Ranch Life – The Hermits' Rest

What DO I think about?

What are your thoughts about cryptocurrency?

As a matter of fact, I don’t think about cryptocurrency at all. I forget it exists for long stretches of time. I don’t bother it and hope it won’t bother me. This may be the longest span of time that I’ve ever dedicated to thinking about cryptocurrency.

I dislike regular currency, too, but I must interact with it.

Things I do like are free. Today was the last day of the Pollinator Bioblitz but all I did was enjoy butterflies. I’m sure glad I have the blue mist flower plant my Master Naturalist friend gave me, because it provides a free butterfly show every day.

Birds also take up a lot of my thinking time. I’m not ashamed about it. Observing how other forms of life behave is not a waste of time. It reminds me that I’m part of a bigger picture.

Our resident Great Blue Heron reminds me that there are advantages to drought: it’s a lot easier to fish for delicacies in a shallow pond.

Today I spent a long time watching dozens of Eastern Bluebirds sitting on our electric wire and taking turns dashing down for a bug, chewing a bit, then flying back up. There was plenty for all, so no need to fight. I’m thrilled to see so many of these beautiful birds with the haunting calls.

I thought they were starlings at first, since there were so many

I even dug in dirt today, mixing new compost into the raised bed and planting cheerful winter pansies and some leaf lettuce in where my pepper plants were. The peppers are perking back up after their wind damage, so I put them in leftover hanging baskets with some compost into case they want to produce more. Why not?

Yep, I’d rather be thinking about nice, green lettuce than cryptocurrency.

Sedate Samhain

There was very little spookiness for this year’s observance of the pagan new year (for some of us) or Halloween (for others). Tomorrow I’ll walk through the metaphorical door into the darkness/introspection/changes and we’ll see what happens next.

It’s vaguely autumnal now, with honey locust leaves turning.

Lee and I drove out to Temple to get me some bird feeders/seed at Wild Birds Unlimited, but it’s gone. So I managed to find substitutes at Lowe’s and Tractor Supply. Now that winter’s coming I want to supplement my stump feeder with a couple of hanging ones. All the winter sparrows and friends might enjoy variety. The House Sparrows won’t care.

We visited the antiques store area in downtown Temple, and I found two purple tea light holders from PartyLite, where I used to get a LOT of candles a few decades ago.

I got two for four dollars, and one is $14 on Etsy, so I did well.

We also went to a very fun kinda goth antique-ish shop that I’m pretty sure is where my kids hang out. Lots of macabre and odd items. We enjoyed it, other than the incense, which messed Lee up.

The day wasn’t entirely un-creepy, though. Everywhere we went today there were way too many Grackles way too close to me. I’d try to look at a cabbage plant, and out would pop a Grackle. Lee nearly stepped on one, too. Sure, Grackles are common near retail outlets, but these were extra! Then, when I complimented a sales person in one of the stores for her feather earrings, she explained that she was dressed to evoke the spirit of a Grackle. Black feather necklace, feather print wrap and even iridescent eyeshadow. Time to go back to the ranch, where more sedate Grackles live in reasonable numbers.

We’re just shiny, hungry, highly adaptable birds. Settle down, Suna, or I’ll peck you like a discarded French fry!

Then I scared myself. For context, we’ve just finished this season of the Scariest House in America show with the marvelous and sartorially splendid Retta.

In the show, people talked about hearing noises and invisible people talking in their haunted homes. This appeared to stick with me, because as I was walking back from horse feeding, I kept hearing sounds like a gate opening. Then I heard a woman’s voice, but couldn’t identify it. Eek! I even called out, “Hello!” As if that would help.

The horses often make the chains on the gates jingle.

Only when I scurried into the house did I realize my phone (in my back pocket) was playing an ad. My phone is usually on silent, but I’d turned it up to change Siri’s voice and forgotten to turn it down. I butt tuned something! Gee whiz. I set myself up for that!

I hope you had/have a good holiday weekend. El día de los muertes is tomorrow. I’m gonna ask my dad to watch out for me. it can’t hurt.

Photos? I always have photos

Share a few recent shots from your camera roll, no context needed.

