Opposable Thumbs

My little grandpuppy, be thankful that he does't have them

Gil is getting to be a big boy...and smart in a way that is new to me. I am used to border collie smart, where once you get the dog's attention it is all about working together. Gil is different. Some of his intelligence seems to be aimed at getting into trouble and getting away with it. Thus we must put the dish towels in ever changing places because he will get them...every time....and damn the consequences. 


He can leap straight in the air, reach out without touching anything, snatch one off the middle of the kitchen table and be gone before you can grab the squirt gun. Hell hath no fury like grandma when one of Aunt Lisa's home woven towels is his victim. He does not care. The fun is worth it to him. I have had to teach him the word, "trade" so he will give me the things he steals without a chase. I am too old to chase...and I know it is encouraging him and enabling him to be a bad boy to give him a treat under the circumstances, but I cannot run as fast as he can, especially under the chairs and tables. Even I am too tall for that.

Anyhow, I babysit for the grandpuppy when Beck is at work and he has learned to be quite a little leash hauler. He has darned near dragged me off my feet a couple of times. Old Arthur Itis was visiting yesterday so I put the pronged training collar on the little monster, for the first time ever, and purely in self defense.


He raced to the end of the leash to pop me off the porch, hit it, stopped and looked at me, as if to say, Well, dang! and NEVER tugged again the whole walk, even after I took it off.
Wow, can you imagine if that little dog had opposable thumbs? 


No dish towel in the world would be safe, ever again.

Fifty

Cedar Waxwing peeping out at us

Bird number fifty showed itself late yesterday afternoon. It was raining in a dull and dreary fashion, but the yard was alive with birds, including lots of LLBs that just wouldn't show themselves.

Crows having a discussion

I was watching and listening carefully, when I heard the diagnostic "wheep" call from the old horse pasture. I watched the area from whence it came and saw something about the right size. Yup, there it was, a great crested flycatcher. It engaged in a racing argument with a smaller flycatcher...could have been a phoebe...was NOT the willow flycatcher that frequents the same spot. Then it obligingly sat about as still as a flycatcher ever sits while I got a good, long look.

My little friend, the willow flycatcher

Just color me tickled pink. There are a lot of birds around that I am not getting identified so I don't think the count will stay at fifty very long.

The catbird seat

Wish you could have seen the fireflies the night before last. It was just after dark when I went out on the porch, just to listen and enjoy the fine, gentle breeze. There they were in their hundreds sparkling everywhere you cared to look. When we were kids we simply had to catch all we could and put them in jars with holes punched in the top by some obliging adult. Now it is enough just to see them.

Rhubarb Sauce

Wash and dice a random quantity of rhubarb. Only you know how much sauce you want.


Add enough water to keep it from burning, and simmer it slowly until it is very soft and tender.


Add sugar to your taste. I like mine as sweet as jam, but others might prefer to retain a bit of rhubarb's natural tartness. I add cinnamon to taste as well, and I like a lot, but that is purely optional.


Simmer the mixture a bit more to cook the sugar into it. If I have time I watch it carefully and get it as thick as I can, so it acts like jam on toast or biscuits. We love it with breakfast sausage. You can serve it at about any point after the rhubarb gets done though, soupy as you wish.


It freezes well, and the taste in the middle of winter is incredible...as if you saved a little summer up in a package!


**This recipe originates with one of my very favorite aunts who made it every morning for my brothers and me when we stayed on her family farm when we were kids...which was as often as we possibly could, as it was a wonderland of animals, birds, gardens, fields and creeks to play in...and the work was more fun than anything we did for play at home. Love you Aunt Sandy.

Sunshine

 Breakfast biscuits..so good with rhubarb sauce

Bird species #49 purple finch. 

I think they are nesting in my favorite spruce and they spend a lot of time there

Yes, yes. Don't know how long it is going to last, but I'll take it and gladly. It was supposed to pour last night and didn't. Ditto today. The boss baled some hay yesterday and he and Jade got it up in the mow last night. It had been rained on a few times, but was still not too bad. Glad to have it anyhow.


The boy was home from Saturday night until yesterday evening. That was nice. He helped with milkings, gave me and Beck a morning off and was generally handy and helpful. Fixed Lizzie's truck for her too, new shocks, brakes, etc.


The nice weather yesterday gave me a chance to sit on the porch and bird watch for a while. It was great, about like a tennis match, with so many flying back and forth and up and down the driveway. In just a few minutes I saw or heard: kestrel, common crow, common grackle, European starling, Red-winged blackbird, willow flycatcher, eastern phoebe, grey catbird, American robin, yellow warbler, common yellow throat, indigo bunting, house finch, purple finch, gold finch, blue jay, killdeer, mourning dove, rock pigeon, chimney swift, dozens of cedar waxwings, house sparrows (Sassenachs, bah humbug), Baltimore oriole, northern cardinal and probably more that I am not thinking of just now. Someone with a better knowledge of songs could probably pick up at least five more. There are a lot of things singing out there that I just don't recognize.


