Author: Ashton

Pile of AshAnna Pictures

Life around AshAnna’s place has been crazy as of late. We’ve been doing so much, It would take too long to make a post for each item, so I’m going to throw them all together in picture format. I’ll try to do a little of narration to keep you on track.

First: Mocha. I’m sorry, she’s just so ridiculous I can’t help but take the pictures:
Mocha - King of the Jungle...
(This one’s so awesome I created it as a 1440×900 desktop too.)
Anna says "..."
Miracle Grow?
Depression Hurts

Ashton finally got his hair cut:
Time for Ashton's Semi-Annual hair cut

Ashanna created a flowerbed on “the dull side of the house”
Ashton makes yet another stack of rocks

Here’s the progress on the stone wall:
AshAnna's stone wall progress

We rented a post-pounder for the weekend.
Ash+Mocha on a John Deere

We woke up the other day to this:
We wake up to 3 horses all in a row

There were three of them in this next picture… but I was too slow.
Liana and Nora Drinking thirstily

Chickens:
And the red one was pecking at their toes

Enjoy,
AshAnna

Animals

Eagles in the Yard

So I was in the middle of “working hard” when I noticed some birds flying outside my window. To make a long story short; there were two Bald Eagles (one juvenile (all brown), one adult (white head and tail)) flying around and “playing” with two smaller birds which were probably either baby Eagles or hawks (most likely babies).

The adult Eagle dived into the ground just over our fence and caught what was probably a gopher/ground squirrel, and threw it at the juvenile! He grabbed it (off the ground) and flew off with it, which just happened to be right towards my window, so I took this picture:

AshAnna's Eagle

Enjoy,
AshAnna

Ranch Stone Wall

My Summer Project – Stone Wall

Post author By Ashton
Post date April 28, 2008
1 Comment on My Summer Project – Stone Wall

If you’ve ever been to our house, as you drive down our driveway, up to our house, you’ll see a nice line of large rocks on the right, with small trees in between them. On the left, you see a pile of dirt and rocks, covered in weeds.

I (Ashton) got this crazy idea in my mind that I can create a awesome terraced planter there! So, as crazy ideas usually begin, I got right to work. =]

Whoever built our house evidently ran into a bunch of large rocks as they are distributed around the property, including on top of this ugly hill. I brought it upon myself to bring these rocks down, and line them up in a nice straight line. Mind you these rocks are 300-600 lbs each…

Here’s the first shot I took of the area. You can see the random large rocks around the top of this hill: (I have already moved two big rocks into place.)
The Project Begins

And then I moved a bunch of them down.
Rocks Move

Buddy helped me move the last one (on the right), which was at least 500lbs.
More rocks come down the hill

Here’s a close up of the progression that I went through in ~4 hours:

More to come,
-AshAnna

Ranch

Burn, Baby, Burn!

Wow! the sun finally came out, and the weather was nice, so Anna and I found ourselves outside a lot this weekend.

We started a bunch of projects, and finished most of them. But today was the most exciting as Anna and I made our first burn pile. Our lawn has been surrounded by two very large thickets of tall grass and weeds that we haven’t figured out what to do with… until today. We had a couple friends over helping us to fence the back half of our property, and they said, “Why don’t you burn this thicket?” uh… Okay… so without further ado, he pulls out his lighter, and lights two spots of dried grass in the thicket. I didn’t even have time to take a picture of a “before”, here’s some “during”s and “after”s:

the fire gets started
and bigger

And by the time the fire finished burning the dried plants in the thickett, it ran out of things to burn and basically completely died. (Sucks for the gophers who used to hide in it =])
then it runs out of stuff to burn

Anna and I were pretty excited about this burning thing, so Anna says, “Let’s burn this one, too!” lol This time I got a before and after.

Before:
Where the First and Second Burn is

After:
Hey look, a huge pile of rocks we didn’t know existed. “Boo Yea! More Rocks!”
And the fire comes, goes, and reveals a pile of rocks we didn't know existed.