I’ll try to get as much horse riding and swimming pool lounging in as I can for the rest of the month, because I accepted the offer on the job I was debating and it starts June 30.
I’m asking myself that.
The Pacific Time hours will be a bit of a challenge, because I’ve never worked in a time zone later than mine, but since it’s relatively cooler in the mornings in the hot months here, I may find doing horse stuff and other ranch chores more pleasant. I can adjust!
I’ll still have time to look for birds at my birding station, which was sited today.
Theoretically, I’ll retire again in 6 months or so. I did like the main interviewer a lot, so I think I’ll enjoy making a few more handouts and answering a lot more questions about project and portfolio management software. I’m sure glad I didn’t entirely flush that knowledge from my brain in March.
Looks like plenty of space for rainwater capture here.
In the meantime, Lee and I are taking a short drive around our area, first to close on a property sale in no-longer-scenic Cedar Park, then spending the night in Waco and going to the zoo we didn’t get to go to when storms came after Lee’s canceled jury duty. Just some couple time.
I may be a little slower, but I get there.
It’s a nice reward for making it through all the interviews and paperwork. I’d suspected they’d choose someone young and energetic. Well, my friends keep telling me I’m energetic, so I’m passing as the elder statesman energy bunny.
I thought today would be uneventful but there were many events, many, all of which involved our precious animal friends. Let’s enjoy the fun one first, shall we?
No carpenter worm moths are part of this story. Other than this one.
I was up nice and early to meet Sara and her horses. I got to go with her for her and her filly Jhayati’s last lesson with Tarrin. She also brought Aragorn, to practice for them all driving to their new and beautiful pasture in Wisconsin. Want to follow their journey? Sara has a blog! Learn all about their regenerative farm there.
Jhayati is so big! She will be two in May.
Anyway, it was a joy to watch the young horse wearing a saddle for the second time like she’d done it for years. Then she wore a bit for the first time, and she explored it but did fine and followed all her instructions fine. This is a smart girl.
I e learned so much from these two women. I’ll miss my horsemanship friend so much, but look forward to hearing about Sara’s new adventures.
Meanwhile, Aragorn wasn’t acting like himself. He did not like being tied to the trailer. Much pawing and agitation occurred. This is more than his usual opinion. But I’m not worried. Sara is well prepared for travel, and Tarrin shared lots of travel tips. This was the only first animal oddity of the day.
Flower break.
I got home, and Lee told me Carlton was acting strangely. He would not eat his food and was limping. He’d needed help getting into the bed to go to sleep last night. It turns out he hurt from having two of his nails trimmed too close yesterday. And to top it all off, Harvey picked fights with him all day. He seems better after some pain medication, though.
Getting rest.
The chickens are acting oddly, too, and I found feathers in the henhouse. Has Connie gone broody? She has nothing to brood though. It seems our egg thief has been so well fed that she had to shed. It’s longer than my height.
Things were calm until I went to feed the horses. They were very well behaved and I was happily watching them eat when I realized Mabel was not eating. She was sticking her tongue out and then yawning. Her food was no different from any other day.
TongueYawn
Eventually she knocked all the food out of her tin and kicked it around. I caught that in 27 seconds of cinematic drama.
Mabel expresses her opinion of food.
I got really worried. I went to let the other horses out, but when I let out Fiona first, I realized that she hadn’t touched her food, either. She just walked away.
Not touched. She doesn’t get much.
As soon as Fiona left, Mabel marched over to her food dish, sniffed it, then kicked the tub over. As an added flourish, she stomped on the tub. Here’s a video of that.
You will note in the video that she cones over to me at the end. She kept doing that, coming over to tell me something I didn’t understand. I worried that she was colicking. So, I called Tarrin.
Luckily, as I dialed, Mabel went to the water trough and drank. That made me feel better about colic (very dangerous horse issue). Tarrin suggested I see if she’d eat a horse cookie. I was relieved to see she would. Fiona reluctantly ate one, too. Whew.
Hummingbird break!
The theory we came up with is that Mabel and Fiona were reacting to their vaccinations yesterday. That makes senses
I do wonder if they ate something less than ideal down by the pond. They were all chomping away there, too.
