Crescent Lake

This is the first lake I went swimming in since I've been living here in Wisconsin. I've been here for over a year now; and while there are tons of lakes all around, I just hadn't really thought about swimming much. Well now that I know how nice these lakes are (well there are some that would be too weedy to swim in) but I'll be going out again soon. Not far from us is another lake (Sunset) that is another perfectly clean and clear lake to swim in.

On Vacation - A day at the zoo...

Clayton's mom and Pat are here visiting and I am on Vacation while they are here. It's so nice to have time off and to explore Wisconsin even more. We went to the Marshfield Zoo today, which is only an hours drive away, and it was a beautiful day and I was so surprised to see such great animals at this zoo. The bear, well Miss Grizz did not seem so happy, she needs a new place to stay, and they are trying to raise enough money to get her a new 'dig'; she looked really old and when she walked it kind of just broke your heart, I did manage to get some 'happy' looking pictures of her, but I almost got tears in my eyes watching her. Most of the others seems pretty happy, well as happy as an animal can be being behind fences and in a small confined area. The Eagles made my day! finally I got up close and personal with a bald eagle, WOW; they prairie dogs were a hoot! Loved them and the Wood Duck oh so colorful was a very pleasant surprise. So here are a few pictures with a link to a slide show of the rest of the best....enjoy.

Click here for a slide show of the Best Shots of the day 

The Deck is Done

Now all we have to do is decide on a railing system and add stairs. But in the meantime, we've been enjoying it out there. Since these pictures, I've cleaned up the court and deck of all leaves and small branches from our last storm which passed. They both clean up quickly with the leaf blower. We have played several games of Boccie Ball and well it's nice to finally get some relaxing done. All that hard work paid off; it was totally worth it.  These pictures also have the chairs we bought and stained, they look pretty colorful out there in the vast green surroundings.

The chairs above have RESERVED for signs on them.

Clayton's mom and Pat are coming for a visit and we wanted

them to see what is waiting here for them when they arrive.

MOTHRA

Tonight I saw this guy fluttering on the sliding glass door. It was 9PM and dark and the auto focus did not work and manual was hard, I just kept slightly turning it and hoping it was in focus. Several of them were.

I googled this description of a reddish moth with blue and black spots on the wing, couldn't tell what species for sure but it is some sort of Silk Moth, I think.

His wing span is like 3-4 inches and I was literally right on top of him. Very cool

End of second weekend - the Deck is progressing

I didn't take any photo's on Saturday. Something sad happened though on that day. We had left our garage door open, and there is a nice clear window on one of the walls. Well, when we were done with working and putting stuff away, I found a dead hummingbird right under the window on the work bench. What a very sad way to die...I felt so bad......

Here is our deck progress from over the weekend, Sunday we got off to a slow start due to some other stuff we did in the morning, didn't even start till about 1PM. By late afternoon I was wishing I was ice fishing again instead of deck building. It was pretty humid and I got a little too hot. Clayton kept at it for an hour or so longer after I left him and went in and cooled off and took a short nap.....

back lit leaves

The sun was setting to the left top corner of this picture; it looked so pretty from the window, I had to take a picture. But then I had to play with filters; the leaves are not really yellow that is just the light filtering through and back lighting them....

Day 3 - more deck building progress

Well day three felt like we slowed down a bit, lifting all that wood, moving it from point A (top of driveway) down to point B (Deck area) and hammering, sawing, cutting, drilling, measuring, leveling, holding, thinking, re-thinking and pulling all those little trees and bushes and weeds takes alot of energy. We didn't exactly make it to where we wanted to be, but we got close. We still need to block around the tree and block the first row joist boards.

Something interesting happened after we stopped working while we took a rest in the gazebo before putting everything away. During the day, we had yet another run to Lowe's (you never have everything you need, no matter how much you prepare) well I decided to buy a fuchsia plant they had them there in a 10 inch pot for only $10. A great price from all the other garden stores I'd seen, I've seen them as high as $30 for a 12 inch pot. But going back to sitting and resting in our gazebo, I had put that fuchsia on a pillar stand in the area where I prepared for planting and while we were sitting there two hummingbirds came to the flowers and started feeding out of them. I was so happy they found it so fast. But here is the great part to the story, all the sudden a hummingbird came flying straight into the screen of the side of the gazebo. It got stuck and fluttered three times trying to get out. I thought his toes nails had gotten stuck in the screen, but Clayton was sitting closer and it was actually his beak that got stuck in the screen; poor little guy, I was just about ready to get up and help release him when he finally got out on his own. Of course he did not appear to be hurt, much softer to fly into a screen than into a window like alot of birds do here. But it certainly was an interesting thing to witness!

This picture above shows the area I pulled all the trees, bushes and weeds from, only leaving a few tiny pines, and some wild flowers and you can't see them, but I even left a few small (tiny even) oak trees.

Deck Progress - Day 2

We got quite a bit done today, considering we had to stop and make two Lowe's runs to get stuff we needed and didn't have. Well one trip was first thing in the morning before we started, but Oh and on the way to Lowe's the second trip, we saw a Black Bear! So cool to see it. It was not far from the road, and I did have my camera, but only had  my 55MM lens. So here is a picture of it but it's not very close.

Then here is our deck progress for the day and it was a perfect day today; Not windy and the temp just about 70.  The size of this deck is approximately 35 feet by just under 15 feet wide. We sort of went a bit big, but it really has to be big since the boccie ball court is so long. We are happy with our progress, however i was hoping to get a little further, but we are still on track for finishing the under structure by tomorrow. Maybe if we are lucky we will even get a few deck boards down. 

Then I got sidetracked for a moment and saw this spider, Clayton needed me too, but I made him wait. I just had to get a picture of this thing. I have no idea what kind of spider this is, but I sure am glad I didn't see him on me, I would have freaked. Look how scary he can make himself when he feels threatened. With a Butt like that; I will most definitely only get as close as this to take a picture.

the Deck Project has begun

Today, Friday May 14, we started building our deck next to our boccie ball court. And here are the pictures to show our progress so far. Tonight I'll probably post again of our progess from day two.

These last three however are from last weekend when we dug the dirt up and tossed in some peat moss to make a little flower garden bed. I'm not sure what will end up here yet, but I'm sure soon I will think of something; and if Idon't then I think it will just plant a hodgepodge of plants just to get some color here. Then there is the area to the right that still needs attention...but it's coming along and my goal is to keep is as low maintenance as possible.