The Barking Barkers and Fathers Day

Summertime means lots of yard work. Our June project has been re-barking—what a doozy. We shopped for bark (3 nurseries) and spent a week of evenings weeding inside curbs and digging out and trimming the weed barrier. We considered having the bark blown in like 4 years ago, but decided to try dispersing 7 cubic yards (delivered by J&L) ourselves due to the need for “specialized placement.” We spent 4 hours on Friday night and probably 8 hours on Saturday, in between 3 cloudbursts, to get rid of the pile by loading, transporting, shoveling and raking. Dad doesn’t know how many trips he made up the steep hill with wheelbarrow loads and I don’t know how many rock crevices I hand-stuffed from a bucket, but it was a lot in both cases. We’re pleased with the results, but unfortunately we’re not done. We’ll have to order another 4 cubic yards, probably, to finish all the way around the fence up top, the front yard rocks and the west side. Oh goody. Our muscles are sore, but it sure does smell good!

Sunday meant Father’s Day and we enjoyed filet mignons on the BBQ with baked potatoes (sour cream, chives, cheddar cheese, and bacon bits), Rhodes Texas rolls, and a great salad bar brought by the darling daughters. (Thanks!) After presents and Snickerdoodles and ice cream (Dad’s favorite Blue Bunny Tracks), the Stansbury Barkers arrived for a classic game of Croquet. Baron won’t forget his roquet-croquet to the ball of his foot (ouch!) or the one which sent Dad’s ball flying from the tip top, down two levels to the raspberry bushes. Although Baron was the first to become poison, Abram also became poison and finished off the last three players with one awesome shot…3 with one blow! Congrats! Brie and Colby had fun wielding the mallets while Donette and I took photos.

The pile of bark.

Wheelbarrow Man.

Precise placement.

The "before" shot...notice the black weed barrier in the foreground and up the hill and the gray bark.

The "after" shot...no more weed barrier and a fresh chocolate brown covering.

The girls assembling the salad.

Dad the "Chef de BBQ."

Father and future fun...washing the cars.

Colby and Henry the Train.

3 generations in the berry patch. First fruits of the 2009 season...only a teasing handful for the moment.

Let the game begin. Mother and daughter.

Autumn and the "velour" ball & mallet.

Mr. Blue.

Autumn sharing with Colby.

Zoog...coordinated...all black.

The power stroke to try to make it up the hill without hitting the curb and rolling back down.

And the winner is....Abram with a 3-fer!!!

A shot of the berry bushes...loaded this year...they must have liked the cool, cloudy days.

Front yard showing off its colors last week.

Weigela (why-gee-la) or as we call it, the wigglia.

Potentilla.

Yep, those are the baby shamrocks that went to Phoenix and Las Vegas in the tiny pot...about 1 month after transplanting, they've gone crazy!

Window of Opportunity

On Tuesday afternoon, the power went out at the Salt Lake County office buildings and eventually with the rising heat and no computers functioning, we were all sent home! What do you do with a free afternoon? Well, The Geo Idiots go caching, of course. We have wanted to re-do the Flag Rock Trail in Farmington for several years. We hiked it 5 years ago and picked up 2 caches. Since that time, 6 new caches have been added to the hike which now continues south along the hills to Patsy’s Mine and makes a loop. We wanted to do it early in the year, ‘cause the trail can get hot in the summer. Tuesday was a perfect opportunity. We went hiking from 4:30pm until about 9:00pm and got rained on twice. (As those of you who live around here know, June has been nothing but gray skies, rain, and cool temperatures…feels like we’re living in Seattle or Portland, not the high desert along the Wasatch Front. But we’re trying to appreciate it since we know what’s coming.) We had a great time. Felt kinda like we were playing hooky. The views were awesome, we took lots of photos, ate a snack, found the Mine, got a lot of exercise, found all 6 caches and accomplished a goal.


Part way up. Can you see the flag on the rock outcropping in the background?

Looking down at Lagoon. The scrub oak in the burn area has really grown up in the 5-1/2 years since the fire. Do you see the rain coming from the west over Antelope Island? It was fun to watch the rain approach and try to guess when it would reach us!

Mom with walking stick, hood and soaked pants. The first rain didn’t last very long, but the undergrowth was very wet to walk through until we started down the south side. The second rain (the last 15-20 minutes) was pretty drenching.

Dad zeroing in on the flag.

Mom at Flag Rock with Farmington Bay in the background.

Looking south from Flag Rock. Can you see Glover’s Lane?

Looking north from Flag Rock. Can you see the CRV, Pepe, our" little mule"?

Dad at Mr. Patsy Marley's Mine (ore excavation in the very early 1900s).

This was an interesting area called the Boulder Field. We found the 5th of 6 caches at the base of this boulder.

And some flower photos, of course. Eeyore’s Thistle.

Yellow wild snapdragons.

White wild roses.

GEO-CLUE Part Deux

It was an iffy afternoon weather-wise when the Barker foursome took off for Ogden to complete the Geo-Clue game we had started two weeks earlier. But, never say die! We only got rained on at one cache, The Hall, but had to wade through tall, wet grasses at The Ballroom also. It was quite an adventure from the south end of Ogden to West Warren, then north to Willard Bay and on to North Ogden/Pleasant View before solving the mystery of who, with what and where. We had a fun time, including a stop for a snack at Wendy’s and then on to the final cache. Mr. Wonton Cache’n couldn’t seem to get his fill, so we visited one more cache in Farmington, just for fun, then came home for toasted tuna sandwiches while watching The Emperor’s New Groove.

The slippery slope at The Ballroom. It's steeper than it looks.
We were lucky to find a path leading down from "the drop off" to the "odd tree out."

3 geocachers on the path at The Ballroom.

Up a tree...literally! How convenient that the branches formed a ladder to the cache container hanging at least 10 feet off the ground in a scrub oak tree.

Documenting the scenery at The Ballroom.

By the canal with green scum at The Study in West Warren.

Success for Mr. Geo Idiot at The Hall at the south end of Willard Bay, in the rain and the very tall, very wet grass. The back roads to the cache got smaller and bumpier and muddier as we went.

Ah, blue skies and a white cloud on top of Mt. Ben Lomond in North Ogden at the Secret Passage.

Looking south towards Ogden from The Secret Passage.

Brie and Grandpa at the Pooh Stick Stream.

Daddy and daughter...Wonton Cache'n...at the Secret Passage.

We discovered all the rooms, weapons, and suspects and collected 8 other clues along the way to figure out the final coordinates to the Geo-Clue cache. Hooray!

It was Mr. Green, in The Library, with the Candlestick.

The final cache was in a little thicket north of the McKay-Dee Hospital where Brie was born.

Brie with Daddy, Grandma and prize Slinky from the Ogden Geo-Clue Cache.

Just one more cache in back in Farmington.

Pretty classy geocoin, the Celtic Star, found at the Geo-Clue Cache...to be logged and moved on.

June Is Bustin' Out All Over

These are the fragrant blossoms on our huge, old, thorny locust "pioneer" trees up top. I guess these trees are good for a few reasons.

Our red twig dogwoods (plain and variegated) that fence in the back yard are covered with white clusters. Abram, I hope these didn't trigger your allergies when you and Airie were here last weekend!