We had a lovely time helping Salicia celebrate her upcoming package of joy!

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails!
Cousins compare tummies!
Salicia got many lovely gifts!
Carter helped distribute the packages to Salicia, which worked up her appetite!

Summertime, and the livin's easy...

My wild yellow rose bush is lovely, as usual. Wish I had a matching pink one to go with it.
The two blue-eyed towheads camped on the living room floor last night -- don't think much sleep was had, however.

Four cousins horseback...

Carter comes to my house on Tuesdays and Thursday, and Bunny's varmints come any time they can escape the clutches of Simon Legree... The kids tried out a couple of different type of horsepower.

Cousins and cowponies...

Blake n Mikey and Sterling n Trigger... learning to ride the right way (by riding bareback to perfect balance)...

Farewell to a loyal and faithful friend...

Sometime Saturday evening, my faithful Border Collie Tuxie (whose parents were our good dogs Tucker & Tessie) curled up in one of our window wells and, from all outward appearances, had a heart attack and without any struggle crossed the Great Divide to join up with all my great dog companions from years past (Buck, Valentine, Tuck, Tessie, Denise, etc.). I found her quite soon after it happened, and Dick was kind enough to bury her in our shelter belt next to Denise and Dot. God's greatest gift to mankind, dogs simply don't live long enough. She was just fixing to turn 13, I think. She came as a puppy with us to Haley Bench. I miss her dreadfully.

The blessings of a good horse...

While Chance masters the art of swinging a BIG loop, his wonderful horse Joker stands patiently by the hour. Not possible to place a value on such a horse.

It's hard to do the garden justice

but it's doing very well. The weeds along the "walking path" next to the fence have yet to get executed but I'm holding my own with them in the rest of the garden EXCEPT at the far west end where the squash are... Gardening is a very gratifying occupation. I like to weed, and Dick likes to water, and everyone likes to eat! The radishes are delicious!

Sisters...

The corner of my yard...

For Mother's Day, Scott & Dick cut down the tree in the sw corner of my yard -- it had been dying off slowly for the past several years and was ugly. Cutting it down made a tremendous difference to the entire yard -- opened it all up. Now we have 3 baby Aspens growing, along with some lovely perennial flowers and some of that tall bunch grass that is all the rage in Billings' outdoor decor these days. There's also a lovely rose in the corner behind the old wheel. I'm hoping the big basket of petunias drape down to eventually cover the ugly stump...

Turning grass into hay...

Our good neighbor Jim Schubert guarantees winter grub for the cow ponies and Runamuck the steer.

When running thru the sprinkler turns into streaking...

The last of the great tadpole rescue...

Q: What happens when Gramma is summoned to help two compassionate grandkids rescue 30 thrillion tadpoles desperately wriggling in a quickly shrinking mud puddle in the middle of the Fandek pasture? A: Two kids with three brimful buckets of odiferous tadpoles are loaded in the back of the Subaru at the Fandek house and rushed over to Camp Runamuck dam. In the process, of course, a few dozen tadpoles sloshed over the sides of the buckets before Gramma could get the whole STINKING mess unloaded at the dam. And after we pitched the tadpoles into the dam and returned to the house, Gramma found one small desperately wriggling tadpole "dry-docked" in the back of her car, so Vash & Chance made a last ditch effort to save one of God's smallest critters. Note: Several hours later, all the chillun piled on the 4-wheeler and went to the dam to show Blake the tadpoles. When they returned, they cheerfully reported that it looked like most of the tadpoles had expired, despite our best efforts. Life IS difficult.

We tried to play Clue...

but it's more accurate to say the entire bunch of us were CLUELESS!

Okay, WHO took this picture with Gramma's camera?

Full house at Gramma & Grampa's house last night...

Left to right, top row: Sterling, Chance, & Grampa
Left to right, bottom row: Blake, Vash, Brianne, & Gramma

Swingin'

Grampa needs to raise the rope tied to the branch because Carter has to keep her elbows and knees carefully raised or she scrapes skin off in her enthusiasm to swing. Carter comes once or twice a week to stay with "Gramma Aunty" -- I love to have the hard-headed smart little varmint, and she's fine with it... once her beloved mother's dust has settled.

