Fog Light

Up way before the light today, disturbing dreams of animals that need care, and dogs gone by, calling out for me to save them. It was so real and then to wake and find that Two Bears does not need to be fed, hasn't in twenty years or more, and never will again. A grand dog of history but gone, long, long gone.....

Two Bears, taken in Colorado, many moons ago

Nick though, Nick is glad of my early morning and his hours-before-normal breakfast time. Glad too that Liz picked up some samples of fancy dog food at TS the other day and he can have a taste...and a spoon of last night's meat loaf gravy....nom, nom, nom.....

Rooster crows at 5:06. Indigo bunting tunes up at 5:32 and does not stop. At all. I want some of what he's drinking. I could use that much energy.

Fog is soggy grey right now, drooping and dingy like it needs to be bleached and hung on the line in the sun. S'okay, when the sun gets around to getting up it will light up like a pearl and glow with silver warm light. The fog muffles the sounds of trains and traffic and makes them seem mysterious and cool....rather than just noisy and annoying....

No cows; couldn't milk if I wanted to. The fog shelters them from prying eyes, sleepy out there somewhere on the hill. They will not come down any more without being pursued, not even for their tasty tithe of morning grain and the water in the big blue tub. They are not liking the mud that ALL THIS DARNED RAIN has made. It hurts their poor feet. Old Mandy cow is being kept in the temporarily vacant heifer pen so she doesn't have to make the trudge to pasture. She does not much appreciate the gesture and leans her long, black, self over the high, red gate, calling sadly and sticks her nose in the window at me....OVER the plywood that keeps heifers from ripping out the window. She is one tall cow I'll tell you!

This much water from ONE rain....there have been many others

We put the two young jerseys out with the cows a couple of weeks ago. What a pair of sixes! They travel together as if yoked like oxen, brown on brown, and always in trouble. Quick to it too; they can dart in the barn door and run around like dervish fools in less time than it takes old folks to hurry to close the door.

We are the walking wounded here, alas. After all summer of being the broken-footed, useless gimp, I am surrounded by folks in worse shape than I am. Becky is laid low by a vicious summer cold, that is dripping and gripping its way through the house. Liz sprained her ankle while feeding her horse and is having a miserable time milk inspecting, working here and trying to get ready for the fairs. Alan went out to change a tire yesterday and put his hand in a wasp nest...just as he was finishing up. His ear was stung eight times and his wrist three. Oh, my the swelling... Yow!

How I hate those nasty mixed vespids. Sting first and ask questions later. And they build their nests in the damnedest places and defend them to the death...no matter whose.

Well, as we listen to the sucking sound of our economy going down the drain, I leave you with good wishes for the day. Enjoy the indigo buntings and good dogs in your world, while the great ones in Rome fiddle to the tune of the flashing flames.