The Hermits' Rest

Dirt. Wet Dirt. Dry Soon.

Well, there’s no longer a stream flowing through the front of my property. The water company finally found out about our little oasis and fixed the broken water line. I am glad for their sake.

Goldie found it a great opportunity to bark. Good thing I was not recording today.

We enjoyed watching them work. My favorite part was when they dug up the very wet dirt to get to the broken pipe. The dirt was so much warmer than the air that it steamed! Have I mentioned we have had a cold snap? There was frost this morning.

I think you can see steam if you enlarge it. Pretty dirt, though!

They dug and dug and it sure was wet.

I didn’t see this, but I heard they threaded the new pipe through the old pipe, which seemed like a smart idea to me. Then, boom, they cleaned up. It really looks good. Our soil in this part of the ranch is sure pretty, if a bit on the clay side (that’s ok, we also have sand and loam).

I went and checked, and yep, no water is flowing into the usual spot the stream starts from. Now it will only flow between now and spring when it rains. Poor little wild animals will have to drink out of the ponds. I guess I worry about them needlessly, since the ponds didn’t dry up this year after they got enlarged last year.

Book Report: Mother Tongue

I’ve let this book marinate in my mind for a few days before writing about it. That’s because Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women’s Words, by Jenni Nuttall (2023), left me conflicted.

It’s a good book to review on Samhain/Halloween, since it has an entire chapter on witches, and there’s a good deal of discussion of how all kinds of words became derogatory terms for old women, the kind you see depicted in Halloween decorations. And who can complain about a book about etymology? Not me, that’s for sure.

Nuttall is an expert on Old and Middle English, so it’s fun to read her easy translations of old phrases (and to try to figure them out before she translates). I’m inclined to be sympathetic to fellow linguists, of course, and to fellow feminists as well, but dang, this woman comes across as grumpy. She also comes across as defensive about her life choices. I don’t think parenting is her favorite stage of life and she certainly doesn’t have much good to say about breastfeeding and hanging out with your baby. I think she’d have liked one of those wet nurses she talks about in the mothering chapter.

The other small complaint I have is probably just me. Since I spent a lot of my early adulthood reading (and writing) about how women use language in more recent times, I was hoping for a lot more detail, more examples, and more juicy stories about the language of and about women in early English. She doesn’t seem to have many other choices than Chaucer. It does occur to me that there may not be many written sources for her to draw from, so I’ll grant that.

I have a lot of books on women’s language and sexuality. Some of them are here. Others are still in a box.

One of the fun things about Women’s Words is that it’s written in British English, so I got to learn some new modern slang. That was a real bonus. But since she’s English, I wish she could have added some words about women from former British colonies like India and the Caribbean.

Honestly, though, I wouldn’t discourage anyone who has an interest in the English language through history and cares about all English speakers, not just the ones who fancy themselves to be in charge. You’ll find out some interesting derivations, like the fact that the history of “girl” is shrouded in mystery. You’ll learn about words for childbirth, marital states, and the work women do. Go ahead and check it out. Don’t listen to grumpy Suna.

PS: if you write a book about women and language, don’t name it Mother Tongue. There are lots of books called that, so you’ll need a good subtitle.

Good night, moon. Hello, ancestral spirits.

When Your Furry Family Member Gets You Angsty

Describe a family member.

I didn’t realize the prompt today would fit with what I wanted to write about today. But it does. I’ve had some of the worst anxiety symptoms and bad dreams I’ve had in years since Friday. Ugh. I get strong chest pains, tightness in my head with ringing sounds, and weakness in my legs. None of this is pleasant. At least my anti-anxiety meds work most of the time!

But, it turns out that, while I only get moderately stressed out about the numerous health issues in my immediate family, a sick horse throws me for a loop. And by the way, he’s no sicker now than he was last week, but knowing something was wrong got me full time of worry, angst, anxiety…and guilt.

