The front pasture at our house hasn’t had herbicide applied to it, so it’s full of wildflowers, grasses, and riparian plants (by the arroyo). Since our internet tower got messed up and I can’t use the computer to write, I thought I’d share some images from walking around the pasture after a rain. It’s really windy, so the grasses are blowing around.
You may recall that I recently bought some hens, two of which were beautiful, fluffy Cochins. Fancy Pants, the gray one, was the biggest and prettiest, but she was never very active. Lately we’d been worried about her, because she never started laying, and her vent area got dirty.
Sadly, she passed away on Wednesday, when I was gone. Thursday was vet day. Sigh. Kathleen gave her a proper burial. We think she had reproductive issues.
The other Cochin, Lacy Legs, did start laying, and produced small white eggs that shaded to brown. Note that I said produced.
This week she went broody! Geez, she barely started laying! So now she won’t come out of the roosting area and makes laying hard for the other chickens, who all want to use the same nest box.
It ain’t easy to get the eggs out, either.
It turns out these little darlings are very prone to wanting to be moms, that is, set on eggs until they hatch. Brooding. Great. The wooden egg won’t hatch. The other hens’ eggs won’t hatch. We have no rooster.
So. Will she stop? I think Buffy did eventually. But I don’t know what to do. She is determined. I’ll see if anyone I know has some fertilized eggs she can hatch and fuss over.
Meanwhile, the other chickens just keep eating and making infertile eggs.
Like my corporate office in Austin that I haven’t seen since early March. And I do not like those one bit. That’s why I was extra happy to see that there were some new office doors hung in the Pope house when I got back to town today. I realize now they are the same style as the ones at Bobcat, my Austin House, only in knotty pine.
They are going to get stained to match the barn doors, to add a bit of contrast to all the white trim. The black hardware looks very nice.
Chris also got one of the barn doors partially hung, and is working on the other one. It’s no easy feat to get a big, heavy door securely affixed to a brick wall, so there’s lots of prep work and such. Once everything is ready, Chris will crack open the tube of super-duper epoxy that mixes itself in the nozzle and quickly use it to firmly attach all the support bolts and such. It only takes 45 minutes to dry, so you have to glue while the gluing is good, apparently.
Other things that are getting attached are the mantel pieces in the front office and my office. We don’t want them falling down, either. I’m getting excited about the area that will surround my faux woodstove in my office. Ooh, it will be a surprise.
All of the furnishings are now in the main bathroom, though none of the plumbing is hooked up. The new shelving unit looks really nice, and the rustic vanity goes well with the lighting. You can actually tell it’s a bathroom now.
While losing a day of work going to Temple to get supplies and help stranded elderly people on the side of the road, Chris picked up the feet for our cast iron bathtub. That practically gave him a hernia, because WHOA these things are WAY bigger than they looked in their picture! They are huge!
Everyone thought surely I’d exchange them, but I figure they “make a statement” and we will use them. Most certainly they will hold up the tub, as long as the combined weight of legs and tub don’t collapse the floor! The installation guide just says it’s “extremely heavy.”
This has taken a while, but to me, it’s gone pretty quickly, considering that it’s mostly been done by one person!
I miss all the good stuff. Last night at the ranch, while Vlassic and I were safely snoozing in our Austin bed, the ranch dogs started barking like crazy and would not stop. Lee got up and looked out the front door but couldn’t see anything.
They continued to bark, and apparently the whole family yelled at them a lot.
Then, as Lee and Chris were going to bed, they found out what all the ruckus was about: a three-foot plain-bellied water snake. According to eye witnesses, all the dogs were hiding around the corner, in order of size, with Alfred peeking his head out, barking and ducking back behind a wall. The rest were his backups.
Chris got the snake out with a broom, then it chased him, then he took his machete (I do not know where that came from unless it was MY machete that I won in some raffle once) and made the snake dead. Boo hoo. I was not there to convince them the snake wasn’t venomous.
The family believed it was a water moccasin, due to its head, which is all mushed up at this point, so the pit viperness is obscured. It does look a little triangular to me, too. I’m glad my iNaturalist friend aguilita identified it for me quickly as a regular ole water snake. In any case, it doesn’t belong indoors.
They think it must have come in when the wind blew the back door open. We are all glad the dogs didn’t go sniff it, since there are a lot of dogs getting bitten these days (Cathy J of Master Naturalists reported one rattlesnake bite and one copperhead bite just last week). Ah, rural Texas.
I’m so glad to be back in Cameron. I’m also very glad to have naturalists who will help with identifying wildlife!
This could have been a MUCH worse post, but it’s scary to me, nonetheless.
