New babies and beautiful flowers!

Today was very much a busy outdoors day for my dad, Jacob & I... (Mom and Andrew were in Bismarck for almost the whole day.) Seeing as everything was so wet and the wind was pretty still, Dad decided to burn the garbage hole out. So, we cleaned up a LOT of trash around the place, plus some old tree branches that we'd fed the leaves of to the goats; some rotten railroad ties; and many small pieces of wood that had been laying on the floor in the back of the shop for a few years! After picking up a bag of garbage in the Quonset, I looked down at where the bag had been and saw about 10 baby mice! They were actually (I can't believe I'm writing this) kind of cute, but cute or not, we did not need more mice on the place. I called our dog and she carried some of them off... The rest we did in. Anyway, it felt good to get rid of all of that garbage, although our muscles don't feel so good tonight. :)

After finishing that yucky job in the late part of the afternoon, Jacob and I went in the house to get some seeds for planting in the garden. Dad came in quick then and said that I should grab my camera and come outside. This is what he had seen:

One of our hens had hatched out 9 fluffy chicks! When we went closer so I could get a picture, our dog Millie ran up to a chick and obviously had plans of eating it, but the mother hen flew at her and she backed away. Millie was going to try again, but we hollered at her and then went and tied her up. We'll have to figure out a place to put the mama and babies, as the cats are a threat to the little puff balls as well and Millie can't spend the next 3 months on the end of a cable!

Jacob and I did manage to get 3 more beds planted in the garden then before having to come in to make a quick supper. Dad hauled some bigger stuff out to the fire and then went and swathed down a little bit of fresh alfalfa for the goats as we're out of hay now. They sure enjoyed that treat! We had just finished with chores when the van pulled in.

When we all got in the house, Andrew had a surprise for me...

He had bought me a hanging pot of Viola flowers in appreciation for the chores I did for him while he was cleaning grain. My very favorite kind of flowers are Pansies, but Andrew said that they didn't have any there, so he got the Violas which are, basically, small Pansies. They are so pretty and smell so sweet. I'll have to find a good place to hang them now... Thank you, Andrew, SO much!