Sure, I’ll do that. But first a quick update on the big rainwater collection project. Much of today was spent grading the area around the house to keep the drainage good. In addition, my son put together a very nice exit for the drain pipe, which will protect the PVC and look like a design feature. It’s now graded perfectly to flow well, and theoretically to not erode thanks to hidden barriers of a shower pan liner and a hunk of cement that formed at the end of our big pour. Very clever.

I’ll save other news for tomorrow and instead follow instructions and just share photos. It’s so hard not to describe them!

Feeling sentimental about childhood heroes

What’s one thing you own that holds deep sentimental value?

I think the appropriate answer to this question, today of all day, is to share my attachment to my favorite action figure, Jean-Luc Picard. Today he’s sitting on a hastily constructed altar to honor Sir Patrick Stewart, the actor who played him.

The pansy is attacking his head, and I can’t find a lighter, but I’m trying to honor someone I admire.

I’ve had this Jean-Luc for many years. He’s kind of been like my elf on the shelf in that he’s always getting into shenanigans. He’s climbed many Christmas trees, hidden in Thanksgiving centerpieces, and most famously, served as the “God” on our monthly tarot group altars way back when we lived in our first Texas house (a decade or more ago). The Goddess figures were usually more serious figurines or such, and he always brought a note of levity.

Sometimes he went to work with me and served to intimidate certain colleagues (in my mind, anyway). Until today, he was guarding a big hunk of crystal on the mantel, awaiting his next mission.

I’m sure he’s hiding somewhere in this photo.

Picard is my favorite Star Trek character, and I enjoyed all his appearances in the franchise, including the Picard mini-series. He and Supergirl are my only action figures. (Not true, I searched for action figures in my phone photos and was reminded of Elizabeth Warren.) I’ve never been much of a doll person, though.

More importantly, though, I’ve admired Patrick Stewart, the wonderful man who advocated for animal welfare, human rights, and the rights of humans to love whoever they want to. He always came across as an intelligent, humorous, and kind person. I’d hoped we’d have another decade to admire his work in additional roles, but dementia hits so many of us.

Thinking of Stewart, his family, and friends

Yikes. I just want George Takei, William Shatner, and Brent Spiner to hold on for a while. This is a hard enough time.

Learning to let go of those you love or admire is one of the hardest parts of aging. That and letting go of hopes and dreams.

Speaking of hopes, we’d hoped to get the rainwater collection system set up enough today to get some water in, and the guys did it! I was there, as sprinkles were falling and the valve opened. Water went right in! Now, we got .05” of rain, so it probably has just enough to cover the bottom of the tank. But it’s a start! It helped me feel less sad.

Getting back to normal

It’s the middle of the last week of October, which is usually a great time of year to be here at the Hermits’ Rest. And yep, it was a beautiful day!

Look! Blurry butterfly! Gulf Fritillary.

It was also a fun and challenging day at work, the kind where you solve problems and take on interesting challenges. I’ll need more of these, because I agreed to stay on into next year.

I’ll still be able to sit by the pool on nice days, though. It looks especially good because our new worker weeded and trimmed the beds. He may have a future as a yard worker.

It could rain tomorrow, but that’s okay, because we can deal with any runoff! Rain will land in the concrete pad for the water tank and promptly drain through the pipes and out into a gentle swale. It’s ready to go!

Plus, the tank is in place! Hooray! Its hugeness now looms across the side yard and acts as a bit of a privacy screen. The land is almost all smooth and graded, so this phase of the rainwater collection project is about done. Next: collecting rainwater, which involves more tubing, valves, and stuff.

It’s farther out than I thought it would be.

I appreciate the peace and harmony this week has brought. It’s like a calm before a storm. I get to feed fish, talk to the turkeys, de-bur at least one horse a day, and walk around in search of pollinators. I can even feed and water the wild birds (replaced the broken birdbath). And no one’s stopping me. I’ll remember this feeling.

Oh, travel, oh, drainage

What’s one piece of travel advice you always follow?

My blog today has two topics, travel and drainage. They go together so well, right? So, let’s tackle that blog prompt.

The thing that makes my travel easier for me is to book seats near the front of the plane when I fly, even if it means paying a few extra dollars. It not only gets me more legroom, but gets me on the plane early enough that there’s plenty of space for my carry-on bag, then gets me off the plane quickly, which makes quick connections much less stressful. Less stress is good for me.

So many lines at airports! Get TSA Pre-check!

