Category: SA Times

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We were at the Azure drop one day this week and just about finished picking up our loot when we chanced to glance off to the north and spy a dust storm coming our way.  It had been blowing out of the north all day without there being much dust so maybe it came all they way from Kansas.  It took 10 or 15 minutes to finally reach us and rolled in like a mist, one a couple hundred feet high.  As I said, it had been blowing all day and the wind didn’t really increase.  It was just laden with someone’s topsoil.  Visibility was about a quarter to half a mile.  It left a coating of on dust on things — cars, porches, grass, people — as fine as face powder, so fine in fact it was hard to sweep up.  A nice half-inch shower would be nice to wash it off.  Anything less would probably just turn it to mud. Continue reading “Dusty mist” →

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Friday I drove down to West Texas Nursery near Idalou east northeast of Lubbock to pick up the seedlings I ordered last November, I think it was.  Maybe earlier.   I could have had them shipped and would have saved money if I had but I like to get out sometimes, see the country-side, bleak though it may be, so I opted for the pickup.  Planting seedlings during a drought might not seem like the smartest thing to do but it will take a decade to have much to show for planting them, if they survive, so one doesn’t want to wait.  This is the first time I’ve been able to find piñon seedlings so I decided to go for it.  I also ordered four-wing salt bush seedlings just because.  Both came in units of 25, so I was faced with planting 50 seedlings, which seemed like a better idea when I ordered them last fall than it did when I got home with them Friday.  As she has done many times before, my good wife saved me from myself, though, by rallying the troops to help me.  Between her, Jill, Kari, Chris and I, we got 48 of the 50 planted Friday afternoon where I had figured I’d have to plant them over several days by myself.  I am extremely grateful.  Using a rolling hose reel with 200 feet of hose on it, I can water the seedlings, which are planted along the southwest perimeter, in 20 minutes or so.  They’ll need to be watered several times a week until they get established, but both are natives of this part of the world and should stand up OK to the dry, cold, wind, heat, etc. of the Texas Panhandle.  We shall see. Continue reading “Hope vs. experience” →

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One morning I sat at my desk in my bedroom and watched a hawk in a tree pluck its breakfast, scattering feathers all over the place, while several bluejays cheered it on. I never saw what kind of bird was the main course.  Dove, probably. Continue reading “Breakfast” →

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It’s a busy time for Abigail and her mom.  They’ve been occupied with volleyball tournaments the last several weekends and have a couple more to go.  A week ago I went with them to one in Lubbock.  It started first thing Sunday morning so we drove down Saturday evening and stayed in a motel.  By the time we got checked in and squared away, it was dinner time so went in search of a restaurant.  We finally wound up at a place called Jazz.  It was one of Jill’s favorites back in the day and we enjoyed some tasty and spicy cajun-style seafood, or swamp food as the case may be. Continue reading “Volleyball” →

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It has been difficult to avoid winter’s icy fingers this week. It isn’t just that the temperatures have been low — lows in the single digits, highs in the teens — but the cloud cover prevents the sun from helping out. The temperature in the shop has gotten down to 30 degrees and it has never been below 40 degrees before. The south and east facing windows help it stay much warmer than the outside temperature in spite of no heat. I’ve abandoned the cave and stayed in the house the last few days because it seemed silly to try to heat even just the corner where my desk is enough to be comfortable. We are already running space heaters in the chicken house and guinea tower 24 hours a day just to try to keep the fowl alive. The electricity bill will be bad enough with adding to it unnecessarily. Continue reading “Icy fingers” →