Brenda has commented that she is tired of that bird giving her the eagle eye everytime she comes on to read a blog or two so I thought I would do something about it.

Now St. Paddy may be just a little early but I don't think my ol' Irish grandmother will be to upset.

I haven't been inspired to write much here, as nothing much has changed on a day to day basis. It seems from all reports that the USA is going gangbusters getting folks vaccinated under this new administration, with the aid of folks in the past who have poured some cash into helping the pharmaceutical folks with pushing a new vaccine. The new mRNA vaccines, initially developed in response to the SARS virus, back in 2004, seem to have opened a world of possibilities when it comes to rapid vaccine development. So for those who think it took a year to develop, it is kind of like the band that is an overnight success, everyone forgets that they have been working the clubs and country fairs for 10-15 years before they made it into the big lights.

I spent a lot of time reading and reviewing things about these vaccines so have no issue with taking them. Afterall I have had great experience with both the polio and smallpox vaccines so will do my part to help the globe achieve herd immunity. I understand there are folks who for valid medical reasons can not take the jab, so it is up to those of us who can to give them the protection they need.

Enough of that though, over the last 7 months here at Dogpound North we have enjoyed our winter at home. It has actually been a pretty nice one, other than a week or ten days in February where we got to shake the moths out of our winter duds.

We are enjoying spring type weather here at the moment, but no fear, I am not putting the snow blower or my long johns away just yet. Here at DPN we still have another couple of months of good sledding weather to get through before the mud season begins in earnest.

I of course have done a little picturin' around the hood so I will throw a few of those photos up here to fill the space and hopefully will be inspired to be a little more regular with this tome.

Bald Eagle and a Raven 

Ringside seats for the Presidential Election

The smaller half of our Security Team here at DPN

Male Snowy Owl

Not every night is early to bed around here.

Mrs. Snowy

A wild stud in the West Country

Even the eagles are calm back home

Just an interesting play of light

Bull Moose hanging here at DPN

These guys will soon be gone back to their northern summer range

Surprise

Olympic Trials at DPN

It has only been a week since my last blog post, but I am trying to keep things a little more up to date here. It is hard to use this as a journal to look back on when I only say a few words every two or three months. Last week I wrote we had finally finished the haying here at Dogpound North (DPN), and the last bale had hardly hit the ground when the snow started. A lot of our neighbours and fellow Albertans and even folks over in Saskatchewan are caught with their crops still in the fields. The news reports say the harvest is about 80% finished so that means most of the profit is still laying out under the snow. In the past the oil patch has served as a fall back position for many in the agriculture industry, you could always pick up a few months work over the winter to pump up the cash reserves. Well this year that might not be easy, although the price of oil is playing with $50 it is still pretty slow out there in the patch. Canada desperately needs pipelines that reach tidewater, Canadian tidewater. For the most part our oil has been sold to our neighbours to the south, but that necessitates taking a discounted price and they are less inclined to buy our product as they have a lot of their own now, since the fracking has taken off in the Bakken and Texas. So it really doesn't make much sense for us to sell our oil to them at a discount so that they can in turn export their own production around the world at world prices. Well enough of that topic.

Up here north of the Medicine Line we don't just use Scarecrows in the Garden

Another piece of news that I thought I would share, this year for the first time since we bought our place down in Arizona, five years ago we are not taking a horse south with us. Brenda, because of her CRPS can't ride, and I am not much on riding by myself so I thought it would be a good time to leave the horses home. We are still taking our LQ with us and if the mood strikes us we may get out and visit some of those old spots we liked to boondock in before we sunk roots into the Maricopa soil. We have no plans to give up Dogpound South (DPS) but might not be tied so tightly to it. Just blueskying but that is one idea anyway.

We are doing what all snowbirds do at this time of year, visiting with our medical teams, planning our departure, and readying the rig for travel. Who knows when we are going to head out but Max is looking at me like, what's the holdup old timer, there is snow on the ground and we should be heading for that warmer place with no grass.

And with those thoughts in mind we have been bringing our security detail up to speed here at DPN, surprisingly the dogs don't seem to mind the company.

On Patrol

Just checking

Still Kickin'

Well I see it has been a while since I last put some words together for those few folks who still check in on us from time. It is not that we are doing nothing, just probably nothing that is all that interesting for our readers. I go swimming most weekday mornings and try to average 16-20 (10-12 miles) kilometers a week. Most weeks I make it but last week was a washout,  between a cold, muscle spasm in my back, and a flooded basement I didn't get much swimming in, but I am back up to 16 this week.

Brenda's knee is story all by its own. She has been feeling like she is not making enough progress so we headed down to see the doc a couple of weeks earlier than scheduled. They took an X-Ray and that indicated maybe they should investigate it a little more throughly. Scheduled an CT-Scan, but we didn't like the timing on that so we jumped ship and had a private clinic do one for us. That got us back to the doc a little quicker and with the CT-Scan confirming what he had suspected from the X-Ray he said she is not to use her leg for about 6 weeks. Not a happy camper I am here to tell you. They say she has a crack in her femur and are hoping that keeping the weight off it will allow it to heal as there is no displacement. Now those who know Brenda know that sitting around is not one of her better developed skills so I am constantly nagging her to stay off it, often to no avail. Oh well, hopefully my nagging will help it heal.