For car travel, I try very hard to go on days that are not Friday or Sunday, which avoids weekend travelers in a hurry. And don’t go to Buc-ees on a holiday weekend. It’s torture.

Not following my own advice, some years ago

And now for drainage. I’ve spent much of my time recently thinking about flooding, since I had five hours on the Texas Hill Country floods of last year during the Master Naturalist meeting and also since there is horrible flooding in the Navajo Nation right now. It’s especially hard there, with so little infrastructure and such scattered populations. Keep them in your thoughts!

Today I watched the drainage system for our rainwater collection system getting set up. It’s important to have a good plan for what will happen once the tanks are full and overflow (seems far fetched right now, but our pattern is drought followed by flooding).

The drainage pipes for the tank behind the garage will go to the field behind us down to the tank (pond) behind the house. That pond drains to a pond further downhill and then to the creek. I’ll have pictures of it later.

Currently the tank could use some water.

The tank next to the house will go into the pipes you see below. The idea is that the water will end up in the lowest part of the front yard, which flows nicely down to the creek. There will be a little retention wetland area to slow the flow a bit. It’s not all 100% worked out yet, so that will be a fun surprise.

The ditch for laying the pipe is very popular with the dogs, who think we’re building them a playground. They are so dirty! Might as well wait until all the yard is smoothed down again to bathe them!

I enjoyed checking on the construction work between meetings and I also did some searching for pollinators. One giant swallowtail was fascinated by my red shirt today and kept following me around. So pretty! This is such a great time of year here in central Texas!

Concrete and more concrete (and proof of my Boomer status)

What was your first ever videogame?

Well, I was born in 1958. The dawn of the transistor age. So, yep, my first video game was Pong. When you only have 2 television stations to watch, Pong is an entertainment option.

That was probably the last video game I ever played enough to get good at, though I was OK at Pac-Man. I’ve saved a lot of time by not playing video games, so that I could knit, read, or listen to birds. Everyone gets to choose how to spend their downtime, and we all need it, right?

And now for concrete. I was a little bummed that I had to be in Waco when the long-awaited day of pouring the cement pad for the water storage tank finally arrived. But my family didn’t let me down, and my son and spouse kept me updated. They even sent a video.

The pad is rather complex, because it has to be below grade to fit under the spouts coming off the roof. But our nephew is quite the engineering genius, so we have it in a depression with a raised lip that will capture any overflow and send it out toward the creek. It will work!

In addition to the pad, we now have a concrete pad that will be a horse maintenance station for washing, grooming, etc. The water spigot that’s awkwardly placed near a former fence will move over, and we will finally get a utility sink, if all goes to plan. We will see.

They had to get a bit of extra cement, so an addition was made to the front porch. It will eventually tie in to the second concrete project, walkways to the front porch and pool area. Fancy, I know.

Today the work of removing the forms for all the pads began. According to my son, that’s even harder than building them. Besides that, some of the supports were screwed in, and a few are now encased in concrete. Of course they can remove them, but ugh.

Why no, I don’t know how the inner forms get removed, or if.

I like how the edges are getting beveled on the parts that stick up. The horse area is also beveled for safety.

There’s a lot of cleanup and dirt redistribution left to do, but the end is in sight! The pipes and other equipment needed to get water flowing into the tanks is next, plus pumps, filters, and purification equipment. This is a big project with so few workers. Thank goodness I have a talented family and they have a helper who is learning.

Lesson 1: don’t make sparks on dry grasses.

Lake Waco and what would Sue Ann post?

I’d planned to blog last night but I fell asleep uploading observations to iNaturalist. It didn’t help that I’d barely slept the previous night (no idea why). But yesterday was pretty good.

I worked until 1, managing to do so while driving to Waco, which worked out great. I was headed to Lacy Point on Lake Waco for another Bioblitz. I’m on a roll with those things! This was the first activity for the 2026 Texas Master Naturalist Annual Meeting.

I hung out with a fellow Master Naturalist from College Station and did a nice 2-mile trail walk. There wasn’t a lot of variety of vegetation, but I ended up with 90 observations, so that was pretty good, plus all the pollinators counted for the other Bioblitz. Yes!

When I was done I chatted with my coworker next to this surprise. I sent it off to the coworker!

It’s a gar. I guess folk don’t eat them?

