4 July 2010

We got home early this week from our trip to Idaho. We spent Sunday with Sarah, Joe and Zina's family. Sophie really loved Zina's chickens. We also got to see Zina's 4H pig, Leon. He seemed pretty happy playing with his other piggy pals in the pig pen.

Joe likes to hunt and he had a new trophy since our last visit-- a rug made from the skin of a cougar. The cougar normally hangs out downstairs, but Joe put him on the floor upstairs so the kids could look at it up close. This year Joe drew tags for an elk and a bear. We'll check back with him in the fall to see how he did.

Abe, Helen, Zina and Sophie built a hotel for fairies in a tree behind their house. They gave us a tour of the hotel and showed how the rooms and beds were cleverly camouflaged in the branches and leaves of the tree.

Back at home, it was back to work. Before we left on our trip, we had an arborist look at 2 trees in our yard that appeared to be dying. The arborist confirmed our fears and recommended we take them out. Brandan cut the trees down on Saturday. The photo shows our 40 foot eucalyptus toppling down. Thanks to Sophie and Abe's help, Brandan took the trees down without damaging the neighbor's van, the fence, our other landscaping, or themselves.

Here's a photo of Brandan amid the carnage. He also cut down our chitalpa. The chitalpa tree used to bloom with big pink flowers in the summer and we will miss watching hummingbirds flitting around it. Now we're looking for new varieties of trees to replace the ones we lost.