What did I do? I survived an overwhelming work week without losing my temper at anyone. I’m sure glad this week was only four work days!
Flying away like these cattle egrets was very tempting!
The minute I stopped answering questions along with my equally frazzled colleague, I went to dinner with Lee and our neighbor, which got me out of the house and laughing at least a bit! It reminded me of how much I miss Sara, up there farming her heart out in Wisconsin. Her husband is about done emptying their house here out. Sniff.
This ground cherry blossom brings some cheer! They’re always turned down, so it’s fun to turn them over.
I’m impressed with my dedication to my equine pursuits, because when I got home, I went straight to horse world, fed everyone and got all Apache’s prescribed cantering and other ground work done before it was dark. Bonus: it was a little cooler by 7:30 pm.
I attempted to water my sad geranium but when it moved I realized I was watering the porch toad (Penney’s friend). It’s a Gulf Coast toad.
So, I did it. Got all my training and documentation revision done, was social, enjoyed horses, and even made my daily exercise goals. Woo-ee. I deserved the blissful hour I spent finishing August on my temperature blanket and watching the Captain Picard show.
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?
We aren’t at a state park tonight, because Lake Livingston was getting flooded today. Plus, Lee didn’t want to drive the big vehicle towing a small vehicle in hard rain. It’s rainy all over our area, but a lot worse to the east. Maybe we’ll go over tomorrow.
Looking at the bright side (though it was a dim day), I needed to get a lot of work done today, and I had plenty of time to do it AND have a S’mores brownie with Anita at the bakery. That was one good brownie. And it was sort of camping food, right?
After work, I indulgently sat in the back yard with the birds. I even got a recognizable painted bunting picture!
Recognizable, not good.
But the way I turned my day of disappointment into a day of joy came when I decided to go for a late-afternoon walk and pretend I was on one of my nature walls, in search of new and exciting things, and maybe encountering someone interesting to talk to!
Finally finding the coolest wildflower in my exotic county road made my pretend hike more exciting right away. It’s hard to spot these native clematis, so my heart swelled up a wee bit.
So pretty.
Then I got to talk to someone interesting, my son, who stopped to chat in his way home. We always have fun telling each other our latest cool nature discoveries. He had a bee swarm near his place and also saw a huge toad. I told him about the scorpion and crawfish from yesterday.
Funereal dusky wing, another exotic find.
I went a bit further, listening to birds and looking for turtles, when another familiar car drove up. It was Buddy, who lives one house further than my son. He told me about a skunk he saw and showed me the rattles from a big rattlesnake he found at his house, which is our former rattlesnake house project. Fitting.
Dickcissels listened at each of my stops.
I got all cheerful after sharing tales with my neighbors and didn’t even mind when I could hear no birds at all for a while, at the top of the hill (which technically is a ridge).
I love looking down the hill at the creek and our house.
My nature hike got interesting again quickly, though, when I heard some interesting hours or squawks coming from the creek. Merlin told me it was wood ducks. Really? You mean, those really pretty ones? This was going through my mind when all of a sudden two pair of genuine wood ducks flew right by! I could even sort of tell they weren’t blue-winged teals, mallards, or even whistling ducks, which are the usual suspects.
They aren’t uncommon in Texas, it’s just that our ranch isn’t ideal duck habitat. But today it WAS a flooded woods.
This last encounter sent me into full Nature Girl joy mode. I was grinning like a child and getting more thrilled with every sight. Look! The kingbird is back! There’s a big hawk, so they’re not all gone! There’s something loud! That was the other man of our house coming home from work and trying to make me jump. Ha. I heard the truck.
Soapberries look exotic, too.
Yep. I managed to get exercise, see interesting plants and birds, and talk to folks. That was as nice as camping, practically! We will try again tomorrow, maybe. You can’t wish away rain here, knowing the scorching heat is coming soon enough.
I would not win the lottery unless someone gave me a winning ticket as a gift, in which case I’d probably share with the gift giver. I don’t play games of chance (life is a gamble, so I can’t say I don’t gamble).
