October 2021 – Page 3 – The Hermits' Rest

Final Tile Selections in the Dreamy Pool

I’m happy as heck with my tile choices in the Pool of Dreams, though I had a bit of a scare partway through the day. I’m glad we had a relatively dry day in between rain events, so the tile could mostly get done. I don’t blame you, by the way, if pool construction makes you want to take a nap; I’m mostly doing this so I can look back at it later, same as I did when we were building the house.

I enjoyed going out on my breaks to watch the progress, and thought how pretty the square ceramic tiles were looking on the waterfall area…but wait, wasn’t that supposed to be shiny glass tile? I checked, and sure enough, I had selected a glass tile.

Where’s that stripy stuff? On the other hand, I don’t really like it.

That sent me into a panic. They were just about done with all that tile, and I was pretty sure it was the wrong tile. And I’d already noticed that glass tile was nowhere to be found on the premises (I mentioned that in a blog post last week). So, I called up the pool place to find out what happened.

The nice pool lady, Audrey, said she’d get back to me, so I had to sit through a long meeting hoping that the tiles wouldn’t be totally glued down before the guys had to remove them.

The guy on the right, with the scary “ladder” is adding grout to the tile they did Monday.

I sure was relieved when she came back with the explanation. It turned out that the glass tile was discontinued, so they couldn’t get it. She was supposed to tell me, but she totally forgot. I didn’t get upset, because that sounded like something that wouldn’t be too hard to do in the middle of a busy day (and she’s nice and likes my horses, which was in her favor). Besides that, the tile looks just fine to me the way it is, so no harm, no foul.

The tiling artists got a lot of the rough limestone tiles up, and its matte, bumpy texture makes a beautiful contrast with the shiny ceramic tiles and the smooth limestone on the edges of the pool.

Lee pointed out that they were really having to do a lot of work on the round part where the fire pit will be. The tile didn’t fit without a lot of finagling. They told me it was, indeed, hard to do. I think it’s worth it. I’ll be adoring it for many years, I hope.

Here you can see all three surfaces together. Nice.

I’m glad it’s all working out as well as I’d hoped. I like how subtle the pool will be, most of the time. But don’t worry, Suna’s love of bright colors will show up when we turn on those dazzling light shows! Even if we have another extreme cold event before I get to use the pool, I’m going to fire up the fire and the lights.

Chicken Wrangling Success

Good news for me! I think I have the situation with Star and her week-old babies under more control now. Lee went out and got me the same feeder and waterer I had for the previous chicks that had gotten thrown out accidentally. I got those set up, and no matter how hard the dang mama hen tries to scratch at the water, she can’t get into it, and at least when it’s pretty full, she can’t turn it over and ruin everything in the cage.

This place is a mess (I have cleaned up).

The chick food also has stayed nice and dry and pristine since I got the feeder set up. Star’s food is still in a dish, and it seems okay now. She just likes to scratch. So, I gave her some scratch today. The chicks seem to like it first, unaware that they should only be eating medicated chick food.

The Brown Chick shows their new feathers coming in and their pretty eyes.

They seem fine and dandy, however, bright eyed and flapping their wings like they already want to take off and fly. Luckily, their wing feathers have not grown in very much. I guess they’ll be taking off sooner rather than later, though.

The Black Chick is probably a gray chick, but the wing feathers are pretty dark.

Ha! They can fly all they want, but they can’t get out! Hooray! They will have a little platform to stand on, a perch, and such. They already seem to like the little tree branch I put in there for them.

The rain has been pretty persistent, but the chicken cage has just gotten a little damp, which is not bad at all.

Rain damaged fire ant nest looks like it could be in the Grand Canyon area.

The rain has led to some interesting things outside the chicken world, like fire ants building interesting looking nests (yes, I’ll get rid of them, but sometimes they are fun to look at).

And the pool guys are back today. I guess yesterday was too rainy. In any case, I’m glad the chickens are okay and the horses have shelter. I’ve ordered even better feeding and watering stuff that should come in soo, so maybe the chickens will be fine for a while.

Lunch hour is over. Time to go make some documents.

Book Report: Fuzz

After the last book I read, I needed something a little more light-hearted to entertain me. I’d been hearing good things about Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, by Mary Roach, so I chose it from the “Books to Read” stack in my office. At least I knew I’d enjoy holding it, because the fake merit badge on the book jacket is embossed and feels cool.

Mary Roach is a very popular science writer, because she’s known for her humor, but this was my first book of hers to read. She just oozes folksy humor, puns, and silly digressions, and I think they could actually be irritating for some readers. I had set out to read something amusing, so I got what I asked for.

In addition to entertaining us, though, Roach educates us. I think I originally thought Fuzz would be a series of cute stories about naughty bears and coyotes, but it instead provides fascinating information about how animals and people can have deleterious effects on each other.

