Cash prizes for Weeds? and other tidbits....

Well we've had some wonderful weather here of late. Pretty warm, 70's and 80's and sunny. Although we could use some rain, not as bad as Northern MN need it though! Well, we're plugging along here. I started my new nursing job this past Monday, May 14th. No more work free weeks for me! It seems like a very good place to work. I'll be working my first night shift tonight. Hope I don't fall asleep! Actually it's pretty easy to stay awake when you have people to take care of. Tonight I'll probably be shadowing my preceptor and going over all the learning modules they have for us. I'm planning on taking a nap this afternoon.

I am enjoying watching all the different birds that we have in our backyard. I haven't gotten any pictures yet but I'm trying. We have robins, house finches, Red Shafted Northern Flickers (type of woodpecker), Black Thoated hummingbirds, chickidees and many more that I haven't figured out yet what they are. They sing all morning and all evening.

What about those gas prices!?? Well, I'm happy to say that there is a wonderful bus system and bike routes here in Missoula. We have not bought gas for our cars in almost two weeks! That's pretty awesome considereing we're hitting $3.20's gallon right now. (That's better than Seattle where Erik's sister reports $3.60!)

So you're wondering about the title of the blog. On May 5th I saw an advertisement to help with the Mount Jumbo weed pull. They would be prizes and fun for everyone. So since Mount Jumbo is one of the areas where we like to hike and it's in our new neighborhood I told Erik about it. We agreed that it would something to do to help out the community and meet some people. So we show up at 10am on Sat morning and we're the first volunteers there. So the organizers (there are lots of them) tell us we should put in for the cash prize portion (pay $5 each). So we did and then went up the Mount to the weed pulling spot and started on pulling lots of knapweed. After about an hour we hiked to the top to get the extra credit stamp. We enjoyed the gorgeous views. Then we went back to our spot and pulled some more. Finally it was over at 1pm and we had to bring down our own bags of weeds and have the weighed. Here is Erik with on of the bags. (missoula is in background) It was a slow hike down as we had to keep stopping and adjusting our hands on the bags. We got our bags weighed (seperately) and then listened to a great bluegrass band while we awaited the results. They announced the winners of all the categories and the got to the money catagory and named Erik as the big winner pulling about 40lbs of knapweed! And they gave him $300 for his efforts!!!! Not bad for 3 hrs of pulling weeds! He still hasn't given me my finders fee yet ;-) but we are buying a new backpacking tent so that's pretty cool! So if you need any weed pulled you know who to call! Here's one look at a native flower the shooting star. At least there are still some of these out there.