But today I feel like I won the life lottery. I enjoyed my day, even with the long drive made longer by having to drive around a bad accident on the Interstate. Then I had to ask for help getting my gas cap cover to open. I must have broken it. But a very nice man helped me (I actually walked into the truck stop and picked a man who was being friendly to the clerk to ask for help). After we got the thing open, he saw the knitting bag in the back of my car. He said I looked crafty and me this flattened coin, saying I could bang on it and make myself a silver ring. There are good folks out there!
It’s a former dime, I think.
I listened to NPR the whole way, and though it wasn’t overt fascinating, I learned a few things about brains and such. Since it was sunny, the drive was just more cheerful. Seeing white pelicans flying for the second week in a row helped!
When I got home I checked on the horses. Lee says Drew was mean to him at the gate, like he was with my son the time he got hurt. I think we will have to work on that.
They do seem to appreciate the hay Lee gave them.
My gosh, in only two days the horses got more than double the amount of burs they had before. When I first saw Apache, he not only had all these burs, but hay was attached to it. This is bad enough!
I got many of these off while he was eating. But I have more, plus all of Drew to do before I can work with them.
After the horses and chickens were fed, I was watching football when my neighbor texted me asking if I’d ever seen one of these.
This is a very rare fungus. Oddly, the Devil’s Cigar or Texas Star is found only in central Texas and Japan. I got very excited when Vicki sent the photo, because I knew exactly what it was. There had been an article about finding it in Inks Lake state park recently.
Photo by Vicki King
This is the first or second observation in Milam County on iNaturalist. I’m so glad to have photos with the GPS attached so I could share them and get Vicki’s sighting verified. I wish we could hear it hissing! Since very few people have seen the Texas Star, I really do feel like I won the lottery.
Map of iNaturalist observations. That’s our area, north of Cameron with the pin in it.
I’m going to go see it myself in the morning. I hope it’s not faded. What a find! I should be less tired tomorrow and maybe I can write something better in the Master Naturalist blog.
Today was special, because my friend Pamela worked very hard to get her ceramics studio showroom ready for public viewing. Today she had the official Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting for the gallery at Neeley Fine Art Studio.
Much cool stuff in here!
The gallery is right next to her working studio, which is one of the most fascinating places around this area. And it’s all set on her family land, which is beautiful (almost visible from the Hermits’ Rest).
Such a pretty setting.
I usually go over there to look at plants and bugs or to load bales of hay, so it was fun to put on nice clothing and participate in the ribbon cutting.
Ruby the hound had to check out the ribbon
It was also fun to hang out for a little while with my friends and other local artists. It is gratifying to see all the support for Pamela and her work. When the community comes together, it’s a really good feeling!
Lynn and KarynMary and Linda
It must have been the day for honoring Pamela! She also was recognized for her Master Naturalist recertification this evening! A Renaissance woman!
There she is, second from left, with other old and new friends.
When she has her official open house, I’m cooler weather, I’ll share how you can purchase your own whimsical and elegant ceramics.
My favorite is the red stuff. It’s a beautiful red.
Thanks for all your love and support, readers, friends, and family. Remember you’re all just great, exactly as you are, and you don’t have to try to be someone you’re not just to placate others.
We were feeding horses when I spotted some smoke in the near distance. Then Anita texted that she couldn’t make it over here to eat, because the road to the ranch was closed at the intersection with the main road. Oh no!
Yep. The road was closed.
We quickly realized hay bales were on fire, so we sent our tractor over to help out. We also realized it was our friends who lease our land for their cattle whose equipment had sparked the fire. Oh no!
Good news. The tractor and hay cutter (and the driver) are ok.
Lots of tanker trucks arrived and people began spraying while our tractor and another one helped move burning bales around to space them out.
They had to cool the tractors off.