Weird grazing matter?
I watched the horses a long time after they ate the treats. I was relieved to see Mabel nibble some hay and Fiona grazing.
Now we want to eat this vine.
More horse surprises coming this weekend. Stay tuned.
The Hermits’ Rest is smaller today. We sold half our property to the nice folks who’ve been leasing the land for hay and cattle. We also sold them our part of the rest of the ranch, which we’d partnered with Sara next door on.
We will still have the sunsets.
It had to happen, since Sara is moving to a beautiful farm is Wisconsin to engage in a regenerative agriculture project. We couldn’t afford to buy her out, and besides, now seems like a good time to liquidate assets. So much uncertainty.
This is helpful. Thanks, social media.
I can still do my iNaturalist stuff and ride on the land, as I may have mentioned before. They won’t cut down the woods, they said. It’s still hard to sell part of my home. You know how attached I get to land, even over-grazed former post-oak savanna. Yes, yes, I’m not good with change.
I’ll still enjoy this woods!
On the other hand, there will be no more owing anyone money. That will help me sleep at night. I can pay off my debts and easily live within my means. What a weight off my mind. The unexpected expenses of the last couple of years messed me up!
There have also been pet expenses. Good news: Goldie found a bed she can get in and out of.
So yeah, that was good news. Tomorrow we get the bad news about Goldie. Her biopsy results came in. But she’s still having fun and we will let her do it as long as we can.
I’m too tired to write much. Well, honestly, my back hurts too much to concentrate. Spending 3.5 hours in the seating at the place where our Master Naturalist meetings are held is too much, even with cushions. However, it’s good that we started a new member class and that I got going on borders for my temperature blanket from last year. Here it is in its lengthy glory:
Last January is at the top, and the last row is December 31-January 12.
I’m not sure how I didn’t realize the year would end with one day on the last row. So I added the beginning of January. At least that put a few cold days on that end of the blanket. I plan to do the black border wider on the long side to make it more balanced. we will see.
Close-up of summer through winter. You can at least tell it cooled off a bit.
It was another pretty cool bird day. The highlight came when I was standing in the back yard of the house we are incredibly slowly renovating. Suddenly a Red-Shouldered Hawk landed on the old clothesline support, just a few yards away. We were impressed! And she stayed there. We left, not her.
This perch is perfect.
It’s really fun to share an interest in nature with a family member!
Maybe tomorrow I’ll be perkier! I did enjoy the class this evening. The new students are interesting people.
It’s probably a luxury and sign of my privileged status that I’m able to ponder upon what to do in the near future to protect my more distant future. Still, people my age tend to be pondering about many age-related potential occurrences.
Sometimes I feel like an empty seed head, like I’ve fulfilled my purpose and am done now.
Do we work for pay every day until we die? Can we retire and finance our needs ourselves? Will we need help from children or other relatives as we age and decline in health? What’s the best strategy that will give us a comfortable old age?
Anita plans to get her advice from Goldie. She’s wise for her age.
Heck if I know. I thought we had things set up in one way, but things unexpectedly changed, and we have to pivot. Our neighbor, Sara, who I do my horse stuff with, is escaping Texas to start a regenerative farm business in Wisconsin with members of her family. This is exciting for them!
Apache will miss his lesson and show buddy.
But that’s meant we’ve had little choice but to sell the vast majority of the ranch, which we owned together. And the very nice people we are selling to also wanted some of the property we owned outright. With times being what they are, Lee wants to liquidate assets, so this is all going to happen.
Bye, land. I get to keep the pond.
If you’re wondering why my anxiety is high and I’m sad, well, this is part of it. I won’t own any of the creek or woods any longer. My plans for a consternation [hilarious typo; I meant conservation] easement are no longer possible. We could not afford to buy out the other half of the ranch to do that; we’d hoped to do it later.
We’d hoped for a few more years of Aragorn in Christmas tack.
The fact that we will soon only have a “ranchette” (not popular with the locals) does give us more options. So we have to ponder them. The agreement we made not to fence in the acres right behind the house means I can’t put in another pasture for the horses. It’s hard to support four horses on what we have.
It better support one attractive rooster!
