The Ticker Seems To Be Good

Just a short blog about this morning at the heart clinic.

Nana's aunt had a heart attack earlier this year which got both of us thinking about he stent in my heart. No one ever said anything about how long it is good for or do we need to monitor it somehow.
I went to see the same DR. that was in charge of me when the stent was put in. e said that maybe we should do a stress echo cardiogram.
That is what I did this morning and I can report that I didn't fail the test, if I had I wouldn't be blogging now. The goal was to get the heart up to 139 beats per minute for the picture taking which meant that they wanted the heart at 150 so they could get the pictures before it got below 139. As I am n the tread mill the nurse asked if I could go one more level and of course I nodded and away we went. This time I had to jog to keep up and out of the corner of my eye I could see my heart rate was at 160. So I gave up and said that was enough. They said all looked good but now I have to wait until the heart DR. looks and gives me some kind of report.

The Burial Plot

This past week I had to make some improvements to the Spring Valley burial plot, aka raised bed garden.
I started this last fall and got a lot of it finished but the back side was way to low for anyone to be able to get anything out of the garden.
It required a quite a few loads of fill dirt to bring it up about 12 to 14 inches. Then I added about 4 to 6 inches of top soil to it.
Today I planted grass seed during a nice rain. We got about 1/4" of rain after I finished covering up the grass seed so it shouldn't need water until Tuesday.

An update on the fox kits we have growing in the dens on the other side of the pond. Yesterday Nana and I watched at least 5 of the little fox running in and out of the dens escape routes. It was either Mama or Dada fox, as you know both of them raise the little ones, kept a close eye on them while laying on the hill above them.

Harsh Reality

While out for my daily walk, when I am home, I came across this skull from a 1 1/2 year old buck.

I had watched this guy last fall as he ran with a 9 point that was probably 2 1/2 years old. this guy would try and spare with the 9 point but the 9 point would just kinda shrug him off as if to say leave me alone and stop bothering me.

What you see is all I found. Not another bone around the area that this was found at.

Out With Old and In with The New

The one mattress that we had was Nana's from when she as a little girl. She had it figured out to be 43 years old. I guess we got out money's worth out of that one.











So here is the new one coming into the house.













And here is how tall the new mattress is on one of the old beds. We just about died laughing that these new ones are so tall. This one about covers up the headboard and does cover up the foot board.










Here is Nana standing next to our new mattress. One of my next jobs is to build steps to be able to get in and out of bed with.

First Day Out

Today was the first day that the fox brought out the kit's. We saw three heads for only about 15 minutes outside the den.
We saw her come back with what looked like a baby rabbit, set it down outside the den and then covered it up with leaves. She then got the little ones to come out and she showed them how to look for food under the leaves.

Quite interesting day.

A couple of hours later we had the woodchuck come out of it's den and start to eat by the edge of the pond. We wished it was on the other side of the pond and not so close to the house. Last year it tried to make a den and nest under the deck so I suppose it will be a battle again this year to see where she makes her nest.

Way Out West - Again

Some more pictures from the latest job in Wyoming.
Lot's of Mule deer this time. You can see them much better if you click on the picture and make it bigger.









These are some pictures from the plane when arriving at Salt Lake City. The day that I left they had added another foot of snow on them. That is where the snow that we got last night came from.

Will It Never End

Beautiful as it may seem to you, I have had enough of winter.
This is what we woke up to this morning. It is heart attack snow - very heavy with lots of water content.

It is nice and warm, by our standards, 32 degrees this morning and the snow will not last long because the temp is suppose to get close to 50 over the next few days.


















The pond looked like a post card with two mallards in it this morning. I was to slow with the camera to catch them.