Category: 2012

There were three big ol’ turkey gobblers doing their best to impress the lady turkeys in the clearing west of the rock house when we arrived in McBride Canyon yesterday morning just before sunup.  They were all puffed up, tails fanned out and how they did strut as the hens nonchalantly pecked at the ground and pretended not to notice.  They were impressive and we got to hear some first rate turkey gobbles, too.  After they moved on Joyce started breakfast while I started a fire.  It was chilly and the girls warmed themselves by the fire once it got going good.  Joyce fried bacon and scrambled eggs on Genna’s Coleman stove.  We’d never used it before and found that it worked very well.  Joyce had the foresight to break the eggs and put them in a mason jar before we left so all she had to do was dump them in the old frying pan that hadn’t been used in over 30 years.  The conditions were ideal for a campfire breakfast and we enjoyed it immensely.  We also enjoyed a visit to the river where Chris, Abigail and Rebecca got filthy muddy.  Kari ran the girls through the shower in the shop when we got home before she let them in the house.  Before leaving we did a little rock hounding.  We were back home by early afternoon.

Last Sunday afternoon A, R and I went to the golfcourse to do a little putting.  We had just stepped onto the practice green when a ball thudded next to Abigail, coming very close to hitting her.  I looked around to see what fool had so badly hit their shot as to land it on the practice green, not roll it on mind you, but have it come from enough altitude to dig a hole half the width of the ball deep, but no one appeared to claim it.  I put the ball, a Calloway, in my pocket and waited for someone to come looking for it so I could counsel them to exercise caution but noone ever showed up.  That would have been just great, to take my granddaughters to the golf course for the first time and get one of them hit with a ball.

At the risk of being monotonous, I’ll start with the weather.  It really is news-worthy when we get some significant moisture and the inch of rain that fell over a 24-hour+ period last week was significant.  My weeds are so grateful.

Thursday evening we attended Rebecca’s pre-school class performance of various music such as itsy-bitsy-spider.  Their styling of that fine old classic was quite good.  It was the 50th anniversary of St Paul Methodist’s program for little ones.  They introduced several alumni ranging from a lady that must have attended one of the first classes through a 13 year-old girl.  At the end of the program they invited all alumni in the audience to join them at the front and Abigail took her rightful place to receive applause.

Have I mentioned that one of the goonies is nesting.  Some estimates have there as many as 50 eggs.  It’s doubtful if they will all hatch and that many keats that do escape the egg will survive to adulthood but the people living around SA might runs us all out of town on a rail if there is a significant increase in the goonie population.  Why, sometimes I have a hard time hearing the highway noise over their racket.  I just read a book titled That Quail, Robert which Aunt Betty gave Mom in 1989.  It’s amazing how people-friendly the little bird was and the author mentioned hearing from other people who also had similar relationships with quail.  Maybe that’s what we ought to raise, quail.

No doubt you are dying to know what I accomplished yesterday, so I’ll tell you.  After completing my normal Saturday morning chores, I got back to weed spraying.  Conditions were ideal for that; recent moisture, light wind and warm sunshine.  I finished my third 4-gallon load about lunchtime and Joyce and I went to the Rock Ranch for a load of granite.  The ranch is open on Saturdays this time of year and they were pretty busy when we got there.  Since that was our 15th load they know us pretty well and got us loaded and on our way quickly.  After spreading the granite (I’ve covered about 90% of the yard), I helped Chris and Rebecca put the bean poles up in the garden where Joyce wanted them.  Then I put the conduit poles for my grapevines up and called it a day.

Friday evening we were invited to the neighbors for dinner and enjoyed some excellent grilled salmon on the patio.  It was a very pleasant evening. After dinner the girls and I watched a movie and then Grampa slithered home to bed.

Vivian fell in th lily pool and Abigail fished her out.

In other news, it has been more like late spring around here this past week than early spring, which was nice because the fearsome five were able to take full advantage of spring break.  All playground equipment and the sandbox got quite a workout.  They also dismantled one of the wood piles to build a shelter they dubbed pooh house, or something.  I’m hoping Winnie the Pooh was the inspiration for the name rather than some other things one could think of.  The Hunts stopped by on their way to and from Taos and there was at least one other group of kids, Kari’s friend’s offspring, that spent a good part of the day enjoying SA.  The three year old in that group also fell in the lily pool but was able to get himself out.

I’ve taken advantage of the relatively light winds this week to do quite a bit of spraying.  The small quantities of rain and snow have been just the thing for shallow rooted plants.  There are several varieties of weeds that give every indication of taking over the place if allowed to, so I’ve drawn a line in the sand and met them on the field of battle.  There is much more left to do.

Yesterday I got the grape vines trimmed.  Some of the cut ends dripped like a leaky faucet, which makes me wonder if I waited a little late, but this was the first weekend that the weather permitted activity like that.

Jill and her girls are about to hit the road for home.  Joyce won’t accompany them.  The weather looks like it will be nice and the sleeping arrangements while they are here take a toll on her.

