by 
Old men acting out...
April 8 Much like March, April started off with a little snow, enough to cover the ground good. Friday it rained and kept raining on into early Saturday morning when the rain turned to snow. That kept up until Saturday afternoon. Total we accumulated 1.8 inches of much needed moisture. Abigail and I got some good grounds keeping done early in the week but none from Thursday on. Sunday morning the thermometer stayed above freezing, barely. That was forecast to be the coldest time, so it looks like we dodged a killing freeze yet again.
April 13 Yesterday Hans and I took a little trip north to the Alibates Flint Quarry National Monument area. We first visited the visitor center. Though Hans had been to the flint quarries, that was some time ago and before the visitor center was opened. It has interesting exhibits and we visited with Gigi the park ranger whom I have gotten acquainted with over time. Seems she was down to her last days there due staff reductions. She told us AFQNM is one of the least visited of national monuments and may well be closed along with other National Park Service facilities as the current belt-tightening transpires. I may be out of a job as well, with no AFQNM to check on quarterly.
Hans and I partially hiked the Mullinaw trail. It was a nice day; warm but breezy enough to be pleasant. One drives through McBride Canyon to reach the trailhead. After hiking we were driving back to McBride Canyon to have lunch and encountered a pickup pulling a horse trailer blocking the road. It was at a particularly steep part of the road and the trailer-pickup were jackknifed across the road. I don’t know what caused that. Maybe the pickup lost traction trying to get up the grade, truck and trailer started sliding backwards down the hill and the driver wasn’t able to keep the trailer straight. The trailer was long, probably able to accommodate six or eight horses. I only saw two horses outside the trailer and neither appeared to have been injured when the incident occurred. There was no way around and it seemed like it might be a while before we be able to continue on our way. Fortunately, someone with a heavy-duty pickup, a dually, was able to pull the pickup and trailer straight so they could get over the hump and go on their way.
Last week, Abigail and I started the process of removing the dead tree near the 2005 back porch. We trimmed all the limbs off and started digging up the stump. After removing the dirt around the stump, we whittled on the roots. I was under no illusion that cutting the roots to remove the stump would be easy and I wasn’t disappointed. It will be a process over time. Meanwhile, we have still a long way to go to clean up the detritus accumulated over the winter and beat back the weeds.
April 20 We celebrated Easter with the Wylies, first by attending an Easter service and then a lunch on Sunday. It was nice to have the downtime after the busy week last week. The trip home was long but uneventful. It was clear sailing once we exited I-35 at Gainesville. There apparently had been quite a bit of rain in the Gainesville to Henrietta area since we drove through there a few days ago. There was standing water in the low places and some fields were more lake than field. The bluebonnets were showing off along Highway 82, along with orange flowers that looked like globemallow but might have been something entirely different. Pretty, though.
April 27 Abigail managed to excavate enough dirt around and under the tree stump we’ve been trying for a couple of weeks to remove and sever a few remaining roots to break it from its moorings. It will be interesting to see if we can lift out of the hole and transport it to somewhere out of the way until we can take it to the city brush site. A couple of days later we were able to extract the stump in spite of it being very heavy. We cut it in two with the chain saw to make it possible to wheelbarrow it to a holding place out of the way.
There were significant thunderstorms early Saturday. Alarms were going off and I tuned in Weatherman John. He informed me conditions were right for a tornado to develop, and I debated whether or not to make a run for the shop. I went so far as to get dressed, but it was raining heavily so I stalled until the storm had begun to move out the area. A tornado did touch down in Canyon and remove a few roofs. We collected over an inch and a half of rain but Canyon got between three and four inches.
There was a murder in my backyard the next night. After spending most of the day Saturday collecting observations for the iNaturalist City Nature Challenge, I was hoping for a peaceful night’s sleep when I crawled in bed. Instead, I tossed and turned into the wee hours. Finally, I was sleeping soundly when I was awakened by dogs barking outside my bedroom window. I thought it might be foxes yipping and tried to ignore it, hoping they would move on so I could get back to sleep. Eventually the barking increased, and I realized it was dogs, so I got up and ran them (there were four) off. After that I was fully awake, so I got to toss and turn a couple more hours before falling asleep again only a little while before it was time to get and get ready for church.
The next afternoon I was reading the paper on the back porch when I saw a small possum in the backyard. Investigating further, I found a mother possum that had apparently been mauled to death by the dogs. I collected six babies from around the carcass and the mother’s pouch. I’m hoping they will survive till tomorrow morning when I can take them to Wild West Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.
April 28 This morning I was able to transport the six possum babies to the rehab center and turn them over to the tender mercies of the ladies there. The babies had survived in the box okay for 24 hours and were, in fact, quite lively. They received a warm welcome from the critter ladies; lots of ooing, cooing and such. I was impressed that the ladies treated them with such tenderness and seemed to truly welcome them. I thought they might be jaded toward such a common occurrence as a litter of baby possums being dumped in their lap must be. They told me I did a good thing rounding them up and bringing them in, but they were ones doing the good thing, me thinks.
