Category: 2012

“Like a wren in a willow wood

Flies so high and sings so good”

On my way to the office last week I took the long way around, down the lane and I heard a wren.  It wasn’t in a willow wood.  It was sitting on an elm limb, so it wasn’t flying, but it did sing good.  It’s not often we see wrens around SA.  I hear them from time to time but seldom see them.  They are one of my favorites.

Sydney is the official shop cat now.  Since it was built the cats have spent the night and inclement days in the shop.  There had been instances of one or more of them spraying where they oughtin to spray and one evening last fall I stepped out of the shop where I had been working and found when I came back that one had urinated on my work bench.  I expressed my disappointment to Joyce and she moved them out.  She set up shelters for them in the backyard.  I even built a wooden box to put in one of the plastic dog houses to make them snuggier.  Several weeks ago Joyce was worried about Sydney because she seemed to avoid the other cats.  She was concerned that Sydney didn’t get to stay in one of the cat boxes when it was cold so I told her I didn’t mind if Sydney were allowed to stay in the shop.  She had wanted in the shop on occasion, the only one of the cats that did after getting used to being fed at the house, and I had let her in.  She never stayed long because there was no food.  Joyce fixed up a comfy place for her to sleep and feeds her down there so now she spends her nights in the shop looking after things and comes and goes as one of us goes in and out.

Yesterday I spread another load of granite in spite of the wind.  I even managed a few other chores around the place but I was glad to get in out of the wind when I was finished.  Joyce ventured out just to tend her flock.  We had one glorious day of warm sunshine and light winds last week but otherwise it was generally unpleasant.  Today looks like it might be pretty this afternoon.  Maybe I’ll get out and rake twigs in the backyard, knowing, of course, that I’ll get to do it again the next time it is pleasant enough to work outside.

 

Last Saturday Joyce noticed that one of the guineas stayed in goonie tower when she opened it and let the others out.  Later she heard it making a pitiful sound which she at first thought was a kitten.  She noticed its head was a little bloody as though it had been pecked so we collected it and put in the crate in the shop away from the other guineas.  Through the day it continued to sound pitiful, as though it had something stuck in its throat.  Sometime during the night it “sagged, lagged and expired.”

 

In the junipers outside my window I see doves roosting.  They are hunched down in their feathers like “old me lost in their overcoats.”  It’s been that kind of weekend.  It was raining slightly when we went to breakfast yesterday morning and the rain turned to snow before we were finished.  It kept it up enough to cover the ground but it melted off before the day was out.  The skies remained cloudy with the temperature barely above freezing all day.  I had thought I would prune some fruit trees after lunch but the chill in the air drove me into the shop where I worked on removing the paint from Joyce’s swing.  I’ve been working on that after work for weeks.  The paint doesn’t come off easily except where it was exposed to the sun.  Yesterday morning I brought down a decorative wood shelf Joyce got in Hot Springs, Arkansas and has stayed in our attic since the move.  I thought I might see if there was a place for it in the man-cave or maybe the shop.  I wound up mounting it on the wall next to the kitchenette cabinets and above Genna’s little cupboard.  It makes a nice place to display my collection of coffee mugs and the towel rack is handy since I didn’t have one.
Abigail made her television debut recently.  A local TV station did a story on the open leaning she’s involved in at Olsen Park.  She was one of the kids they enterviewed.  I don’t know why it is interesting to see someone you know on TV, but it is.  This is Abigail’s last year at Olsen.  She’ll start next fall in middle school.  She’s supposed to go to Sam Houston but Kari has mounted a campaign to get her transferred to Crockett.  Sam Houston has the same unsavory reputation today it did when I was a kid.  Kathryn went there a couple of years and never quite got over it.  Besides, nearly all of Abigail’s fiends will go to Crockett.  It is apparently up to the principal at the school the student wants to transfer to.  Kari has some allies in the system that have put in a good word for Abigail and advised her to write a letter to the Crockett principal.  In the letter she remarked that Abigail’s grampa was in the first seventh grade class at Crockett when it opened.  Then,  seventh was the lowest junior high grade.  I don’t know if that will help any but maybe it won’t hurt.  My three-year career at Crockett was unremarkable but on the other hand I don’t think I did any lasting damage.

 

Last Thursday was a pretty nice day and since we knew what the weekend forecast was, Joyce got a load of granite Thursday afternoon and I spread it Thursday evening.  That way we managed to keep up progress on the front yard.  I’m trying to get the dirt covered as quick as I can because it blows onto the granite from the uncovered areas.  I see we’re supposed to get another blow Tuesday.  Right now the ground is damp from the snow and rain but if the sun comes out and drys it out by Tuesday that might be a problem.  I may have to get Joyce out there to water it down.

 

The weeds are mounting their spring offensive.  I see their massed troops all over the place.  There is one variety that only showed up a couple of years ago and now already the most prolific, it threatens to overrun the place.  There is another type that has been around but must have had a good year last year (not on SA) because I see it emerging all over the place.  The drought-weakend grass allows more ground to be exposed to the sun and according to what I’ve read, that is the trigger for weeds.  When the sun is shining, I use Roundup, it being the only thing that works as cool as it is.  I’ve experimented applying it to weeds when the temperature was 32 and, though it took weeks, it did kill them.  Trouble is, it has to be applied in direct sun.  Many of the places the weeds get started are in shade much of the day.  It’s tricky to find a few minutes in my work day when I can catch the weeds in the sun and apply some Roundup but I do the best I can.