Last night we were sitting on the porch with the dogs, when Lee’s brother walked up and asked if we’d seen Vlassic. We hadn’t in an hour or so. We looked and looked and couldn’t find him.
I got worried he had wandered over to the Laywells across the street, which he had done once or twice before, so Kathleen and I jumped into Hilda, our utility vehicle, and went searching. We saw the Dorners. Hi Dorners. We turned around. We ran into Mr. Laywell on his utility vehicle (they go up and down the road all the time), who did indeed have a small black dog in his lap!
But, it turned out to be a black terrier, the exact same size as Vlassic but way barkier. Nice to have a face to go along with the barking fits across the road (I’m sure they love knowing what the barking fits on OUR side of the road are caused by, too, so no judgment implied). Anyway, we made him talk to us again.
We went by Mandi’s and yelled, we went over to Sara and Ralph’s…checked places he’d hidden before.
Finally we went back home, to find a small black dog in the grass. I hugged him a lot, then asked what had happened. Eek.
Vlassic had jumped into the pickup while Chris was getting some stuff out of it, and no one had seen him. He’d been locked inside the black truck for who knows how long.
We are so grateful he is okay. I’d been thinking it was time to give up on dogs, since I seem to be pretty hard on them. Of course, we have once again reminded ourselves to check cars after we’ve been loading and unloading, because Vlassic or Harvey might have gotten in, ready for a ride. That’s so scary as summer approaches.
So, if you have a dog that likes to go on rides, check your vehicles!
Do you have a favorite pair of shoes? I believe I do. And a couple of runners up. I don’t have a shoe fetish or an actual mental health challenge about shoes. My Well, you may or may not agree.
Now I own a lot of shoes. I do. I’ve endured Imelda Marcos jokes for decades. Maybe young people don’t know about her and it will stop.
I always blamed it on my sun and moon being in Pisces ♓️. That sign “rules” the feet. Apparently the Piscean will either have beautiful feet or scary ones. My dad’s were very weird, and his high arches made it hard for him to buy shoes.
I had very nice, average size feet that looked good in shoes. When I was little, we mostly went barefoot and got a new pair of shoes when school started, either loafers or Keds.
So, when I started earning my own money, the first thing I did was buy shoes. High school friends will remember the white patent-leather 6” platforms I bought in Mexico in ninth grade. I’m sure I looked like a puta, but I could be in the back row in chorus. Ha!
Anyway, I’ve always enjoyed shoes. I sorta miss my lovely Cole Hahn dress shoes, but my feet are thrilled that I now wear comfy ones. Now I just miss all the shoes in Austin I haven’t seen since the first week of March. Poor orange sparkles!
You might be surprised that my favorite shoes are very practical. They’re brown walking shoes, what a snooze. But they are infinitely comfortable, great for walking and hiking, and get this: they’re waterproof! I can walk around in the rain or afterward without wearing hot rubber boots.
And the bottoms have leaves!
I got them on a weird shopping trip with my stepmom. The store owner showed us all his guns. I felt so safe.
Other favorites are Corky’s flip flops, because they don’t hurt between my toes. Then there are the sparkly sneakers. All of them.
Others I like are the Skechers GoWalk series. They are good for work and dog walking. And my colorful Western shoes. Almost as great as the brown ones.
I love cowboy boots. Right now my favorites are these blue Ariats I wear for ranch stuff and riding. They have soon kind of cushioning that’s miraculous. My favorite dress ones are the snakeskin. So comfy.
I always wondered if other people were as fond of shoes as me. Maybe if you had a lot as a kid, they don’t matter? Or if you don’t obsessively match your outfits and shoes like me. I guess I’m a grownup at last, though, with this parade of comfy shoes passing as my favorites. Y’all missed my glory days!
After all the rain yesterday, there was a regular parade of colorful clouds, especially just before sunset. Kathleen and I sat on the porch providing commentary. Nope, you can’t get bored at the Hermits’ Rest.
It’s a-floodin’ outside, so I’ll blog some. Yesterday, Chris and I left our respective work a little early (even though my coworkers really wanted me to keep going and I stayed on calls until long after I got back to the ranch), because Mary was bringing a portable horse pen and some jumps that Sara and I bought from her. No, I do not expect Apache will jump over anything.
[Pretend I wasn’t too hot to take a picture and that you see some green metal and wood.]
After the heavy lifting on that project was over (we had enough help that it went fast) Chris had time to work on ranch projects. He hauled out the backhoe and worked to finish the mini detention pond with ditch that we’ve been working on for a while.
