Blackflies. I had forgotten about them.

It was inevitable that with the warming days and flushing buds would come the blackfly. One day, there were none, the next there were several million of the tiny little vampires buzzing around our heads and the heads of the dogs. The dog run has started to dry up nicely, but there are still a few wet spots here and there.

The title of this entry could well have been "Yep. Still too wet, Part 2" or "The Tractor and I: How I managed to bury it, yet again, to the axles." I was trying to bring some sand and gravel in to Horton, the last dog who has a wet area, and I was using the tractor because it sure beats pushing a wheelbarrow. Because Horton's area is still spongey and wet, I had to more or less pirouette the tractor into position to dump the bucket in Horton's area. I had successfully managed to bring, deposit and leave three times, but on the fourth, as I was reversing, the tractor began to roll down the slightest of inclines and in doing so, sink in sloppy, soupy muck. I tried to go forward, I tried to go backward; I put the tractor in high range and low range. I piled logs (yes, actual logs. In a pile, as in several layers of logs, so deep was I stuck) under the tires but none of this gained me any ground whatsoever. It was so bad that I contemplated cutting down a few trees, cutting the fence of the dogrun and pushing myself out with the bucket, like last time. Fortunately, only one tree had to come down and no fence. I finally got out, parked the tractor and went about my day doing other non-tractor things.

For the first part of the week, Taiga was in the house for a few days. She noticed herself in the window one night, so Jenn went and brought her the mirror. That was entertainment, pure and simple, for all of us. We need to get out more, perhaps.

Much of my time this week has been spent constructing some sort of contraption that allows me to more easily remove the dogbox from the truck. I made it from timbers and wood that I milled last week and the week before. It is fairly large; the four timbers that make up the 'A' part of the frame are 14 foot long 4x4's. I have a pulley at the mid-point on the horizontal beam which allows me to use a wire cable and my come-along to lift the box off the truck. Once off, the box sits on a frame, also constructed from my own lumber.

While I was out building this thing, Hunter snuck out of the house while Jenn was napping. I heard the door close and out came Hunter, wearing only her pink camo boots. It wasn't long before she was in the mud and water and it wasn't long after that that the boots came off, too. I was watching her, but I was also working and as long as she didn't come near my tools or the wood, she was okay I said. I suppose I should have watched her more because she paraded into the house to show Jenn the worm she had found. I guess Jenn wasn't too upset; at least she managed to get a few photos of the kid.