June is usually a pretty wet month around these parts and this June is no exception. Over the last few weeks we have accumulated about 7-8 inches of rain and even as I write this it is coming down hard.
 During one of those rain events the sump pump in our basement failed and within a couple of hours we had converted our always dry basement into a wading pool with about 5-6 inches of water. A quick trip to town and a new pump and the incoming water was once again diverted back out. That only left us to mop up. Luckily our insurance covered this type of failure so within a day or two they had the carpet ripped out, all damaged contents logged and hauled out and had stripped away the drywall and a battery of industrial fans and dehumidifiers howling away in our basement drying it out again. We have taken two good sized dumpsters full of building materials and other assorted flood damaged stuff out of the basement so it is looking pretty empty down there right now. Eventually we will replace the carpet and the drywall and things will quiet down around here again as we shut the fans down.

Everything is drying out, at this point the tear down is completed. You can see the maps on the walls, Dad had collected road maps from around the world and wallpapered some of the walls in the basement with them but the bottom half had to go with the wet drywall, to bad but we'll probably keep the top half.

Other than watching the rain come down and trying to keep up with the grass mowing we have really not done a lot of anything this last month. What with Brenda's bad leg and the wet weather it has been a difficult to get up much ambition for a camping trip, but we are planning on heading out next month and at least get a little mountain time in and maybe a ride or two for Blue. Wink and the rest are just hanging out getting fat on our over abundance of grass.

"Who us? Fat?"

But it has not been all rain, we had some great days and these folks came by to make sure Grandma and I didn't float away.

And we have managed to keep the grass from overtaking the house, although that means everytime there is a couple of hours of sunshine we roar out of the quonset with the John Deere's and cut as fast as we can.

And I have been able to keep an eye on the neighbourhood youngsters as I head out in the early mornings to go for my swim as well.

Visitors and Just Hanging Out

It has been a while since I put my fingers on the keyboard and tried to tap out an entry on our journal here. I used to be able to ramble on about nothing every day on here but lately the creative juices seem to have dried up and it is not so easy to get things rolling. That and the fact that since I have been trying to use this MAC so Live Writer doesn't work over here and that means I have the required two excuses I need to procrastinate.

And trying to keep up a regular schedule while just doing things around here at Dogpound North is a sure way to put our readers to sleep although it is keeping us entertained. We have ripped some fence out, done a little riding around the place, not to mention getting a bunch of medical things out of the way, and tomorrow we have a hoe coming to do a little demolition work and remove the last old buildings around the place. Who knows I might even get some pictures of that for our next entry.

But things heated up over the last week and we had some notable visitors that got us out and about and doing some things that generated some interesting photos. Back in our fulltime RV'ing days we met a lot of folks and we have managed to coax some of them to stop in either here or at Dogpound South for a visit as they travel by. This was the second time the Kendall's have been going by and been drawn into our yard. Last time they were here we did what for us is our the usual things, a trip to Banff and Lake Louise, and a tour of our favourite spot the Yaha Tinda, and by special request a tour of the Tyrell Museum out Drumheller way. This time we thought we should see some different sights and added Peyto Lake into the tour. The shot below was taken on our tour the other day and the blue is certainly a different colour at this time of year than it was a couple of years ago in the fall.

 The picture above was taken in September and it is obvious that over the summer the glacial mill has a bigger effect on the colour, different but still beautiful.

The fellow below was there to greet us as we started our hike up the access road to the viewpoint. The usual trail was buried in 3-4 feet of snow so we wandered up the road that the buses take to get up to the overlook.

 Day 2 of the Kendall's visit we just took it easy and drug them out the Harold Creek road and onto the Forestry Trunk road for a little tour of our back country. Along the way we ran into three bands of wild horses and the one below was the prettiest so although we got lots of pics this was the one that made it into the journal. The palomino off to the right hand side is the herd sire and you could see his influence in the yearlings and the one foal that was travelling with them. He was a good looking horse and here's hoping he contributes to the gene pool in our west country for a long, long time.

 The picture below was taken at Mountain Aire Lodge where we stopped to stretch our legs and enjoy a little refreshment.

One of the thing Deb always asks when she heads our direction is for us to line up a few moose to sit for photo's along the way and although we didn't get any on the trip to Banff or out around the Forestry Trunk Road we had a great showing from our local Dogpound North resident herd. I know Rod and Deb saw at least three different ones while we were wandering the country side there were six individuals out and about that I saw at different times. But heading out swimming every morning at 5:30AM is pretty conducive to seeing some wildlife.

These last two were hanging out within a few hundred feet of our place and made sure they got into the photo array.

As well as the Kendalls we had a visit from Lacey and Becky's half sister from Ontario, Jolene. She had come out specially to meet her sisters and was heading back to Ontario early this morning and I volunteered to drive her to the airport, so she stayed with us here last night. The girls had a great week and we really enjoyed getting a little time to get to know her. That is Jolene in the background watching Lacey and her two new found nieces playing with Grandma's toy stash.

But all good things must come to an end and this morning after Jolene was safely on the plane back east it was time to say our "see ya laters" to the Kendalls as they have salmon to catch up along the Kenai river in Alaska. We are already looking forward to their next visit here and hope to get them down into the desert at Dogpound South for a visit in the interim.