I learned about bears and why the eat the trash in some resort areas but not others (people follow the garbage can rules in one place better), how people cause many of the animal pest problems (boy, we made a lot of mistakes in the 1800s by bringing European animals into places like Australia and New Zealand), and how hard it is to get deer to not run into the road and just stare at oncoming cars. There really are a lot of ways humans and animals can run into conflict.

Sometimes Roach makes me laugh, just by revealing how little background knowledge she has in some areas that I seem to have picked up by living here at the Hermits’ Rest. She mentions more than once how she’s baffled that someone can be both an animal lover and a hunter, for example. We learn all about that in Master Naturalist classes.

It’s sort of like a high school band mom decides to write a science book, and is happy to share her naivete with her readers. It’s pretty charming, though you know she can’t be as naïve as she sounds, because she managed to arrange to travel all over the world and meet with specialists of all sorts in order to ask them her sort of silly questions. At least she had to be a master of logistics!

After reading this book and laughing, groaning, or grimacing at the jokes, you’ll end up knowing a lot more about the complex interrelationships between humans and all kinds of animals. I know Mary Roach hopes you’ll agree to live with a little irritation (yeah, even grackles and squirrels have their roles to play in the ecosystem) so that we can all enjoy the only world we’ve been given to live in. I’m up for it!

Rainy Escapades

I know it’s October, because the rains are back. No pool guys today! But, that is just fine.

I went out this morning to feed Granny and the chickens, and heard a strange noise. What was it? Goldie. She had somehow gotten out and had joined me. I figured I’d determine what happened there later. I headed out to feed Granny, only to be met by four hungry faces.

All the other horses were out and wandering around. Huh. What in the world? I then ran the gauntlet of Apache, Remington, and Mabel, with Fiona trailing behind. I was impressed that I managed to get the food to Granny and not slip in the mud while doing so.

Next, I walked toward the gate to Apache’s paddock. Apache and Fiona nicely followed me, so they were easy to get in. I saw that the gate had been pushed open. So, either one of them unlocked it or (more likely) I had it draped over and forgot to fasten it when I went back to the house yesterday.

Then I went to find the other two horses, which is when I took the photo above. They were just milling around, so it was easy for me to just lead them into the pens by holding their halters. They got lots of pats and love, too.

At least the baby chicks had not escaped, so I managed to keep one type of animal where it belonged! And when I took Goldie back inside, I went out and saw that she (or another dog) had managed to move the big gate that is leaning across the patio to keep the dogs away from the pool. I managed to give myself a couple of nice, sharp cuts trying to put it back (it’s heavy!), but for the rest of the day, so far, everyone’s been in their places.

Tiny cut, but was actually pretty deep. Hurt like heck.

It sure is nice to see the tanks/ponds starting to fill back up, even if it means pool delays!

I also wanted to share that I have a new friend right outside my window. She has a beautiful web, as orb weavers tend to have, but she seems drawn toward my hanging web decoration. I’ve had that thing since I lived in Champaign, Illinois! The rain isn’t bothering her, or her smaller friend who is up higher on the window, one bit.

What’s That Sparkle?

It could be my mood, since I’m settling in at my new job and starting to do fun things. Job Aids! Woo!

That’s part of it, but I was happy to see the tile guys putting the accent tile around the edge of the swimming pool. It’s sparkly, but not TOO sparkly.

I really love the earth tones. They’re going to be so soothing. I wonder if they ran out of the edging limestone, because they still have some left to do. We will see.

They put curves here, and at top you can see where more tile should go.

The tilers were fun to watch on lunch break, making perfectly smooth surfaces for the application. It was like icing a perfect cake.

It looks like they are going to move on to the tile around the outside surfaces next. It’s more limestone, from Turkey. Its rough surface will contrast nicely with the accent tiles.

Hard to see the texture, but it’s there.

I don’t think the tile for the waterfall is here yet. I looked all over for it, but it isn’t hiding anywhere easy to find. Here are more pictures of today’s progress, including mortaring the limestone tile.

Speaking of water, it rained almost an inch last night. That made for an ugly mess at the bottom of the pool. I’ll spare you photos. You can sorta see it here.

I am enjoying a little break in my anxiety. The stress is manageable at the moment, and that feels GOOD.

It was a bit dark, but I enjoyed watching the happy dogs.

The Chicken Family Annoys Me

Of course I am glad that Star managed to hatch two chicks. And I am proud that we made a fairly safe place for them to live and that their real feathers are starting to come in. But, wow, they seem hell-bent on making things difficult for themselves.

The big culprit is Star. She has consistently overturned every food dish I put in the nursery. So, baby food and adult food are just scattered all over the place. I guess they have no trouble finding food.

