The garden is in

Well, the alpacas went back home to their original owners. It was a little sad to see them go, after all, but I think they're much much happier back in their "natural" habitat. And although our barnyard looks much shorter now, it's probably better for us to have simplified a bit too.


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And my mom came to visit for a week! She spent a lot of time weeding, occasionally assisted by the goats



or by me or Mike



but mostly she did it on her own. See overly-large, now planted, garden below.



Note the new experiment with drip irrigation. Working so far, we'll see how the plants do when the heat arrives.



Oh, and we caught a glimpse of one of the gophers digging our yard into dirt piles (so small for the damage they do!)



We also trimmed goat hooves, and the-mama-in-town means you get better pictures of this as well.





And while mostly it was a working visit, we did get to tool around a little and go to Lake Wenatchee



and for a little hike near the Icicle River





where we saw mountain goats.



Meanwhile, here are some pictures of the younger baby (non-mountain) goats with Frosty.



And the older babies plus Ernie hanging out in the compost bin.



All the babies have become good climbers, jumping onto and standing on hay bags, hay barrels, and Breezy and Dublin's backs (which I haven't been able to catch a photo of)... videos still to come...







and here are a few of the requisite kids plus kids photos.





Meanwhile, I went to Montana this past week for a conference. The conference itself was really nice, but the ride there involved a pretty good car accident. Potential babyface and I both came out a-okay, not much worse for the wear outside of a little scare, with the whole thing involving some big holes in the road and blown out tires and fishtailing and hitting a concrete barrier and deploying a couple of airbags, so we're all grateful that the outcome was so good.

And people were super nice, truck drivers pulled over and put out cones, rescue volunteers flagged traffic, I had some ambulance rides across rural Montana, mostly just to check out babyface (and to x-ray a bumped up hand), all of which checked out just fine. Mike came out for the weekend so we could meet up with his bro/sis-in-law/nephew and drive back together... with a quick stop along the way at the tow lot to empty maps and CDs out of the somewhat smushed, probably-not-so-salvageable-even-though-it-had-really-had-a-lot-of-life-left-in-it car.



Looks okay in the back still, though, see?



Anyway, it was a bit of an eventful trip. Next week we head to Minnesota (by plane, and which we hope will be much less eventful) for Mike's dad's wedding... will keep you posted.