Tour of a North Dakota Farm

It occured to me the other day that no one really knows anything about where we live or what it looks like outside of our house. I thought I’d start with getting to know the animals that live at Josh’s parent’s farm right outside of Minot. When I was walking around getting pictures of all of them we counted 17 animals currently getting sustenance from the Rogers’. Let’s start with the dogs, shall we?

First we have a very large and very big teddy bear, Duke the Chesapeake Bay Retriever:

Meet Sophie, the only mini schnauzer that will eat anything, including horse manure and bugs off a car radiator.

And then the cats:

Barn Cat

Digby

Chloe

Tasha

and Linx

The Rabbits, Mr. Cuddles (the white one) and Trixy (the other one):

And now, the horses. Let’s start with the ones they just board, Chaps, Peyton and Rusty, respectively:

And the horses they own, Daisy the Queen:and Jordy (in the background):

and Wildfire:

and, finally, 2 pigs. Meet Porky:

and the newbie, a piglet named Lucy:

Porky meeting Lucy:

Little Joshy

I was unpacking a couple of boxes that i had stashed in the closet of the office the other day when i found a couple of photo albums. I just wanted to share my most favorite picture of all time, little Josh playing T-ball.

I love the huge hat that squished his ears down. *sigh*

Someday we’ll have little joshy’s that look just like this, because, let’s face it, I’m not adding any italian blood to the gene pool. They’ll all be freckled reddish blonde little kids with a constant scent of sunscreen following them wherever they go.

May Showers brings June Flowers

That is how the saying should go. We’ve had a lot of rain up in the Great Plains state and now have the flowers to show for it. Apparently the overgrown jungle yard was hiding some nice plants. We pulled out a bunch of weeds (the smaller stuff we’re going to have to work on) to reveal some interesting succulents and the crowning glory – a beautiul lilac bush. It not only looks wonderful, but SMELLS wonderful too!

My geraniums have thickened but the second round of flowers are taking their time. Also, my begonias look like they’re ready to pop out of the pot I planted them in. I bought some fuschia to hang but I think it will be next year before they drape and hang from the pot. Right now they aren’t big enough to do any sort of draping.

I also ordered some herbs online. However, the lemon thyme didn’t seem very hardy. It died practically as soon as I planted it. Oh well. I still have the rosemary and english thyme. I’ll have to go out to buy basil to plant and then I think i’m set for herbs. If I have basil and rosemary, i really don’t think i’d miss any other herb. Maybe sage, sage does go wonderfully on chicken.

Enough of my rambling about my plants. Next year I’m going to have a plan of attack and even plant a vegetable garden. Won’t that be exciting! Then I can blog about corn and squash and jalapenos. Yum.