Ever since we built the shop we have been wanting to pile up the dirt mounds higher to make a ski run, so to speak, and just because.  Tuesday it looked like the weather on Wednesday would be suitable for that kind of work so I took Wednesday off, rented a skid loader and gave it a shot.  Gary Shewbert was kind enough to tow the skid loader for me.  I don’t have a vehicle with a tow package and Gary even had a trailer.  It turned out, though, that the skid loader was a bit much for his trailer so we wound up using the rental shop’s trailer.  That would normally have cost an extra $30 but they didn’t charge me because we brought our own trailer and they advised against using it.  The skid loader weighs 6,500 pounds.

Beside not knowing whether the skid loader would do the job, I was worried about the hazards of operating it.  I had no experience, of course, and even though they are simple, there is always a learning curve.  I knew pushing the dirt up on the mounds and getting up there with a top heavy piece of equipment would run the risk of turning the dang thing over.  I had a couple of frights, one where I felt I was going over backwards and another when I felt like I was going over sideways.  Just backing it off the trailer was exciting but I managed to avoid crashing.

After a while I got the hang of driving the skid loader but never felt like I got the coordination down very well.  Everything is controlled by two joy sticks: push both forward or backwards to move in that direction and/or push them in opposite directions to turn; push the left control left to raise the bucket and right to lower it; and push the right control left or right to change the angle of the bucket.  I started off pretty good but as the day wore on I began to realize I probably wasn’t going to accomplish what I hoped to.  After about six hours of almost non-stop activity, I began to tire and lose what little coordination I had developed.  Although I had the machine until Thursday morning, I could see I wasn’t going to finish and the weather was supposed to turn bad during the night, so Joyce called Gary and asked him to come back so we could load the machine back on the trailer and get it back to the rental place.  One of the unforseen problems I encountered was that the skid loader, weighing as much as it did, really packed down the dirt and moving it created giant hard clods where before the dirt was unpacked and consistently clodless.  Maybe I accomplished something because the two bigger Wylie girls and the Zbinden girls played on the mounds Thursday afternoon enough to get themselves really dirty, much to heir mothers’ dismay since it was too chilly to just hose them off in the yard.

In other news, Joyce flew to Dallas Thursday and Jill picked her up at the airport on her way out of town.  Joyce worries about Jill making the drive to Amarillo with the little ones by herself.  They arrived in good shape early Thursday evening and didn’t encounter weather worse than rain.  Speaking of rain, we got a little of that yesterday, maybe as much as half and inch but probably a little less.  That will be fine if it doesn’t have to last us for another month or two.

There is a trace of snow left from Friday evening in the shadow of the “witch tree” juniper in the meadow.  And yet the apricots are blooming.  At least they were before Friday night’s low of 24.  I even see traces of green from the gramma grass, which surprises me because I didn’t think it had gotten anywhere near warm enough, that is the soil hadn’t gotten warm enough, to encourage the natives.

Yesterday was pretty nice in spite of the covering of snow in the morning.  We knew the forecast but gambled that the moisture we got wouldn’t keep me from spreading a load (#9) of granite and it didn’t.  In fact, Rebecca got a shovel and helped me.  With her pitching in we had the load spread in nothing flat.  The closer we get to finishing spreading granite over the entire are, the more anxious I get to finish.  The bare dirt area remaining stands out in contrast to the granite, which is pleasing to my eye.

As I said, it snowed Friday evening and the neighbors were down for pizza, at least A&R were, so we built a nice fire and watched a movie.  We used up the last of the wood I had stacked on the front porch.  That’s probably the last fire of the season.

Joyce and I stained the swing I’ve been working on all year.  I finally finished getting it stripped to bare wood.  We used an expensive redwood stain that is supposed to protect the wood from the weather.  It was what was put on it originally and I think it looks pretty good.  We haven’t done anything about the support posts, though.  They still have the paint on them where it hasn’t flaked off.  Maybe during warm weather we can work on that if we have time.

One of the goonies has spent the last two nights outside goonie tower.  Saturday morning it showed up but so far it hasn’t this morning.  Joyce speculates it has a nest somewhere and she’s resolved to find it today so she can snatch the eggs and perhaps dissuade the goonie from spending the night outside the safety of goonie tower.  It is likely to become an ex-goonie if it continues to do so.

Last Sunday I took advantage of the nice weather to rake leaves and twigs around 1911, knowing that there was a high probability we’d get another blow and there would a fresh crop of detritus to rake.  Well, we did and there was.  I think it was Wednesday when the wind gusts were as high as 60+ mph.  So there were more twigs but not leaves.  The danged oaks in the neighborhood hold onto their leaves well into winter and then turn loose of them to blow onto SA and drift against the fences.  They’ve pretty much blown off so there doesn’t seem to be more adding to the drifts.  Last Sunday I raked up five bags and I’ve probably got several more I hope to rake up today.  That’s just around 1911, mind you.  Maybe I can con Chris into raking along the fence on the west side of SA.  He doesn’t like to do that sort of thing and can be pretty slippery if he doesn’t want to do something, but maybe if I look pathetic enough, he’ll do it.