Junuary 2008

Stardate 061008

Last night the wind blew, the air got colder, it started to rain, and we turned on the heat pump. This morning while preparing breakfast, looking out the kitchen window, the clouds began to lift off the mountains, and there was a fresh snow cover at the 3000' level.

Yep, there is fresh snow on them thar hills today.

Our weather has been a bit screwy this spring. Much more cool and damp than usual. We have had only three wonderful weekend breaks of spring/ summer like weather when the temperatures went into the 80's and 90's.
This year we have had a few warm weekdays with the temperatures in the lower 70's, but by week's end we have more rain and cool temperatures move across the area.

What we thought a few weeks ago might be our last night by the backyard fireplace, turned out not to be. Over the past couple of weeks we have had a number of evenings just sitting by the fire, enjoying - watching the sunset.

Last week we begin working in our garden by putting in nice transplants on Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday it begin pouring rain as we were covering the plants with soil. Thursday I begin to plant seeds (radish, beet, carrot, lettuce, swiss chard, etc.) and yesterday I was planting bean and corn seeds. Now I am looking for a row of 80 degree days to make things grow. This year we have Kevin Walker and his young family helping in the garden and as I told he and his wife last week, we have not lost any growing time this year since we have had mostly cool, damp weather up to now.

This morning we woke up to NPR news and the regional announcer made a comment along with the weather forecast that this season's weather appears to be more like Junuary than June. Please don't think we are complaining here... we will be glad for this Junuary weather when we get to July and August and the temperatures hit 100 degrees and there is no rain or snow insight.

With rain now falling, a breeze blowing, the furnace is running and Kittee taking it easy on her shoulder, we are thinking about taking in an afternoon matinee of the new Indy Jones movie.

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To finish this blog posting for the goings and comings of the rest of this day...

Kittee and I did make it over to Walla Walla to catch the mid-afternoon matinee of the Indiana Jones - Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. We found this movie to be very entertaining, and should be viewed on the big screen to center yourself into all the action. Wow, a lot of Steven Allen Spielberg action in this one.
After the movie it was time for dinner and our Northwest Quarter Horse Assoc. meeting in Walla Walla so we just motored across town to take care of this business. We had a good membership meeting this evening, but Kittee begin to feel the pain of sitting up all day so we had dinner and left the meeting early. We did learn at the meeting that there was 5" of fresh snowfall on Basket Mtn. and 14" on the mountains around the ranch today (see pictures above & below). The garden should have gotten well soaked by the heavy rains today, so we should see some seed/ planting development as soon as we get warm weather.
After getting home I went out, moved the horses and fed Rusty. As the sun was sinking slowly in the west I was able to get a few good pics of the sun on the mountains to our east and a rainbow that had formed to add colors to the golden hue at the end of this day.

We are so blessed by the Great Spirit to live in such a beautiful open air golden cathedral as ours. Some spring days as today we have rainbow braces on the sky. This past week we had 3 evenings with rainbows, of which two evenings were with double bows arching our Walla Walla River Canyon.

a day in the life at McKuster Ranch --- Dale