So, lots to ponder, lots to keep me up at night, and that’s not even bringing in the unknown of the next four years and how it will affect us, right as we would need to start relying on Social Security and Medicare, which we’ve paid into since we were teenagers.
Don’t fight change, Mockingbirds!
Change is inevitable; we all know that. I can deal with it in small doses with time to prepare. This stuff? I’ll remind myself to put one foot in front of the other and notice the good, the beauty, and the inspiration that occurs every day. Right?
I admit that right now I don’t have a favorite restaurant. There are lots I like (even here in Cameron), but no favorite. But I think I have a favorite chef at the moment!
It’s found here, in a Fulshear, Texas suburb.
We met this fine chef on a visit to Lee’s high school friend and his spouse, along with our frequent visitor, Matt. We are all pretty compatible in our philosophical leanings, so the conversation was good. It was so good that I forgot to take any photos except plants in the wild area behind the house.
Hummingbirds and butterflies loved this rough leafed dogwood.
Anyway, we are extremely well on this visit. I’m pretty sure that if I could hire a personal chef, P. would be it. Everything was healthy but delicious, exactly what I’d make for myself if I had the time and patience! Examples:
Homemade Gorgonzola salad dressing. It was so thick and savory, not as intense as blue cheese.
Salmon en croute. The best way to cook salmon. Topped with a papaya salsa. Whoa. That was good.
Then there were extremely cute little purple potatoes, the purplest I ever saw.
I forgot homemade pumpkin rolls that were only subtly pumpkin. I never had anything like it.
Pumpkins showed up for pie in dessert, too.
What a meal! And she made it look easy. But wait, there’s more! In the morning we had this Amish oatmeal bake with fruit, nuts, and eggs in it. It may sound weird, but it was fantastic. I was ready to go raise a barn after that.
Who needs a restaurant when you can visit a gourmet cook? I wish I were that talented with food. But we got to enjoy it!
Visiting Suburbia
The drive to where we visited was very pretty, since we passed many beautiful cattle and horse ranches, but after we checked into our hotel (Lee needs a couch to sleep on and it’s weird to request that of hosts, like you reject their lovely bed), the GPS routed us through suburb after suburb. These were new, nice suburbs.
Wide streets, mown lawns, flowers.
Now, I lived in Suburb World while my sons were growing up. I was used to the fancy entrances, the ponds with fountains, the elaborate playgrounds and pools, and all that, though we lived in a less fancy suburb.
Perfect trees with perfect mulch.
I felt kind of like Granny Clampett arriving in Beverley Hills after living her life in the Ozarks. Jed! It must take a passel of sheep to get that grass so short! But where are their pens?
Manicured quaintness!
Yeah, I obviously have been out in the country/small rural towns for so long I’ve forgotten all that HOA perfection. To me, getting the fence lines weed-eated is dang fancy now. All those perfect lawns, those non-native plants, and those giant houses on tiny lots look strange to me now.
Bridge over a ditch. Wow.
I truly enjoyed the trip down memory lane, though. But I’m now more comfortable in towns with a magnificent old home next to a 50s ranch, with a house with no lawn and no recent maintenance next to that. And of course, non-functional vehicles randomly strewn around.
Greenbelts. No trash or river cane.
And out in the country, various pieces of equipment in various stages of utility lurk behind various outbuildings in various stages of construction. Often there are more travel trailers than homes. That describes the Hermits’ Rest, and it’s fine with me!
I honestly think our roadside plants are also pretty.
I’m glad there are places for all types of folks! It was fun visiting the Houston environs, and who knows. We may return. The food and hospitality are good!
I’d intended to update y’all on the progress my amazing family and team are making on the current renovation project in Cameron. At this point, I’m ready to move in! (But I won’t.) sorry for two posts today, but I couldn’t fit the two topics together.
I finally got a picture of the whole house. It’s wide.
I dropped by earlier in the week and saw all the insulation that got put in. Wow. It’s so much quieter in there now! Even the attic is insulated. I imagine the utility bills will be better, too, especially since the new heat pump is very efficient.
You just want to poke it. Why no insulation in part of the hallway? Future windows. The window at left is newExtra back door going awayInside utility roomThe air conditioner
It’s cool to see how much is changing.
