I am Tempted

Got humidity?

To complain about the heat. Besides being one of the wettest on record here, this summer has been cool so far. Downright cold even. I am still washing flannel shirts and hoodies every week.

Robins have taken over this porch
and will not allow me to sit here. It is one of my favorite things to do in summer

We have noticed that the berries are rather sour and the vegetables slow to mature, probably because of this trend. 

Summer has a stinger

Now we are going to get some genuine summer weather, well into the nineties they say......although even at its hottest it won't rival the places where some of you are.....

I hear numbers with three digits bandied about all across the country. Can't remember the last time we saw that and don't want to, not at all, at all. Nineties in a region this humid are nasty, but compared to hundreds....no thank you! The corn is going to love it though. I'll bet you can almost hear it growing even this morning.

And a fancy little skirt

Plus all I have to do to get myself over the whining is to look through pictures taken during one of our other seasons.

Sunday Stills.....Landscapes

Lookin' out my back door

I was lucky enough not to have to leave home to take these, although the latter three did require a long walk. The top one was taken from the back step, just by opening the door.

For more Sunday Stills.......

Cough

The things you see

The boss went to a ballgame last night so I rewarded myself for putting up vegetables all day with a walk up behind the barn. Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak, as Sunday Stills is landscapes this week and you have to get up high here to get good ones.

I was right behind the barn, not fifty feet from where the boss had been unloading the hay he made all day, when a sharp cough about startled me out of my skin. It was like a big dog barking right at me really close.

Aliens have landed

She was startled too I guess, as she bounded off through the tall weeds with her tail flagging in alarm. I don't know that I have ever been quite that close to a wild deer before, nor do I want to be again. Three feet is not enough distance between us!

With the cows gone there is far too much wilding going on. I spent some time waiting to see the source of some sharp chip notes right in the barnyard to find that they were indeed produced by a pair of Indigo Buntings... The grasses have grown tall with no cows to nibble them down and they were eating the seeds. One of the does, maybe the one I almost stepped on, had her fawns right there this spring.

Later I stalked two birds all the way down the hill, only to find that they were just Song Sparrows.....of which we have dozens and dozens. Oh, well, someday I will see another Lincoln's. It was a good walk  and just the right way for a nature loving introvert to spend an evening off.

You may want to turn your volume up a little while you watch our tiny dancer and hear her new favorite song. 

Turn About is Fair Play

Just putting the deer on notice for November. They ate every single one of Lizzie's broccoli, cauliflower and all the great big cabbages that were growing up in the top garden.

In one night!

So I want them to know that we believe in fair and balanced.

Just sayin'....

And if the bunnies don't stop eating the bottoms off all the beans......

USA! USA! Not to mention Canada and Mexico....
in the clouds during the storm the other day.

Ropin' and Wranglin' Eastern Style

Cue the Jaws music

For the past couple of years the area in front of the porch of the camp where we stay has been a fishing tackle Bermuda Triangle...a sink hole that ate hooks and lures and line like it was its job.

We figured that a big log had gotten shoved up in there by bad ice a few years back, but the water is deep and dark and cold, so we just fished off the corners or accepted that we were going to lose some gear.

Then, this year, there was a stick poking up through the water just a few feet off the porch. Mappy grabbed it from his kayak one day and discovered that it was attached to something much larger....our log! Guess the waters had moved it closer into shore over the wildness of the winter.

Then one day he got sick of looking at it and went after it with the big boat and some rope.

Although you really can't see it, as most of it, not unlike an iceberg, is under water, it was as long as the boat and pretty thick. That limb is just a little offshoot.....He towed it off somewhere and got rid of it.......

I am sure, although they won't know why, future porch anglers will lose a lot less tackle now.

And I know that I sure enjoyed having a few days wherein I could cast right straight off the porch and catch nice fish.

Really, it is MUCH larger than it looks.

On that note, just how spoiled are we? Good fishing without ever leaving the cabin....just step out on the porch, cast out a lure or worm, and plop down in a comfy deck chair. Life does NOT get any better than that. 

What the little ones see when they feed the duckes off the porch

Digging

We dug the garlic yesterday. When we came home from camp it wasn't ready but just in those few days suddenly it was.

It is one of my favorite crops as long as I can get the gumption to plant it in October when it needs to go in. I am usually pretty well over gardening by then.

Good thing the writing and most of the bookkeeping is done for the week because there are beans and beans and beans out there and a pretty good bunch of squash too.

So guess what we are doing today....

Mornings

Hope you can stand more lake photos.....

Lake Babies

We haz em.

