The Livin' is Easy

I've been in Roosevelt, Minnesota (which is near the Canadian border) for a little over two weeks now.  I'm glad that I had 8 months in Central and South America before coming here, because the transition to the SLOW pace of life hasn't been such a shock. 

I'm considering getting some chickens!  I miss seeing them around everywhere.  I don't want to touch them or anything, I just want them in the yard.  Wouldn't that be cute?  And then we can eat their eggs. 

If they don't freeze to death this summer...I'm reading reports of 102 degree weather in Minneapolis.  Meanwhile we're still in winter apparently: 

June 7th.  60 degrees.

June 13th.  60 degrees.

I love it.  I LOVE the weather here.  It's cold.  I need a sweater and a scarf.  Most importantly, I'm not sweating all over the place.

I thought I had escaped the bugs and the creepy crawlies from south of the border.  Nope.  There are SO many bugs here.  And they get in the house.  They're buzzing around my ears while I'm trying to sleep...the other day I got bitten by two mosquitos at the dinner table.  What is this, Nicaragua?  And, snakes?  My dad freaked me out the other day with this disgusting thing:

Snakes shedding their skin in the yard.  EW!

But hey, why not hang it on the wall?  We've already got a dead animal graveyard here:

We decorate with moose horns that have been carved to show scenes of dogs treeing bears.

A bobcat on the way up the ladder to my loft bedroom.

My cozy cozy cozy bear-skin-infested loft bedroom.

The other day, my dad and I hooked a chain up to the tractor and pulled out a bunch of trees and stumps and stuff. It was my job to wrap the chain...so I was bending down a lot. I caught myself pulling up my Seven for all Mankind jeans to cover up my butt crack thousands of times throughout the day. I am totally going into Baudette to buy a pair of Wranglers for future farm girl days. The higher the waist, the better. I'm looking for a 9-inch zipper, friends.

Dad's new tractor

Ooh! And we found some ladyslippers in the yard! The rare Minnesota state flower. We only have yellow ones, but they are super beautiful.  In a few weeks, the pink and white ones will be blooming along the railroad tracks and I'll try to get a photo.  Here's a stolen photo of the yellow one:

Photo credit -- cs.odu.edu