Every patio needs an umbrella...

Somehow Dick doesn't look that thrilled to be in charge of installing the new umbrella to the lovely old redwood picnic table Dad made for me (oh to have Dad here to do the installation of the new addition...)

Carter, Sterling, & Chance check out the new shade!

Chance will do ANYTHING so long as he can drive the 4-wheeler!

In this case, he is helping Grampa plant two Colorado Blue Spruce to replace winter kills.

Riding at 77... and looking sharp!

After, the northeast corner of the barn...

Married 23 years and counting...

The two Grosskopf ladies, the younger having just celebrated her 31st birthday (the older having done that decades ago).

Ponies enjoying a sunshiny morning for a change...

Machinery shed...

Here's the after shot, partially obscured by a HEAVY bale feeder blocking the nice new window on the east end of the building. Here's the mid shot -- after the big ackward heavy rolling doors were removed and yards and yards of concrete poured inside to replace the dirt floor. Also the building was divided in half, and the east half was insulated and turned into Dick's shop with a window.

Better late than never...

On Sunday, May 11, after Mike's traditional Mother's Day branding, we gathered at Gretchen's to celebrate our birthday girls, Adrienna & Bunny, whose real birthday is May 10. Don't we love 'em?

A magical green world on Monday afternoon...

Here's how the Smith ranch in the Wolf Mountains looked Monday afternoon as we rode from the camp site to the ranch headquarters to load up and go home after camping and branding for three days and nights. Absolutely beautiful country, and not far as the crow flies from where our forebears Don and Georgia Blake and their partner Kendall Shaules farmed for a number of years.

Gramma's little varmints...

When the kids weren't slogging around in the rain with mud to their knees, they were playing in the water trough, which was fed by a wonderfully cold & clear spring. The upshot of it was that they were sopping wet 75% of the time -- the other 25% being when they were sound asleep and lucky enough NOT to be wet then too!

The whole damned crew on Monday...

We are on the far left. Aubry and his brother George are on the far right.

Aubry illustrates an example of "the cowboy way"

Cardsharks...

We were able to brand Saturday, but Sunday, after we had all the cattle gathered, the rain started in relentlessly. I gathered up the kids, and we trotted back to camp; not long after we had unsaddled, everyone else came, too. We were all back in camp before lunch. It was a LONG, rainy, cold afternoon & evening. Thank goodness, I had packed a couple of card games -- Uno and Bunco -- so Sunday afternoon & evening the kids n I had some rousing games in my nice little tent, while the rest of the rowdy crowd hurrahed & heehawed over at the mess tent.

Wrangle horses were ALWAYS kept at the ready...

Camping is hard work...

Gramma's darlings had fun!

Chance made a new buddy...

Miss Blake ... vertical & horizontal!

Haley Bench horses learn about traditional rope corrals...

Our horses got along fine in the rope corral with all the strangers ... until Sterling suddenly emerged from the brush on his way back from "taking a leak"! Stampede! We managed to stop most of them, but several (including Aubry's wrangle horse who could hop with hobbles on about as fast as the others could run unfettered) tore over the hill!

Over hill & dale...

After the men & the cavvy raced over the hill towards camp, Staci on Page, Sterling on Trigger, & Blake on Joker rode to camp at a more leisurely pace. My first view of camp. I parked the pickup and took this quick shot. You can see how breathtakingly beautiful the country side is.
Here's the chuckwagon with the fly stretched over it parked next to the mess tent. The mess tent is where we all spent a great deal of time during this chilly, damp 3-day period! It was wall to wall portable camp chairs, everyone soaking up the heat put out by the old wood-burning range. Plenty of whisky was consumed and stories told when there was nothing else to do! There was about 2 dozen of us staying at camp. And numerous neighbors rode over each day to help.