Tag: productivity

Flowing and going

Hello blog, reader friends. how are you all doing? I’m a pretty tired gal today because I worked my little butt off and succeeded in finishing yet another big old project that I had to get done. I’m very proud of myself, but it takes a lot out of you to sit in front of the computer with headphones on for eight hours in one day.

I’d rather have been standing here looking at the pins and listening to Green Herons in the willows.

I’m glad I had something to take my mind off of all the work. When we got up this morning, we looked out the window and Lee said hey. There’s a donkey out there. Sure enough Fiona was grazing happily in front of the house. Somehow the horses had managed to find their way out. We thought about it and decided well, let’s just let them mow the lawn and fertilize a little bit for a while and they’ll go back in when they get thirsty. We could just go with the flow.

Mmm, grass.

Nothing really seem to bother the horses all day. Even when the garbage truck came and made a lot of noise, they just sort of looked up and said, hey, a giant truck how about that? It drove past them, picked up the dumpster, dumped it, yet they just kept eating. Flowing and not going anywhere.

It’s just the garbage truck. Keep eating.

Later in the day, I came out to get the mail and there was good old Spice checking out the RV parking area, which currently contains a tractor with a missing front door. She was checking that tractor out pretty thoroughly. She was also checking out a bag of birdseed, which I wish she hadn’t checked out. Ah well. Could be worse.

We’re exploring.

By the time the horses’ meal time came around, they were all back in the pens, because they had finally gotten thirsty, just like we predicted. The only one who was wandering around was Fiona, who couldn’t seem to find the correct gate to go in. We determined that perhaps one of the veterinary assistance had forgotten to chain Dusty’s pen gate, and that’s how they got out this morning. It’s OK. It’s nice to just not have to worry about the horses doing anything weird, because Drew isn’t here anymore to instigate mayhem with his curiosity. I still miss him though, of course.

I smell petrichor.

The sky was getting darker and darker while I was feeding them and sure enough just before everyone was finished it began to rain pretty darn hard. I had to let everyone out cause I couldn’t leave them trapped in their pens, so I got a little shower from nature. It actually felt pretty good. No need to get bent out of shape; I was flowing and dripping.

I tried to get a heron picture, but I scared it.

I think I’ll go to bed now, and bask in the fact that nothing horrible happened all day long and it was fun and I just got to enjoy being at home being with the horses and being with everybody else. I’ll be back tomorrow. Stephen Colbert can’t say that, but now he can run for office.

Photo from E Street Nation.

Getting Productive on a Challenging Day

When do you feel most productive?

I was not productive during my usual most productive times today, because we had a couple of waves of rainstorms come through. But generally, I do best between around 9 and 2 pm. I’m a little slow when the day starts, and by mid afternoon, I hit a slump. I think that’s pretty normal.

Rain aftermath

Today being Sunday, I’d planned to spend my productive hours exploring the more distant parts of our ranch complex for the City Nature Challenge, then I’d hoped to ride Drew for the first time since he got back (I’ve been exercising him, just have had vet visits, birthday dinners, and such getting in my way). But, I was determined to get my observations in and my exercise accomplished, even if it meant dodging raindrops.

I was also determined to photograph a dang dickcissel, which I did.

I felt like I sat on my rear end a lot today, but I also crawled under electric fences, climbed muddy embankments, and walked a few mikes, some of it briskly. I think the rain may have given me more opportunities to see things, so it all worked out.

Crawling on the ground helped me spot this excellent stinkhorn, for example.

I had hoped to photograph more birds today, and I did, though many were pretty bad photos. I was so excited to finally see an indigo bunting this afternoon that I didn’t care how bad my photo came out, as long as I could tell it was blue. Now I’ll believe Merlin when it says it hears one.

Turkey vulture
Flying turkey vulture
Indigo bunting. It’s blue!
Two crested caracaras
Mockingbird. Decent photo.
Lark sparrow
2 female and one male scissortail
Different arrangements
If you know birds, you can tell they’re mourning doves
Male red-winged blackbird
Dickcissel
Finally out of the trees
Here I am
Barn swallow, near a barn
House sparrow waiting to eat my chicken food
Great blue heron looking for crawfish
Birds birds birds

The rain smooshed most of the flowers, but I did see a good number of insects. I don’t think I realized we had so many kinds of butterflies before I started recording them. I think that’s a good sign we have left enough native plants around.

Common eupithecia moth
Fall armyworm moth
Gray hairstreak
Ditto
Phaon crescent
Skipper
Bold jumping spider (not an insect)
American lady
Monarch
Checkered whites
Ditto
Variegated fritillary
I forget
Convergent lady beetle
Orange blister beetle
Bugs bugs bugs

Whew. But wait, there’s more. I observed lots of interesting water snake behavior today. In the morning, while looking at the heron, I saw at least four snakes traversing the pond behind the house. I got blurry images, so no ID.

Snake is to the right of the log.
That pattern is how you recognize a swimming snake

Later, around 6 pm when I decided to get the rest of my exercise goal accomplished, I noticed a snake near the shore of Walkers Creek. As I watched, I saw two more. The creek was quite still, so I could see them real well. Then they obliged me and swam up to the bridge. That let me ID them as nonvenomous diamondback water snakes. What a sight!

Snakes in the creek

All this makes me more firm in my decision to not swim in the ponds or creeks here. Interesting aside: when I came back from my walk to the cemetery, the creek was rushing and gurgling. It was at least three inches higher. That’s what flash floods are all about!

I got a lot done in my non-productive hours!