New rear entrance through laundry/utility roomPrimer going on trimOld vents are covered and old paint scraped. Outside of removed back door. Needs brick.
Today Anita, Lee, and I all visited. I told my son to dig up violets and grape hyacinth to plant at his cabin. Then I looked around. Most of the insulation is now covered with sheet rock. They’ve made good progress. I got a demo of taping and floating, which was educational to me. It looks fun, and my drywall application pro child agreed.
BedroomBedroomBedroomLiving roomMain bedroom
The house is so light now. But the most light comes from the two new windows that have transformed the formerly dark and tunnel-like hall leading to the main bedroom. It’s awesome from the inside and out.
There will be really nice siding here, which will break up the width a bit. Inside, the hallway seems wider! And so bright. Cleaned up, these bricks will make the ex-door disappear. It’s so cool to re-use material.
More painting happens next week, and cabinets are getting worked on. The team will keep the mid-century charm while making the house comfortable and modern at the same time. I’m glad I get to help a little! But major kudos to our team and the excellent subcontractors!
You get some great, amazingly fantastic news. What’s the first thing you do?
If I got great news, I’d tell the people in my household, then call Anita and Mike, because they are the people I tell stuff to. Then I’d tell my local friends email chain, my old LLL friend Facebook group, my horse friends, and my other Facebook friend group who I’ve been friends with before there was anything other than email. I guess I’d then go out with the horses and think about things. I might do the horse part first.
What news do I have for you blog readers today? There isn’t too much, since we got lots and lots of rain. All good. Not like mudslide rain, just standing water that’s not conducive to outdoor activities.
February showers bring happy wildflowers.
But everybody at our house did go look at paint colors for the renovation project house. Mmm, two shades of white. But, it had to be whites that complement pink and tan, the colors of the retro tile we are keeping.
Great paint names.
I got paint samples to take over to the house to see how they go with the brick (peach) and roof (gray/green/brown). I want a grayish green for the trim and a dark apricot for the doors. We will see if any of them look okay or if we have to be more conservative.
We also went all the way to Temple to look at tile and floors for the house. No final decision was made, but it was fun looking. We also had a good lunch (especially the squash casserole thing) and ran into our next-door neighbors/relatives. It’s rare that all five of us are in the same place. We are a happy, yet hermit-like family.
Floor candidate. Goes with creamy colors. Main bath idea Kitchen with tools pretendí to be an island My offspring did this drywall.
I’m glad Apache is better about his medication now, or I’d have gotten extra wet trying to get it to him. The other horses will get their rations whenever it isn’t raining tomorrow. It was slippery out there!
No bird news from here. I saw sparrows and a hawk. Oh, and doves in Temple.
I saw this tiny arachnid on the new drywall.
Newshounds, I’m sure you wished for more, but I doubt you want to read the Jackson Browne lyrics I got all misty over and posted on Facebook. You can go listen to the version I watched tonight. Perfect for a reflective old imperfect human, even if he did write These Days at 16.
If you’ve known me a long time, you’ll remember when I blogged a lot about our home renovation business. While we have changed some things, we still buy houses and hire great folks to fix them up. Now some of those folks are our family, which makes it extra special.
The current team worked on some projects of their own recently, but Lee and I finally got to be the client in this one, a very nice single-story house in Cameron that used to be owned by people who made candy in what’s now the master bedroom. What a cool story!
The house is so wide I don’t have a picture of the whole thing. Back
When we got it, the layout was quite awkward, with a giant living/dining area, a huge pink kitchen, an even huger main bath, and a bedroom way at the end of the house that you had to go through another bedroom to access. Luckily, a lot of cleanup and prep had been done by the prior owner, so the team didn’t have to start from scratch.
The giant room. It’s now 3 bedrooms. The closed-off kitchen. It had a very cute stove but it didn’t work. New stove will be where the cooktop is now. All this storage is gone, but a new island and pantry will add back storage. Keeping the tile. It will look retro cool. My son got the nice range. Theirs had died. Much of the big bathroom stays. White-ish carpet goes. It gets a new shower, too. Future living roomI think this photo shows open space at top. Cool shiplap. Saved. Long dark hallway.
