Just for a little fun (and to answer some of your questions) I’ll post these few photos of the Corvette Stingray
We’ve had the car for a long time (I never drive it–but I do ride in it)
He used to drive it in the winter
Since it has a rag top and a hard top.
But the icy roads and blizzard conditions made him stop that nonsense and just use it in the summer time….with the top down.
He gets offers all the time to buy it…but, well, you know the answer to that question 🙂 It’s Terry’s baby.
Linda
Yesterday was my birthday…I’m now 64 years old.
It always surprises me that I made it to anywhere after 50. I don’t know why it does, but it does.
I can remember sitting in my desk in the first grade of school, the teacher, Miss Mable Howard, was talking about the 20th century ending and the 21st century beginning…I remember thinking that none of that makes any sense at all.
Then she talked about the year 2000, you have to do the math, but this was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 1955, the year 2000 was sooooo farrrrrr away that I couldn’t even get it to come into focus. Since it was so far away I decided that I would make it to the age of 50, which was really, really, ancient and just let everything else take care of itself.
As the years progressed I would think about that little girl so long ago deciding to be fifty and then let every thing else just happen as it would. Fifty seems like a real nice number, way back when. It still does.
When I was fifty I lost my best friend/sister, my beloved Grandmother, and both my parents. Strangely my life did end at the age of fifty. Every year after fifty has been a surprise and a gift. A year to treasure and be thankful for. I am not sick, nor do I have beloved family or friends ill, what I have is a new year that my little 6 year old mind could not comprehend in 1955.
A gift of life.
Many of you have emailed me birthday wishes, which adds richly to my birthday. My children and my grandchildren and my step-grandchildren have widened my life to a whole of completeness. I have become the matriarch of our family, which still seems like an odd thing, but also a blessing.
Really, life is truly a circle and one we all get to rejoice in.
This is me in 1951! What a hoot!
Thank you each and everyone of you for helping enrich my daily world.
Linda
It’s cold here…12*, but still dogs need to walk, and I need to walk, and the little kids like to get out of the house.
While coming back from the upper end masses of Sand Hill Cranes flew overhead….
My still shot was not very good, but at least you can hear their sound.
Linda
What a wonderful couple of days….full of food, family and gifts. My brother and his wife stopped by on their way to sunny California, their car was full of gifts for us. A complete surprise and much enjoyed.
The snow we had is melting down here, but in the mountains it looks like it is staying. As I write this we are in another winter storm watch…Terry and I agree we will take it if it means snow in the mountains.
Our soon-to-be daughter-in-law arrived last night from Grand Cash, Alberta, Canada for a week of visits. She said we are much warmer here. 🙂
Hope your holidays were wonderful. I’m off to visit your blogs now and then back to packing up all my Christmas decorations.
We are heading toward 2013… Boy, does time fly!
Linda
We have decided that, to ease the work-load for next year, all of the transmission ditches need to be put underground.
Transmission ditches only carry the water from one place to the next place, they don’t have to be open ditches for a person to use siphon tubes to water the actual fields.
The time in managing the open ditch is huge, you have to make the ditch, keep the ditch clean of trash and weeds and deep enough, with enough slant, so the water will flow. It’s an all season job, which sometimes gets away from us. The water, with the weed seeds gets a start and then this is what you get.
A mess.
The mess takes up some of the water for themselves and the sun takes more, so by August how many tubes or gates you get to use starts to shrink.
We have several transmission ditches.
Gradually, every year (pipe costs lots of money) the transmission ditches have been going underground.
The first two years Terry dug the ditches by hand, last year he rented a backhoe and dug it that way. But this year, after putting pencil to paper, we hired Troy Wells to come out and dig this ditch.
(Besides I don’t think – at our ages – we should be doing all the work!)
Terry got everything ready so all that had to be done was the digging.
The work was excellent!
All the top soil (because we are going down a road-the one that goes to our head gate and to the upper end of our place) was put on one side of the trench, the good farming soil on the other side. The sides were squared and the bottom flat…very little hand work had to be done. Just at the top where the transmission pipe connects with the first artery of that system.
And that WAS a job!
The it was up to us. Get a pipe, lay in the trench, get another pipe, glue them together, make sure the fall of the land is still good, if not take a shovel and shovel the spot until perfect, put another pipe in,
(Jump out so a picture or two could be taken. But don’t do it too often or the “Boss” will get upset for goofing off!)
Then…THANK HEAVENS FOR BIG MACHINES…Terry would start dumping the good farm soil back into the trench. Here the test is to make sure the dirt lands on TOP of the pipe, not on one side or the other causing it to roll.
A good job! The pipe did not roll and we did not have to get back in and shovel off the dirt and re-align the pipe.
Thank goodness!
We had lots of help!
I guess you know what we are going to be doing the rest of today and the rest of this week.
Have a great Tuesday everyone!
Linda
The next night found us in Denver. Terry had a meeting he had to go to and I thought I would enjoy having a break.
First Independence Pass then a canyon of very tall buildings… skyscrapers they are called (as all of you know).
We had a room fairly close to the 16th Street Mall so we were able to walk over there.
Now DO NOT laugh at me, but I get lost in places like that….all the buildings look the same, there are vehicles EVERYWHERE, and tons of people from all walks of life.
I had it in my head that I would walk around and take some pretty cool city shots…I didn’t make it. Two blocks to the mall, one block one way and then one block the other way is about all I could do or I would have been hopelessly turned around and not able to get back to the hotel.
I admire all of you who live and work and can function in large and giant cities.
We had snow on the passes, but not too bad.
I’m just glad we are home. (I don’t get lost in land around here or on the forest areas…just in concrete jungles, I guess.—I know, rather sad.)
Linda
What a weekend….Friday we took off for Buena Vista…we had an appointment there that had been made weeks in advance—
thinking we would take a short cut back home (and a different route) we thought we would go over Independence Pass into Aspen.
Let me tell you right here and now…never ever EVER go over Independence pass in the fall or the spring…they close it in the winter
The bottom of the pass says “If you are longer than so many feet do not attempt this pass”
I guess some people just can’t read.
This kind of driving is NOT FOR ME
The drive was beautiful snowwise, but not drivingwise, and I’m sure Aspen loved the snow.
For me…I was glad to get to DRY ground.
The next day we had to head off again!
Linda
The horrible burn we had (two days worth) last spring is starting to heal itself. Green is everywhere, although, lots of the green is invasive weeds. Still it’s green.
Also, a “little” green arrived in the mail…the insurance company covered the cost of the gated pipe on our land and some of the fence posts. The whole west side of the fence is not covered yet…lots of dickering on amount and such is going on with the two other farms who experienced they same horrendous fire.
Then yesterday the Ditch Company came and fixed the fences on the north side and the east side of our place!
The Ditch company said they would even fix the bridge (they burned) this winter with a cement top instead of the burnable wooden top.
We are really feeling blessed. Once the fence on the west side gets fixed we will have everything back to where we started.
Linda
Off we go to fix fence, down the hill and around the whole place. There is a hole somewhere, for the electric fencer isn’t working.
Life on a Colorado Farm 