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Thanksgiving on SA was pleasant. Good weather, lots of good food and no melt downs. Combine that with a Cowboys win and it would be hard to improve on that.
The Wylie clan beat us to our house Sunday evening. Since then the little ones have been playing up a storm. The weather has cooperated and they’ve spent a lot of time outside, including some time out at Wildcat Bluff. This morning (Friday) Jill and Kari were out early to see how much of their Christmas shopping they could knock out. After lunch they set forth again, this time Joyce joined them. Dave had some running around to do, also, so I have the girls down her in the cave watching Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving.
Chris and Tom Clark, the fellow who built the shop for me, are working on Chris’s storage shed. Chris is building it on the spot where he had the dog run. They are using SIP panels like the ones used in the shop construction. I think it is going to look pretty good and Chris can certainly use the storage room.
Abigail broke a bone in her left foot. The story I got is that she got up in the night, her foot was asleep and she came down on it wrong. She has to wear a boot and navigate on crutches for three weeks. Looking on the bright side, her left leg is the one she’s been resting so the foot healing will run concurrently to that. We wish her a speedy recovery. She wants to get back to her club volleyball.
Foxes are being seen on the place again. We’ve gone several years without seeing any but there have been multiple sightings lately, just not by me. We’re concerned for the welfare of our lone bunny but what are we to do. These gray foxes are very small and I like to think they present no more threat to an adult cottontail than a cat, of which we have a perpetual supply. The foxes aren’t out much in the daylight hours so maybe the chick is safe from for the most part. Still, it better stick close to the hen.
I wanted to get another pinon pine to plant on the perimeter where a juniper had once been. I thought it might be fun to make it a project that included the little girls so Monday morning we drove out to the nursery to see if they had something suitable. Sophia rode in the pickup with me on the way out while Jill, Kaylee and Vivian followed in Jill’s car. Vivian rode with me on the way home.
We were able to find a pinon I thought would work. They weren’t scheduled to get their fall supply until November 29 but they had several that they’d marked down because they had had them several years. I got one marked down from $300 to $150. Last year I paid around $250 for a much smaller tree. The new one is at least eight feet tall and that presented a problem. The ball was too heavy to lift so we had to figure out a way to plant it when we couldn’t lift it. After digging the hole, I realized we could back the pickup up to the dirt pile I’d made, which was next to the hole, walk the tree out of the pickup bed and onto the dirt pile which was about as high as the bed, then slide the tree into the hole. With Jill and Chris helping, we managed to do that without straining anybody. If the tree prospers, it will be six or eight years ahead of the small one I planted last year.