Hannah Belle Sanborn

Hannah our dear Black Labrador Retriever a loving, loyal girl left us for heaven on Tuesday. She lost her short battle with Lymphoma. While it’s a very sad day here at the house, we take solace in that she is at peace now.

She’d bring me a tennis or any other type of ball she could locate in their toy box every evening, dropping them on my chair so I’d throw them up for her to retrieve,  “I love balls, how’d you know I love balls", I’d ask her each time!

She had fantastic energy, always on the go, she’d run round, and round the house, sometimes 5-6 times just burning off her excess energy. She was always first out the door, look out or she’d run you over, she was in a hurry, had places to go! As a pup she was a chow hound, devouring her food, literally inhaling the bowl.  A fierce protector she wouldn’t allow anyone near the house uninvited, she let everyone know she was on duty.  

I think she’s actually responsible for teaching Zebulon (our German Shephard dog) to bark! Hannah took great care of her Zebulon, she’d clean his ears whenever he laid down and would allow her. She loved swimming in her pool and was an avid hunter, chipmunks, and squirrels didn’t stand a chance when she was on duty.  She was skunked a year or so ago, I’ve no doubt she’d do it again too if she'd got the chance!

                                      Top to Bottom, Zebulon, Winston and Hannah

We will dearly miss this sweet girl.

Zebulon will have a hard time losing her, we’re hopeful that our newest addition to the family “Winston” also a black lab will help him and us with this difficult loss.

 

“If there are no Labrador Retrievers in Heaven, I’m not going.”

Rain, Rain go away...

I could do without all the rain, sheesh! 70% CHANCES OF RAIN FOR THE NEXT 10 DAYS, beats bitchin' about a drought though I guess. 

Grape jelly is still the favorite here at the bird feeding station, we had to get more meal-worms on Monday

Rose made up a nice cheese ravioli with some nice bread for Fathers day.  Winston is still going sharknado when he gets tired...  We're online looking for a new car to replace the RAV4.  It's tough to get out with the new puppy.

Jason's working 3 days a week at Osram-Sylvania, James is at the High Tide restaurant both the boys, are working local in Hillsborough,  I for one can't wait to get some great seafood at the High Tide!

The boys are out of school now, they're going to be Seniors next year wow!

Rose got me a new knife for fathers day, a beautiful knife.

Family is the most important part of a person's life

Winston our new puppy is really starting to get the hang of letting us know when he has to go out to do his business, unless we don't notice he's trying to alert us...  He gets the zoomies now so fun to watch

The tuckered trio

Jarrod and the family came down over the weekend, he helped me install a solar charging setup on the camper.

There’s just too much to do and not enough time to do it lately.

Can you believe it's officially the Summer Solstice on Wednesday the 21st of June, we're nearing the end of June and we've had the heat on a couple of mornings this week.

Rose saw a doe running back and forth in the field on Thursday morning, she thought she may be trying to distract a Bear or something.

The doe was out in the cove again this morning at 5AM, just standing there, hopefully she is nursing a fawn.

And we have a fawn, Rose saw the fawn learning to walk a little unsteadily with Mom this morning, no pics yet, soon...

Oh and we have a couple of new bucks too on Saturday morning

I counted 8 points on this guy

Not sure if you'd call that 4 points?  Anyone?

The deer are all acting very skittish, Rose thinks they are sensing/smelling the bear that's been around.

We're off to look at cars today, ugh...  I hate looking for cars.

All of the buds on our Korean Lilac died from the frost several weeks back, Rose saw a Cardinal's nest in the bush, she's been seeing them fly in the last few days.

 

Happy Fathers Day

Some of the birds are eating the Black Soldier Fly larvae, (meal-worm replacement) others not so much. 

Rose thinks one of the deer was beginning to have her fawn last night she was standing on the edge of the deer-yard all hunched over. We can't wait!

Propane prices are up $4.25 per gallon, we only needed 10 gallons so there's that!

The Poppies are flowering in the yard now, oh and the the Peonies are too!

Winston has taken to climbing up the bulk head then sliding back down it. He was up at 3AM this morning then up with me at 4AM, he did his business, and played for a while in the office, then it was sharknado time...  He gets crazy bitey when he gets tired or hungry, he'll nap or eat and becomes a sweet little puppy again... it's funny to watch, Hannah and Zebulon are doing good keeping him entertained.

Bear came in last night denting up our grain barrels, he got in and ate his fill on Wednesday night.

I mowed the front and side yards, I still need to do the back yard.

Happy Fathers Day Dad!

