Tag Archives: chores

Ivy and the Zoo

Usually I like to put pictures with my posts. You know the whole picture is worth a thousand word thing.

Tonight I thought I’d be different.

So here we have pictures of our trip to the zoo, and random things Ivy said after we got home.

When Clara and Ivy were emptying the dishwasher together:

“Clara is so nice to her big sister and she helps with the housework.”

About an hour after Clara and Ivy gave Piper a shower, from which they emerged just as hairy as the dog:

“Do you know why my butt is kinda itchin’? ”Cause of the hair. Pipers hair is on my butt makin’ it itch.”

Ivy’s irrefutable logic in my attempt to eradicate the word potty from our language:

Ivy: “I’m going potty right now!”
Me: “Oh, OK.  You could say I’m going to the bathroom right now – it’s more grown up.”
Ivy: “But I’m not grown up.”

Confessions Of A Lawn Hater

It has been two weeks since I mowed the lawn.

Today while mowing the lawn I found a dead cat.

If that bothers you please stop reading I doubt this story is going to get any better.

Fortunately years of mowing at high speeds with minimal before mowing lawn pick-up have honed my swerving skills and I was able to stop next to the cat. It took me a good thirty seconds of staring to identify the flattish, orangeish, hairyish, splotch in my yard. Without the ear and tail I might have been stumped. So I probably don’t need to say this wasn’t a freshly dead cat.  The good news is that if you find a dead cat it gives you plenty to ponder while you finish mowing your lawn.

There are questions with probable answers:

-Where did it come from? I’m guessing the neighbors barn cat or a feral cat, there are lots of both around.

-Why is it in MY yard? Well cats do come through the yard occasionally although the dogs really dislike that and so it’s not real common.

-If John had been mowing would he have run it over? Probably, he is color blind and runs everything over with the lawnmower, a classic case of if I do it really badly I won’t have to do it anymore.

Questions that I can only guess at the answers:

-Did something kill that cat?

-Does that explain why I also lost three ducks while we were on vacation?

-Do things that eat ducks not eat cats?

-What is wrong with my dogs, that they haven’t noticed it?

-Thank goodness my dogs haven’t noticed it!

-Can I convince John that dead cat removal is a mans job?

And questions that might indicate I spent too much time in the sun:

-Would running over a dead cat be better than running over a pile of chain?

-Would I have to extract dead cat from the mower deck if I did that?

-Would that require taking off the deck?

-Does my Dad’s knowledge of lawnmower fixes include dead cat damage?

-Would anyone help me if that was my problem or would they just laugh?

And the biggest question of all:

-Why am I mowing a patch of lawn that we use so infrequently that it can have a very decomposed cat in it without anyone noticing?

Ivy’s New Job

Last week our sheep grew bored with things around here and six of them went on a little walkabout. A very nice farmer up the road (two miles up the road) found them and helped to get them back. Since then we’ve been beefing up fences and keeping a closer eye on them.

To be totally correct Ivy has been keeping a closer eye on them. Her new job is to check to make sure the sheep are still here. The first few days every hour or so I would ask if the sheep were still here and she would go running out the door to check. Now I don’t even have to say anything, she just wanders over to the gate and looks for sheep.   In addition to that she usually stays on the gate contentedly visiting with the sheep for a long time before coming back with her report. Ivy’s new job makes me happy becuase it gets Ivy out of the house doing something by herself. Fortunately Ivy likes her new job too. It is important to know if your sheep are where you left them and Ivy feels special that she’s been given an important job.  Perhaps it makes the sheep happy too, I’m not sure. Do they like bubbles?

Little Helper

I like to teach Ivy how to do things.  Right now Ivy wants to help, and is old enough to actually do it herself, if a bit slower and messier. So I try to squash my impatience and teach her how to do whatever it is she would like to learn. She learns, we have fun, it’s all good!

For instance:

Ivy saw me folding laundry, she wanted to know how, now she folds her own laundry.

Ivy saw me sweeping the floor, she wanted to know how, now she sweeps up my dust piles and throws them away.

She’s learned how to get dressed by herself (which makes for interesting outfits some days), navigate in the kitchen better than perhaps she should (When you wake up to your kid bringing you a breakfast of Swedish Fish candy in bed what is the proper response?) she helps feed the ducks, dogs and chickens, etc, etc.

The other night she saw me taking clothes off the line and wanted to help. We’ve done that together before and her job is  taking the clothes out of and putting them back in the laundry basket. But not this night, this night she wanted to do the clothespins.  I did that squashing thing with my impatience, tried to ignore the dew settling on the clothes, and helped her.  She took every pin off and then would yell “Catch it!”   I would catch it and put it in the basket. We had fun, she getting good at the clothes pins by the end of three loads that were hanging, but I’m hoping for the sake of my shoulders that next time she’ll be happy being the laundry basket girl again!