I guess I’m unhappy to find out that Apache’s blood test results were extra bad (like 400 where high normal is 40) for ACTH. This means that, as we’ve always suspected, he has PPID or Cushing’s desease. The link tells you what the tests he took were, and we’re from the place doing the testing. His insulin wasn’t bad, which is good news.

Don’t panic. Medicine is on order that will reduce his symptoms and make him feel much better, though it won’t fix his endocrine system, which has probably been bad his whole life. We’ve just been managing the heck out of his symptoms.

Why have I been so upset? It’s because this furry family member has meant so much to me. He’s the first horse I learned to take care of and to ride, so he’s dealt with all my learning experiences and mistakes. Conversely, I’ve dealt with all his issues and idiosyncrasies, along with his curiosity, eagerness to learn, humor, and patience.

Don’t forget my beauty, other than the furry coat and sweating.

He and I each have our challenges, but we’ve stuck together through bad feet, poor horsemanship, anxiety (both of us), and changes. And in the past year or so, we’ve finally become a real team and started having fun. There’s been a lot of growth going on for both of us.

So Friday, when I found out the vet was supposed to have sent me those test results but I didn’t have them, and I got the impression they were bad, no amount of me telling myself that getting upset wouldn’t change things worked. I just fell apart and got mentally dysfunctional. I mean, internally. I did all my stuff and acted fine. I just hurt inside. I care so much about my animals.

I was mainly feeling bad that I didn’t get the testing done earlier, like I’ve let him suffer needlessly. I was concentrating so hard on his feet, muscles, and diet that I missed this. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to get haltered some days, or why he gets squirrelly on rides…blah blah blah. I’m just making stuff up at this point, but I guess that’s what you do when you think you could have helped but didn’t.

My hope it’s that by talking about my relationship with my Paint/Arab companion of lo these many years I’ll help myself feel better. He will be on his way to feeling better as soon as those meds arrive, and we’ll take it from there.

I’ll remember good stuff like hearing the sandhill cranes migrating overhead.

We will both be fine, especially if folks treat us kindly and gently. I don’t need to be made to feel worse with a bunch of, “Why didn’t you…?” And “You should have…” stuff. I just need ways to move forward and live the rest of our time together positively and happily. The horses and my inner circle are what keep me going!

Resources

Equine Cushing’s and Testing

Equine Endocrinology

Am I Unfaithful to the Temperature Blanket?

What’s this? I’m knitting with hand spun yarn (by a person named Genevieve) that’s distinctly not acrylic sport weight. Why, it’s wool, silk, and sparkles! It’s not making a mitered square. It’s in the round!

I’m enjoying doing something different, using my pretty wood yarn bowl, and feeling natural fibers. It’s a K1 P1 cowl. I need one for all this outdoor stuff I do. But I’m not being unfaithful.

The thing is that I finally, after all this time, caught up to today! And since a cold front just blew through, I’m not sure what today’s low will be. You can see the last ten days were pretty okay. Not over 95° so I didn’t have too much heat trouble.

However, as you can see, we’ve finally had a rainy spell. And with rain came humidity. So sweating had occurred. You can easily spot the 6” of rain we had this week!

So, from now on, I’ll knit a square per day. I’m looking forward to the cooler colors for the next few days. I even ordered more blue, optimistically. And I’ll make a few little things. I seem to have lost all my fingerless mitts or moths ate them, so I guess that’s next.

I can’t write about much else. I’m pretty anxious right now. Send me good thoughts. Knitting helps some, as will a visit from friends this evening.

A Different Me

What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?

Here’s a prompt I was interested in. I was really stuck on a career path until I was about 26 and realized I didn’t want to write about little syllables at the ends of Japanese words the rest of my life. But I loved the teaching of linguistics. I love teaching anything.

Todays illustrations are cool cloud formations from today.

The first path I should have considered was getting a degree in music education so I could teach choral music and sing in choruses. That seems more likely than making a living in folk-rock.

