Winter prep


fall flowers
Fall is the reward for flowers that survive the Texas summer (click to enlarge)

Wednesday I rode with Kari to Abigail’s volleyball game against Lorenzo de Zavala Middle School.  Abigail started and played the entire first game so we got to see her play more than in all other games this season combined.  As the season has gone along the coach has been teaching them new tricks and there is a lot more strategy employed than at the start of the season.  I recall that the level of play the first game wasn’t any different than the previous year’s Kids, Inc games.  That is to say, many serves didn’t make it over the net and those that did were only returned about half the time.  Somewhere along the way the games got much more competitive and entertaining.  The teams don’t miss many serves and most serves are returned.  Abigail is a setter, which means her job is to get the ball up in the air close to the net so a teammate can bang it into the opponent’s court making it too hot for the opponent to handle.  At least, that’s the theory.  The players at this level still aren’t able to jump high enough and hit the ball hard enough to have the desired effect very often.  Abigail did a good job and though her team let themselves get way down in the first game, they fought back, even taking it to game point, before falling short.

With the sun coming up later and the mornings being chilly, I’ve found it nice to spend the first hour or more of the day puttering around the shop.  I’ve probably driven Joyce nuts by tidying up her chicken table.  No doubt she knew right where everything was but to me it just looked like a heap with who knows what buried underneath.   When I moved in over four years ago I put a lot of metal objects in the barrel used for oats back when there were horses on the place.  I managed to do some rearranging to get all that into a rolling half barrel from the candy business so I could put some of the chicken supplies in the oat barrel.  I even added wheels to it so I can easily roll it out and clean behind it, which just tells you how compulsive I am.

Friday was dismal and cold but we made the best of it with our first fire of the fall.  Joyce made stew.  Barbara Howard joined me by the fire while we waited on the rest of the crew.  After dinner, I enjoyed sitting by the fire some more while Abigail read a new book and Kari and li’l r played a board game.  Saturday was as nice as Friday was nasty.   We stayed indoors until it had warmed up a bit.  Li’l r showed up ready for work complete with work gloves so she and I got busy and worked on cleaning the lily pool.  We siphoned off crud until we got tired of that and went on to other things.  Other things included helping Grandma tighten up the chicken house for the winter.  She let the new chickens out of the chicken yard for the first time and they took full advantage.  Methinks they had been observing the two old hens which Joyce lets out every day so they weren’t shy about exploring the area outside the yard.  Joyce and Chris got their fist egg from the new chickens this week.  It was about half the size of the eggs that they’ll produce once they get going good.  Since then there have been one or two more.