 

 

 

New Pupper!

It's Sunday morning, I got a good nights sleep last night, feeling better, still sore in a couple of places, Rose was up with the dogs at 5AM.

Winston our new Lab slept through the night until 5am this morning! 

Winston is starting to get used to our routine already,  he was playing in the dining room ran to his crate and peed in his crate! He goes outside too but it'll take a while before he realizes that is the only place he goes to go...

Meet Winston our new puppy!

Winston and Zebulon

A large flock of geese flew over the house this morning in a classic V formation, maybe fleeing the fires up north?

The bugs are going to be Wicked

The Bugs are going to be Wicked when it stops raining some day...

 

Rose took the dogs out last night and Hannah treed a young bobcat in the old apple in the backyard, she grumbled a bit but did go back in the house.

Hannah had a setback last week, we took her to the vet and they upped her medication to twice a day again.

Supposed to rain for almost the next ten days, ugh.

The days are long, the years are short, and the decades they just fly by…

We went for a drive to see if indeed the smoke improves the sunset, spoiler, It didn't!  Still pretty but you can barely make out the mountains in the distance.

We swapped out the Meal Worms for Soldier Fly Larvae, I'll let you know how the birds like them.

We went to look at Pups on Thursday evening, no luck with older dogs and we found out our old Vet is still breeding dogs, she has a 10 week old male lab available now or we can wait a couple months and get a German shepherd pup.  Hannah may not wait that long... So we're getting a new Black Lab pupper Friday night. Is there anything better than the smell of a puppy? He's a sharknado, needle sharp teeth and FULL of energy. We'll probably call him Winston~

Rose got the house re-puppy proofed, crate out, new bed and stuff ready.  She went to pick our new pup "Winston" up in Hillsborough on Saturday morning.

I'll post some pics of Winston later

Was talking to my IT team in Canada on Thursday, smoke in Ottawa is real bad he said the whole house smells of smoke, pretty scary!

James came over with his girlfriend on Thursday evening after going out to see Jarrod playing over at the City Hall Pub in Manchester. 

Brought Hannah up to the Vet's on Friday, she's on antibiotics for a UTI, as of Saturday she's already doing much better.

On the way home from the Vet's with Hannah on Rt 114 Friday around 5pm a drunk driver cut right in front of me as I drove home literally 2 minutes from the house. Hannah is ok!  The air bags all went off, very loud scaring both of us, so many air bags... after checking on Hannah I literally had to crawl out from car through the air bags. I was sore last night, I have an airbag burn on my left hand, possibly two broken fingers on my right hand, and my right knee is swollen we'll go get them checked out at the doctors later today.  Overall everyone survived! Airbags work folks!

 

FIELD Sobriety testing of the white Pickup truck driver while his wife looks on, she wasn't in the truck, luckily as she was pregnant.

                     

 They put him in the cruiser

 

My RAV 4 aftermath, what a mess!

The white truck cut across coming from the other direction in front of my RAV4, my vehicle spun him and he hit another truck pulling a camper.

The other truck the white truck spun into
 

Looks bad, the Tow company said it's totaled!

I'm tired, been a rough couple of days, going to take a nap...

 

 

It's JUNE Already!

IT'S JUNE ALREADY!

 

Toilet Paper - The official US Patent documents show it going over the top/hanging down the front. If it's good enough for the patent application, it's good enough for me.

SpaceX Inspiration4 launch made of multiple telescope tracking shots.

It's been 14 years since the film UP! was released...

The Catbirds, Oriels and oddly enough Sparrows are eating the grape jelly.

We hit Tractor Supply to pick up a Deer block, we should have fawns soon enough, our two smaller deer will need something to eat after the larger does kick them out of the deer yard because of new fawns, Rose thinks we have two pregnant does.

We picked up a bag of Black Soldier Fly larvae yesterday instead of meal worms, we'll see if they like them the same as the meal worms, cheaper too. We'll try them out after our open bag is gone, all the birds seem to love the meal worms.

Saw the downy woodpecker yesterday

Saw another article that as much as 90% of the grape harvest was ruined by the frost a few weeks ago.

The ticks seem to have calmed down the last couple of weeks since Rose's last trip to the Lilac bushes, not sure if it's the mowing or what. We haven't seen a tick in weeks now.

Rosie and I cut out all for the Plum tree suckers growing up to 40' away from the main tree, hundreds of 'em. talk about a tree made for drought conditions, it's roots growing that far out.

Gathered the tools to replace the upstairs faucet and drain, almost broke my glasses in the basement, banged my head on a low board, did you hear me cussing? 