But, that’s not all. The chicks were having trouble getting to the first water dish I gave them, so I put in a saucer. The Black Chick and the Brown Chick (no real names until they get older, I decided) get all excited whenever I add water. That’s because the moment I pour in nice, fresh water, Star jumps in it and begins scratching in it, getting it dirty and spilling it. I’m sure she has her reasons, but that is really annoying.

The chicks have their own little things. The cardboard border is down, thanks to Star, so of course the chicks try to get out. The good news is that chicken wire is too small even for 4-day-old chicks. They also like to get between the cardboard and the wire. At least they can get back out. I did try to fasten the cardboard with some metal, but that didn’t work. I will find some duct tape and use that next. I’m gonna outsmart those fowl.

I’ve been trying to get by on stuff I already had here, but it looks like I am going to have to go to the feed store and try to get one of those little chicken waterers and HANG it, so they can’t turn it over. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with food. The thing I am using is obviously too easy to overturn. I guess I’ll get one of the plastic chick feeders, too. They all got thrown out when the garage was cleaned out last month, and I have no one to blame but myself for that. I think I did it.

I’m sure I’ll get all this chicken stuff figured out, and maybe when the rest of the family comes back again, I can get more ideas or help. In the meantime, I get to figure out what to do with the chickens so I can clean the cage. Hmm.

Book Report: Coffeeland

I managed to get through this very dense book by taking breaks for light-hearted magazine reading every couple of days. Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug, by Augustine Sedgewick (1920-21). It’s the second of the books I decided to read after they were referred to in This Is Your Mind on Plants. I’m not saying it wasn’t a good book, because it was, but there were so many details that sometimes I got a bit snoozy while reading it.

The book is not a history of coffee, but rather is a history of how the cultivation of coffee shaped the country of El Salvador, as engineered by one coffee planter and his descendants, starting in the late 1800s. James Hill came over from England at a time of much change, and he instigated just that when he emigrated to El Salvador. His descendants, now fully embedded in the upper classes of the country, continue to work toward change.

There’s a LOT more to this book than just a history of one coffee planter and his plantations. There are long digressions on the history of growing coffee, processing coffee, and marketing it. I had no idea how much it had changed, and what other changes to society went along with it (coffee breaks and supermarkets, to name a few).

You also learn a lot about the history of Central America from a much more neutral point of view than you’d get in a US history book. By the time you’ve read about the conditions the Hill family’s worker-people (as he called them) lived and worked in, you can easily see the appeal of Communism when it showed up. And Sedgewick does a great job of laying out the perspectives of the plantation owners, the government (such as it was), and the indigenous people who worked the land.

I guess what I learned the most about, and what was hardest on me to follow, was all sorts of scientific theories of humans and work. You learn how calories originally were measured, how the idea that in order to eat you need to work came about (that’s right, it was not always a given), and how people like James Hill motivated workers by giving them food, but not too much food, so they’d have to keep coming back to earn more food.

There was also a very interesting history of economics, what it originally was and what it came out to be. Yeah, there’s a lot of educational material crammed into 350 pages of Coffeeland. I’m not sure if this was stuff I was dying to learn about or what I had hoped the book would be about, but I think I’m probably a better and more thoughtful world citizen after learning all these things.

A final thing I enjoyed about Coffeeland is that it was told from the perspective of another part of the world, not the US. I enjoyed learning what the priorities were and are in El Salvador, the modern history of that country, and most of all, how events around the world (the Great Depression, World Wars, etc.) affect our commodities and societal norms.

While not everyone who reads this blog will be the right audience for the book, fans of history, science, philosophy and how they all interact, will enjoy it a lot and come out much wiser.

Skill in the Pool of Dreams

Two men have been working on the pool for most of this week. They seem to share two features: a love of traditional mariachi music and major skill in working with stone tiles. It’s been a real pleasure watching them work, as well as listening to the music. It’s real loud, but since I am also fond of that music, I have not complained. There’s some fine tuba playing going on in those songs.

Early progress – they were fitting the inserts in the holes.

This post is about the tile work, though. One of the guys spends all day using the wet saw to cut the blocks of bullnose-edge natural limestone for the pool edging, as I’ve mentioned before. Lee worries, because they are not wearing masks. That’s pretty legitimate. I don’t stand around outside very long when the saw is going. I don’t want shards of limestone and quartz in my lungs (the stone is very shiny in spots).

Not sure what this is, but it has a nice circle in it.

The guy has made dozens of smaller tiles for one edge, and medium for the other edge. Meanwhile, the other guy has been first dry fitting and then cementing in the stone. He uses leftover glass tiles from other pools as spacers. That’s a good way to use them, I think. Lee is worried about there being so much space for grout, but we’ll see if it causes an issue.

