Barbecue and Baling

Or perhaps not.....Happy Birthday America. You may know that there is no crying in baseball, and I truly wish you would dry your birthday tears and let the sun shine through so the guys can bale today.

Not likely, but they were able to grab a couple of small loads yesterday and put them right in the mow.

Hope you all have a wonderful day....and that we all remember why we celebrate. Take care.

Peanut Butter

Hi, Gramma, I haz dis

See...It's dulishious

An, it's all mine

Buh Bye

Thank you, mama

Now, if only I can hold onto this

We are supposed to get a little stretch of good weather, starting today. Maybe....I don't trust the gurus, as, once it starts raining like it has been, the air just keeps sucking up water over the ground and dumping it back down on us.

However, we will take it if we can get it. 

The doe and fawn on the hill the other day came right down to the horse barn day before yesterday. This is about the length of the outstretched honey locust tree...were it to lie down....or maybe even a little less from the house.

It is also about thirty feet from the garden, which is still being mauled by bunnies. I put out fabric softener sheets and they thought those were so nifty they started stealing them.

Prolly some real sweet scented bunny nests out there.... aluminum foil pans on strings going up today. Shoulda put them up a week ago, but it has just been so rainy and cold I have hated to go in the garden for fear of spreading disease among susceptible plants.

Otherwise, it is all catching up paper work and packing for camp. Every single year I put my packing list away where I can find it and then forget where I put it. Last year I let Beck in on the secret, but she forgot too. Guess I put camp away in a quiet closet in my mind and only take the memory out when things get to be too much....

Anyhow, we are busily adding to yet another new list and taking care of business......Only six months filing to do....going on seven.

Oh, well, maybe it will keep me off of Facebook, which instead of sporting cute pictures of kitties and pretty cows, has become a septic tank of outrage and ignorance.

Missing the Boat

Japan has at least fifty words for rain.

Hawaii has even more.

As do the Welsh.

Considering the weather here I think we may be missing the boat on this.......and no one wants to be missing their boat with all this coming down. I am thinking we maybe should bring the canoe down from the shed and park it in the dining room.....just in case. I already dug the paddles out of the closet.

What I mean to say is that we need to come up with more words for rain to serve us here in the eastern and central parts of the US.

It's all very well to list downpour, drizzle, deluge, mist, fog, steady, intermittent, may be heavy at times, torrential and all, but somehow these are not enough. 

I think that we need to hit the shift key and amalgamate some of those uppercase symbols on the top row of the keyboard into all new words with which to express our feelings about rain.

Meanwhile, Ooame, pakaku, go away...and don't let the door hit you in the backside on your way out. We have enough cats and dogs inside without them falling from the sky for a month, thank you.

Looking out my Back Door

Looking out my back door

Sorry for skipping days. The rain and cold kinda get me down. This has been one of the wettest Junes in history. We need to make hay to pay the infernal property tax. We can live on our other income...we are pretty frugal folks....but the taxes we have to pay to keep on farming are pretty steep.

You cannot make hay in the rain. At least no flooding so far this year.

Great Spangled Fritillary right on the back step

However, there is always a bright side. You can see deer and fawns pretty much every day without leaving the yard. Foxes. Bunnies with a predilection for beans and peas. I hung some fabric softener sheets on strings out in the pea patch and laid down a big swath of mulch between the brushy fence line and the veggies.

Time will tell if this will work.

The robins and catbirds are planting mulberries
I wonder if they think they will grow here.

I think there was a deer eating mulberries yesterday when I went out to walk Daisy. Something coughed right under the trees...about ten feet from me...and then the bushes rustled and parted as if something large was in there. The touch-me-not is already tall enough to hide a deer. It loves this weather.

Deer path going through our hedgerow to the housing development next door

Although we do not love this weather...and that is putting it mildly, there is always something of interest and delight right outside the door. If I could speak crow I would be getting quite and earful right now in fact.

And speaking of crows. If you want to see...and hear...a small flock of Fish Crows, the parking lot of the Gloversville Tractor Supply has them, along with a mess of Ring-Billed Gulls. Their caw is very distinct from that of the American Crow that is more common here. Sounds kind of like a cartoon! You'll know it when you hear it.