Weedy

Camp was great; incredible sunrises, lots of birds, interesting fish, and peace. 

Quiet. Just the sounds of wind and water, birds singing and fish jumping....only a few motor boats...hardly enough to mention.

Calm. It is easy to be calm at the lake.

Basswood flowers

We had tons of company, but they were people we wait all year to see and talk to....very sweet and good. 

The weather was strange. Beyond strange. It got so cold we wore all the heavy clothes we brought along just in case...and could have used some more.

However, there was a basswood tree draped over the roof of the cabin, with mops of blooms, fragrant as the honey the humming bees were making of it. All the basswood trees in the forest were in bloom at the same time. It smelled so good!

I saw a garter snake under the cabin that had blue stripes on its back. I had heard of them, but had sure never seen one before. Was pretty excited by same.

Our boy came up the last two days, thus never a dull moment ensued. He took me out trolling....rowing btw...for bass with his fly rod. When he hooked onto one with that light tackle, yowsa!! What excitement! It was really a lot of fun and I wished for more days with which to partake.

Now we are home with gardens full of weeds to tend to, as well as the first peas and beans and squash and garlic to dig an onions to freeze.

It's all good. 

Sunday Stills.....Groups of Birds

Getting ready to rumble

Duck wars

And stay out!

A perfect challenge for us for this week, as we were at the lake, where birds abounded. Ducks, as you can see, don't much like each other. The Mallards and Black Ducks were at war all week. They would start a quick, staccato quacking as soon as they saw each other, sail towards one another, check each other out, and then erupt into violent ducking and splashing. Quite entertaining, even if wet....even in the photos only showing a couple of ducks there were actually many more....they were just underneath the melee. 

For more Sunday Stills......

What was That....Wait, what IS that?

Camp starts this noon. See you next Saturday afternoon.

However, things are still rolling here at the farm. Welcome to the madhouse....I get up  a couple hours before the rest of the crew for some quiet time and to get some chores done while house is still.

First job is to take Daisy out for her little walkies.

I opened the porch door to find that during the night something had wreaked havoc.

The snow shovel, brush nippers, tool boxes, garden stuff, hose nozzles, etc. were strewn and tangled everywhere.

The wood of the wall....not the world's sturdiest wall...was chewed away on the corner of the door to make a round hole so whatever it was could escape.

My guess when I went out there and sniffed the air was fox...it was sort of a wet, rank, doggy odor. The hole is about the right size....

I woke up the boss, because that is what wives do. He got out the .410 and put in a couple of shells and we took a look around. 

After I put on gloves and cleaned up the mess that is. Lots of rabies around here....so Peggy will have to be carried through the porch for a few days.

Something rustled in the bushes under the mulberry tree, but odds are that was just a deer. We went back inside to talk about the Amsterdam Mohawks ball game he went to last night...guess he had quite a time.

And then.....my cell phone rang. It was Liz, making no sense at all. Something about a calf, but incoherent with excitement.

 We bred both old cows last year. Moon didn't calve to the service we had on record and neither did Bama. We didn't care too much....

We had vague memories of talking about breeding Moon a second time, but it wasn't written down (my bad) and no one actually remembered doing it. I thought she looked bred when we brought them in the barn last Saturday because of concern that local fireworks might scare them. She wasn't bagging though, and I just said, nah, we never bred her again.

Guess we did though. It's a girl.

Field Names

Speaking of cars, I miss this guy

They tend to grow from descriptions that pop up in conversations about the day's plans and adventures.

"You know, the field where Dad put the little tree through the haybine...." The boss's dad that is.....it soon becomes "The Brush Lot." Trees and brush are not friends to haybines.

60-Acre Lot, 30-Acre Lot, Field behind the Barn, Old Pasture Lot, Hickory Tree Field, and Seven County Hill are self-explanatory.

The T Field is shaped like a "T", which shows clearly on aerial photographs.

The Old Spreader Field is where they tipped up an old manure spreader to cannibalize the wheels for something else.

Sometimes there is a story behind the names. So it is with Stolen Car Lot. It was before my time, so I don't know what it's old name was, but years ago, when the boss was a boy, someone stole a car nearby. They must have panicked when pursued, because they didn't keep it long.

It was just after the family bought this farm....they had been farming on the other one a while.

 His older brother was hunting out there when he spotted something shiny stuffed under the brush of the hedgerow.

It was the stolen car. It had been partly dismantled and the parts were scattered under canvases. 

The situation was reported to the appropriate authorities, who came and investigated and had it towed out.

So the field got a new name. We still wonder how they got it back there.