A good number of song birds were around, clumping around the trees for the most part. We enjoyed watching and hearing Red-tailed Hawks, Red-shouldered Hawks, a Sharp-shinned Hawk, and multiple Ospreys.

When I was done I headed over to my friend Kathy’s house to see her family and her new Dalmatian (the previous one, Daisy passed away soon after our last visit). Sally came through Milam Touch of Love, and I’m so glad she got out of the Casa where she was being held. Whew.

She’s a lovely dog, still getting used to her home.

It was a nice evening talking and eating and telling stories. Her daughter was there, who I hadn’t seen since La Leche League days. Kathy’s husband is also doing well and fun to see.

I was telling Kathy what a good job she’s doing dealing with a bunch of challenges, how patient and kind she’s being. She laughed and said she wasn’t always that way. I responded that I feel the same, that it’s so hard not to show how upset I am in public forums (fora?). Kathy said I was her role model in moderation and that she often thinks, “What would Sue Ann post?” (WWSAP)

That was the highlight of my evening! Just to know someone notices how hard I try. She should know, since she was there when my outspokenness did me no good. Learning and growing is the best, and being noticed is a bonus.

Boy, did I sleep well last night, too!

Blitzing the biology

I’ve continued making observations for the 2026 Texas Pollinator Bioblitz this weekend. It’s like I went camping, only I stayed home, with all the walking, stalking and talking? No talking. I just took pictures but that does not rhyme.

I even climbed a hill, the only one around here.

After the incredibly windy day Friday, it was more pleasant to go look for pollinators and the plants they pollinate this weekend. But the wind had bashed a lot of the few plants that should still be blooming. For example, I’d really looked forward to getting pictures of Snow on the Mountain on my walk today, but I had a hard time finding any whose flowers hadn’t blown off.

Anyway, I’m doing okay finding things to contribute. Right now I (Sunasak) look like quite the little blitzer. However, the real hardcore participants include Texas Parks and Wildlife staff and people with good cameras who need to process their images. By the end, I’ll be more in the center.

Anyway, at least it’s gotten me out of the house. The only other stuff I’ve done is feed various animals. Spice messed up the water trough AGAIN and the rest of the horses have found the cockleburs. Apache feels it’s his duty to take over from Drew, so he requires daily work. I don’t think he minds the added attention!

The number of butterflies I’ve seen is larger than I expected. The Gulf Fritillary family is still busy laying eggs on passion vines, so they were easy to get good photos of.

There are many tiny Ceraunus Blue butterflies yesterday, but a good number of others, too.

Of course, butterflies aren’t the only pollinators. I found plenty of bees, wasps, and other insects (which may or may not be pollinators).

I did find a good number of plants, but not many great plant photos. This is not a good time of year for pretty plant images. It’s a good thing I know what a lot of plants look like when they’ve gone to seed!

I also have to report on birds, even if they aren’t part of the Bioblitz. On Friday, with all that wind, I only had 11 species, but it was a bit better yesterday with the arrival of much cooler weather and my little buddies the White-crowned and White-throated Sparrows. Today has been quite good, with over 40 species so far (I’m writing in the early evening). The best part is that I got some photos, including a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that Merlin didn’t register.

I’ll spare you the dog adventures this weekend. They were sort of unpleasant, but in the end, they’re all fine. I hope you are, too, or at least heading that way.

Blown away!

It’s not hot anymore! The weather today would have been quite pleasant, except that the cold front literally blew in. Like a leaf blower on steroids.

Merlin only heard 8 bird species. Luckily my eyes saw three more, but 11 is a real low!

The mountain was gradually moved back to where the backhoe is, so the area could be smoothed down.

And the guys working on the forms for the cement pads had to be careful so pieces of wood wouldn’t blow them around. All the dirt moving also left a film of dust everywhere.

Worst: the cattle ranchers had spread fertilizer yesterday. Everything smells like poop. I was looking all over the house to see which dog had pooped, sprayed Lysol all over the house, and was totally baffled until I finally remembered that tractor pulling something behind it yesterday. Dogs are forgiven, but some horse is in Trouble for messing up yet another water trough float. (Spice)

I did manage to get out and snap some pollinator photos for the bioblitz, though the plants were very wiggly. I was surprised at how many butterflies and dragonflies stayed still long enough, and the workers found me a cool rabid wolf spider with eggs (not a pollinator, but interesting).