 

We hung up another whirligig, getting the accumulating spring junk out of the kitchen...

Four men are in the hospital waiting room because their wives are having babies.

• A nurse goes up to the first guy and says, "Congratulations! You're the father of twins." "That's odd," answers the man. "I work for the Minnesota Twins!"

• A nurse says to the second guy, "Congratulations! You're the father of triplets!"  "That's weird," answers the second man. "I work for the 3M company!"
• A nurse tells the third man, "Congratulations! You're the father of quadruplets!" "That's strange," he answers. "I work for the Four Seasons hotel!"
• The last man is groaning and banging his head against the wall. "What's wrong?", the others ask"  "I work for 7 Up!"

~

“Being Old is Not Easy”

• I’m at a place in my life where errands are starting to count as going out.
• I don’t always go the extra mile, but when I do, it’s because I missed my damned exit.
• My goal for 2023 was to lose 10 pounds. Only have 14 to go.
• I just did a week’s worth of cardio after walking into a spider web.
• Senility has been a smooth transition for me.
• I may not be that funny or athletic or good looking or smart or talented. I forgot where I was going with this.
• I love being old, I learn something new every day and forget 5 other things.
• Just remember, once you’re over the hill, you begin to pick up speed.
• Having plans sounds like a good idea until you have to put on clothes and leave the house.
• It’s weird being the same age as old people.
• When I was a kid I wanted to be older . . this is not what I expected.
• Life is like a helicopter. I don’t know how to operate a helicopter.
• It’s probably my age that tricks people into thinking I’m an adult.
• Never sing in the shower! Singing leads to dancing, dancing leads to slipping, and slipping leads to paramedics seeing you naked. So remember. . . . Don’t sing!
• If 2023 was a math word-problem: If you’re going down a river at 2 MPH and your canoe loses a wheel, how much pancake mix would you need to re-shingle your roof?
• I see people about my age mountain climbing; I feel good getting my leg through my underwear without losing my balance.
• So if a cow doesn’t produce milk, is it a milk dud or an udder failure?
• You don’t realize how old you are until you sit on the floor and then try to get back up.
• We all get heavier as we get older, because there’s a lot more information in our heads. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Perspective...

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside. "That laundry is not very clean; she doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap." Her husband looks on, remaining silent. Every time her neighbor hangs her wash to dry, the young woman makes the same comments.

A month later, the woman is surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and says to her husband: "Look, she's finally learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this?" The husband replies, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows." And so it is with life... What we see when watching others depends on the clarity of the window through which we look.

Thursday evening Rose went out with the dogs and heard the bear huffing loudly, a warning maybe over on the property line between us and the neighbors. I went out and we shined the flashlights over in that direction to no avail. 

The Black flies seem to have abated somewhat, they're not too bad here now, I'm guessing the Mosquitos will be coming soon though..

It's Friday, Enjoy the day, T-Storms later today possibly they said

We finally have a female Hummingbird, we saw the male hummer doing his courtship dance yesterday, zipping up and down over and over by the feeder, this morning he and his mate were both doing the courtship dance.

We had a Downy Woodpecker at the Grape Jelly feeder yesterday, he stayed eating for a while.

Saturday I replaced the bathroom faucet, everything in an old house takes way longer than you think, I got the drain out of the sink as the drain tube crumbled in my hands, yikes, then onto removal of the faucet, the water lined disconnected without any issue, then onto removing the faucet itself.  Removing the nuts that hold the faucet proved to be a lot more difficult, it's a small cabinet, smaller than me and uncomfortable to get into.  Finally got them loose after taking a hammer to the faucet that loosened it enough that I could remove the two nuts, yay!  Got it all back together water lines connected & testing it, water poured out around the drain, WTH?  I ended up sealing the lower gasket with plumbers putty to resolve that issue.  Done...

Sunday was wet too.  Four deer out tonight around 8pm, the biggest one was chasing the smaller does out of the deer yard.  Rose says she definitely looks pregnant.

 

Memorial Day Weekend!

 

It's Memorial Day Monday, let's remember to thank those that gave all!

May God give comfort to all the families and loved ones who have fallen in the service of our great country.
 

The Farm is really starting to come alive this week, blooming shrubs and bushes everywhere.  Our pink lilac bush by the old orchard is going to be spectacular, we trimmed the apple tree above it in the fall giving it more sunlight and it really liked that.

Jack the Sparrow is back to sitting up under the back porch at night, we have to be careful not to spook him if we go out, he'll slowly get used to us to the point of not even waking up if we go out.