There was great teamwork among the firefighters and neighbors. Everyone pitched in. We were a little scared when the tractors were moving bales that looked like fireballs, and especially when our tractor had to pull one that got stuck off a burning bale. But everyone knew what they were doing.
Pulling the stuck tractor.
We are very happy the fire is contained, but it sure is smoky downwind from us. And the bales of hay will take quite a while to burn out. Someone is sleeping there and we left our tractor in case they need it.
Ruby the hound dog watches from my friend’s house.
It’s so dry. And we have flint rocks in the fields. The field was being mown to prevent fires, ironically. I’m just glad no homes or people were damaged, and that lots of hay was saved.
Smoky sunset. The field has a beautiful view.
Lee was on the other side of the road and got some good pictures of the teamwork that kept everyone safe.
Sending gratitude for the firefighters and skillful neighbors. And I’m glad everyone is safe. Sending love to friends who got less good news today.
Like today. I was awakened in the night by a familiar odor. Someone had been skunked. That someone was Penney.
I was just helping Goldie
And more stink arrived in the form of Goldie. I tried to sleep but Penney kept pushing, which she does when she is scared. I ended up with my legs off the bed, which gave me sore knees when I woke up.
I’ll spare you the carcass
After only a little coffee I was told to remove the skunk from the side yard, where most of it lay. Other parts were scattered around, as if a large animal had gotten to Goldie is a large animal.
Suspicious hole
As I went to get a shovel, I noted a large hole under the pool equipment base. Oh goodness. The skunk was trying to build a burrow in the yard where the dogs live. Skunks aren’t bright, cute as they are. It was doomed.
This was all over the yard.
Anyway, the skunk is now turtle food in the pond, and I got over my nausea from looking at its innards. The hole is gone, too, since this morning, Lee and the nephew created a new walkway from the back of our under-construction garage apartment, the garage side door, and our main path. It also made the pool equipment area look better.
New path from rocks that got delivered earlier in the week.
After the skunk thing, I cleaned my giant closet and the kitchen, which had turned into a housefly buffet. I’ve now kept up with the dirty dishes stacked near the dishwasher for 6 hours and emptied the dishwasher twice. Lee has washed the stinky sheets. Yay.
This young lass had her own skunk adventure over at Sara’s but has bathed herself. Good dog.
I was tired of ranching and chores so I helped Sara film Aragorn on this dressage work, now that he is all shod. He did great. While I was there, I found a new (to me) plant, a swan flower. It is beautiful, and nothing like any other flower around here!
Swan flower
I wrote an article for the Master Naturalist blog with more details. I was surprised to see this one is the northernmost sighting of this plant, which is only found in Texas. How about that! This has been the highlight of the day and was a nice break.
When I got home, we got a hay delivery of square bales for the horses this winter. I did my best to help, but I really suck at lifting hay bales. The young man who brought it, though, was damned good at throwing it, and the nephew was good at stacking it. I counted.
The young woman who also lifted many bales.
Half the hay went to our house and half to Sara’s. Sara was much more helpful than me. But I wish I had a video of the tossing. They were amazing at it. Nice hay kids! Whew.
I was hot and the day wasn’t half over. This ranching can be hard and keeping your cool can be hard. I tried to cool off by the pool, but no. Neighbors dropped by to ask if we’d seen the obscene stuff painted on the bridge over Walker’s Creek next to our property. They had all sorts of theories that some teens who’ve been riding up and down the road in a “gator” (motorized golf cart utility vehicle).
That proves it wasn’t ME.
I had no idea there was stuff down the road, but I remembered seeing red stuff when we came back yesterday afternoon. That day teens did indeed go up and down the road endlessly. And I’d seen them earlier messing with cane on the bridge. I thought it was just kids having fun on summer break.
But no.
Nope. There was obscenity, anti trans stuff, cruel stuff about people with mental illness, and the coup de gras (whatever) the flourish of Let’s Go Brandon. Hardly necessary.
So welcoming to their trans neighbor.
