We Had a Visitor!

This being our first week home for a while we both had projects that we wanted to work on. Barb's project was the hillside in front of the house. When we built our house the excavtor had to add fill at the front, it was about 6' of fill, mostly rock and quite steep. The only thing that would grow there is weeds and it has been bugging her for years. We finally came up with an idea so away she went! She started out by making it as smooth as possible and laying down some fabric to prevent the weeds from growing. She then bought some juniper bushes. These are supposed to be low growing, wide spreading bushes which would spread across the hillside. She finished the bottom by adding a border of blocks. 

So far, it looks great! Next up is to plant a couple more junipers and find some rock to spread over the fabric.

She has also been fighting to grow some grass around the edge of the concrete of the gazebo for over a year. This year, she is trying sod to see if it will grow. She put down 3 rolls of sod, a $15 (+ $45 for the garden weasel) experiment. We shall see if it takes.

For my part, I spent my time in the new garage finally building the deer blind that has been on my list for several months but other things were a higher priority. Starting out with a pile of lumber, I began with the base. I wanted to put it on a base that I could move with my tractor so I put pallet fork pockets in it. 

Then I started building the actual structure. It is an octagonal design for maximum visibility. About half done at this point.

We had two exciting events this week. The first was a visitor! 

It came while we were sitting on the couch early one morning and I looked out and there was a baby fawn walking up to the house. It had to have been born within the hour as it could barely walk. 

It would take a few steps on wobbly legs and lay down for 5 minutes, get up, walk a few feet and lay down again. Momma was nowhere in sight. 

For over an hour, it repeated this. Then it went into the dog pen are and tried to get into the woods only to hit the edge of the fence. Its mom was probably up there, and it was trying to get into the woods. It finally gave up and laid down again. 

I walked out to see if I could push it in the right direction, but it just tried to act invisible. Instead, I took down some of the fence and then we went to town for a while.  When we came back, it was gone. 

The other excitement we had was finally getting out fishing! We loaded up the boat and headed 40 minutes south to Angostura Reservoir. 

What a beautiful day, light wind, sunny and mid 80's. Being our first outing, we had to keep track of our fish count to see who was going to dominate our annual fishing contest. I started out with a nice little crappie, which I dangled in front of Barb to taunt her. 

I followed this up with another crappie and then a small walleye. Within the first hour, I was up 3-0! When she finally caught her first fish, it was the smallest catfish known to man. And to top it all off, she got poked by one of its spines stung her and drew blood! 

Next up was a nice 19" walleye which now resides in our fridge awaiting the frying pan tonight. 

Barb finally got into it, catching a few fish, mostly crappie, but I kept up and maybe outpaced her the rest of the day making me the big winner for the day! 

I finished the day with what a really nice. This thing was fighting like crazy, it was for sure the biggest walleye I had caught in quite a while! When I finally got it close to the boat and Barb netted it, I saw it was not a walleye at all, but a freshwater drum which are at the bottom of our list of edible fish, so it went back into the lake. 

What a fun day though!

We topped off the week by going out to our favorite rib place, some of you may recognize/remember this place from when we took our group of RV friends out there last September. 

I will leave you with this picture of Maisie. We continue to get pictures of her almost daily. 

That was our week in a nutshell. The perfect mix of work and play. We have more planned for next week. Finish up the hillside, finish up the deer blind and hopefully some more fun!