Kathleen, the dogs, and I enjoyed watching it, very much. He made the pond bigger, tapering it toward the road. That pissed off a lot of 🐸 frogs. We enjoyed watching them.
The dogs went crazy running around in the dirt and swimming in the pond. We laughed a lot.
Then came the fun part. Chris made a ditch that will take the water from this pond to the pond by our driveway. That solves a drainage issue we had. It was also great dog fun.
Penney decided to “help” with the digging and vigorously applied herself to widening a spot.
As he went further, everyone supervised. I didn’t get any after pictures, but I’ll say it ended up smooth and nice.
Chris has great timing. Last night a HUGE storm came through, so the new drainage got a workout. Actually, it’s still getting it, which is why my photos are through the window.
We are pleased to see water heading to the front pond in an orderly fashion. It’s working!!
All the dirt piled along the side of the pond is slated for another project. Kathleen and I want to plant a palm tree 🌴 or put native plants around the finished pond, with a bench for watching our animals. I’ll have an interesting yard some day!
I’ll get more pictures soon.
Here’s another fine thing that happened this weekend; we added a beautiful new friend to our little herd of equines, Lakota the Perfectly Perfect Palomino Pony. That is NOT his real name (I don’t know what it is, actually), and he is also not a pony, though he is of the smaller quarter horse type.
Sara, my horse partner and ranch neighbor, and I had debated this for a while, with her doing the most debating with herself. We only have so much pasture and don’t want to overload it. But, I have been promised fencing that will allow horses to hang out on our side of the ranch, which will help a lot with that issue.
Besides, Lakota is a horse who deserves to hang out with us. He already knows Spice, since they were owned by the same person for a while, and had spent time together in training, I think. He is beautifully trained by the same Parelli Natural Horsemandhip Method* trainer who trained all the horses we own, Kerri April, and used to belong to one of her family members when he was a fancy equine athlete. This means we don’t have to learn new ways to work with him; he’ll probably help train ME.
Sara got Spice from her friend Mary when Apache’s occasional lameness issues made it hard for her to to the horsemanship activities she wanted to on him. Mary had found Spice to be a bit much too handle, but she loved Spice very much and only wanted her to go to a fellow Parelli-trained owner. Sara was it! I’ve enjoyed Apache, Sara has enjoyed Spice, and all has been well.
Now Mary is moving to the suburbs and won’t be able to keep horses at her place anymore. She sold her others, but there was Lakota,** too old to sell as a consistent mount. She just wanted him to have a happy last few years. We said okay.
Now, Sara had never seen Lakota before, and was just happy to help out, since Mary said she’d pay all his expenses. We had enjoyed our old buddy Pardner very much, and he kept the other horses calm. We had hoped Lakota would be similar.
On Saturday, Mary and a friend brought him in their trailer. Sara took him and brought him down to the horse paddock. I could not believe what I saw. This may be the prettiest horse I ever saw in person, at least conformation-wise. He is built to be a barrel racer or other show horse. Compact and muscular (even at his age). His palomino coat is soft and shiny and somehow smells like vanilla.
Now, I’ve always been told that you get a horse based on personality first and looks second. DANG. He exudes peace and kindness, just like Pardner did! He is wonderful with people. How would he be with horses, we wondered?
This is the next amazing part. He went over to Fiona, who was wandering around looking well-groomed (briefly). They touched noses and sniffed each other. Hey. Hey.
When we put him in the pens next to where Apache and Spice were, he was all excited, as were they. He and Apache touched noses, then nibbled each other’s shoulders. Hey. Hey.
Spice jumped up and down and made mare noises. She recognized him! It took her a while to calm down, but soon everyone was standing nose to nose, happy as they could be. We left them alone to get used to each other with a fence separating them.
Later that day, I got to ride Apache with the bit and bridle Mary conveniently sold to me, which was the same kind Sara was already teaching him with. I did not fail! I did it (and yes, I know there are other options; this stuff is all in Sara’s hands, not mine, since she’s training him).
After the ride, when everyone had eaten, we put everyone in the big pasture together. So much joy ensued that it brought happy tears to our eyes (yay, happy tears). They all ran around, then the paints showed Lakota all around the area. Then they suddenly realized they were in the GOOD grass and started eating away.
It appears that Lakota is in good enough to do trail rides with us, though he has some heat issues and we will have to watch him. In any case, they all bonded really fast and don’t like being separated. That’s not bad. We are grateful to Mary for letting us share this grand old gentleman. He may not be perfect, but his introduction to our herd certainly was!
*I do not endorse any particular natural method of training horses. I think they are all good.
**Why we end up with all these horses with Native American tribe names is beyond me.
Stuff in my house.
The Hermits' Rest 