by rakeeter 
Our neighbors had a little get-together for the Abster’s volleyball team yesterday evening, a perfect evening for it. I got the yard and the grass court mowed so the place, at least that around 2005, looked pretty good. When I staggered back to my lair the fair maidens where playing volleyball, having stuffed themselves with hot dogs and needing to make room for somores. Continue reading “Oh mow is me”
by rakeeter 
Greetings from the SA rain forest. We went much of the week without seeing the sun while getting a couple of inches of rain. That is significant for this part of the world and I think the rain was fairly widespread, just maybe not at the same time. Continue reading “Shrooms”
by rakeeter 
You may recall a couple of weeks ago in a tournament in Hereford Abigail’s Rebel volleyball team fell in a squeaker to Amarillo High in the final. Then last weekend the Sandies sent the Rebels home from another tournament in Dumas in two games. So it was with no little satisfaction that the Abster and company dealt them Sandies a solid thumping in their own gym Tuesday evening. They made hash out of them in two games and danced on under their scoreboard. Continue reading “Retribution”
by rakeeter 
It was a quiet week around SA, seemed to me. Last Thursday’s rain greened up the place a little. There is rain in the forecast and if we were to get another half inch plus the place would green up nicely. We’re still short of moisture but we don’t need a lot to get by. Continue reading “Quiet week”
by rakeeter It must be the generally dry conditions and lack of food that has made the birds so aggressive in getting at the grapes. The table grapes were beginning to ripen but only just the end of July. That didn’t deter the birds, though. They ate any grape that was the least bit ripe and more than a few that weren’t. By the time I realized what was going on and put bird-blocker netting over the vine it was almost picked clean. I figured Joyce would be upset, the table grapes being her interest, but she shrugged it off. The wine grapes were so far from being ripe I thought I could cover them at leisure but I was wrong. We had a dickens of a time closing every little gap in the nets to keep the birds, primarily robins and mockingbirds though we did catch what might have been a variety of vireo, out. We’d think we had then come back and find half a dozen birds inside the net where they couldn’t get out. It was a pain to get them out, too. Sometimes we could open a gap in the net at the end of the row and heard them down that way. Finally we started just catching them, no easy task I assure you. It required someone on each side of the row to flush them out and finally get them tangled up in the net so someone could get a hold on them. The bird was inside the netting and whoever had a hold of it was on the outside, so we had to open a gap, usually at the bottom, so one of us could work a hand up inside the net to grip the bird. Sometimes the bird’s foot was tangled up or, more often, they had a death grip on the netting which had to be peeled off toe/claw by toe/claw. Rebecca was good helping to catch the birds and enjoyed releasing them when we freed them from the netting. Once released the birds high-tailed it without so much as a thank you. Continue reading “The birds”