Painted birdhouses that Rick's dad built for us.

When we first arrived we still had snow in the meadow, and for a short time there was an actual little creek running through it. Now the meadow is grassy and green and star arnica is blooming everywhere. Just gorgeous. It remains to be seen if the wildflower seed we planted last year actually came up. We have more seed coming from Pawnee Seed Company — a mix of prairie grasses and wildflowers that we'll spread around the burn pile areas and the area that was excavated for the trenches for the new solar panels.

There is lots of lupine coming up around the house as well as Wyoming paintbrushes, pink plume, larkspur and fireweed. Most of it will probably be blooming later this week. Soon we will be surrounded by flowers of all different colors. Already the meadows are full of brilliant paintbrushes!

The pasque flowers have gone into gossamer seed mode, but still equally as beautiful.

Unfortunately the mosquitoes are also "in bloom" right now. They say the mosquito hatch only lasts three weeks up here, so we shall see. Right now we douse ourselves with repellent before we go outside. We both smell like Lemon Eucalyptus all day, not a totally unpleasant smell. We've found a repellent without DEET that appears to work great. We also have one of these handy little gadgets, the Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Appliance, that uses butane to heat a synthetic form of natural insecticide, forming a 15-foot-wide area of protection. We used it yesterday while out in back potting the herbs we bought. No mosquitoes dared come close!

We have a lot of Evening Grosbeaks —such beautiful birds! Here are Mr. & Mrs.

And of course, who could forget the ever present hummers? Right now we are not inundated with them as we have a not-very-sugary mix for them to drink, plus there are plenty of flowers for them.

As far as moose go, we have now seen four different moose: Morley, Hannah, another bull moose larger than Morley who has not been named since he has now shown up more than once, and this yearling moose that hung around all day on Saturday. Long legs but tiny! He even came close enough to inspect our fire pit! We were actually grilling steaks on the porch and talking, neither of which seemed to bother him one bit.

In other points of progress we are still waiting for the Direct TV person to come and install an HD dish. So far they have cancelled on us twice and are now scheduled to come this Saturday, the 18th. I hope they don't cancel yet again.

Our barn was supposed to be delivered on the 17th, but after a visit from a representative of the company that is building it, he decided that he could not get the barn down the driveway without taking out a lot of trees. He is getting in a new piece of equipment that will allow him to maneouver it in without too much trouble but it won't be in until the following week, so we are currently scheduled for the barn to arrive on the 24th. He checked all the cattle guards along the route and no worries there, they are all wide enough.

Our mail seems to be coming through just fine. My magazines have started to arrive with my new address and not forwarding information!

What else? Oh yes, Destin. Who could forget Destin? Actually, he is a whole blog post to himself which I will write in the next day or so. He is growing and learning so fast. So intelligent. So gorgeous.

So JOYFUL.