A little gold, yard flowers and visiting kids!

Ron and I are camping by Rapid City while he gets to do his dental work - 3 teeth pulled and 1 crown - ouch! Meantime, we've also been doing a little gold prospecting. Saturday we joined the Black Hills Prospectors and my first bucket of the day produced this little gold picker - look closely in the black rubber of the sluice! Lots of nice sized flakes too. Very good day! I have to show you the flowers in my garden and yard. We have awesome columbine and irises this year because of all the nourishing rains; also we have lots of flowers that are growing wild in our yard too - the blue flax, dames rocket, western salsify, and textile onion. John and Elizabeth came for a day to look for petrified wood - they were fun to watch as their geologist' side kicked in and their eyes focused right in on those puppies. I wasn't aware of how much petrified wood was in our area! David stopped by the campground for a bike ride - we had fun biking to Keystone, but as you can see, the clouds were building for our daily afternoon thundershower and we got to bike back up those big hills in the rain (but we weren't sweet enough to melt!!). It was a good workout.

The green, green grass of home

Rain, rain, rain . . . after having several years of drought, the rain has been WONDERFUL! It is soo green here, as you can see our house has green all around! You can see the new car, a 2007 Ford Focus, hopefully a gas-saver and good little car so far. The irises bloomed yesterday and smell luscious. Also, the columbine opened up two days ago; its a very good year for them, according to my gardening buddies. White penstemon are growing wild in the yard, and I see the blue ones are just about to bloom. So we have more rain in the forecast for the next few days - its getting to the point where things are flooding, and a little scary when tornadoes and hail are predicted. Maybe too much of a good thing? Its still great to be home!