It has to be hard to get these all lined up on the curve. It sure looks pretty.

I think the tile is gorgeous. It blends in with the cool limestone the house is clad in, and looks really natural, which will help the pool not look like some garish thing plopped in the back yard. The accent tile under the limestone also looks pretty natural. It’s beautifully glazed ceramic tile squares, and they will look pretty, but still fit in with the ranch vibe.

I’m enjoying some of the fine touches they’re putting in the tilework, such as the circle cutouts for the filter outlets, or whatever those will be called. I sure hope they have handles. They installed the baskets in there, too, so I feel like the pool’s coming along.

And on the edges of the hot tub/spa, they put a nice triangle accent. That’s going to look so pretty next to the waterfall.

I’m looking forward to watching more of their artistry in the next week or two (and having their music in the background while I work). I’m not in any hurry to rush these craftsmen to finish their work. It will be like having artwork that you can cool off in, once the pool is done! I won’t even be sad that it gets done after the weather cools off (we can still use the hot tub, anyway).

And in Horse News

I just have to brag on Apache and Aragorn. Today they were both on their best behavior and really showed how much progress they are making. Each of them was easy to ride and not all nerved out at all, even though we rode all over the field behind our house, where Aragorn had never been and Apache hadn’t been in a long time.

It was like it used to be when Sara and I would ride Apache and Spice, before Apache got lame and squirrely. The weather was beautiful, and we could relax, look at the trees and plants, and ask our horses to move around gracefully.

In the end, Apache really wanted to go “home” over to Sara’s place. Poor guy. I totally understand. But, even when he tried to tell me what he wanted, I was able to gently convince him to go back to his pens. I have no complaints about that horse right now. What a pleasant change!

Then, since he was all hot, I decided to rinse Apache off. I didn’t have to tie him up or anything. He just stood there and enjoyed his cool-off, then turned around for the other side. He didn’t move off until I took off his halter, and then he just went off to graze and drip. He’s a good buddy.

Autumn at the Ranch

I love autumn in Texas, even though I tend to go away for a few weeks every year. Today I walked around and enjoyed the weather, the animals, and all the blooming life around here. I am so glad to have the time to savor the season.

It’s hard to believe something this beautiful is called “Devil’s Claw.”

Some of my favorite flowers show up this time of year, like the devil’s claw above, the delicate and tiny yard asters, and the practically leafless false foxglove. There’s so much pink and purple, if you look carefully.

I even found some dayflowers still blooming in the arroyo and some tievine that’s just hanging on because it’s stubborn.

While I was wandering around looking at the beauty, I spent some nice relaxing time with Apache and Fiona, as well. We walked around together for a long time, then I sent them off to graze in the big pasture. Apache was so polite, not leaving until I sent him off. He’s really doing well.

Of course, I paid attention to the other two horses in the pasture (Dusty has gone to Yorktown to hang out with Kathleen and Granny lives in her pens to keep her digestion under control). Mabel is getting more friendly these days, and I’m not sure why. Not complaining! And Remington will take all the love I can dish out.

Not a bad life, considering where they were last July!

By the way, I’ve been getting reports and little videos of Drew over at his training camp. He’s running around with lots of weird things strapped to him to help him not spook, jumping over obstacles, and climbing up on decks. I hear he is getting quite polite, too. I’m proud of that boy and very glad he is in such good hands. Sara saw him yesterday, and he was very friendly.

I’m sure feeling a lot less stressed out, even with the house still not sold and the family issues ongoing. I can take some stress just fine, in appropriate doses. Most important, I can remember to enjoy the good things and keep sending out that lovingkindness into the Universe. Shedding my concerns over things outside my control has helped a lot, too.

Consistency is Dull

Sorry, y’all, but there’s not much new around here. The two chicks are still with us, so that’s fine. I’d like that to stay boring.

The pool guys are still tiling. They spent a lot of time smoothing the edges, but did get some edging cemented in. They are so careful. That makes me happy. They also work like 11 hours a day. Ugh.

They were just leaving when I took this.

And the horses are fine. I’ve been so tired this week that I haven’t done much with them, but today I took Apache and Fiona out for some fun. First, Apache got to try out the new poles in the round pen. He tried to avoid them at first, but then started to have fun trotting over them. He even cantered really nicely for a bit!

We went for a good walk, practicing good manners, and exploring. Of course Fiona came along. She seemed to enjoy the view.

It really seems to me like these two have as much fun as I do wandering around and checking out all the different plants, hills, and trees.

And the promised house offer has not happened. Not surprised. No news is no news!

So yeah, it’s not exciting. The blog visits have plummeted. But, I’m employed, I have friends and family who care, and I’ll keep on keeping on, with a good attitude. Thanks for reading, all right of you.