And you know what, in today’s society, you hesitate to report vandalism in the community, because you worry some asshole will come shoot you. Nice. Rural living can be beautiful. It can be scary. Here’s a flower.
And yes, I called the sheriff. I just hope my beloved county commissioner will paint over the offensive stuff. I’m not wanting anything it peace and quiet.
Hey there, readers! Do you remember that back in September we started building a swimming pool over here at the Hermits’ Rest Ranch? You haven’t been hearing much about it lately, have you?
Lee inspects his plastic palm trees. They will help keep people from falling off the steps, which has already happened.
That’s because, just as Lee feared, the workers disappeared for about a month. Naturally, the only day all this week that I was gone was when people showed up, at last. They came to put the plants in the flower beds. Hooray.
Workers, working. Photo by Lee.
They also put in Lee’s fake palm trees, which I have to say look pretty good right now. We will see how they hold up after a few rains. I was glad to see that the real plants are hardy items like palmettoes and those yuccas with the red blooms. They will at least lend some color.
The dogs seem to approve of the plants or whatever peed on the rocks before they were delivered, perhaps.
Lee and the gang were glad to see that they did put landscape fabric down and they put tan rocks in, not glaring white (which pretty much cooks plants in the summer sun here).
They didn’t have enough rocks. Oops. My job is to remind the owner to order more rocks.
The frog pond is now dry, as well. There is a lot of silt and such in the bottom of the pool that they will need to get rid of before the plastering can occur. I have been told that the plastering will commence tomorrow or Monday. We’ll see.
I think the plants look nice, but I do hope they remember to make the electricity work and make the pool actually work after the plastering. I want that hot tub.
In Other News
I enjoyed a book club at a nice restaurant last night with Anita and the women from the old neighborhood. Finding the restaurant was challenging, because it is in a dimly lit (but lovely) shopping area and its sign is not lit up at night. You are just supposed to know where it is, sorta like Bob’s Steak House in Cameron. It was really nice to see everyone and get caught up, at least a little bit, on what’s going on with them.
It’s not quite everyone, but is most of the neighbors!
They gave Anita a lovely poster with lots of photos of them as a going away gift. Wasn’t that sweet? No wonder we’ll miss them once Anita is no longer cat sitting on the next street over!
They say hi.
You will also be happy to know I got a replacement helmet for riding the horses. I actually ordered two, in the vain hope that Anita or someone else concerned with the safety of their noggin will want to go riding with me some day, once I have two horses. I guess, though, if one’s my son, I’ll have to get an XL helmet.
I figure if my horse is named after a Native American group, I can have a matching helmet design. The other one I ordered is plain white and has more air vents, like for summer.
At least Sara and I won’t mix our helmets up anymore.
Yesterday marked another milestone in working with all the new horses around the Hermits’ Rest and Wild Type ranches. Sara and Aragorn paid a visit to us. After the challenge I had riding Apache over there a couple weeks ago, I was really hoping this visit went more smoothly.
Everybody’s happy (even Vlassic, who hung around for the whole visit)
The lesson I learned was the ole Scout motto of “be prepared.” I thought I was doing a good job by heading out to open all the gates to our pasture, but I had not thought hard enough about the fact that horses are very observant prey animals. I figured Kathleen’s horses wouldn’t even notice Sara and Aragorn approaching and riding toward our barn…until the sound of thundering hoofs told me otherwise. At least it was pretty watching them run, especially Mabel, with all those legs. On to Plan B.
Who’s that cute donkey over there?
So, I told Sara to go on the other side of our fence, and I’d let her in our back yard, since dogs aren’t scary to Aragorn. I hoofed it on to the other end of our area, managed to shut the dogs into the house (yet another minor miracle), and opened the gate. Now, poor Aragorn was far from home, surrounded by weird things, like the pond, and getting distracted. After a bit of circling, Sara got off and led him (she had thought to bring a lead rope, so she was prepared!).
Sara tells Aragorn to get our of her space. He listened.