Another path would have been to switch my college major to biology once I realized how good I was at it. I could have gotten to do field research and written marginally more interesting scientific papers…or taught biology. Still, I’d get to hang out in nature for a living. But I’d have ended up specializing in maggots or something, knowing my luck.

I could have done forestry and become a park ranger? Right now that’s my vote, especially if I could ride horses in the forest.

I seriously considered a career change in mid life to work in a yarn shop and teach knitting and design patterns. I enjoy doing that still, but I’m not creative or driven enough to actually make a living at it. I sure admire my friends who do it, though.

Someday I’d like to write a book that’s got a plot. Obviously I have a lot of words in me. They just need more structure than a blog! I do write for my job, but honestly, I’d be writing every day no matter what. Maybe I’d write letters. Maybe I’d write poems or songs. Who knows? I just enjoy making sentences. That’s not a different me; the writer is the real me.

I don’t think photography is a potential career path.

So…what are your alternative careers?

It’s the Most Water-full Time of the Year

Yessir. These days we tend to have a few months of drought, a couple of dribbles, then WHOOSH! A big ole flood comes along. Today was Flood Day. We got four inches or more, three of them very fast.

Even the backup culvert was called into use.

It was about time that our poor ponds (tanks in Texan) got refilled, because the drizzles we’ve had earlier in the month didn’t stop them from continuing to dry up.

Still, it is probably too much to ask of Mother Nature, but a few days of an inch or two a day would be a lot better for our plants and trees, because this much water just runs off into the creek, into the Little Elm, then into the Little River, then into the Brazos, and on to the sea. Or something like that.

For a while there around noon today it looked like we were in a lake, because it was raining so hard nothing could absorb. It was fun to watch, as it was fun to see the creek slowly fill up as more rain went into Walker’s Creek up north from here.

You normally can’t see water from our back yard.

After the rain, I had a lot of fun in my rubber boots looking at the aftermath. Drew was enjoying the water running in from the arroyo and across the road. I hope there wasn’t too much fertilizer runoff, because now it’s all in our front pond.

Mabel, on the other hand, changed colors from rolling in the mud. That gal likes her dirt.

The minute the sun came out, out came all the birds, butterflies, and bugs. The birds had a feast, I’m sure. And I finally got a picture of one of the beautiful blue butterflies with its wings open! That was a personal goal.

You can see how high the water got during the hard rain

I also made all my work goals, even publishing my training video successfully after it breaking repeatedly. For the first time ever, I found the answer in one of those ancient user forums on the software’s site. Turns out you can’t have any of that fancy chart stuff from PowerPoint in your presentation for it to work with my add-on software. I converted the charts to images and everything was fine. I tell you what, it makes me feel smart.

More rain is in store for a few days. There goes my plan to ride my horses every single day. Ya can’t have everything.

Congratulations! It’s a Pipit!

I’ve been trying to ID a brown bird I see every autumn for years now. It’s got white on the sides of its tail and is found in our pastures. Why has it been so hard?

There are LOTS of those tricky little brown birds here in the middle of Texas in the post oak savanna. In addition to the easily spotted house sparrows, there are savannah sparrows, vesper sparrows, lark sparrows, swamp sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, Harris’s sparrows, and maybe more. Some are easy, some are hard to ID visually.

This is the bird. A bit lanky for a sparrow.

That’s why I must once again praise Merlin Bird ID. It’s helped me figure out what I’m seeing SO much. And yesterday and today I was able to figure out what that mysterious brown bird of autumn is, and it’s not a sparrow.

It’s also not a meadowlark, which also has white along it’s tail feathers and a brown back. It does have a beautiful song, like the meadowlark, though.

Meadowlarks are this color in the front, though.

It’s an American pipit. Or it’s a Sprague’s pipit. They aren’t even related to sparrows, which is obvious if you look at their bills. They have the sharp bill of an insectivore. I know that because Merlin heard them calling.

I then read the description and had a “doh” moment. That’s exactly what I’ve been looking at in the fields.

