Cuteness

I took these pictures of my friends' baby last week when they visited the farm. And I feel I must post them simply because of their cuteness.


Studying the grass:

Watching Marge.

More intense grass studying.

And again.

And again. She was truly fascinated by the grass.

Such cuteness.

The Auction

Every Wednesday, not to far from our house, a super fun thing takes place.

I haven't actually gotten to go to this super fun auction in a long time on account of having to work every Wednesday. But in light of some super fun family being in from out of town last week, I managed to get the day off. So the whole family headed to the auction.

This auction is different from a lot of auctions (I think) in its magnitude. There are literally fields full of stuff to be auctioned! One field for furniture. A couple fields for random mid-sized stuff. And one big barn thing for little stuff.

You can find everything at Dixon's Auction.

Like this glass head. Who doesn't need one of these!

Or this strange Asian antique.

Or this extensive and somewhat scary collection of salt and pepper shakers.

Or this lovely green chair.

Every time I go there is always one item that there seems to be a lot of. Its different every time. This time it was swords. Which of course my little brother enjoyed.

Though it made this little baby who came along for the adventure kinda skeptical.

Baby Cows

I love the baby cows on this farm. I visit with them like every day.


This is Bert. He is very shy.

This is Ernie. He is very friendly.

They are both very cute. They are going on 4 months old.



But, my favorite by far, is Big Bird.

He is probably about 1 month old now.

He sleeps a lot. Sometimes I get to feed him his bottle.

How can you not love this sweet little face?

Sigh. So cute.


Though, Ernie does have his cute angles too, even when his nose is covered in food:

Watched

Some times when I walk Marge around the farm the cows ignore us. Other times, for no apparent reason, they like to watch us walk past.

I find it very amusing...every time. :-)

First Fruits

Things are starting to bloom like crazy in the garden. Looks like we will actually get some yummy food out of it - yay!

My many tomato plants are going to town!

But I kind of expected that.



However, pessimist that I be, I did not expect this:

Its a watermelon. And its about the size of a golf ball so far.
I have never grown watermelon before, which for some reason I assumed meant that they were difficult to grow. But it turns out they are not.

There's actually a bunch of these little fellas. One slightly larger one is hiding under the sunflowers.

And a whole bunch of itsy bitsy tiny ones are just beginning to sprout. You can see the little flowers giving way to the tiny bead-sized watermelons.

Won't be long before we will actually be eating some of this stuff!

Photo Safari

I was in charge of this year's anniversary trip plans and some how I managed to keep them a secret until the day before the main event! It was merely the evening before that I told Mon Amour that we were going to go on what is called a "Photo Safari" - which is basically a walking tour led by a professional photographer who will teach you some basics about photography!

Mon Amour was quite excited (or he put on a good front...but I think it was genuine). Mon Amour had the camera, and I took notes as we headed off on our 4 hour tour.

It was a very enlightening tour - we learned a lot! As our guide pointed out, you can read the manual and it will tell you how to adjust everything, but it won't actually tell you why you would want to adjust those things.

So that is what we learned. There is still much more room for practice and perfection, but I think now we both feel a little more equipped to use our camera.

Here are some of my favorites from the trip:

Did you know there is a memorial to Einstein in DC? I had no idea. I have been there many times and yet had no clue it existed. Its cool. And huge. And if you stand in front of him and talk to him, it echos back (an intentional part of the design). Coolness.

The cheery looking face below belongs to our guide, who kindly used himself as a model when needed. Here we were learning a most practical trick. When taking pictures indoors with the flash - you know how faces can get all shiny and the background can get all dark and gloomy? Like this:

To fix that (and pardon the blur and such below. Tis not the best picture, but you will get the gist of the lesson) slow down the shutter speed so that it has time to take in not just the light from the flash, but also some of the ambient light from behind.

Ahh, less glare. More background. Success.

We learned other cool tricks too - like how to make moving cars disappear from your pictures. And other, more practical things.

Family Portrait

Last weekend was full of fun times and family. All of the family to be exact. We (my side of the family) were all in town. A rare moment indeed. A rare moment that necessitated a picture of course.

Its a good thing our camera has one of those lovely 10 second delay things. Its fairly simple to use, but we still had to practice.

It was a nice practice shot. But clearly not everyone was in it. We needed to get closer. And stand less stupidly.

That's better. You can just barely see dad...and mom for that matter. But you can tell that they are there - success! We are all there and no one is blinking.

We had to do one more just to be sure though.

Hehe. I like this one :-)

Bee Naps

This still boggles my mind...

Can you see them all around the edge in this picture? There is an almost complete circle of bees around the edge of this flower.

See?

They stick their heads into the plan and just sit there. Napping I assumed. Kind of like the flies, and the cows, and everything else around here that naps.

I have always known bees sleep in flowers. But I still find it most fascinating.

Here is a little video of the ones who aren't sleepy yet.

Video Footage

I don't think that I can embed this particular video. But it is a must-watch for any Marge-fans out there.

So, here is the link


I took Marge to work with me the other day - and my boss's dog, Duke, was also there.
Marge loves other dogs a lot. Fortunately Duke is very patient - cause pretty much all day Marge was trying to figure out how to sit in his lap. And if that didn't work, she would bat him in the face in attempts to get him to pay her some attention.

From time to time, Duke would bark to let her know he had had enough, but Marge was not deterred. I think she thought the barking was the coolest part about him

It was adorable.

The best things in life are free (and hand me downs)

Our landlady's dog is addicted to tennis balls. She is rarely ever seen without one in her mouth. But apparently she does drop them from time to time because occasionally Marge finds one and brings it home with her.

She likes to pretend that she doesn't like them though.

See, totally not interested.

Oh wait. Maybe. Maybe she will just give it a little chew.

Ok, actually she is addicted to it. It is her new favorite toy.

She gets very focused on her chewing.

Sometimes it is so intense that she just has to nap afterwards.

Hurray for hand me down toys!

What the cats think of Marge

Though I am not a cat person, the barn cats have earned a special place in my heart. I love visiting them. Marge kind of likes them too. She likes to go over and say hi and such.

However, the barn cats don't reciprocate Marge's affection. You can clearly read this cat's disdain for Marge's ridiculousness in his facial expressions as he watches Marge.

This would be the "Don't you get any closer you stinky breathed creature" look.

"That's right. Not a inch closer"

"Oh, are you leaving?"

"Fine. Whatever. Do I look like I care"

Alien Corn

The corn is getting tall around here.
It is very pretty to look at.

At least most of it is. Most of it looks like people expect it to look. Tall, green stalks waving in the wind.



But have you ever looked closely at it?



More specifically...at the bottom of it?

At the base of each corn stalk are these weird purple roots. Some go all the way into the ground - and some just stick out like freaky alien fingers. We looked it up and it seems they are called "prop roots". I guess they are normal. And they probably serve some kind of functional purpose. But, honestly, they are just weird looking....and it has kind of permanently altered my view of corn. Adding a touch of "ick" to my otherwise positive opinion about it.

This reminds me of the time when I got in a bit of an argument with the professor of my Non-Verbal Communication class about how many ears of corn are on each stalk. It being a non-verbal class and all....out argument was 100% in charades. Yeah, that moment in my life also forever changed my view of corn.