Fourth of July Weekend

The weather has cooled off after a series of 95+ days. It’s too early in the summer for this! We don’t have air conditioning; instead we open all the windows at night and shut them up tight about 8:00 am. It works great unless the nights are too warm and muggy.

We spent the Fourth in the hills with the cattle. Mark took a few minutes to hang a beautiful new flag on the garage before we left. We intended to make it home for the fireworks, but the day got too long as it often does in the mountains. We saw a few colorful explosions above the city lights as we topped the divide heading home at dark. The radio was playing patriotic songs including Neil Diamond’s “America.” We found out later that Seth and Anna had seen Diamond in person at the Capital Fourth concert.

Maybe missing the Fourth of July festivities was the impetus for Mark to take some time out of his Sunday to finish a project I started last fall. I had dug an old gate out of the ranch junk pile and brought it home to install at the front entrance to our yard. I transplanted some hollyhocks to the site from my Uncle Doug’s yard and gathered some lichen covered rocks from the mountains. Now all I needed was to catch Mark at the right time to set two posts and hang the gate.   

Turned out today was the day. He found an old cedar post standing solitary out in the sandhills. It was once a corner post to an old arena and would be just right to anchor the gate and complete the vintage look I was after. Mark loves cedar posts, says they never rot. He said this cedar was alive when Christ was a child.

Turned out nice don’t you think?