With my love of identification and categorization of what’s around me, I’m quite satisfied right now. Pipit. Yeah. Turns out they’re not even uncommon. Huh.

This snail seed vine isn’t uncommon either, but it’s pretty.

It’s a good bird time right now and will only get better. I’m sad to see summer birds go, but meadowlarks and all those sparrows fill the air with song. Plus the phoebes are screeching and the shrikes are shrieking. The kingfisher is back, too!

It’s a great time of year. Flowers glow in late afternoon light.

And hey, only one bur today on Apache’s man bun and zero on Drew. I want to credit my braiding, but I think the new hay has kept them out of bur world.

Tiny crow poison looks like stars in the grass.

Who Says Neigh and Deserves Some Hay?

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 horses seem pleased. They should be.

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!

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.

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.

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!

Book Report: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

I finished this fascinating book a while back, but haven’t had time to write it up with so much other excitement going on. But now’s the time! Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: The Astonishing New Science of the Senses, by Maureen Seaberg has opened my eyes (senses metaphor) to all sorts of ways I can do a better job of making full use of all my senses.

I heard the author in an NPR interview talk about her experiences as a person with enhanced senses (she sees more colors than most people and experiences synesthesia). Once she figured out she was different, Seaberg got interested in how our senses work, hence this book.

What fun it was to learn about how we use our senses (including others besides the traditional five) and about our Perception Quotient, a concept Seaberg made up. Stories from people with enhanced smell, taste, etc. make for insightful reading and kept me so engaged that I devoured the whole thing in a day or two. It made me want tetraploid vision a LOT.

I wonder how many shades of green or brown Seaberg would see?

My favorite part of the book is where we get ideas for making the most of our own senses. I’ve been focusing a lot on smell and hearing when I’m out among the woods and fields. I’m glad I’ve been stopping to notice what I can smell in different situations. At the State Park this weekend, the wonderful scents were decomposing wood, Kidneywood blossoms, tiny swallow-wort flowers, and the omnipresent frost weed.

Interestingly, these are all white flowers. I’m not the only one who’s noticed that white flowers seem to have strong scents. That helps with moths at night. If you’ve ever smelled a night-blooming cereus you know that’s true!

There were also unpleasant smells. We were close enough to Luling, Texas and its oil wells to get whiffs of crude oil every so often. I lucked out and didn’t run into any skunk odor, though.

Listening has also been fun lately. I mentioned doing a listening exercise yesterday. I also have fun (sometimes frustration) with the Merlin Bird ID app when I can hear birds it can’t. Mourning doves seem particularly hard for the phone app to hear from a distance. I’m really happy to know my hearing is still good at my age. I’ll get hearing aids the minute I need them, that’s for sure.

I’m also glad my glasses correct my vision so well. I just love to view the world in whatever colors I can see. I’m relieved to not be colorblind like Lee is. My excellent peripheral vision is also something I’m very grateful for. It sure helps me find birds and butterflies in time to enjoy or photograph them.

I found this one because her wings flapped.

I think you’ll get a lot of ideas and learn some new things from this book, even though I find the author can be a little too “New Agey” even for me. She’s a real character!

If you’re like me, you’ll be sharing little tidbits you learn with anyone who will listen. I wish I had grandkids to share some of the book’s ideas and scientific discoveries with, to encourage them to fully use all their senses as they explore their worlds.

I Took a Break

Yes, I took a break from many things I do constantly, and it felt good! I skipped two days of blogging and knitting, and I am just fine, thank you.

I don’t particularly look fine with one dark lens and one light one!

While it wasn’t a voluntary break, it was blissful to have a lot of time to meditate, listen, and rest for the past few days. You see, I took a blogging break starting last Friday because the place we’ve been all weekend is like most Texas State Parks, and light on cellular connectivity. Once I fired up my hotspot, I was able to do things like upload images to iNaturalist slowly and post a few photos to Facebook.

