Today after work I was hanging out in the yard with the animals admiring all the plants in the yard, but especially the daisies. I would like the whole perimeter of our yard to be filled in with flowers and plants like this patch of daisies. Hardy ones to combat the chicken scratching and pecking.
Schnoodle and Omelette with Daisies
We also have a lot of food plants, like these peppers, but also tomatoes flowering all over!
The front yard is filling in really nicely with some perennial wild flowers we planted as seeds when we put new plants in there.
Zinnia and Baby’s Breath
Mmm I love basil with cheese and tomatoes! And this is purple -extra mmm.
Football and Henrietta up close and personal
And for fun, here is a song called Daisy by one of my favorite bilingual musicians, Kevin Johansen
Last night we decided to go to the Greeley Moonlight Bike Ride sponsored and put on by the Greeley Police Officers’ Association. Registration was at 8:30pm and the ride was to start at 9pm. Unfortunately for us, we are now on the chickens’ schedule because we have to lock them up at night to protect them from attack which means we had to wait for them to go in their coop at dusk. When they finally put themselves to bed, we closed them up and were on our way to the Greeley Police Station on bikes.
On my bike on our way there
The Police Station is only probably about 1-2 miles from our house, so we were there in short order. They had an acoustic guitar band called Girls with Guitars playing when we arrived. We signed in, grabbed a free snack and enjoyed the music.
We had encouraged our friends Matt and Jamie (and their daughter Hailee) to come, but didn’t think they would. They surprised us by showing!
Matt and Britton at Starbucks
Me and Jamie with Police Car
The whole event is free and sponsored by area businesses in addition to the Greeley Police Department. They said they’ve been doing it for 16 years! How did we miss this all the years before? The police rode with us and police cars blocked off whole streets as we rode.
This is route- about 12 miles round trip
We rode from the police station on 10th Street went east on 8th Street, rode past downtown, rode up through UNC’s campus and Reservoir Rd, through Sanborn Park where boy scouts had set up luminaries down the path. It was really cool because they glowed as we rode past the lake. Then we stopped at the Starbucks in Westlake Plaza where they served us free drinks. That was our half-way point. At this point we could see how many people came out by the sheer number of bikes!
And of course, all the people. Here they (we) are waiting for them to call out the door prizes of which Britton won one!
Police guy is on the table yelling out prizes
From there we rode up 20th Street to near 47th Ave and then turned into a neighborhood near 16th Street, rode through Bittersweet Park where the sprinklers were on! Everyone got soaked, it was pretty cool. Then we headed back in a round about way to the police station. I was amazed at the number of people who crashed going that slow. It was kind of funny once you knew they were ok. Now I know why they wanted everyone to have a helmet and light on their bike although they didn’t turn anyone away if they didn’t have either.
Once we were back at the police station they had free sandwiches from Jimmy Johns and drinks from a company called Oogave. They gave out a few more prizes and showed some biking clips on the big movie screen -a bike-in movie! We said goodbye to Matt and Jamie and headed back home by about midnight. And yes, the chickens were sleeping safe and sound.
We get the best sunsets without ever leaving our house in Greeley. Sitting on our back porch in the summertime, we love to watch the sun go down. It is so pretty. Here are a few pics I took tonight. It is like a painting that changes before our eyes. Click to enlarge to see it in more vivid detail.
Rose in the flower garden enjoying the display as well
Today is my birthday. Every year it ticks by. Strange how time flies.
Britton got me an ice cream cake! (I love how Football and Kitty are in the background of this pic!)
Anyway, we didn’t do anything too crazy or exciting. But we went out to Farmer’s Inn with some of my family and friends yesterday.
Friends Andrew and Mindy at Farmer’s Inn with me
Britton, my mom and grandma
Then today we decided to go out to Loveland for dinner and then to walk around Lake Loveland. It kind of felt like we were on vacation, especially being near the water.
Today we went swimming at Centennial Pool in Greeley. We took the day off -actually a four day weekend for my birthday- and pretended we were kids again. When Britton and I were both young kids -before we ever met each other- we were probably swimming next to each other every day during the summers here in Greeley. Centennial Pool is THE pool to go to. But I hadn’t been there for years.
They had changed a few things since I had last been there. The water slide is still huge, but it doesn’t land in the main pool anymore and it actually kind of hurts your back to go down it. They added a sprinkler “splash” park for the younger kids and removed the baby pool. It still had the diving board and we went off it a couple of times. Britton actually came up with a new dive -the kangaroo cat pounce dive…lol…I wish I had a camera for that one…but you can imagine. We brought our niece, Summer along for the fun.
Me and Summer -taller than me!
We swam and played around for about 3 hours, ate nachos with carnival cheese like kids, and went and got a cold smoothie later. I was so hungry and thirsty I just downed that smoothie way too fast and ended up with a belly ache while we walked around Sandborn Park afterward. I actually had to lay down in the shade because the sun was making me feel nauseous.
Even with the weird ending it reminded me of all the summers here growing up. The heat, clear blue skies, the smell of sunscreen and chlorine. That flush of red that makes your face glow and the sheer worn out feeling after a long day of playing. We work so much that we sometimes forget all of this is going on around us. It was nice to get out there and have some summer fun in our own town!
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