February 2025

February 9 This month started off pleasant, then it wasn’t, then it was again. Monday afternoon was warm, officially 88 degrees, with light wind. I took advantage to spray weeds, mostly in the perimeter tree line. Don’t remember if I’ve ever sprayed this early in the year, but I’m hoping to get an early jump on the weeds and thus avoid some of the problems when warmer weather really kicks off the weed growth. Then Tuesday cold returned. The thermometer said it was 22 degrees when I got up. That was low enough to keep me inside, so I finished treating the wood floors. Abigail kept on with her tile grout project and is getting close to finishing up. Wednesday it was back to warm weather again, so I continued spraying the perimeter and Abigail kept working on the tile grout. Next day she left for Kerrville to attend a ball with Nathan.

After a semi-productive weekend, I’m relaxing in the sunroom waiting for the Super Bowl to start. Whichever team loses I won’t be too disappointed. They can’t both lose though I wish they could. May all the players avoid injury and could there please be a minimum of silliness in the end zones.

February 16 Valentine’s Day has come and gone. I wish all the young lovers well. Old lovers, too, I suppose. Because Thursday was not so nice, I switched my house cleaning to then so I wouldn’t have to get out. The streets were icy, you see. Friday was better so I went to the grocery store and ran errands. It was interesting to see the men scooping up flowers, candy and whatever else would express the proper sentiment to their ladies. There was sort of a look of desperation on some of the faces. After all, they were cutting it close.

Last fall when I was visiting the Wylies, I took a day to visit my sister and her husband. Driving to their digs I took a short cut that ran between two busy streets rather than continue to the intersection of the two. It ran through some warehouses and other commercial properties and linked up with a second busy street. There wasn’t much traffic on the shortcut but the light where it intersected with the second busy street was as a long one. I was three or four cars back initially, but more drivers kept taking the shortcut and eventually there was quite a string of cars waiting for the light to change. Then a car came out of a side street and the driver wanted to go through the light as well. No way was he going to make the light unless someone let him in. Since I was about even with him, I motioned for him to go in front of me when the light changed. I was some distance from him and didn’t know if he would see me motioning. He did, though, and promptly pulled in ahead of me. We all went along our and everything was everything.

A couple of days later I went along with Jill, Dave and Vivian to Vivian’s volleyball game. We sat in the bleachers and after sitting there for a pretty good stretch, I thought I should get up move around some. Trouble was I had been sitting too long, and my old carcass had stiffened up considerably. The dang bleacher aisles were narrow and there were no handrails. I was teetering and wasn’t sure I was going to get down out of the bleachers without doing a face plant. While we were watching the game I had noticed a large fellow also watching with his family. I noticed him because he was wearing a Cowboys sweatshirt. As I was trying to get down to floor and it was beginning to look like I wasn’t going to manage the last few steps with my dignity in tact, a big, outstretched hand suddenly appeared in my field of vision, and I quickly grabbed it. It belonged to the Cowboys fan and with his help I managed to get down without breaking my neck.

Sometimes small acts of kindness go a long toward smoothing out some of our daily challenges.

February 23 Cold Aside from Monday, this week was cold. How cold was it? Tuesday morning was 13 according to my thermometer and it went down from there as the week went along. Weatherman John said the official temperature got down to -1 and the wind chills were 10 less than that. And there was no sun for several days. Then on Saturday, I washed my car. It had gotten pretty dirty from the melting snow over the last few weeks. I went to a car wash nearby, but just as I was afraid of most of Potter County had the same idea. Cars were lined up behind each bay, so I went home and washed the car in my driveway. It had been decades since I hand washed a vehicle but it wasn’t bad. The afternoon was balmy and my car is not too big, so it didn’t take all that long. Plus, I think I did a better job than the car wash would have.

February 25 It was time for my quarterly visit to the Alibates Flint Quary National Monument and Kari and I stopped off at the Palo Duro ranch on our way and visited Riverland. When I was there last November I did some plinking with my 22 around the corral and managed to lose the clip. Though I knew I lost it within a small area, for the life of me could not find it. I took a metal detector with us on this trip to help me out. When we got to the corral, there was a cowboy and a herd of cows where I needed to search. The cows, all black angus, had calves or were about to. Josh the cowboy said they started dropping calves last week during the cold snap. Cows with little ones will be protective. My dad told me when he was a boy on the ranch or farm in New Mexico he might be walking in a pasture a mile from a fence when his dog would get a cow stirred up and of course the dog would run to Dad with the cow in hot pursuit. Needless to say, Dad ran like a spotted ape. Anyway, I didn’t want to miss out on a chance to find the missing clip, so I girded my loins and waded into the herd. The ladies expressed their displeasure bawling vigorously but yielded to me as I came along. Kari found the clip, which was mostly plastic and might not have triggered the metal detector.

We stopped at the visitor center and talked to the rangers about various hikes. They suggested we visit a scenic area but there was no trail to it. We were told it was adjacent to a “saddle”, or a low spot between two hills so we gave that a try. It was a beautiful day of clear skies and light and variable wind, quite a contrast from the week before, so after driving to the area we were told we would find the saddle, we started up what I thought was the saddle in question, though there was another such formation close by. The going was pretty steep and rocky, but we preserved. Eventually we realized while the climb was bad, the decent was likely to be worse. Finally, we managed to reach to the top but there was no scenic view worthy of breaking our necks, so we skirted around the area and worked our way down the canyon wall, which was dicey, but preferable to the way we had climbed up. We were thankful to get back to our vehicle in one piece. After lunch in McBride Canyon and a stroll down the road, we headed him.