The knitting issue was my own dang fault. I had forgotten to bring along the two shades of blue I needed for the cold front last week. Indeed, it got cool enough to require blue yarn. So, I had to stop. That’s not the end of the world, since I was almost caught up to the present in my squares. Blah blah blah, knitting talk.

Anyway, Lockhart State Park is a little jewel of a place built by the CCC and WPA, two government programs that provided employment in the Great Depression. Today it would be labeled handouts and frowned upon, no doubt.

There are only 20 camping sites, but the circle we are on has 50 amp electric and sewer hookup, so it’s snazzy. Our view is of a woods and the second hole of the only golf course remaining in a Texas State Park. I doubt they have to mow it very often, judging from the sizable herd of deer that shows up every night.

You may recall that our television antenna was knocked off poor Seneca’s roof. We have a new one but haven’t managed to get it up there, so this was also a television-free weekend, other than watching The World Is Not Enough with Pierce Brosnan last night on BlueRay.

Who needs TV? Plus we got the bedroom slide out! Yay!

So, what have I done? Mostly I walked. I have gone on all but one hiking trail here, madly taking photos of plants, bugs, and such for the 2023 Pollinator BioBlitz. I knew I’d do well on this one, because I had one free weekend at home to record observations, most of a week in South Texas, then this long weekend in Lockhart. At one point this weekend, I was #3 out of over 5,000 people in numbers of observations (this will change as people who use real cameras upload their photos, I’m sure).

There were a few plants that I really enjoyed seeing. New to me was the Texas Feathershank Schoenocaulon texanum. It a beautiful plant, especially when the sun shines through its blossoms. I wish it grew at our place!

Two other wonders are the Texas Kidneywood Eysenhardtia texana and the Bearded Swallow-wort Metastelma barbigerum, two plants with tiny white flowers that I learned more about on this trip. Lockhart is at the northern end of the area these are found in.

Kidneywood is used for dye, as it apparently glows underwater! It also has blossoms that smell intoxicatingly wonderful and are very attractive to pollinators. With its teeny little leaves, it’s a cool small tree to find.

The swallow-wort I saw in south Texas. Here, though, there were huge vines of them, just abuzz with bees and wasps. I think it may be related to milkvines, because the leaves look similar and the seed pods look just like climbing milkvine. Plus, look at those seeds. Sure looks like milkweed! The flowers are teeny-tiny, though, so if they have a cute little pearl in the center, I couldn’t see them.

I did finally find a blooming milkvine, after spotting many with no blossoms. I do love milkweeds.

The most common plants here are the ubiquitous straggler daisy, Texas Indian mallow, and Turk’s cap. There were some lovely vistas of Turk’s cap in the woods, even though you could tell a lot were lost in the drought.

Here are some other plants and insects I found:

My side quest was to see how many birds I could identify. I actually saw quite a few, with the most obliging one being this lovely black vulture, who just grunted at me a couple of times.

Mostly I heard birds on Merlin. There were a couple of obvious errors, but most I could confirm by seeing them. There was even a screech owl! In all, I identified 42 kinds of birds, thanks to the varied terrain here (water birds really like the lovely creek that flows through the park).

I also saw lots of deer in the woods, as well as on the golf course, and one happy armadillo. There was evidence of MANY armadillos here, along with coyotes and raccoons.

The most fun I had (fun is a weird thing for me) was going into the trails at sunset and finding a quiet spot. Then I’d just listen. Sadly, you could always hear traffic way in the background, along with airplanes and a really annoying bulldozer that messed up my listening this morning. But when it was quiet, you could hear the leaves falling off the cedar elm trees, cardinals flying (they are loud fliers), distant crows, and what I figure are deer walking around or armadillos digging.

Of course, in the mornings, it isn’t silent. The wrens, chickadees, blue jays, cardinals, and woodpeckers make quite a racket. And one hawk about burst my eardrums it was so close. Pretty cool.

Back to work, dogs, and horses tomorrow morning! I think I have enough Internet to get work done while Lee gets ready to leave! But we both will remember this quiet, restful respite.