The Climate in Upstate NY

There's trees in them thar hills. And brush. And swamps and bears and rocks.

Never mind the rain. Everyone is tired of talking about it, thinking about it, and living with it.

What I mean is the kind of atmosphere that exists when two very terrible men have been running loose for weeks and no one knows how to deal with such a thing. You can lock up and look out and hope they catch them, but you really never know.

Since the break out from Dannemora Prison has even made Fox News (where much of the discussion was so wrong as to be absurd....guess they don't realize just how wild it is up here) I'm sure you know what I mean.

We are quite some distance away, but everyone knows someone involved in this. Liz used to inspect five farms up there so she knows folks....and old friends from long ago still live there.....and we have had this on our minds. NY is a big state, but Upstate is a small community, no matter how many people live here.

I guess this has been on  everyone's else's minds too. 

Beck and the boss were over at the Dollar Store yesterday picking up some spaghetti sauce and stuff. The boss called me to be sure of the brand.

Just as he did, I saw the news on Facebook that one of the escapees had been shot by police. I told him and he mentioned it to the people near him in the store.

As word spread up and down the aisles, cheering broke out. People shook their fists and said, "Yeah!" Someone ran outside and hollered across the street with the news.

There was much relief.

I don't think of it as bloodthirsty or wrong headed either. People have been scared of these guys...and still are of the one who is left. When even a man's own family is relieved that he is no longer a threat to them, you can hardly blame people for being glad.

The sooner they catch the other one the better.

And, just about five minutes after I posted this comes the news that they did!

Good job!

Sunday Stills....Tall Buildiings

For this week's challenge, Ed asked for buildings over four stories. Around here those are pretty scarce on the ground, so I am going to get a little creative. What with the cellar and attic and the really high ceilings, we have, in theory, four stories here....add the tower and we should be able to call it over four...with a little stretching.....

Anyhow, I looked up the definition of a story and got just over 10 feet. Since the tower is something like 72' I should be good to go. When we had a roof put on the tower a few years back the company had to bring in extra scaffolding because they didn't have enough to get up there.

For more Sunday Stills.......

Looking out my Back Door

Through the screen door from where I sit in the kitchen

The mulberry trees are a madhouse of birds and mammals. We have more Robins this year than I imagined were possible in one place. And Catbirds. There are dozens of them too.

A red squirrel showed up the other day and is quite ferocious in screeching and chattering at me whenever I go outdoors. Since the trees overlook the garlic patch, the compost bin and where we park the car....and where I walk the Doodlebop..... he gets quite a lot of vocal exercise.

The Winesap apple tree is working hard

He is joined by one of the several billion chipmunks that have invaded here this summer. The little stripy rat somehow sat right on the end of a branch peering down at me and stuffing berries in his cheek pouches last night when I was looking over our visitors.

Bold little beggar.

I had some fun with one on the sitting porch..... I was potting Abutilon when I heard a rustling very near. I leaned over the railing to find a chippy slipping and sliding up the shiny bark of a new branch of box elder. Upon reaching the top he began to chew and gather leaves at a great rate. I watched for a couple of refills ...

And then....

Boo!! Just because I'm a meany. And because he cleaned out the bird feeder and buried all the seeds in the house plants on the porch, whereupon they all sprouted and made a Godawful mess.

Spooky sky, looking west at sunset

Meanwhile Becky discovered a much larger mammal sneaking mulberries when no one was looking. Jack, the pony, has a couple of trees in his pasture and the other day he was daintily sipping the fruit off the ends of the branches.

Looks as if someone has been polishing the mulberry leaves

Sometimes, when Nothing seems to go your Way

Ya gotta have a cow.

.....glad to be able to help.

Triumverate

Stanleeeeeeeyyyyyy.....get over here!!!

I saw you over there billing and cooing with Ruth
You're history, boy!

 

I'm leaving you for Steve

He's fluffier any way

Irish Twins

If you see my next younger brother today, wish him a very happy birthday. I will try to give him a call later.....

He's the one with music flowing from him like a spring, or a well filled with magic. We  love to listen to him play and sing.