New Respect

When I was little I often remember trying to “help” my dad. While I have many memorys of watching dad work in his work shop I also have quite a few of being told he didn’t really want my “help” any more. If memory serves those were usually the times he was fixing cars, lawnmowers and the like. At the time I didn’t understand what could possibly be unhelpful about my presence.

Today I understand.

Today I put the cutting deck back on the lawn mower. This is something that I’m sure would have taken any of my male relatives 5 minuets tops. It took me about three hours.

Three hours in which-

-I made a makeshift ramp to get the lawnmower out of the barn
-I put kid number two down for a nap
-I tried for way too long to “slide” the stupid thing back under like it says you can do
-I called John to find out that that doesn’t really work and that they had to lift the mower off the deck when they took it off
-I made a ramp
-I drove the mower up on the ramp to get the deck under it
-I pulled it back off the ramp and smashed my fingers
-Then enter help of Ivy
-I got handfuls of grass
-I got rocks
-I got a phone
-I got sticks set on my back courtesy of Storm
-I got a pto engager shift thingy smashed into my knee so hard I couldn’t feel part of my leg (that wasn’t due to the kid or dog, that was just me being a klutz)
-I got a diet coke (I needed a diet coke)
-I called my dad to find out what to do with a random part I couldn’t figure out
-I went up to the barn for wire to fix the part
-I was given more grass
-I was given flowers
-I was given a screwdriver (but I asked for that one)
-I got it on!
-I turned it on!
-the belt fell off
-I started putting the belt back on
-Kid two woke up
-I changed a diaper
-I made lunch
-I cleaned up lunch
-I nursed a kid
-I changed another diaper
-I went back with two kids and two dogs in tow
-I got the belt on
-I turned it on
-It worked!Then we all sat down and made dandelion crowns in the grass, because we only had 20 minutes before nap time.

So today I have a new respect for my Dad’s grumpiness when I wanted to help. And all those male relatives of mine who could get the job done in five minuets, I’d like to see them do it in five minuets with “help”!

What a Weekend!

This past weekend Tyler organized a birthday work weekend for me, and boy did the work get done!

The fencing is done!


The water line got put it!

The fencer got re-housed, buckthorn got pulled out, and the chicken plucker got tested!

On top of that more presents (probably undeserved), picnic tables and tulip trees!

Ivy got butterfly nets, her own table and chairs and, from dumpster diving Susie, a bike!

We had birthday cake, and lots of food!

And most impressively this is the house…

… still standing after leaving Sarah all alone with the kids all weekend!

A huge thanks, to Sue, George, Mom, Dad, Riley, Sarah, Granny, Gramps, John, Jeff and Katie. For the help, the work, the tools, the expertise, the financing, the kid watching, the dumpster diving and cake getting, the food prepping, the cleaning, the soda, beer and turkey(for plucking), the garbage burning, the trenching, the pounding, and all the fun too!

And an extra thanks for Tyler for making it happen, he’s the best brother ever!

Yard Work


I don’t like yard work, I think I could blame it on the child labor that was extracted out of me growing up, but I think my mom might read this so I won’t. Instead I would just like to say, (Mom and Grandpa are you listening?) That I do have SOME standards!

1) Green is good. Well unless it’s purple (creeping charlie), yellow (dandilions), white (clover), or brown (well this color isn’t good but the cow pasture from the neighbors floods parts of our yard with…umm… “dirt” and it’s brown and there isn’t much I can do about it).
2) It should be short. Unless short means that I have to mow it more than once every 7 (or 14) days, then it can be a bit longer. Or if I lose a kid in it, then it’s time to mow, but they yell really loud so that takes some serious length.
3)I want to walk in it barefoot.

Ok fine I have ONE standard, but it’s something right???
So that leads me to my problem. I have too many thistles, and since this directly violates standard number 3 I have been trying to do something about it. The problem is my lack of an other standards are making it sort of difficult. A weed killer you say… well then I would have no lawn (see standard number 1) . So I have been digging thistles, a LOT of thistles, three wheelbarrows full and counting, that kind of a LOT of thistles. Now I have about half my lawn thistle free, Horray! New problem: driving the wheelbarrow is getting difficult due to all the ankle breaking holes left from the thistle removing. This leads me to my big problem with yard work. You spend time, lots of time (if you are a certain kind of person all your time, if you are me as little as you can get away with) because it’s always SOMETHING, and what do you end up with, a short green thing you can walk across…

While I have been digging thistles, Ivy and Clara have been playing on a blanket together while storm wanders around the yard (she finally figured out it’s not a good idea to catch the thistles I throw on the pile). See…

Oh right… so what’s actually happening is that Storm is eating sticks and grass and creating lawn shrapnel all over the blanket while Clara has crawled off the blanket in search of her own lawn to chew on and Ivy found a toad.
Just after this picture was taken Storm and Clara noticed the toad and both tried to eat it.

Tomorrow I’m going to work on the flower beds!