The Bunny is back, we've noticed Hannah watching the Forsythias and thought it might be a bunner, Rose saw him/her yesterday while working out by the garden. We thought they were all taken out by the foxes last year.  She was getting the soaker hoses ready for the flower beds, I re-tilled the flower bed area today to get the fertilizer and lime Rosie put on the beds down into the soil. The tiller is now put away for the year, te wont be putting in the big garden this year. It took a while putting in the hoses, the soaker hoses didn't work as we expected so we replaced them with sprinkler hoses.

Hannah is still doing good, we'll take her for her recheck again next week.

I replaced the end of a hose where the end of the hose fused with a cheap sprayer end, I hate those cheap sprayers.  I could probably grease the threads before putting them on, but...

The Iris's are flowering along the back of the house.

Rosie planted her teapot garden last week

 

The fire pit woodpile slowly growing with trimmed Apple wood.

 

 

 

 

Frost! May 18th

 Frost!

Frost, yeah we got it, luckily we've been watching this one, we brought in all the plants and covered up the one we couldn't. It was 30 degrees at 4:30am on Thursday May 18th, Mom called Thursday night to warn us too! Looked like a winter wonderland this morning.  Did you get all your plants in?

Poplar fluff, I've never seen this much that I remember, it's everywhere!

Black flies haven't been too bad yet, the windy weather seems to keep them away.

Rose took a walk out front after the frost, the Hydrangeas. Hosta and Smoke bush took a bad hit, we'll have to see if the recover, they look pretty bad.

Rose went food shopping today, got home and went out to cut some Lilacs for the house, she found 3 ticks on her, we didn't put the Tick stuff down in the are where the Lilacs are, guess we'll be putting more down for sure.

We went to Mom & Dads for Mothers day, Chinese food Yum!  Lisa was over, it was good to see her too.  We got to talk about the various critters visiting our homes.  I fixed dads computer... "don't let him tell you otherwise" I changed out some fluorescent bulbs for LED's and changed a couple dead bulbs.

I have never met a guy that doesn’t get excited about a good flashlight. Whether it’s for fishing, hunting, or just general fun. Men love portable light fixtures. See told ya, "it's not just me..." LOL

Hannah is responding well to the 2nd reduction of her medications!  So far so good.

We're getting some nice weather on Sunday, time to get the tiller out fire it up and till Rose's property border flower bed, or what will be a flower bed, frosts should be gone now so the dangers are lessened.

Went out to Dinner for Crystal's birthday with Jarrod, Crystal and the boys, at Margarita's in Manchester, great Fajitas, we had a great time!

Manchester vineyard said 90% of this years crop was damaged by the frost. Sad!

 

Happy Mothers Day

 to all the Moms out there!

 

 

Got the tub ready for the doggo's to get a bath today, new tub shroom, and stopper are ready for the games to begin. Hannah loves baths, Zeb's too big to get into the tub without one of us lifting his hind end around. Rosie tried to give Hannah a bath, it didn't go as planned, her and Zebulon were wrestling trying to get into the tub. Rose suggested I bring Zeb outside while she tried to bathe Hannah again, she wasn't having any of it, mayhem ensued, Hannah kept trying to jump out of the tub, Rose did her best and called it done.  

I did some field mowing Friday and Saturday so it doesn't get ahead of us.

I finally got the boat moved out of the field Saturday!  Yay!

The Baltimore Oriel's are here, I hear them mostly or see them on occasion on the back side of the old apple in the back yard.

A couple pairs of bluebirds are nesting in the bird houses furthest from the house. 

There's a pair of catbirds coming in to eat the grape jelly we're putting out for the Oriels, they seem to like the orange slices too. 

 

Everyone seems to like the meal-worms, Sparrows, Tufted titmice and even the Chickadee's.

The apple blossom petals are blowing everywhere in the wind Saturday

The crows nesting up in the big pines in the cove were chasing a big hawk out of the area, they hit him so hard he fell to the ground by the carport, they continued and chased him across the highway.

Maddie Graduated on Saturday, Congratulations Maddie! 

Joe & Amy sent some pics.

That's All Folks!

 

Lexi

 

It was a sad day on Friday evening Jarrod, Crystal and the boys dog Lexi passed.  Lexi was awesome, always the first to welcome us to their house. She was a well mannered, loving dog, she especially loved opening presents at Christmas and boy let me tell you that girl could smile, she lit up the whole room when she smiled!  Lexi we figure was around 10 or so years old.   We'll all miss you dearly Lexi girl!