather cooperates and we don't get too many freezes and snow storms through the summer, I might even get a lot of food! That's the hope anyway.

And one warm evening I did stop for long enough to host a dinner for several old friends. It ended up being a perfect evening for grilling outside and hanging out around the fire and chatting and catching up on life.

My friend Amy, at 9 months pregnant, came over and hung out and chatted while I worked around the garden one morning. She's since given birth to a beautiful little baby girl!

Some more shots of dinner with friends.

It doesn't look like much now, but there are a lot of tiny little plants coming up in the garden!

And then I had a very close encounter with a bear! While gardening. Unfortunately there are no photos of the bear since I had my hands full of dirt and weeds not my camera, and we were both quite startled! (This is the kind of stories I save for all you faithful blog followers. :) ) 

After running a few early morning errands a couple days ago, I returned to my house. I headed over to the garden to pull a few weeds and check on what seeds had germinated overnight. As I neared the far end of the garden, I thought I'd just walk over to the water tank and rinse the dirt off my hands. About 15 feet away, I suddenly heard a crashing noise. There is a lot of brush and berry bushes at that end of the clearing, so I stopped walking and looked for a deer or something similar that must have come inside the fence while I'd run out for a few minutes. Instead of a deer, elk, or moose, what I saw come out of the bushes was a coal black bear head! He was headed right for the back fence only a few feet away and I saw him hit it pretty hard. Being unsure of wether he'd break through, or get stuck and feel trapped, I quickly headed the opposite direction, for the house. Fortunately he did break down the fence (a deer mesh secured to T posts with zip ties) and scampered off through the woods far faster than I could grab my camera. 

When I later looked to see what he'd been doing back there in the brush, I realized he'd been tearing up one of the large ant hills and eating all their grubs. It's a bit hard to tell from the photo, but this ant hill stands over two feet high. You can see the side he had torn all apart and he must have had his head so busy in there that he never even glanced up or heard me until I was that close. In the days since his visit, the busy little ants have mostly repaired the damage and put their home back together! I re-affixed the fence and have not seen him since, but it's always kind of amazing to know there are big critters like that around. 

And yes, for those who are concerned about my safety, I do keep bear spray right beside my door and do have a gun should I ever need it. Neither one has ever been necessary so far, and I hope it stay that way. I do love seeing all the wildlife that lives in and travels through the woods around my house.