Friday Eric had the spoken portion of his French test and did quite well. The tutoring has really helped. Saturday we went to Matt’s house for a Hay/Muller picnic. We played 9 holes of disc golf – not very well. When we got home we watched a YouTube video on footwork and throwing technique which seemed to make an improvement.

Sunday I finished placing bird houses in the pasture and did some grading of the road side sand that built up over the winter. Kathryn and I cut firewood; particularly a large poplar that fell across the trails. Sunday night we were planning on cooking over the fire at cook-out corner, but we were interrupted by Cullen getting into a porcupine. Fortunately, he didn’t get any quills inside his mouth and Eric/Kathryn were able to remove all the quills. While restraining Cullen Eric picked up two ticks – one of which we didn’t discover until later in the evening. The tick was still burrowing and we did the best we could to extract him. The next morning K took Eric to urgent care to ensure all the tick was removed and to get an initial dose of antibiotics.

Monday I planted most of the garden starting with Brussel Sprouts, peas, tomatoes, broccoli, artichokes, pole beans, pumpkins, acorn squash and kale. New this year is the attempt to grow artichokes – I have never tried them before and use of hog panel fence for the pole beans. I still have more tomato and artichoke plants to transfer. We mowed the lawn and Kathryn used the self-propelled mower to mow most of the trails.