Bee stings still itching...

Not that important, but sure keeps your attention!

The best thing I've put on it besides ice has been some horse liniment.

I smell like peppermint...

Wonder if I'll start "whinnying"!


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Update on bee stings...

It's 24 hours later... and the pain from the hornet sting on my finger is gone... but the pain from the ground bees attack on my ankle has turned into itching and although bearable, it's crummy!


Haven't seen any of the ground bees today and the horses aren't plagued by them so I think they were disturbed by the tractor mowing the weeds and were furious!
Apparently they've found new "digs".

Little Critters... but they sure sting!

All the work I had been accomplishing came to a grinding halt.
Just because of a tiny little thing - about a inch long.

Previously I had washed carpets and presented some marketing strategies and website ideas to an employer and trained three horses and on and on...
I decided to weed whip and headed down to the river to clear the edge.
But after a few feet of clearing, unknown to me a hornet had grabbed on to my tight fitting yellow gloves and when I felt it I tried to brush it off but it seemed stuck on my glove finger.
I had to strip them off and shut off the weed whip - the heavy duty kind.
I lay it on the ground and ran up to the house - really concerned about the extent of the bee sting.
The pain was excruciating for such a tiny little hole!
I drank water - got ice for my finger - and thought it would get better.
NOT!
About an hour later I took a couple of Ibuprofen - just to do something.
Three hours later - I thought I felt good enough to feed the horses and end the day.

I walked out to the first shed and got the grain.
The stallion was acting like an exploding firecracker.
He tore into his shed with his buddy and they milled around.
What was going on?
Well, I was soon to find out.
I stepped over to open their gate and felt pin pricks on my ankle - which turned out more painful because I had stepped onto ground bees!
They were all over.
That's why the horses were going nuts in that area.

I got them settled into their individual sheds and fed the horses in the other pasture and then came back to the house to take care of the many bee stings on my ankle.

They weren't as bad as the first one.
But they just added insult to injury...it seemed.


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When a loser is also a winner!

Is winning the only thing?

Do people only remember the winners?

At our family reunion camp up in Itasca State Park, the games began. The young parents and their children had been bicycling and hiking and now came the competition at Bean Bag Toss.

OK, sounds wimpy but that’s why I signed up for it!

And you should have heard the cheers as relatives rooted for their cousins or aunts and uncles. The small tykes got to stand closer to the target bean bag hole than their older siblings and us grandfolk.

Near the end of the competition someone had set up a challenge between my son, Scott, and me. His family had already competed.

Now every Mom probably has lost many games of “Go Fish” or “Crazy Eight” to their kids when they were little. So I don’t mind losing to him. But he’s grown up now and I’m going to make him work for it!

I had played a couple of games of tossing the bean bags earlier that day. I figured I had the “power swing” down.

So I didn’t expect to go scoreless!

We had a goal of 11 points. Soon Scott had nine and I had zero!

How could that be? I hadn’t even hit the board!

My last chance came up as Scott scored his winning points but I had my turn left.

The crowd yelled, “Get it in the hole!”

And although I hadn’t even gotten the bag onto the board up til now, I strutted up to the line and nodded to the crowd and tossed the bag... through the hole for three points!

Cheers and enthusiasm billowed up from the crowd.

I strutted around accepting their congratulations and they started calling and encouraging... “Do it again!”

Well, remember now that I hadn’t hit the board until that last throw! But I strutted right back up to the line and nodded to the crowd and tossed that bean bag and walla! I hit the hole again for another three points!

The crowd went berzerk cheering and yelling, “Do it again! Do it again!”

I performed a Jesse Ventura type of world wrestling championship stance as I held the bean bag above my head to show the crowd and went up to the line ... and tossed it in the hole for the third time!

I have no idea how I managed to toss those bags into the hole. It seemed like I was just watching along with everyone else!

No, I didn’t win the game. I had one more bag to toss and it missed the board totally.

But you know, with all my clowning around, and then making three fantastic tosses... no one probably even remembered who really won the game!

So, just do the best you can. Then everyone wins.

(I’ll try to remember this when watching pro football!)

Wood Sculptor, Charlie Ekstrom, shows you

what he sees in a piece of wood.

(Hint: For a smoother video presentation: press the Play button and then press the Pause button until the video is downloaded. When you press Play again, it will move along without having to download.)

Little Hitch Hikers!

An empty bird’s nest was perched on the back of Dave McKeag’s huge 4440 John Deere tractor. Dave noticed it as he checked the transmission oil before starting out to disk the 180 acres near Highways 56 and 19 that he and his son, Dan, were planting in soybeans.

Since there were no eggs in the nest, Dave thought it had been abandoned but for some unknown reason he left it there and headed out to work the fields. He would spend the next 4 1/2 days disking.

It was on the second day that Dave saw that there had been a change in the nest. There were four blue eggs nestled in it.

Well, the nest had been built securely and hadn’t budged while he had been driving the tractor the first couple of days, so Dave headed back out into the fields with his little “Hitch Hikers” packed in the back.

Dave couldn't see the nest from the cab of the tractor.

It was only when he stopped the tractor out in the fields to take a break and walk around to stretch a bit that he saw the mother bird. She was perched on the large disk he was pulling behind and appeared to be strongly scolding him!

Bird language was not translated but her attitude was pretty apparent! When all the fields were disked, Dave parked his tractor in the shade to protect the little babies.

And they were happily growing up, getting ready to leave their "mobile" home and fly away to more adventures!

A face in a fried egg?

Maybe I should have put this on e-bay?

When I looked down at my fried egg in the pan I saw what reminded me of the face of a baby in a bonnet!

Maybe I should have put it out for auction on the internet... but it was early in the morning and I had just finished chores, feeding the animals, and it looked good enough to eat!

Yum...