After much brainstorming among me, Lee, and our contractor, we redid the layout. There are now three nice bedrooms in the former living area, the middle bedroom is expanded to be a nice living area, and the kitchen is still pink, but open to the living area. It’s much less choppy.
Kitchen is now open. Light is temporary. It will have a dishwasher. New hallway to bedrooms. Front bedroomMiddle bedroomBack bedroom. Closet will be on back wall. New pantry is behind the table. At right will be a banquet for an eat-in kitchen.
They will add windows in the long, dark hallway to the master bedroom, and a utility room with laundry and new HVAC is being added in the former carport, which will now be a nice covered porch.
BeforeUtility area framed Window going away. Another one will be added to the left.
Of course, as with any remodel, structural issues were found, so now the ceiling joists are all new and sturdy, and insulation will be added throughout the house. It’s going to be so much nicer to live in. The electrical work is all new, too. Plus the scary roof has been replaced.
People don’t see the new wood around the windows or the stove vent that now actually goes outside, but we and the crew know it’s there, and future occupants will be safe, dry, and cozy. The house will keep its mid-century style, with a few exterior upgrades.
I hope to share more photos later! Stay tuned.
Daily Birds
Today I enjoyed wrens. Two of our usual residents, the Bewick’s and Carolina wrens, were giving a concert this morning. It sure was beautiful, loud, and lengthy. They have very different songs. The winter wren sometimes shows up, but it mostly makes scolding sounds, as does the house wren, who is very round. I sure enjoy their hopping, climbing, and tail wagging.
I know, I know! My horses! And after a lot of effort on many people’s part, they have some round bales to enjoy when the cold weather comes.
The first four bales
The horses seem pleased. They should be.
Nom nom, as the young people say.
I had just washed my hair when I went out to figure out where to put the hay. I now wish I had a wind like today’s to style my hair with every wash! It made my hair look great!
Nature-styled hair
By the way, I may deserve a treat or pampering like the horses get, too. It’s the dreaded cocklebur season. I’ve probably mentioned this multiple times already this autumn. The horses seem to think the grass under the bur plants is the BEST, because each of them has a fine collection of burs in their manes, with bonus tail burs…or had.
Burs? What burs?
I took an extra half hour getting Drew and Apache ready for their lessons today. Some of it involved getting mud out of their hooves, but most of it was bur removal. Drew, whose new hairstyle is shown above, had about 15 burs in his made and a bunch in his tail. His hair is smooth, which makes it easy to get burs out. When I was done, I did the braiding you see. I hope it makes for fewer burs and easier removal. Plus, it’s cute.
Look at meee!
Yes, eventually Apache got braided, too. First at least 38 burs had to be removed. He has fine, frizzy hair in his mane, so the burs stick way more and are much harder to remove. My poor hands! (I’m careful not to use my nails.) I ended up making his forelock into some kind of horse-man bun. That should help. The rest of his braid is longer than Drew’s, but at least it won’t fall forward and may get fewer burs. We will see. Too bad I never was a girly-girl or had a pony and learned to do fancy braids. But Tarrin said the style I did might work.
He also has lots of wisps and at one point his braid flew up like a kite.
But I can’t be annoyed at the guys. I’m still kind of shocked at how well Apache’s been doing in lessons. It’s so very fun to get more skilled at riding as he gets better at his form. We did slaloms today and ran out of things to criticize. And we did three barrels correctly, at a trot.
These are things I never expected. Heck, even his side passing is borderline okay! Quite an improvement! Obviously he isn’t built to be a high-level dressage horse and he started out way late, but as long as he’s healthy and interested, we’ll keep working on things.
Drew and I are both improving, too. Bridling is coming along, and I’m getting the hang of helping him get straighter on slaloms and barrels. He’s where Apache was last year. But I think he can do great things if we keep working away. He deserves hay, too.
And I deserve hay. Duh. Even though I bray rather than saying neigh.
Lots of us deserve a reward right now. I’ve solved some problems and helped people at work, for which I’m proud. Lee’s buying us a house to renovate! Go him! And others in my circle are being amazing caregivers. Teamwork!
The Hermits' Rest 