dust – The Hermits' Rest

Spring Can Be Sickening

Spring is in the air, at last. The weather is becoming warmer (perhaps too warm for February, but never mind – it’s nice for riding horses), birds are migrating north, and the days are getting longer. All those things are welcome to everyone who had to deal with the harsh surprises the ice storm brought.

I was happy to see that the cranes are now back in the skies, going the other way, and the killdeer have come back. Meadowlarks are also making themselves very well known.

All the tiny spring flowers are blooming, which you can see if you do “belly botany” like my botanist friend always recommended. It’s so good to see them.

While uploading some of the photos I took to iNaturalist, I took the time to see if one of my theories about what’s growing on our grassy areas was true. Sure enough, chickweed is so named because it’s used as chicken feed. It’s even grown as a crop in some places! Common Chickweed (Stellaria media) is darned interesting for a “weed.”

It is native to Eurasia and naturalized throughout the world. This species is used as a cooling herbal remedy, and grown as a vegetable crop and ground cover for both human and poultry consumption.
Stellaria media is edible and nutritious, and is used as a leaf vegetable, often raw in salads. It is one of the ingredients of the symbolic dish consumed in the Japanese spring-time festival, Nanakusa-no-sekku.
iNaturalist

I feel a lot better, because for the past few weeks I’d been feeding it to the chickens along with the henbit I’d read was good for them to eat (and whatever else comes up when I pull it up). They eat it like crazy.

Speaking of the hens, they also know it’s spring. Everyone has grown all their feathers back nicely, even Blondie, who had been bald on her back from the rooster’s attentions. And Betsy, the one who lays blue eggs, has ramped up production again. I think half the chickens are laying now (at least two of them are old enough that I don’t think they’ll lay at all). For a while I was just getting one or two a day, a white and a tan, but now I’m getting three…maybe up to five with the coming of spring.

The other great thing about spring coming is that the days are getting longer. That means I can get rides in on both horses after I finish work, which may help out with the fact that I’m not feeling very confident lately, especially with Drew, who is needing a lot of “firm corrections” as Tarrin calls them (he rushes rather than walking beside me when he sees grass, and just seems irritable). I am glad I can spend more time with my equine buddies, nonetheless.

So, why do I say spring is sickening? It turns out that I made myself sick when I was cleaning out the henhouse last week.

Let this be a lesson to you all: when you are sweeping up bits of hay and straw filled with chicken poop, wear a mask. I did not.

Thanks to that error in judgment, I now seem to have some kind of lung infection. I found myself wheezing and gurgling when lying down a couple of days ago, and since then, my lungs seem to be filled with fluid. At first it was clear, so I wasn’t too worried, but it’s getting worse, so I have an appointment to get my lungs looked at. Since I have NO other symptoms of illness (COVID negative, before you ask), all I can figure is I inhaled things that displeased my bronchial tubes.

The horses say I should spend more time in the fresh air with them.

Now, I live in Milam County, Texas, land of few medical services. I had an appointment for this morning, but it turns out the Internet is down at the local office. That’s so Cameron. I might be able to get in today in the next town over if my PA goes over there; otherwise, I have to cram an appointment with the other provider in tomorrow (my busiest day of the week), amid getting my spouse to the chiropractor for his messed up back, taking him to his Rotary meeting, and grabbing lunch with my friends. I predict all of that won’t happen.

So, readers: wear a mask when working in a dusty, enclosed environment like a chicken house. Or don’t ever clean it (not a good idea, since it gets stinky).

Deep Stuff about Dust?

Oh goodness. What WERE the PC Practitioners over at the Unitarian Universalist Association (world’s most politically correct organization) thinking when they decided that dust was going to be one or the UU Lent words of the day? Were they thinking UU Lint? (And how many people also came up with that question today?)

Can’t believe no one else had tagged #UULint yet on Instagram. Ima check back later. None on Twitter yet, either.

I’m sure a lot of people go real deep when they think about dust. Or the song “Dust in the Wind” gets stuck in their heads. Darn you, Kansas. I guess it DOES blow your mind the first time you realize that, “we are all made of stardust,” a sentiment which seems to have been attributed to every pop astronomer of the past twenty years.

Sometimes I wish the vast majority of people who have that us versus them mentality would think about the fact that we are all made of the same stuff a little more. Perhaps if they dusted off the cobwebs in their brains, dust could lead to peace. That’s a stretch, though.

I’ll be honest, here. When I think about dust, other than when I need to wipe some off a surface, I usually think about what’s IN the dust. I’ve always had what passes for Suna having fun by imagining germs, dander, mites, ash, and a whole lot of giant pollen particles swirling around me, going in my lungs and back out. I’m glad we don’t get all stuffed up inside.

Special Dust

Brick dust everywhere, even on the ancient curtains.

However, right now, I’m more fixated on all that brick dust at the Pope Residence. It’s a couple of inches thick on some of the wainscoting in the entry. Poor Randy has swept it many times. I’m sure glad he and Easton wore masks when sanding down the bricks.

That’s some dust-free wood! Plus, I can see where the light fixture and vent will be! Photo by Chris

In fact, when Chris sent me this photo of the ceiling going up in the bathroom attached to my future office, my first thought was, “Wow, that sure is clean.” I sure hope we eventually get ALL that brick dust out of the building. It can blow in the wind, because as we all know, EVERYTHING is dust in the wind. Or stardust.

Okay, if any of you would happen to have more insights into the concept of “dust” that you’d like to share with me, I’d really appreciate it. I may be missing out on something as I am using most of my brain on actual work today. Share! Do it for Vlassic!

Thinking about being made of stardust has me all tuckered out.

Hey, It’s Dusty Out There

Scary pale sunrise in Cameron this morning.

There has been a series of African dust storms coming over our area during the last few weeks. Right now, we’re in the middle of another one. They flow across the Atlantic, then up the Gulf of Mexico and into the middle of the US.

The good news is the dust makes mornings sort of cloudy and it stays cool just a little longer. The bad news is that if you are like me, and your lungs aren’t your strongest feature, you really should stay inside. Well, I did NOT stay inside all weekend, as you could tell from the photos of saddled up horses and such. I also spent a lot of time doing outdoor activities that I’ll cover in another post, and I sat on the porch a lot.

That has led me to unpleasant asthma symptoms, which I don’t get very often. It’s annoying. I don’t have bad asthma, but it will show up if I vacuum a lot or hang out where there’s a lot of sawdust in the air.

Seeing warnings about the dust danger really makes you think that these Saharan dust storms are pretty bad things. They send people fleeing indoors! They make our cars all dusty! The sky is sad!

But, I found the silver lining in the cloud of dust: supposedly the will significantly lower the chance of a big ole hurricane hitting the Houston area! Well, that’s not bad at all. I like rain, but I don’t like people I know getting flooded over and over again.

The dust is supposed to hang around for another month, so I guess I’ll just keep coughing if I go outdoors a lot. At least it usually isn’t this dusty when the storms come, which is actually every year!