Memorial Day weekend.

Miss C called us from Yellowstone this week...... I could just see her bouncing up and down on the other end of the phone. She's 'having a blast!'...... C absolutely loves it up there, and the job suits her----- animals, the outdoors, riding horses, and wherever you look, there's something beautiful to see.  My husband was right years ago.... when the two of us went to Yellowstone, he said that C would love it in that park.  She is already thinking about taking a winter job in Yellowstone.... snow-mobiles, cross-country skiing, and I'm wondering if they do the horse-riding tours during the winter..... probably not, because the snow must be awfully deep there.

We had to search for Mickey the other day...... couldn't find that cat anywhere....... turns out that he got himself up into the rafters of the barn.  My theory is that something must have scared him during the night, or maybe he chased a possum or armadillo into the barn.... but he ended up somehow in the rafters and couldn't get down. How he got up there is beyond me.... his front paws were de-clawed years ago (and no, I would never do that again to a cat). While I searched around the house and the cottage, my husband checked the barn.... and he heard him meowing from way up high.  My husband got Mickey by climbing up a ladder and literally carrying him down. Then I carried Mickey all the way to the house. Poor cat was exhausted, and hungry and thirsty.  So now, Mickey goes into the coop at night.  I think Mickey is finding out that his bad bathroom habits which got him demoted to an outside cat gave him some much-desired freedom that may not have been exactly what he wanted.

We're still  gardening.... more garden fabric in the flowerbeds between the cottage and the barn....... all those rose bushes....... then more mulch. There is never enough mulch, and we'll be spreading mulch from now till our last days, I think. Then there's trim-trimming to be done....... my husband borrowed a chain-saw thing on a long pole. He'll cut the branches and then we'll carry them off into the pasture and start a new brush-pile for the birds.  The smaller birds are nesting in the brush-piles that are already established. We can see them flying in and out of the piles..... and we can also see the hawks circling those piles, waiting for a careless bird that's not looking up.

Speaking of birds..... we're sharing the porch with the barn swallows again.  The swallows come back to their old nests, re-built them a little bit, lay their eggs and raise their baby birds.  The birds who've been here a while have come to recognize us, and they don't fly away when we go past their nests. The baby birds just look at us as we walk by..... they are just so darn cute.  The mama birds are still zooming past Mickey when he's on the porch.  The birds are used to Gatsby, but Mickey has to earn the birds' trust before they'll leave him alone.

We'll be trimming tree branches today... another day without nail polish. Oh well.