It’s 24 degrees and snowing.  It just started and the flakes are very small.  The forecast is for 2-4 inches.  We could sure use the moisture.  The ground is getting drier and drier, but it’s too blasted cold to do much watering.  We had a thin covering of snow on the ground Tuesday morning but it was gone before the day was over.  Yesterday was cold, too, but we still managed to get out in the afternoon and take care of business.  Joyce serviced the livestock, including the dogs.  The neighbors went to Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine for the weekend.  I spread the load of granite we got Friday and decapitated the two bushes in front of our house.  They had gotten overgrown and needed to be put in their place.  We really weren’t uncomfortable.  The sun came out briefly and the thermometer shot up to 37.  Then it clouded up again and the temp was below freezing again.  There wasn’t much breeze, though, so while we were working we were warm enough.  In spite of the cold weather we’ve had this month, when I walk to the office  in the morning I hear the cardinals dueling from the treetops.  They must think spring is coming and they need to stake out their territory.

 

Last week I forgot to mention the faculty recital at WT we attended with the Brokenbeks the previous Friday evening.  The profs doing the playing were Emmanuel Lopez on the cello and Choong-Ha Nam on the piano.  They were quite good and since it was free admission and we were home before bedtime, it was a pleasant way to spend an evening.  This past Wednesday evening, Abigail and I went down to watch the WT chicks basketball game.  They whipped up on Abilene Christian pretty good.  As we left the parking lot, we got a view of the moon rising over the prairie.  It was full and looked huge just clearing the horizon.  We usually don’t see the full moon until it is at least 15 degrees or so above the horizon.  It was about 7:45 and had been dark for over an hour.  I couldn’t understand how the moon so low in the east could reflect a sun that had gone well below the western horizon.  The angles just didn’t look like they would work.

 

It is snowing more seriously now.  I may have to crawl back in bed.

A cold north wind blew all day yesterday (see poem below) but Chris and I still got the cypress damaged by high winds a couple of weeks ago cleaned up.  It had a secondary trunk and that split off to reveal significant decay.  The tree hadn’t shown any outward signs of it but it was obvious why the wind was able to take it down.  Sometimes I feel like I’m presiding over the slow demise of SA from what Arthur and Montye had built up.

 

ICS held their annual meeting last week so I made my yearly trip to Connecticut.  The weather was pleasant by New England in January standards while I was there.  Most of us ICSers are getting long of tooth.  They joke that they might have to hire a staff nurse.  We keep plugging along, though.  We spent quite a bit of time learning how organizations use social media to market their wares.  Needless to say, the genre doesn’t have much appeal for most of us so we’ll have to force ourselves to embrace it.

 

Rain was forecast for Thursday night and we did get a sprinkle, but that was all.  I have to keep reminding myself that droughts are just part of this area.  I suppose people in areas prone to flooding have to remind themselves that floods are to be expected.  I would rather have a drought than a flood.  I was reading in Panhandle Pilgrimage how investors from the east and England started ranches in the Texas Panhandle in the 1880s and were thwarted by the weather, including droughts.  Long term, homo saps won’t be able to inhabit this area like many others to the extent they do and in the style they do because there won’t be enough water.  Maybe some new techniques and technology will come along to help them thrive on much less water.

Joyce finally did the right thing and took Po Kitty to the vet to have her neutered.  Po Kitty is what we call the stray calico I’ve mentioned before.  When she first started showing up I lobbied for taking her to the pound.  We’re never going to get down to one cat if we keep accumulating them.  Then as she started growing on us I suggested the SPCA.  Joyce made excuses: The cat was only around in the evening and she didn’t want it to have to stay in a cat carrier overnight, things along that line.  One morning I saw the calico around the house when I walked to work and resolved to catch her, which I did, and she was waiting for Joyce in a carrier in the garage when she got home from her morning walk.  Law, you’d think I’d sold one of the granddaughters to the gypsies!  I turned the cat loose and worried about it producing a litter of kittens and how I’d enjoy living in Needles, California.  As I said, Joyce finally took Po (it was given a name by this time) to the vet where, after examination, it was determined she had already been neutered.  I’m greatly relieved.  At least all five cats aren’t in the house or the shop and their population increase is limited.

 

We had a guinea rodeo Friday evening.  Chris wasn’t around to help Joyce corral the guineas that wouldn’t go in guinea tower so I got the call.  Fortunately it was a pleasant evening because we spent about an hour chasing one guinea.  They are hard to catch, particularly in the dark.  It didn’t help that all five cats showed up to watch and it’s hard to tell the difference between a cat and a guinea in the dark until you get up close.  After losing the guinea in the dark, I sometimes took after what turned out to be a cat.  No doubt they all thought it was great fun.  We finally caught the fugitive and stuck it in guinea tower.  Joyce told me yesterday that she found a little white guinea egg in GT the next morning and speculated that the one we chased around for an hour Friday evening was the culprit.  She thinks the reason it was so hard to get in GT was because it was wanting to nest somewhere.  They aren’t supposed to lay eggs in the dead of winter, but this bunch we’ve got don’t seem to follow the guinea rules we’ve read in books .

 

We must be living right because we had a beautiful calm, sunshiny day yesterday.  Wednesday last week a cold front blew in and the temperature dipped down into the teens a couple of nights.  Friday was a pleasant day, also.  We’re very fortunate to get the bad weather out of the way during the week and have nice weather on the weekend.  We need it to work around the place.  I expended most of my energy moving a bunch of dirt from the dry creek bed excavation in the front.  I’d thought I would use it as part of the landscape, then decided I didn’t like the way it looked, so I loaded it up and piled it on a number of the tree stumps around the place in the hopes that it will speed their rotting away.  Joyce got some help from Abigail and Chris in beginning the process of cleaning up the garden.  It will be planting time before you know it.