Katinka!

We had a lovely surprise as Katinka made it to Chico on her world tour. But first.... On Friday, I started working on the flower bed beside the glen. I bought a Daphne to go in this spot, but I have to thin out all the iris and day lillies first. They will be trimmed and replanted around the yard.

The dogwood next door is stunning right now.

 Rick gets some tilling done on Row 1, where the garlic starts are going to go.

So we went to brunch with Karen and Glen, and we hadn't been back for more than a few moments when Katinka showed up at the door. We took her to croquet.

Then went to the farm. We gave her the full tour, and worked on the bar a little.

Fortunately it was a lovely day. We wanted to go to Sierra Nevada for dinner, but they were having their 30th anniversary party, so we had to get Mexican food instead.

We were going to head over to Titus and Jane's to play Catan, but the heavy food put us all to sleep! So Titus came over the next morning, after we had breakfast at Cafe Coda.

Katinka plays with the amber crown. Titus showed us pix of Lori's underwater murals, and incidently showed me how to browse the internet from the PS3.

 

Then Katinka showed off HER new artwork: an amazing tattoo. It has all sorts of symbolism, including the rune! We had a lovely visit, but Katinka had to get back up to Redding to go through her mom's stuff.

It had been rainy all morning, but by afternoon it cleared up at little... at least for a while. So we went back over to the farm. We saw a murder of crows circling the hawk tree. Notice all that blue sky between the clouds.

I took advantage of the damp ground to pull out a row of tomatoes. Rick and Buddy helped separate and roll up the old wire. Then I put the chickens to work. We'll plant peas here.

Here you can see that I took out almost all of row 4, just leaving a few tangerines at the front of the row.

The dogwood is so lovely right now, and it only lasts a week or two so I had to get lots of shots.

We "fell back" this weekend, so sunset came early. And with the sunset came the rain. And then, it started to hail!

Unfortunately, these shots don't do it justice. The slanting sunset rays illuminated the hail so it sparkled and glittered as it fell. It started out looking like silver glitter, then became a glowing amber waterfall of golden light.

It was the most amazing and beautiful thing we'd ever seen! Rick, Buddy, Catherine, and I just stood inside the bar gaping at it. Although I did note that when a bunch of 50 and 60 year olds are saying "I've never seen any weather like this..." that might not be a good sign.

I kept trying to get shots that would display how awesome it looked. I had to rush out in the hail and put my chickens away. The poor things were all wet and bedraggled.

Rick points out how large the hailstones were.

We kept looking for a break in the weather. At the first gap, Catherine made a run for it. She got almost to the gate before another deluge hit.

We waited a little longer and thought we might get to the car without getting too much wetter than we already were. Ha ha! The water was up to the gate, and we had to wade through ankle-deep water.

The water was all the way across the street.