Ranch Life – Page 131 – The Hermits' Rest

Horse Schooling

That’s right, two posts in an hour. I had two topics, you see… so. One of the things we found while doing things around the house yesterday was a beautiful black widow spider that we must have disturbed in all the work. I’m sorry to say we had to dispose of her, because I just don’t want to risk the safety of my family, friends, and pets.

I had never seen one of these spiders up close until yesterday. They are really beautiful! I’m glad they mostly hide, and sorry I disturbed so many this weekend!

Then, today, after Sara and I rode the horses, we went to replace the mineral tub with a better one, and were very grateful we decided to check carefully before cleaning it out to put in mineral. We found entire families of black widows in there, including the rarely seen male and a lot of egg sacs. I’d probably prefer the equines to not get bitten, too. Sara had gloves on, so she was the one to stick her hand in. Eek!

I’m proud of Sara. She did a week-long horse riding vacation in Montana, and did great, thanks to all the training she’d been doing. She is now focused on working with Apache more, to get him ready to wear a bridle and bit and do more precise work with her. He is really her horse, after all, so I’m glad he’s getting the work.

Really, It’s 7 am. We have to go out again? Yes, you do. No wonder Apache is hiding.

Visiting and Tinkering

Ah, darn. I had an entire post written on the phone yesterday, went to add a photo to it, and somehow discarded the whole post rather than just a photo I wanted to replace. I declared it a sign that I should just concentrate on doing rather than writing for a little while. So, for the past three days I’ve been doing stuff like crazy! I feel quite accomplished.

This picture of hour much the dogs love their giant puddle will distract you from being sad that I lost all my work, painstakingly typed on the phone.

A lot of this doing occurred because Chris and Kathleen came up on Friday and stayed until after lunch on Sunday. You see, Chris likes to work with his hands and is a great problem solver, so he did a bunch of things to help us around the office and the Hermits’ Rest house.

And because of that, I was inspired to do my own set of tasks, with Kathleen there to lend some muscle and brain power, too. We’re pretty lucky to have Lee’s clever relatives working with us on our projects!

On Friday, after Mandi and I worked like good employees, Chris assembled Kathleen’s lovely new office furniture, straight from the box. It’s probably the first “new” stuff we have in the Hermits’ Rest building. It’s all white and brass, and cutely modern. She brought lamps, which enabled us to really see the former storeroom, which turns out to be pretty cute (and clean, thanks to Melissa’ cleaning it last week).

Summer Dead Stuff

Hey again. I’ve got some more deep thinking coming up, but first I have to say it’s hard to get anything at all done this time of year, because there’s always something interesting and deceased laying around.

Our first thing isn’t dead, just empty. That’s the tiny nest the baby finch tried to fall out of yesterday. It’s so small and exposed! But birds successfully fledged.

Awkward photo of awkward bird nest

The next best is bigger and more protected.

But at least two fledglings ended up on the porch this morning!

Continue reading “Summer Dead Stuff”

Did I Save a Baby Bird? And Summer Glory

Isn’t it about time I got back to nature observations? I think we all could use some sweet stories and pretty photos, so I’ll try to give you some of each.

I love this image of a wheel bug on the window at work.

The Dangling Finchlet

First, I’ll tell you about the house finch families who have taken up residence at the Hermit Haus, who entertain me and Mandi when we hang out by the carport. They sing and sing, and fly right next to us or sit in big groups chirping and looking spiffy (especially the males).

Well, as we came out to leave this afternoon and I was trying to load paper towels in the car, something brushed against me. I looked left, and there was a poor little baby finch flailing away, but unable to fly off, because a piece of nesting material was stuck on its leg.

Continue reading “Did I Save a Baby Bird? And Summer Glory”

Kittens! More Kittens!

It’s been a busy and fun day. I’ll share more tomorrow. Right now, though I just want to share kittens.

I needed to go by Mandi’s house in landlord mode to see how some rather inexpert plumbing combined with new siding led to a big leak. That was not good. But, hey, kittens.

Our little friend Patsy Catsy has found herself nursing eleven kittens. Six were from the mother cat Mandi adopted a couple months ago, and five are hers. The other cat’s kittens are two weeks older.

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Driving Down the County Road 140 Obstacle Course

To get to the Hermits’ Rest, you have to go 2.2 miles down a county road for the last leg. As a county road in a poor county, you don’t expect immaculate maintenance. But, you might expect to be able to go in a straight line.

Not on our road! You know it’s a local driver when you see a lot of weaving and slowing down. There are spots where those in the know look like they are doing a slalom. There are areas on the hill where people driving what they think is a reasonable speed can go airborne.

We call that the roller coaster. When you first turn onto County Road 140 there’s what we call the washboard. It’s caused hubcaps to fall off. And there are at least two danger pits where I have no doubt people unfamiliar with the road have experienced damage to wheels or suspension systems.

Continue reading “Driving Down the County Road 140 Obstacle Course”

Starvey Harvey at Four

When we brought Harvey home from where he was dumped at the Rattlesnake house, the vet said he was about the same age as Brody, so I assigned him the summer solstice as his birthday. Sigh. Brody would be four now.

Anyway, Harvey is doing well. Not as porky as he was for a while, thanks to Carlton keeping him moving, but nowhere near the bag of bones he was when Ralph first found him cowering across the street, waiting for his owners to come back.

He seems a lot calmer now, and less prone to his growling habit. He only gets testy when Carlton gets too relentless in his play requests. He also enjoys running and playing with Vlassic, which provides us with hours of fun.

He looks so incredibly happy when I get back from Austin every week that it makes me tear up sometimes. All that love coming barreling at me warms my heart. He and Alfred both just have the most expressive faces.

That dang Carlton grew. His legs are too long!

That’s really all I have to share. I just don’t talk as much about Harvey, it seems, but rest assured he’s always in my heart.

A Dog and His Frog

[Note: that should say “toad,” as you will see later, but I like that the title rhymes.]

Last night, while our merry community members were sitting on our porch watching the weather, we noticed that Vlassic, the little black dachshund mix was looking at something else. He was very intently observing the water trough that the dogs drink from and swim in (one that will soon hold some fish).

Hey, what’s in there! It looks fun! It’s swimming.

We soon realized he had spotted a frog-like creature in the trough, who seemed to be trying to get out, but with little success. Upon further examination, it appears to be a Woodhouse’s toad, but I’m waiting for confirmation on that. We had a long discussion about the difference between frogs and toads, but hey, they all go rivet rivet.

Let me OUT of here. There’s nothing to eat but mosquito larvae. Wait, I like that.

Meanwhile, Vlassic was running up and down, sticking his feet into the tub to try to reach his little buddy. It was really entertaining, so we let it go on.

How’s the Weather? Active!

Yowee! Did we ever get a variety of weather yesterday! After a muggy morning, clouds began to build up, but rain kept going all around us (which often happens, at least in our perception. I guess severe weather is just going to be the norm as “global heating” continues.

Scary sky and dog looking for a toad (see next blog post)

The wind got whippier and whippier, though, and by the time we were getting Father’s Day dinner ready, it became quite breezy on the porch, where we spent a lot of time watching clouds make interesting formations.

Fresh vegetables and organic meat loaf. Farm living.

After eating our harvested squash, fresh beans, most delicious little roasted potatoes, and yum yum, a great meat loaf by Sara, we realized the wind was really, really hard and it was much cooler.

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).

My shadow and the garden. Beans are to the right. Giant squash is in my shadow.

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.