Watering Boots

Ed and I fished out our barn boots to water the seedlings today! They saved our tennis shoes, as well as our socks, from an assault by the cheat grass (upper right) in Lambert Park. The grass burrows into your shoes and socks, which not only sticks into your feet when you walk, but also takes hours to remove! Yay for boots, that saved us that aggravation when we watered the upper seedlings this morning!

And hooray for the little seedlings, valiantly trying to live in the middle of a drought! We might have 30 percent dying in the highest zones, but that means 70% are still doing great!

Alpine Sage Publicity Shot

Alpine Sage (aka the Alpine Slow Jam) had their publicity shots taken today. We actually are missing two members of the band, but we're hoping when we finally all show up for  practice on the same day things will magically all come together!

We're getting ready for our big gig on Monday, July 16 at the Alpine Food Truck Roundup at Legacy Park! We'll be playing at 6 p.m., and we're hoping to see some friendly faces!

Ziplining in Provo Canyon

Our girls had given us Groupons for a zip-line adventure, which we cashed in today. It was at Provo Canyon Adventures, and was just a little ways up Provo Canyon. We were excited to try it in America, as our only other experience had been in the canopies in Belize.

We were driven up the hill in an old Humvee, which was an adventure in itself. This meant that because we started at altitude we didn't have to climb up a set of stairs every time we reached a new platform!

And, what we lacked in Jungle canopy, we more than made up with beautiful mountain vistas!

They had some really great, long and fast runs, and it was so much fun!

It was fun to realize you can have just as much fun in your own backyard as traveling half-way round the world in search of adventure!

Ladies Hike #3-b

We did the Ladies hike again this week, and found the poppies at Lambert ruin were all gone to seed! The red poppies only last about 3 weeks! But, the California ones are much hardier, and you can see some in the background still going strong here!

Looking ahead to our July nature hikes, I am thinking about featuring berries in the park! This early currant berry looked almost ready to eat! I hope we can see a lot of them before the birds discover them next month!

Happy Real Birthday Ed and Ken!

Ken and Ed have a lot in common, but one of the most interesting things is that they share a birthday! Not the same year, but close enough! So Laurie and I planned a little outing for them on their real birthday yesterday!

We took a bike ride on the Murdock Trail together! It was Ed and my introduction to the trail, so it was nice going with friends that were old hands at it!

We picked a nice picnic spot after about 6 1/2 miles, where we enjoyed a really great meal prepared by Laurie and me!

The trail is paved and wide, and basically flat the whole way! I was happy that we got back before I got saddle sore! My rear end needs easing in to bike riding!

Everything turned out great, except it was hard keeping the candles lit! The breeze kept blowing them out before the birthday boys could make a wish!

Quartet at Barbara's

We had quartet practice yesterday at Barbara's house. We tried some pieces that stretched us a lot. The big question is how long do you keep playing when you get out of sync? Do you keep playing and hope you'll sync up eventually, or stop and start at a given spot?

Maybe if we get good enough that will become a moot question!

Happy Birthday Party, Ed

We celebrated Ed's birthday yesterday, with a fabulous "Nebula" cake by Brittany! She added some sparklers for special effects.

Inside it featured little planets floating in space. Clementine even liked the fondant icing!

For a special treat we took the girls over to Lorraine's house to see the animals! Clementine was a little tentative.

But Mabel has a new best friend in Gus, the very sweet miniature donkey!

The highlight of the evening was watching Clementine "walk down the slide." She will try anything and gets some especially dangerous ideas from Mabel. She did this over and over, laughing each time. It's no wonder she's sporting a band-aid on her forehead!