Late Spring Bounty, Plus Drama, of Course

As the days grow longer and longer here in Texas, our harvest starts arriving. It’s lots earlier than in other parts of the US, where nothing’s ready until August, but hey, it gets hot here early.

Some Good News

This has been a great year, too, with the rain continuing to fall much later than usual. It’s raining now, in fact, and it’s only 79 degrees (too bad it was up to 93 at the end of our horseback ride this morning).

I think I’ve mentioned that our neighbor Tyler started a vegetable garden this year. Yesterday, as I was looking for chickens, I peeked in and saw a really, really big yellow squash. And Tyler is out of town.

So, this morning after putting up the horses and Fiona (who went with us on our whole ride and caused no trouble), Sara and I went in and harvested the giant squash and zucchini that were lying under the large, healthy vines. We have to hand it to Tyler, his fencing and netting combination have worked great to keep meddling animals, birds, and others out of his crops. We left him plenty of small squash to harvest for himself once he gets home.

There is also healthy-looking corn, beautiful beans, and lots of peppers on their way, and maybe a watermelon (don’t know what the huge vines in the corner are, and it could be pumpkins; I’m not a vegetable gardener). That’s all really good, because the rest of us haven’t been overly successful with vegetables, but I guess I should expect an Indiana native to be able to grow crops!

I took everything home (plus an egg!) and am about to cook some for Father’s Day dinner (along with potatoes and meatloaf Sara is making). The dads in our community will feel loved! What’s left I’m going to freeze, because I love yellow squash, and Anita loves zucchini.

And Some Bad News

It appears that we have yet another road fatality, one of Mandi’s mama cats. Her weaning-age kittens are now trying to nurse off poor Patsy, whose kittens are two weeks younger. It does not look fun.

It was also not fun for Sara to find the mama cat on her back porch, where her dogs had brought it. We think they just brought it up, but a car got her.

And more chicken adventures (do they ever end?). As we were getting ready to ride this morning, Sara’s blue heeler puppy came running down the driveway with something in her mouth. That something turned out to be Buffy the buff rock hen, my biggest and slowest one. When Sara yelled at Jess, she dropped Buffy. Buffy took off in a flash, squawking like crazy. At least she was not dead! She is lacking her tail feathers, though.

Jess got escorted home to be locked up. Buffy was later found in the hay area of the tack barn. She was clucking, so we took that as a good sign. I’ll be checking on her soon. Poor dear. She was the tamest one.

This incident does remind me we have a lot of dog training to do when we move the chickens. The hope is that Alfred will guard them. Harvey probably won’t care, but Vlassic and Carlton may get to have some shock collar training. Nothing’s easy.