Up to 49 species now, what with the obliging pair of house finches and the hairy woodpecker that showed up at the suet Friday. I figure to hit at least 51 when the gulls come back or maybe see something interesting out on the lawn. There are a few common ones that just haven't shown up yet and they may. We have bobolinks, harriers, brown thrashers and several other up in the field that I am not counting because I am confining myself to what I can see from the house and barn yard. Usually both smaller birds are seen here sometime over the summer so.....and there is always the chance for ducks or a bald eagle.

Willing

To pose today......at least for a while....Right click and then click again to enlarge

Sunday Stills...By the Numbers

For more Sunday Stills.....

Liz Wants a Blog Post

This morning we had some up close and personal veterinary work to do on five strong, flighty, more than a year old, heifers.


They are not sick, this was just routine stuff, but it had to be done. They are housed in the old sawdust shed, which was built to keep the sawdust from running away. It served that job quite well, but despite the addition of some sturdy gates, it won't bear having heifers tied to it,  or slammed against it, or handy-dandy gate moving or anything like that.


Thus these heifers had to be caught and held without the benefit of good equipment.


The boss tried. He has always been a strong, capable man, leaping tall buildings at a single bound and all. However, he has been injured a lot of times over the years, plus he broke his shoulder and dislocated it a couple years ago and it just doesn't do what he needs it to. And he is well over sixty.


Thus he couldn't just grab them by the nose and hang on like he would have done even a couple of years ago.


This work absolutely had to be done.


There was no one here but us wimmen and him. His lariat has a broken catch on it and is essentially worse than useless.


So Liz took an old calf halter, undid the nose band to form a makeshift loop, handed me her engagement ring and got in the pen.


After all the fruitless previous efforts by her dad, and there were many, in about fifteen minutes she roped all five heifers, held the rope with one hand while she did the work on them with the other, then turned them all loose. Then she took back her ring and put it back on.


She was covered with manure, bruised, battered, and has one finger that may not have been meant to bend that way originally, but the work is done and everybody is still standing up and taking nourishment.....she told me she expected a blog post out of it at the very least.


So here, it is...Upstate NY, where the men are men and the women are scary.

Same Stuff

Different day. With pointless and expensive breakdowns sprinkled in there just because. (It is never wise to let the three point hitch arms engage with the power shaft on the manure spreader. Better to keep them up out of the way) At least, even if it does rain in one form or another, hard and/or soft, solid and/or liquid, every single day, it does make for pretty on the rare occasions when we see that thing that was out yesterday for a while.

Catbird with Rainbows

 Both flying and skying

What is this Thing?

Play Signals

Trying to get biscuits out of our improvised non-kong

What do you when the pup, which you just brought in from outdoors, leaves a large and odoriferous "calling card" right next to your chair?


Why you scold, of course, and point at it and exclaim, "Bad dog!" in cogent terms. And strongly worded, yes indeedy!


Then what do you do when the pup comes over to see what you are yapping about, takes a look at the pile, play bows, and begins to bark at it as if saying, "Bad poo, bad! What are you doing there by Gramma's chair huh? Shame on you poo, shame, shame!"...????


Well, I didn't know exactly what to do about the situation except laugh myself half to death and take that idiot dog out for yet another constitutional. Prolly was wrong to laugh but I couldn't help it.


I have had dogs all my life, most often five at a time, as five is a nice solid number, but I have never had one bark at poo before.


Never. Now if only he would "bark" outdoors.

Hail to the Chief

Or would you believe, hail to the ground and everything else?

Yeah, it really came down today, rained like it meant it and hailed for a while. It put on quite a show.

Once Upon a Time

A little chunk of winter came in June. All the plants died and people were hungry. Folks were forced to sell or eat their livestock and nearly starved the following winter.


Yup, the Great June Frost occurred on this day in 1859. The night time temperature was 25 degrees from Iowa to New England, according to the National Weather Service.


Here is an interesting story about what it was like, from the point of view of a Civil War Veteran from Warren County. Do go read it if you have a minute. It is a chilling tale, no pun intended, of the frightening hardship caused by that freak of the weather. Here is a short excerpt:

"In the morning I was up at daylight and saw a sight such as I'd never seen before and I've never seen since. All the crops were gone. Everything was frozen stiff, corn, grass, things in the garden. I was a tough, rugged lad, I'd laid away my shoes early in May and wasn't going to bother looking them up again. So I went off down across the pastures to fetch the cows and the grass and weeds were crisp and crackly with the thick frost under my feet."