He used to relish this short time each year when he and I are the same age. I wonder....nah....it's probably not nearly as much fun any more as it was back when we were ten.

Anyhow, have a happy, Michael. We love you dearly. Maybe you could come up to camp this year.......

Rain without End Amen

Wildlife of the battlefield. An ebony jewelwing??

Yeah, no hay is gonna get made any time soon. The boss worked on the boy's tractor all day yesterday trying to figure out why it won't start. Batteries seem fine, ground wires ditto, terminals all cleaned and tightened, and many other reasons for lack of spark examined. Oh well, at least it was a good day for the garden. *****Update: brand new batteries were toast. The company replaced them without charge.******

Got another bed of onions weeded out for what seems like the hundredth time and cleaned up the garlic patch...again. That will be ready for harvest real soon. Scapes have been scalped and frozen for winter's soups...tips of the big leaves are already turning brown a little bit.

At least most of the ground has been planted, which is kind of a sad statement for almost July. I still have one flat of tomatoes that could go in the dirt. Or Liz can sell them at a swap. It's such a gamble. If the blight holds off then it is well worth putting them in...lots of sauce can be made for winter. 

If the blight hits, then it's an awful waste of ground that could be planted to something more blight resistant.  Oh, well....it is what it is.

Called in the cutting instructions for the beef yesterday and the freezer is defrosted, clean, refrozen and ready. As are we. Been out of beef a very long time and if I don't see a sausage again for a while that will be just fine.

Thinking...if it doesn't rain the next hour or so..... I may fill some big pots and buckets with dirt and put some more herbs in them. Nothing like homegrown....

Meanwhile I just spotted an entire litter of baby bunnies in the beets.....

Devil's Den, looking at Little Roudtop

Bucket List

Meade's Headquarters

Nearly everybody has one even if they don't call it that.
For the boss a big one on his list was to get to Gettysburg. I know, I know.... Pennsylvania, even the southern part of the state, isn't all that far from here.

However, when there are cows to milk, old cars and trucks that are prone to fail and three better places to put every dollar that goes through your hands, such trips are honored more in talk than in action.

However, last Friday night around ten PM our boy called from the road....a road he had been driving since late afternoon in Washington DC. Traffic had stalled him here and stopped him there and he was going to be very, very late.

"Want to go to Gettysburg tomorrow?" he had his sister ask his dad. Affirmative if tentative. We had talked about doing this for our 30th anniversary, but talk was as far as we had gotten.

And then they hollered in to me...in the shower of course....did I want to go to?

Well of course I did. Although other wars have had my attention, what with reading Kenneth Roberts, Walter D. Edmonds, and WEB Griffin, the Civil War has long been the focus of much interest in my family.

Mom says I had three great grandfathers who fought in it. My paternal grandparents visited many a battlefield, as did my own folks.

Yeah, he climbed up inside the monument picture above.

And besides....road trip.....

And so we left the farm before six in the morning to return well after eleven at night. We saw all we could see in a day. Walking, then driving, after I petered out a bit. We climbed down Little Round Top and then back up, clambered over the Devil's Den. Found the monuments to the regiments of two of those great grandpas. Ate black raspberries.

Dodged poison ivy. Listened to reminiscing about 911 by strangers who met at the Pennsylvania monument, struck as we were by the atmosphere. Everybody talks about that because everybody feels it.

How could you not?

I thought all day of how it must have been for young farm boys who had to march and charge and fight over the broken, rocky ground. And 47.7% of the working population was made up of farmers in 1870, so there must have been a lot of them there.

A lot of New Yorkers too. So many monuments to NY regiments everywhere we looked.

We dodged a hurricane. Bill stopped by just as we climbed down from the Devil's Den and dumped a pile of Gulf Coast weather right on our heads. Some of these photos were taken by Alan who got out of the car in the rain so we wouldn't miss them.

It was all we could have dreamed of and yet so much more. I expected smaller...emptier...maybe a big hay field with a few fences. That is not how it is.

Thanks, guy, for a day we will remember for a very long time. I would surely go again someday.....

Irish Brigade monument, taken by Alan

29th Ohio, also by Alan

137th NY, by Alan