Cloudy with a chance of rainbows

The weather report called for only a small chance of rain yesterday afternoon.

That was enough, apparently, for quite a downpour. I won't go so far as to call it a gully-washer, but it was a steady heavy rain that lasted several hours. Just before sunset, the sun broke through and made for some gorgeous conditions.

The sun shone through a small break in the clouds, lighting up all the rain. The result, inevitably, was a gorgeous double rainbow.

The sun shone through the wet trees, making them magical.

If you look carefully, you can see the rain still coming down in this photo.

A herd of deer across the road didn't seem to mind the wet. Not that they had much of a choice...

A shaft of sunlight lit up this little lady.

Mr. Darcy tracked her intently.

The whole spectacle must have lasted fifteen minutes before the sun finally set.

This morning, no surprise, was foggy, though early sun shone through and lit up the yard, including the bird feeder.

We needed the rain, so I'm glad the weather didn't listen to the weather report.

Come what may, we live here

I don't know about you, but the news has been very depressing lately. We don't have television, of course; and even radio reception in our area is scant. But the internet is a window into every woe in the world, and sometimes it can get to be a very big downer to scan the headlines in the morning while drinking my tea.

So this morning, after reading something particularly heinous, I looked out the window at all the song birds attracted to the feeder, and realized something very, very important:

Come what may, we live here.

Seriously, our modest little home on modest little acreage has become – in just the four months we've lived here – a haven against all the turmoil and chaos in the wider world.

We have so many plans for this place. We're working on projects and improving the infrastructure to turn our acreage into another self-sufficient homestead. Whenever the rest of the world seems to be spinning out of control, we have to mentally withdraw and focus on what we can change, not on what we can't.

There is a certain peace that comes with letting go of things we can't control (which, of course, is what the Serenity Prayer is all about). When I see a particularly egregious headline, I look out the window and admire the Cassin's finches or lesser goldfinches or evening grosbeaks gathering at the bird feeder, and take a deep breath.

Come what may, we live here.

Backup backup backup backup

After a couple of years of waiting for it to happen, it finally happened: my faithful laptop died.

By the grace of God, we had ordered a replacement laptop back in January for just such an occasion. I even got it "pre-set-up" for what I needed, and then tucked it away.

Yesterday my old laptop froze. And I mean froze. Totally dead in the water. I finally turned it off cold (which I hate doing) and re-booted. After that it worked fine. I should have backed it up at that time, but I didn't. My last backup was April 3.

This morning my laptop worked fine, until once again it froze. Again, totally dead in the water. This time I had unavoidable job commitments and couldn't mess around, so I transitioned to my new laptop immediately. We were able to get the old laptop to run long enough for me to back up my materials (writing, photos, etc.), so nothing was lost.

My dear father is one the one who spent many years hammering into my head "Back up back up back up back up." He is right.

Back up your computer. You will be glad you did.

Cotton candy season

Now that spring has arrived, all the anonymous bare trees around here are exploding into bloom.

Even the tiniest branches are a frothy mass of delicate blossoms.

As for distant hillsides, it looks like cotton candy piled on the slopes underneath the towering conifers.

This (apparently) is an apple tree on our property.

At the moment, it is loaded with blossoms.

But elsewhere (apparently) we're seeing wild plums.

The blossoms are so abundant that they pile up on the sides of the road.

It's all so unspeakably beautiful.

Cotton candy season won't last long, so we'll enjoy it while we can.

Honestly, who needs cattle?

I've mentioned over and over again how many deer we have around us here in our new place. Several times I've glanced out the window and my first thought is, "Cows." As in, livestock are grazing in the pasture. Which, in a way, they are.

We'll have whole herds just hang around, lounging in the field, resting or grazing.

They seem very much at ease, and in fact are quite fearless.

Many times they'll be right outside our windows.

I like deer, and since at the moment we have nothing they can destroy (such as a garden), I don't get annoyed with them. Really, it's like having a herd of tiny cattle all over the place. Pity they can't be milked.

Until such time as we have cattle competing with them, we'll just enjoy the sights.

Potting peaches

Since we're starting out fresh here in our new home with the goal of turning the property into a self-sufficient homestead, one of our priorities is getting fruit trees established since they take a long time to become productive.

Apparently (and we can't quite tell yet since things still aren't quite blooming) we already have apples and pears – somewhere on the property – so we're hoping that's the case.

But my all-time, hands-down favorite fruit is peaches, so we wanted to get some trees established right away.

 

An advantage to purchasing fruit trees from local nurseries is they focus on varieties that thrive under local conditions. At the tail end of some other errands (which meant the car was full), we hit a nearby nursery and selected four very young peach trees that are resistant to peach-leaf curl. Since we couldn't take them with us at that moment, we paid for them and returned later to pick them up.

The trees were heeled into the ground and for some reason I thought the nursery was going to pot them for us. Instead, we got bare-root trees with the roots wrapped in plastic bags. (To be honest, this didn't impress me.)

By lucky coincidence I had just picked up some potting soil the day before...

...as well as some 10-gallon pots. Phew. This meant we could at least get the trees potted quickly until such time as we can get them in the ground.

The four varieties we got are Oregon Curl-Free:

Charlotte:

We also got an Avalon Pride and a Frost (no tags to photograph, sorry).

We got some potting soil poured into the pots, and placed the young trees in them.

Then we straightened the trees, filled the rest of the pot with soil, packed it down, and gave everything a good watering.

Obviously this is just a temporary arrangement. But we can't just dig a hole and plop these young trees in the ground. We have so many deer around here that the tender young buds would be munched down instantly.

Instead we're planning the first of what we're calling "nuclear fencing" to keep deer and elk away from these valuable plantings. This also means we have to weigh our budget and the lumber shortage against  various fencing options, Right now we're looking to build a "tent" of heavy-duty netting over salvaged poles to keep deer out of the trees until they're older.

I'll keep you posted on how this works out. But at least for now, the peaches are potted on the porch and safe from deer.