As of yesterday the high temperature was only one degree above the record lowest high for the date (if that makes any sense at all), but it was a lot warmer than that. In fact the Warren County story makes fifty-nine seem downright balmy.

Okay, I Promise

I won't whine about the weather. It's out there and it hasn't changed, although we did catch a few minutes of sun...or at least less cloudy...yesterday. Nuff said.


The boy got home for a short time...less than a whole day because they are working Saturdays on top of the 12-hour week days. It was really fun though. We sat in the kitchen Saturday night enjoying an adult beverage while he regaled us with hilarious tales of life in the big city as seen through the eyes of a bred in the bone country boy.

Laughter is good. We laughed. A lot. He helped with milking last night and it was so nice to have a tall person to unhook my milk lines in the high stalls. Becky will, but I hate to ask. I am not a tall person, shortest pup in the litter, alas, and it is really hard to get the milkers unhooked in those last two stalls. I can plug them in, but getting them down requires essentially hanging by one hand, feet on the stall curb, while I try to get the hose off the milk line with the other hand. Not pretty. I don't miss it when I don't have to do it.

We are getting a routine for dealing with his absence worked out though. We still give Liz her night off. Becky feeds the calves and milks her string and I just do mine alone. Not a problem for me, really although she has quite a lot more than normal. I have the longest string of milkers, roughly twice the cows in the other two groups, so usually the help is welcome, but I can still keep up alone. Back in the day I milked 150 with just one helper so the few we have now is pretty small potatoes.


Beck and I just go ahead and milk most of our mornings off though, unless he gets a decent length of weekend. No big deal for us and not fair to him to have to work for us after weeks like this past one. 

Sunday Stills....Shades of Blue

Not much for me this week...a late afternoon peek at the moon and a flash shot from yesterday sunset  of some Dutch iris...plus a bit of that same sunset.

Click to embiggen

For more Sunday Stills.....

Weather License

Jack, the pony

Rain should have to wear a collar, license and vaccination tags....or at least be microchipped...so when your rain shows up at our house, I can send it back to where you are too dry. Then we won't be too wet.

Alas, it knows no such constraint. After about four days of the most glorious weather imaginable, weather wherein just taking a breath of the bright fresh air is a conscious joy, weather that brings morning skies like peaches, air redolent with a billion blossoms, birds by the dozens, and hay actually getting baled, it is raining again.


And every time it rains this spring...again...it gets stuck and keeps raining for a week. It is cold, and dank, and gloomy. And I am going to be darned sorry I took the plastic off all the windows on my side of the barn, because we are going to freeze doing chores. But it is so dark with the windows on and I wanted to let in the light.


Okay, enough whining. I know a lot of you would give whatever it took to have this rain (and trust me I would give it to you). At least it is Saturday, which tends to be followed by Sunday. Even if our boy has to stay in the city and I don't get the morning off, at least I can goof off all day tomorrow in my comfy Sunday chair. I think I will build a fire in the wood boiler again. I was nagging the boss to shut it off for the summer, but I am kinda glad he didn't. 

Stay safe!

NYC Soda Ban

It's all over the Net. Mayor Bloomberg wants to ban sales of sugary drinks over 16 ounces in his little fiefdom to the south of us. 

The arrogance, the intrusiveness, the overstepping of the reasonable purpose of government, not to mention the utter stupidity of this.  After all, what is to stop folks from buying two sodas anyhow? It's mind boggling. Political smoke and mirrors at its lowest.


And consider this.


The good mayor's personal worth is estimated at $19.5 billion. I suspect that he drinks what he wants to and that such a concept as "economy size" (or economy in any form) never cross his mind. What could he possibly know about how the other 99% live?

I have never paid much attention to the regulatory infrastructure of NYC. Despite the whole state being identified by its excess and attitude, we live far away from there, both geographically and culturally. I can count on my fingers the number of times I have visited there, with quite a few fingers left over.


However, as of late last year, our boy works there. 


Or maybe I should call him a man now. Yesterday in the course of his job, he picked up, carried, opened, and poured seven and a half tons of bagged cement over the course of a 12-hour work day.


In the hot, blazing sun.

What gives Hizzoner and his pals the right to tell that kid that he can't have a large soda if he wants one? Certainly the not the Constitution. Certainly not any moral high ground where they perch omnisciently over the peons. In fact nothing gives them the right. They are just taking it....but only if New Yorkers let them. Maybe they should call up some of that famous attitude and cry foul nice and loud. Meanwhile.....

I don't even like soda, never drink the stuff. But this ticks me off.