Keeping Busy

Not a lot of posts lately for two reasons. First, house guest season has started (!) and when we're enjoying our guests we're doing just that, not taking tons of photos or thinking up ways to make those visits into posts. Visiting us is a little bit of getting away from it all (or so we like to think), so we don't think our loved ones should feel like they'll be blogged about and upon. Second, I have been preparing to participate with a couple of neighbor-friends in the first annual Bitterroot 50-mile Garage Sale! I have been going through all the boxes, cupboards, closets, drawers, and bins.  Between myself and the others, we have made good use of the 15' x 20' storage unit we rented in the valley. WOO!  

You don't have to be able to make out the words, just look at that picture for Saturday (4th from the left). It's only supposed to be 3 degrees hotter than Friday, but for some reason those 3 degrees make a BIG difference in the thumbnail representation of the day. Oof.

This morning we'll set up a pop-up tent in front to give us another 10' x 10' and hopefully sell the heck out of all our crap stuff! There has been A LOT of advertising and marketing for this and we are told people are coming from out of state to shop the 200 (!) vendors with crap wares for sale!  It's going to be a long, hot couple of days, but it should be fun and will hopefully replace some of our unused crap things with more useful cash to put towards other summer projects. It's just a nice feeling that our crap belongings that we don't use or need anymore might have another life with someone who will use or does need them.

If I have the time and inclination, I will try to get pictures of our sale site. WOO!

In the meantime, we attended E's employer's Employee Picnic and ran into an old friend. BIGFOOT FOREVER!

And while I was making trips to and from the house and the truck with boxes and materials for the sale, I spotted this super downy feather stuck to a weed underneath where a couple of pairs of swallows are nesting. They must be getting close to fledging! Or something!

 

In less bright sunlight, the feather was more of a dove grey color. Er, swallow chick grey.

After I took a few photos, I picked up the feather for a closer look and noticed this wee fellow on the quill. This creature (cricket? grasshopper?) was at most 1/4" long.  Neat!

Speaking of yellow-brown wildlife, this toad gave me quite a start a couple of weeks ago when I was draining the water out of the woodpile tarp. I suppose he'd been eating the mosquito larvae that I was concerned about. I wonder if it's this same toad I saw last year over by the hose bib on the house? It's about twice the size of that one.