God bless pet heifers***

***(And a pox on men who leave gates open)…

I was peacefully comparing prices today, trying to figure out whether it would behoove me to change to Road Runner and digital phone, eschewing the frustrations of dial-up and AT&T, for just about eleven dollars extra a month. I had a really helpful salesperson on the phone and was about to make a deal, when three heifers caromed off the snow banks by the garden pond and headed down the hill.

I looked over toward the barn and, sure enough, the guys had finished up feeding, gone on to the next chore, and left the gate open. Muttering words that would melt the computer if I typed them, I quickly excused myself from wheeler-dealing and raced out of the house in my soft, worn, leather house loafers. (The low ones that an inch of snow will fill in an instant. Trust me, we have a bit more than an inch.)

The heifers were more than halfway down the driveway by the time I got to the front yard with a bucket and some chicken feed pellets, which is what was handy on the porch. They were also between me and the state highway and the Interstate and closer to the latter than to me...down to the last curve and actually almost out of sight of the house, maybe five car lengths from the highway.

What do you do in a situation like that? There was no way I could get ahead of them to stop them from going into the road. If I went farther down the drive, they would be likely to run away just for the fun of it, and get there sooner rather than later. A bad situation.

So, I did what any self-respecting cow spoiler would do and called them. The odds of them coming, having never been called in for feed or anything before were slim, but I was plumb out of choices. I hollered, “E….come on baby, co boss, co E,” and rattled my pail of chicken feed.

And (thank God for his eternal goodness), my pet heifer, E Train, threw up her head and galloped back up the hill to me, a goodly tenth of a mile. She didn't really want the chicken feed but she followed me to the fork in the driveway anyhow, head in the bucket, with her runaway buddies in tow. There I managed to get behind them, and with a few side trips to leap through five-foot snowdrifts and sniff cats, they went back to the cow barnyard where they belong. I am more than slightly grateful that they didn’t get down on the road and cause an accident, and more then ever glad of E.

Sustainable (NOT) development and a great dog rescue

Here is a story about what activist organizations are doing to deprive citizens of not-so-wealthy nations of economic development, and how they are going about it.

And anopther one about the dog who who was the silent heroine of the Mt. Hood Rescue this week.

***We are in the process of attempting to find a car that will negotiate the driveway from Hell in three feet of snow but is small enough to be comfortable for not-so-tall me to drive, as my minivan, although willing to go almost anywhere, is no longer able to do so in a straight line or to stop upon arrival. And then there is the pair of bull calves we have to sell, all the major repair work that has been waiting for Alan to have a week off from school so there are two men for the various jobs...and all that stuff...so I may not have much to say for a day or so. Sorry.

Opera browser

I know a couple of people in my blog roll use Opera so I tried it. So far it is very nice but it won’t let me type posts for this blog. Hmmmm. I am typing in Word and trying to paste.

Weird....it will let me paste in "edit HTML mode, but not in "Compose". I am sure there is some way to do this and I will try to find it.

Big problems on the computer front

Kindly old Mr. Gates sent some along updates yesterday, which Norton generously allowed to be installed, even though I had instructed via my settings that I be asked if I wanted to install such downloads. The seeming result of that is that Netscape, my browser of choice, no longer functions (could have been a coincidence, but since my profile vanished from the computer at the same time I don't think so. No viruses, no new spyware, so I am leaning strongly toward those pesky updates). Since I despise IE and don't find Firefox willing to open a number of my favorite news sites, I will be spending a long, long time, re-downloading Netscape on my slow-as-molasses dial up connection. If and when I get my shiny new, not working today, computer going I will visit all my favorites. Until then, just sign me....
addicted to the Internet and needing a fix

Scare tactics

We took our sweet time milking the cows this morning. It isn't milk tanker day, we got the grain truck in all right yesterday, most of the driveways are clear, and Alan is home from school, so we just coasted through chores. Al went up and dug the sheep a path so they can come down with the heifers after hiding in the tool shed during the storm. We puttered instead of pushing hard to get done and it was kind of nice. We even spent perhaps more time than usual sitting on thecurb behind the last few cows, talking about this and that, because for the first time in days we didn't HAVE to rush.

Thus when we came inside and the phone was beeping I hurried guiltily over to take the message, which I expected would be the girls telling me that they got back to college all right after their storm induced mini vacation. Instead I heard incoherent sobbing, and someone saying, "Oh, my God, oh my God," for about thirty seconds before it was cut off. To me it sounded just like Liz.
I was scared to death.
Total panic.
I called the guys in to listen and the boss thought it was the girls too.

While I called Becky's cell phone in worried haste, only to have it drop the call before taking me to voice mail, Alan kept calmly saying, "It's not the girls, mom, it's a prank call or somebody out of school and getting high."

I didn't believe him. I couldn't believe him. The roads are mostly cleared, but visibility is debatable because of the wind, and there is plenty of drifting. And those are my babies out there on the rush hour highway, no matter that they can and do both vote.

