The smoke from forest fires either here or BC has invaded our skies and it was hard to tell if the sun was shining...it was just gray all day...with no wind to clean the shy.

I hate it when it is like that....one of the reasons I would never live in the lower half of BC...hahaha  just this amount of smoke irritates my throat and makes my eyes burn...I had to carry my inhaler with me when we went grocery shopping today...Hhhhha  I drove all the way to the city and then remembered I forgot my wallet at home....yikes...good thing I didn't get stopped it is a $500. fine for not having your drivers license on your person while driving...

It has been a lazy couple of days here....I have been given the task of doing some on-line research for new floors for our steel grain bins....the cost of building wooden replacement ones has risen through the roof so we are looking for alternatives....ie: steel or concrete.... but they cost even more money than the wood to build one...but at least they have a longer life expectancy than the wood. we bought a prefab wood floor 8 yrs ago for one of the bins and it is already rotting....which really makes me angry since we paid $700. for it...oh well we will figure something out...most likely just ignore the rot for another year...ahahahaha

We hope to bale some more hay tomorrow..there has been small showers everyday for the past while but not today so if we are lucky to not have a shower overnight we will be baling...it will be good to finish it up...another few days of good weather should see it all done and then we can begin preparing for weaning the calves...we have to fix a few corral fences before that can happen though.  always something down here on the farm...

We have been waiting for a few days for a phone call telling us that the mattress we ordered for our murphy bed had arrived at the store...but we were desperate for fresh fruit and milk so we broke down and went shopping today and on our way in to the city I told R that I bet when we got home today there would be a call saying the mattress was in....ahahahha figures since we didn't take the trailer to pick it up...thinking it was not in yet...cause R did call yesterday and they said it hadn't come in....ahahahahaha  and sure as shit on the barn floor....there was a call from them saying it had come in this morning....figures.....we live by murphy's law....so now it will have to wait until next week when I have a crappy appointment at the hospital in the city for those stupid, horrible eye tests...because of one of the drugs I take can pool in the cornea of your eye and they have to check you every 6 months to see that it is not or else you could go blind.....gggggrrreeeeaaaaattt....don't want that....I would rather be deaf, mute, or in a wheel chair than be blind...knock on wood...

I planted this vine two years ago that was suppose to grow to over 20 ft in height...and up the side of this pergola that I built and over the top....it grows like crazy but doesn't want to grow up it goes out...it has spread all over the sidewalk and into the flower bed beside it....i train the branches to go up and later in the day they are going sideways again...so I give up....we are going to move it somewhere it can go sideways if it likes and it won't matter to me...and another beef I have against it is that it went to seed this spring...and I have dozens of baby vines growing all throughout the flower bed now...so I am going to put those in pots and move them somewhere to.... it is a species clematis...with yellow flowers and in the winter the seed pods are fuzzy balls, quite pretty but a royal pain...oh well, live and learn...I have no idea what to plant in its stead, that will grow up the pergola...our yard is like Siberia with such exposure to the winter winds and crappy clay soil....it has to be zone 2 or less...so those are plants that will grow in Siberia....  I'm not kidding...the plants that flourish in our yard are:  Siberian crab apple, Russian almond, Siberian olive tree and Siberian larch....hahahahahaha I have all those growing like crazy here but hard to get anything more showy to grow...it all winter kills... well we will keep experimenting there has to be a few more things we haven't tried yet.  Next spring I will be on the hunt for a few more shrubs and one more tree....and I am planting all my little seedling pine and spruce this week in the yard.

..if they grow it should be like a woodland oasis here in about 20 years...ahahahhaha until then I will have to concentrate when I mow so I don't run over them.... oh dear.