Wildflowers of the Black Hills

One of our regular visitors to the birdbath 

Being stationary for so long with so many ongoing projects there is a fine balance between working too much and getting out and exploring the hills. With only two weeks left before we head to Ontario and all of our visitors gone we found ourselves in “all work and no play” mode.

Beautiful Rainbow after a rainstorm

What have we been doing? The two biggest were getting the underground plumbing done and building an outdoor fire pit area. Along with that we have been working on fencing over at Kevin’s and working on prairie dogs over at our neighbors.  

Having never done plumbing before I was a little perplexed on exactly where to start. Luckily, our neighbor to the west is a licensed plumber and was nice enough to come over and help me lay it out as well as inspect it before I covered it up. Richard and I had gotten a third to a half of it done while he was here so I just whittled away at the remaining over the last week and soon I was done!

While I was working on that Barb has been working on a project of her own. Farmer Bob was nice enough to bring us a tractor rim for a fire pit so Barb has been busy creating a patio so we can sit around it. 

I will take another picture when it is all done. 

It is very time consuming as she has to wander around and find the perfect flat rocks and then bring them back and piece them together like a big jigsaw puzzle. She is about ½ way done and it is really looking great!

With all this work to do we have to remind ourselves to stop, look around and “smell the roses”. That thought inspired me to walk through the property and take pictures of all the different wild flowers and other flowering plants that we run across on our daily excursions.

I have no idea what most of them are. Farmer Bob told me a few but I am afraid my retention is not very good so if you recognize any of them, let us know what they are. I have numbers each of them to make it easier. 

#1. I am told these are Echinacea 

#2. No idea what this yellow flower is

#3. Wild Sunflower

#4. No idea

#5. Some kind of thistle 

#6. Looks like a dandelion but the size of a baseball

#7. Wild Rose with some other flower next to it

#8. No idea what this purple flower is...

#9. Yucca blooms

#10. Prickly Pear bloom

#11. Once again, no idea, it is about the size of a dime

All of these flower pictures were taken on our property so as you can see there is quite the variety. We found two other things over the past week as well. About 1/3 of the prairie dog holes in the area have black widows guarding them which makes it a little precarious when treating them. The other even more disturbing creature found this week was a rattle snake. Barb is now looking into what we need to do to get the dogs a preventative shot in case they ever run across one. 

Speaking of the dogs, I have gotten a couple of comments that they are not in the blog enough so here they are. They have two new favorite places to hid from the heat. Under the rig and in their pool....

We did have a couple of get-togethers; one at the Bumpin Buffalo with Harry and Vicky as well as Jim and Brenda and another when Quartzsite friends Les and Sue stopped by for a visit. They are working at Crazy Horse for the summer so we hope to get together with them again sometime soon!

The gang at Bumpin Buffalo

Jim and Brenda along with Sue and Les

Oh! We also had a visitor the other day! This guy came right up to us while the Jordan's were over. As a matter of fact, he walked within a foot of Jim Jordan!

Our new friend

We leave for Ontario in less than two weeks, I am guessing the work is not going to slow down as there is a lot we want to get done before we head north for a month!