Easter and other family adventures!

Almost time to eat!

The whole clan!

Another delicious cake

Mom mixes the dressing and I check the dog.

"I found a bird piece"

At the Jersey Shore

More pictures from the spring: Snowday!

Even teachers like a good snowday!

View from the front

View from the back

Tea and scones-the perfect way to celebrate the day!

Hooray for snowmen in the front yard (and friendly neigborhood kids who take pictures)

More pictures from the recent-ish past: Apple Blossom Festival

Apple Blossom Weekend breakfast (the pink lemonade mimosas were a nice touch I thought)

We had the motorcycles lining up again this year.

Shasta was mostly unperturbed. (Mostly)

We also had the classic cars line up too!

You know who this one's for :)

It's summertime-where did the spring go?

So it's time for a massive blog update (well past time actually).  Here's some pics from the past few...well, months really that are what we've been up to!

Steph and one of the dogs at the farm we visited for class.

The yellow face of the entomologist after a day in the streams.

Cool critters!  A gomphid dragonfly larvae (best family name ever-say it outloud without smiling, I dare you)
and a giant stonefly

Steph found the cool critters first!

Morning drama back in April-Shasta uncovered a nest of baby bunnies (less than 1 day old).  This is the one we took to the wildlife rehab center nearby.

This is the rest of the nest-alas, despite our best efforts we think the neighborhood cats got to them.

Overheard...

Steph:  What kind of plant do we have in the living room? I can't remember.
Jim: What plant?
Steph:  The only plant.
Jim: The green plant?
Steph: .......yes

We will have real posts soon, I promise.  Really.

An exciting day at work!

Today was definitely an exciting day where we work!  As part of a land management program, several fields at work are managed to foster the growth of warm season native grasses.  There's a lot of benefits of planting these types of fields in our area-increased drought tolerance, more native bird species (yay bobwhite quail!), higher populations of pollinators, and some evidence of higher nutrition fodder. 

What's more, these grasslands have traditionally been maintained by fire.  There's evidence that the whole Shenandoah Valley has been maintained as open grassland by fire for thousands of years.  So in a classic case of what's old is new again, controlled burns have become a major part of grassland management, and today they did a burn on a few fields at the SCBI!

Just getting started with the first of 5 fields

The second field starting to go.  They were very careful-firebreaks were dug between the separate fields weeks ago, they did one at a time, and the set the fires so that it had to burn into the wind rather than with it.

The final fire.  You can see how they set the lines to burn in towards the center so the firebreaks got larger as the fire burned.

You could hear the flames crackling across the valley.

Going full-bore!

And done.  Each field probably only took 10 minutes or so to burn (dry grass goes up very quickly).

Our new headboard!

This is a project we've been working on off and off for for months... which is sad, because it only took about 2 hours of actual work to do!

I had been coveting this bed:  http://www.vivaterra.com/vintage-couglas-fir-gustavian-bed.html -- but not so much the price tag.  So, we decided to mimic the design.

We used 5 12 inch-wide planks of pine wood.  We cut the two on the ends to 10 inches each to fit the bed better (using a table saw) and secured them together using wood glue.  When the wood glue dried, we attached of the pine pieces that we'd cut off near the bottom of the bed frame and a metal strip closer to the top.

The following weekend, we picked it up again and taped painting papers on the bedframe.  We figured out the proportions of the curves (as in, this bend is halfway between this corner and this corner...), marked them and hand-drew the outline of the frame.

 We sanded the front pretty thoroughly, since the wood glue had leaked through, and the wood had some cardboard glued to it...

 And then stained it with two coats of a dark walnut stain.  

We let it dry downstairs for the following week, and just moved it upstairs this morning!

I love it - even the not-so even bits - it looks like a proper bed now!