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Blind snake

While digging some soil out of the dirt mound to build Joyce some melon mounds on the caliche, I unearthed a blind snake. It could have been a New Mexico blind snake or a plains blind snake. If a NM blind snake, it was pretty far east of their normal range and if a plains, then it was north of its usual territory according to my Texas snakes field guide. I think it more closely resembled the picture of the NM blind snake in the guide, being rather pink. It was a feisty fellow and did its best to slither away but being only 5-8 inches long it just couldn’t cover ground all that fast. And then there was that whole white cane and dark glasses business to further impede.

Sometime in the last year or so, Rebecca found a carcass of what appeared to be a blind snake in their driveway. It had been thoroughly rendered two dimensional by vehicles but was still recognizable as a snake and not a worm, which the species closely resembles. Other than that I had never seen one before, which is not surprising sense they spend their lives underground. I guess the one mashed in the driveway tried to buck the system.

Egret in the pond

by rakeeter

egret — Great or Common Egret stock photo from Internet

Joyce hollered for me to come a running shortly after breakfast this morning. She was headed out the front door to plant some of the flowers she had yet to get into the various pots around the house and saw a big white bird in the pond. We didn’t get very close to it so we didn’t get a real good look, but I think it fit the Audubon bird guide description and picture of a great or common egret. It was considerably larger than a cattle egret so I think we can rule that out.

Later, or maybe earlier, Kari saw the egret strolling around the side of the house and Chris took this picture. I was concerned it might have been dining on the gold fish in the lily pool but Joyce and Rebecca confirmed the fish were still there after the bird was gone. It might have gobbled up a few frogs while wading in the pond but it was chilly this morning so maybe the frogs were sleeping in and escaped notice.

McBride – Mullinaw trail

by rakeeter

McBride-Mullinaw trail along the Canadian River

Saturday morning was beautiful down in McBride Canyon and along the river. I wish you could have been there. I joined seven others in a hike along the McBride/Mullinaw trail which follows the river for a couple of miles. Led by an Alibates volunteer, we were birding. The morning was cool and it wasn’t buggy down along the river bottom. A breeze sprang up about 9 o’clock and made a sound blowing through the cottonwoods that was like standing on a beach and hearing the waves expend themselves on the beach in a faint popping of the bubbles in the foam.

As for birds, there weren’t that many and they were hard to see unless they were on a dead cottonwood limb. We retraced our steps and drove back to McBride Canyon where the group again went in search of birds and with similar success. I grew weary of peering at faint specs on tree limbs through my binoculars and wandered off toward the rock house. While walking around it I caught sight of a turkey some ways away and listened to it cluck. The clucking made me wonder if it was alerting the rest of its tribe to my presence or, maybe, it had some little ones it was herding to safety.

I wandered in the direction of the turkey and climbed a little knoll. It gave me a good view of the canyon and I was rewarded by seeing a couple of mule deer emerge from the creek bottom, cross the road and proceed up the other side of the canyon. At one point they stopped and stood still as statues for some time while watching me watch them. Finally they continued on their way and disappeared over the canyon rim.

At the Alibates visitor center our guide showed me how to operate an atlatl. It was interesting but would require a lot of practice before I could hope to hit anything but the ground. The visitor center is very nice with its gardens of native plants, picnic areas and information available inside. That part of the country is about as green as it can get right now and the wildflowers put on quite a show.

May flowers

by rakeeter

For all my whining and complaining about the weeds, the relatively moist start to the year has had a salubrious effect on the flowers, too. There has been a steady parade starting with the apricot trees in February. The iris that Genna planted around the place bloom at different times. The plantings I’ve done around 1911 are several years old now and really are showy. That is most gratifying. The new bed, or should I say the improvements, I did in the lily pool area on the south side of 2005 are finished and I’ve planted a few drought-tolerant plants in it though it will be a year at least before the show up much. Continue reading “May flowers” →

Adios April

by rakeeter

April is finally over and aren’t we glad. Its not just that we have to turn over so much of our hard-earned money to the clowns in the District of Columbia, but the weather is one day pleasant and the next day unpleasant. As the weather warms the weeds kick into high gear and take advantage of not just the pleasant days but in their contrariness keep right on growing through the wind, cold and especially rain so that when the weather finally clears one is just that much farther behind. There’s no way to keep up.

We wound up the month above average in moisture thanks to a late snow storm that gave us over an inch of moisture. Kari, Abigail and I drove through that storm on our way to Albuquerque for a volleyball tournament. That was a Friday evening and it wasn’t much fun to dodge the trucks on I-40 in the dark and snow but we managed to not get mashed. There was no snow accumulation in Albuquerque and what fell on SA was gone by the time we got home Sunday afternoon.

ornamental pair — April 30. 2017 ornamental pear damaged by high winds

There had been high winds in Amarillo that day but even that had died down by late afternoon but not before taking down half of the the ornamental pear in the front yard of 2005 plus a few minor limbs here and there around the place. I spent that following Monday cutting up and hauling off the downed portion of the pear tree and the miscellaneous limbs which was not only hard work but put me just that much farther behind on the rest of the place. Oh well.