We got over to the horse pens with no further incident. Hooray! Then we were able to have a nice visit, discuss our training progress, our career progress, our families, and normal friend stuff. Since I rarely see others during the day, other than to say hello or goodbye, that was a real treat!
Aragorn is focused.
When it came time to go, I got to watch Sara ride Aragorn for a while, which was fun, since he’s so pretty and strong. I was more prepared for them to leave, because I shut my horses up in their pens, and shut Sara’s up in the outer pen (they had conveniently all come up to see what was going on, which was mighty nice of them).
Making circles.
I was able to go ahead and open all the gates, and Sara had a very smooth ride back home! I think we can do it again sometime! And one day, when I’m allowed to do more than go in circles and figure 8, I can go again, too (at least we’re doing well with the circles and figure 8, and I am happy to take our time).
On their way home
Other News?
At least here at the ranch, there’s not much other news. I needed this weekend to relax as much as possible in preparation for a hard work week, so that’s great. I do think a couple of the new hens have started laying, since I had four eggs this morning, and two were smaller. I hope the colored eggs start soon!
Artistic egg display.
Trixie comes back to work on Drew again today, I’ll get the start date for the pool tomorrow, and I think the other shipping container will show up soon, to complete the pen arrangement. All those things are good distractions from hurricanes, COVID, and other illnesses.
Here are my other distractions from life’s challenges. I talk to animals way more than I talk to people, at least in person!
It’s always something, because that’s life! I’ll just do my best to be prepared and keep sending out that lovingkindness to the world.
Apparently, we do have a pool, and it’s right behind the Bobcat Lair house in Austin. I’ve lived here part time for four years and owned the house for six, but I’d never really seen it, just glimpsed it through trees.
Look, Ma, there’s a cement pond! (as they would say on the Beverley Hillbillies)
I discovered this (just kidding, I did know there was a pool there; I simply had never seen it up close) last night when my friend Carol, from back in the Hermit Haus Redevelopment days, came over to visit. She brought some delicious food, we pulled out the good wine, and we had a lot of laughs catching up. The recent goings-on in Cameron led to much laughter.
The infinity area, with scenic view.
Now, when we had most recently walked Pickle, the neighbors informed Anita and me that the pool had indeed re-opened after a year of slumber and intense renovation. I wanted to check it out, since some of the neighbors had done most of the renovating themselves, including the lovely plantings around it, and I wanted to see it up close and in person.
You can see the moon. Once it got dark, it was really pretty. The pool edges look so nice now.
We mentioned it to Carol, and she also wanted to see it. Why, she had even brought her bathing attire along with her in case she could go swimming at the Y near her house at some point in the day. So, I donned my fabulous modest bathing suit and grabbed the towel I bought two years ago and hadn’t used yet to join her for a dip. Even though it was 8:30 pm and Carol only had fancy sandals to wear, we slipped between the houses and went down.
A cozy spot to dine, or take notes, which someone forgot about.
We were very impressed with the resurfaced pool (even though I had never seen the old version), the painted areas, and the cleaned-up limestone. The lighting is also lovely, and explains why it’s never really dark outside my bedroom window.
It’s all so clean and fancy!
It turns out the pool doesn’t close until 10, so we enjoyed the water (even Anita, who had hiccups the entire time, dipped her feet in) for quite a while. I sure wish we had made time to use this neighborhood feature before, but I figure I’ll get the most out of it while I can this summer. (Excuses include losing the key for a couple of years, being exhausted every night, and COVID.)
Don’t make me take my socks off. Our house is just to the right of the one you see behind Anita.
I really appreciate the hard work people in this neighborhood are doing to improve the aesthetics of the neighborhood. They are spending their own money, since the HOA is not inclined to do more than mow and trim.
Carol checks out the plants. That’s our house, at right. Pretty close.
Sigh, actually hanging out with your old friends is fun. Thanks to all the people who worked so hard on the COVID vaccine, too!
The Hermits' Rest 