He was right though. When I finally managed to get Becky on the phone, they were fine. I wonder whether it was in fact a prank call or if it was a wrong number and some other mother is going to get some kind of frightening news from her daughters this morning.
I hope it is the former.

More storm stuff

This little toy car is inside the kitchen window
(gotta find where that snow is sneaking in and caulk it!)

It CAN be pretty

Chingachgook...or just some silly boy hunting pigeons in the storm?

We just like to take weather pictures I guess. It is nice today except for the wind....lots of sun.

Into the heart of the storm

Photo by Alan

Photo by mom

Photo by mom

The snow is 24 inches deep on the car right now, but seems deeper where the wind can't get to it. The extra-large bucket on the skid steer fills before Alan can even go five feet. We haven't seen a storm like this in many, many years.

He took the blue jay photo from the upstairs window using binoculars like he did on the deer pictures last fall. It gives an idea of how hard it was snowing earlier. It has actually gotten worse to the point you can barely see 5S. Big storm!

Blizzard warning-Happy Valentines Day

These came out of the closet last night and are leaning on the wall in the kitchen. Alan was in 4-H rather than the boy scouts, but he belives in being prepared. (For those of you who live where the manatees roam they are snow shoes and I would rather see a flock of robins I can assure you.) He also split up about a face cord and a half of stout maple last night and tucked it in under heavy canvas. We brought heifers in off the hill and stuffed them in the barn with the shorthorn bull, fueled up everything and picked up all the stuff that we could think of that might be hard to find under the snow that is forecast.

As of ten last night the college had cancelled classes for today for the first time in the three years Liz has been attending. Shortly thereafter FFCS joined a growing list of schools that are closing today. I am real glad of that. Although it looks like today is going to be a rough one at least we will know where they all are and have their invaluable help this day.

Now there are blizzard warnings for the first time in years. So far we only have about four inches, but it is that mealy stuff that tends to be a harbinger of lots more to come. I guess we are as prepared as we are going to be, but the B-word makes me plumb nervous.

As a wee footnote, the boss and I had the privilege of being awakened at some obscene pre-dawn hour, by an idiot on a snowmobile going about half again as fast as the plow trucks and the semis on the Thruway. I thought about a hundred mps, the boss says 75. Anyhow the foo' was either on the bike path or actually on 5S itself trying to find himself a headline or maybe an epitaph up in Evergreen. I dunno, but he sure woke me up. Anyhow, Happy Valentine's Day...hope it ain't snowing where you are.

Mysterious bee disease

This could be very bad news!

Could be a rackabore bone

One of my read-'em'-every-day type favorite bloggers, Florida Cracker, posted an interesting puzzler today on his blog. (He is a teacher and likes to test us.)

Most guesses run toward mineral block or salt lick, but I am thinking maybe it is a rackabore bone. We see 'em all the time up here in the hilly country of Upstate NY and I am thinking maybe one retired to somewhat flatter Florida and succumbed out in FC's warm southern forest. Take a look and tell me what you think.

More About Growing lettuce indoors

Cabin fever and garden deprivation can get really intense by this time of year up here in the frozen north country.A sunny day that isn't too cold comes along and you just itch to go outside and plant something or pick something or do something besides stuff wood in the stove. However, the ground is still frozen and will be for a long time yet, the wind is still biting and it isn't even maple sugaring time. Sometimes, I can kind of ease through the no-dirt, no-greenery, no-gardening doldrums by puttering with the houseplants....repotting Amaryllises, cutting down gangly geraniums, picking off spent flowers and such, but really I need to grow something new and interesting. Most years I grow a few geraniums from seed, and maybe some lobelia, moon flowers or other things that require a bit of fussing. This year I am out of dirt and need to go buy some....which kind of goes against the grain.

Anyhow, I decided that we needed some lettuce that I knew came from a clean, fresh, not-in-another-state source so I decided to plant some in the living room. I used compost from the buckets I grew tomatoes in last summer and threw in some perlite and put the whole mess in a Styrofoam cooler left over from toting soda and Bologna sandwiches to the fair last summer. It has been slow going because there is so little sun, but it is beginning to come along quite nicely now. I nip off a leaf every now and then just to sample and I think we will be able to use it in sandwiches pretty soon.

Back to the barn

No-o-o-o....I don't want to walk.

It's cold out here!

Please carry me mommy...

Repeat after me....

There are no flies
It is not muddy
Snow is pretty

Say it again
There are no flies
It is not muddy
Snow is…..

***Most politicians understand that if you tell a lie often enough people will begin to repeat it as if it were the truth...so I am chanting the mantra above in hopes that I will somehow start to like winter...

I might add:

People pay for dermabrasion to make themselves look younger. I am hoping wind blown snow has the same effect for a much lower price. (Although so far all it has made me look is redder.)

