Beans!

The Bag Lady has been pickling! She has a bumper crop of beans this year, and has been working at preserving the bounty. Mustard beans, dilled beans (both green and yellow) and dilled carrots.... so far. She still has some beans to put up, then more carrots.
The zucchini is growing, too. Mustard pickles using zucchini sound good, don't they?

Photo Finish Friday - Haying

 It's that time of year again...........

Catching Up With the Bag Lady

Hello? Anyone there? (is there an echo in here?)

The Bag Lady has been really busy since she posted last, but the museum is finally open (and she has almost recovered from her state of near total collapse from exhaustion.)

She has been playing catch up with yard work and house work and all those fun summer things. Luckily, the Rancher stepped up and took care of the garden, tilling and hilling potatoes, and mowing the lawn. The Bag Lady was so busy, she didn't even have time to stroll though the local greenhouses to buy bedding plants, which is one of her most favourite activities! Consequently, she has only one tomato plant - a Cherokee Purple that she bought at Costco.

She has added trees to her yard. She purchased trees from the shelterbelt program (exactly what it sounds like - trees to plant as  a windbreak) and so far, most of them seem to be surviving. Someday, she may be able to harvest some berries from them. Chokecherries, Nanking Cherries and Sea Buckthorn. All will make good jelly. And the birds like them, too.

A neighbour brought her some lilac bushes, too! She's had a lovely time landscaping and deciding where to put things. These are purple lilacs - the neighbour promised some white ones, too, when she digs up the ones that have suckered into another of her flowerbeds. The Bag Lady saved a spot for those! In a few years, if all goes well, her fire pit in the back yard will be surrounded by lilac bushes.

This has apparently been a perfect year for strawberries! The Bag Lady planted a couple of strawberry plants in her flower bed many years ago, and over the years, they have reproduced and spread a little. But she has never seen as many runners as there are this year! Upon closer inspection, some of the plants appear to be wild strawberries (which are teensy tiny, but packed with flavour!) and the runners from those plants are, well, running wild!
 So, that pretty much catches you up with what the Bag Lady has been doing. She'll leave you with a  few pictures from a little country rodeo she attended last weekend.....

AAAAAND...... THERE'S THE HORN AND THEY'RE OFF!

And yes, the young woman driving this wagon won the race!

Photo Finish Friday. Mulish

The Bag Lady is feeling the crunch a bit. A couple years ago, she volunteered to be the curator of the new museum built in her little community. She regretted it as soon as she sobered up had a pretty easy first year (because the museum had no artifacts), but items started trickling in, then the trickle grew to a full-bore flood and the Bag Lady fell behind in her accessioning. She finally found an assistant, and they have been working their butts off, accessioning items, setting up displays, organizing dioramas, restoring and cleaning (cleaning, cleaning), painting and repairing donated display cabinets..... and they have (perhaps foolishly) set a date for opening to the public. In a month. Actually, a month from yesterday. gulp.

So she is probably going to be even more absent from blogging than she has been (which sounds almost impossible, because she's been pretty scarce around here!) but she will try to pop in once in awhile to see if anyone is hanging around.

She will leave you with a photo to remember her by, though....

This is one of her neighbours with his mule team. Aren't they adorable?

Photo Finish Friday, Bonus Edition

 The Bag Lady has been so busy, she hasn't had time to update you on all the calves being born, so here are a few of the newest.

This white cow had a red/white faced calf

This red/white faced cow had a white calf!

This little girl arrived early the next morning

And the following day, this guy arrived

This guy is only a few minutes old

And if you look in the dictionary under cute, you'll find this picture!

Just in case the Bag Lady missed some, here's a group photo!

The girls definitely outnumber the boys this year, although there are still about 6 cows that haven't calved, so the numbers may even out a little yet.

Oh, and here is the bonus picture (might have to click to enlarge it.... unless that no longer works with the new Blogger interface!)

Hawk

 This hawk spent so long on the ground in the same position that the Bag Lady finally went to see whether it was injured. S/he was fine; simply guarding the afterbirth buffet. S/he allowed the Bag Lady to get fairly close before reluctantly flying off to a nearby tree. The Bag Lady trudged back to the house and when she looked out the window awhile later, the hawk was back on the ground!
Photo Finish Friday can totally be blamed on Leah at the Goat's Lunch Pail!

More Calf Pictures

Yesterday morning, the Bag Lady watched as one of the cows calved. (Not unusual, considering it's calving season on the ranch!) The cow had been wandering the ranch, looking for a suitable spot, with another cow dutifully following along behind. She finally settled on the perfect place and got down to business.  The Bag Lady strolled down a little later and took a picture:

Late in the afternoon, she glanced out the window and saw the cow still in the same spot, still licking her calf..... then thought to herself, "wait! That's a newborn calf....."
The cow that had been following the first cow had decided that the spot chosen was absolutely perfect, so had her calf in the same place! The confusion arose because, at a glance, the cows are identical. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that, although the cows are very similar in appearance, the calves are quite different. They may be the same colour, but the one born in the morning is a female and the later one is male.

And one more tiny difference.... the calf born in the morning has two white feet and a teensy tiny white mark on her face!

The Bag Lady is having difficulty deciding what the mark looks like.... what do you think it resembles?

Photo Finish Friday - Random Ranch Photos

Here are a couple more calves that have made their debuts recently.....

"Lift butt, then bring front feet under .... at least, that's how it worked last time!"

"Another photo? Sheesh, I'm napping!"

"Why are you ignoring me?" (calf from last year)

The sun rises out of the tractor?

( Leah at the Goat's Lunch Pail is totally to blame for Photo Finish Friday!)