When I let the dogs out for a constitutional convention I do not have to stand on the porch shivering and calling, and calling, and calling before they come in. As soon as I open the door I find them huddled on the back porch in a trembling black mass and they fall all over themselves trying to get in.

There are no flies
It is not muddy......

Yesterday

**Alan took this yesterday afternoon, just as the sun was beginning to set. You can barely see the houses with the reflecting windows except at that time of day.

No such thing as a free lunch

Yes, this dog crate is in my kitchen

But, no, that is notadog.

***It's a little Zipper

Today's desktop wallpaper

Brought to you by the ducks of Peck's Lake NY

Following Michael's fingers

Sitting there today I reflected on how many hours, how many years, how many decades even, I have spent watching his fingers fly over the fret board and copying as best I could the chords he made. It has never been more than a poor facsimile, my part of the music, but it sure has been fun doing it.

Making music together began perhaps in my aunt’s yellow convertible out by the curb at 14 Bloomingdale Avenue, listening to fifties rock and roll and singing along. We were small then, and that car was the epitome of glamour and adventure.

Doing dishes together, him washing, me drying, and belting out Beach Boys and the Dave Clark Five. Even then his high, pure voice put my rumble to shame, but we had fun anyhow.

Then the “band” came along, that first one we started, with him playing on an antique wooden drum set that came into the shop and me wishing my short, untutored fingers would somehow learn to bend into a chord on his wonderful black guitar. Neighbor kids who couldn’t play anything either jammed into my bedroom with primitive instruments and an astonishing lack of talent. We made a lot of noise anyhow.

A couple years later we got a bit more serious. We learned to more or less really play our instruments. By then I knew enough chords to actually play a few songs…as long as they weren’t too hard. A better sort of musicians joined the gang, a lead guitar player, a pianist and a bass player. We began to practice in cellars and garages and to play at school dances and even actually got paid… usually about enough for gas money and solder to fix the always broken wires on the PA speakers.

Long before that time his talent was evident. He wrote music, played drums amazingly, learned guitar and other instruments.

After a few years of playing bars and local resorts the band broke up. We grew up, moved away, got married and grew apart, but always a couple of times a year we got together to play. He still took his music seriously and took it places, singing and playing in church, taking lessons, always getting better and still better.

I took cows seriously and never really had any talent to begin with…tone deaf as a dog howling at the moon. I still play the same second-hand imitation Gibson I have had for over thirty years…on the rare occasions that I play at all.

Still when we sat down in living rooms, on porches, at camp, at his house, at my house, at someone else’s house, I could always follow his fingers though songs that I didn’t know. Even though I had often never even heard them before, I could always read the chords he made like a sort of musical mirror and follow somehow. He would drag me along on his tuneful coattails and for a while I could fly on borrowed wings.

As we celebrated a late Christmas with his family, mine, and that of my younger brother today, he played John Pryne’s Paradise and I followed his hands. We played LA Freeway and soared a little…( at least it seemed that way to me, I am not sure how the people listening felt about it). He rattled off a Guy Clark song and I missed a few chords, but his lead was solid and by the end it fell together nicely. We did Danny’s Song and he let me sing the lead on the chorus in my scanty little voice and held me up with his rich harmony. It gave me cold chills.

He’s a pretty good brother, my next younger one. I think Ill keep him.

***I am going to keep the other one too, the baby of the family. He is such a lovely guy. He brought me diamonds today, great, gleaming chunks of them like ice glittering in the headlights on the highway.

*** Herkimer diamonds that is, but I love them anyhow.

The UN Global warming report

Here is a quote from a story that A Coyote at the Dog Show linked to the other day.

"Giegengack may have a personal 50-year perspective on global warming, but the time range he prefers to consult is more on the geologists’ scale. The Earth has been warming, he says, for about 20,000 years. We’ve only been collecting data on that trend for about 200 years. “For most of Earth history,” he says, “the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has only rarely been cooler.” Those cooler periods have meant things like two miles of ice piled over much of what is now North America. Nothing to be nostalgic for."

Here is more:

“Sea level is rising,” Giegengack agrees, switching off the sound. But, he explains, it’s been rising ever since warming set in 18,000 years ago. The rate of rise has been pretty slow — only about 400 feet so far. And recently — meaning in the thousands of years — the rate has slowed even more. The Earth’s global ocean level is only going up 1.8 millimeters per year. That’s less than the thickness of one nickel. For the catastrophe of flooded cities and millions of refugees that Gore envisions, sea levels would have to rise about 20 feet."

Too bad the world listens to Oprah first and scientists second.

A canine hero

This story of a stray dog, rescuing an injured motorist is pretty amazing. I knew I liked dogs.


***Update...Becky and I got to talking on the way up west to do errands today and came to the conclusion that if the animal that came upon the poor lady was a cat large enough to drag her by the collar she would have been a menu item rather than incredibly fortunate.