Places of the Heart

View from the back seat

Our boy took me out scouting fields yesterday on his quad. We stopped to see what the boss was doing with one of the hay wagons...cannibalizing a hub off an old derelict one to get this functional one back in business.

Will the old one fit?

Then we went to some of the back fields to see what the hay looks like. Some is pretty good. Some is pretty awful. It is all pretty though.

It was a nice ride. I love to get a chance to see all the way back fields without hiking up all those hills, although I do walk as far as the 30-Acre Lot pretty much every week, and back to Hickory Tree Field and the Old Spreader Field pretty often.

Sunday Stills.....Red

For more Sunday Stills........

Raising the next Generation

Of birds and birders......

The robins are fledging today. Peggy is so excited. Me too. Now I can use my porch.

Prepping

For the Zombie Apocalypse. 

We'll get the vampires first!

And you know what? As I watch the world being sucked ever-downward in a spiral of junior high school drama, no substance, no sense, I wonder if being prepared for some kind of apocalypse might not be a bad idea.

I try to keep things cheerful here, but I sure have seen some crazy stuff this week. Seriously, has everyone lost their values completely? Don't look for me to get all worked up over that infamous large carnivorous kitty cat that perished a world away from here. I didn't know him personally and neither did the loonies who think he was the Messiah.

They believe that they did though and I guess that's all that matters.

Meanwhile we had a marvelous crop of garlic...bloodsucking undead need not apply at Northview Farm. I need to find somewhere other than the kitchen to hang the three braids we made though. The place smells like a pizzeria...not a bad thing, but a little goes a long way.

Keep smiling....it confuses the heck out of them. 

The aliens landed while we were looking the other way, worrying about silly stuff.
The pods were left behind and will hatch any day now.

Hunter

Intrepid

I have always somewhat disrespected Daisy....not that I wasn't fond of her or anything....but..... 

We got her because of the cute factor...and because she had eaten some turkeys that were off limits and was facing eviction from her premises....

For the two years that she has lived here I have tended her faithfully. Tending faithfully is in a farmer's heart.... I found dog food she can eat and a way she can eat it.

Never saw such a dog for digestive difficulties. For two years, twice a day, a third of can of minced chicken Pedigree mixed with ample water has been served...it usually works...she is generally okay. Her housebreaking is pretty shaky. No biggie...she is small and so are her "accidents". She is however, confined to the kitchen.

After half a lifetime with herding dogs....they live to serve and protect and be partners...her independence was a barrier to us being buddies of the heart. I didn't blame her a bit. She had no reason to trust a stranger...me....and hounds tend to go their own way anyhow.

Not that I haven't always liked her, quite a lot in fact...I'm a doggy person, and she is certainly a dog, albeit in a pretty small package...but she was never quite a border collie. With a border collie there is an intense sensation of minds that are tied together...an invisible bond of cooperation and love and the will to work..I haven't found it with any other dogs, but if you have BCs you know what I mean. You can feel their brains there, reaching out to link with yours...a bond like no other. I still want another one....

Then one day she convinced us to let her get the mouse in the dining room. Ten minutes and it was dispatched and delivered.

Second mouse. Ditto.

The plague of chipmunks and bunnies on the porches and the garden was next. She made them her life's work right after I pointed them out to her.

 I don't think she has caught any yet, but not for lack of effort.

I am proud of her. She weighs about ten pounds and isn't much more than a hand and a half high at the withers.

She is eight, and has many health problems related to a hard life and being a double dapple dachshund with all that implies. She can barely see out of her too-small blue eyes.

That does not stop her from being a hunter.

This morning she was out, slowly making her way up the big back lawn to where the deer are eating Liz's garden. I think she is kind of tired after an insane cracker dog session last night when I was making much of her, and it is hot...but she is still game.

This is not a place where dogs can run unsupervised. Besides the Thruway, the state highway, the coyotes, owls, and foxes, there are leash laws. However, I suspect that if I did just let her run, the chipmunks and bunnies would be forced to take their business elsewhere.

I never expected to have a hunting dog, but I do. Good girl, Daisy.

All the Luxuries of Summer

Starting more days than not with perfect sunrises. Summer mornings are amazing.... I love stepping out of my room to gold and red light leaping down the hallway and dancing along the upstairs walls. This morning it came in through the front room windows and painted pretty red shapes on the wall by the stairs as it slipped between the carvings on the railing.

Getting dressed in under twenty minutes and not suffering the miseries of the frozen while doing so. In winter, while layering on all the turtlenecks and sweatshirts and sweaters that are required even indoors here, I often lament the absent wonders of light cotton shorts and Hawaiian shirts. In summer I just wear them.

Nibbling green beans on the way in from the garden. Yeah, and without even washing them first. Living dangerously, heh, heh, heh........ In fact, eating the imperfect ones while picking, right out there in the garden, as in, "Hey, this one is broken! Can't take that into the kitchen to freeze. Om, nom, nom....."

Hummingbirds in the Scarlet Runner Beans.

Scarlet Runner Beans.

Drying laundry on the clothesline. Those yards of heavy rope....none of your flimsy thin stuff for us farm women...are premium space in summer, as with all the folks living here there are lots of things to dry. A good hay day like yesterday is a good laundry day too.I start doing wash at daybreak and bring the last of it inside a couple of hours before the dew sets. It is not in any way punishing to do so either.....you never know when the hummers will hover by or an eagle will soar right overhead.

Playing Facebook games with my mother.....I am so lucky, not only to have a wonderful mother, and an amazing, clever, and loving father, but to have a mom who LIKES game requests and plays Bejeweled Blitz and all that stuff with me. 

It is sweet indeed to see her name and avatar there waiting for me and I am grateful every day...I like to play with my daughters and friends too, but moms are so special....It is also nice that my very first Internet friend from It's Your Turn back in 2000 when we first joined the Internet madhouse, is out of the hospital and back to play games and post funny stuff on my timeline.....You can sure make great friends with people you have never met, thanks to this amazing technology... I am grateful for that year round.

Lookin' out my Back Door

I could go on all day, but I guess you can tell I am not a fan of winter. Even with the heat sapping my get up and go so I have to go to bed early and all, I love this time of year. The grass is lying tawny in the old heifer pasture, head high to the pair of cows and the calf out there. Looking out over the field behind the house is like watching a moving painting by the Master, with soft white clouds sliding west to east across the hilltop all day long.

The day lilies are blooming as are the bee balm and the chicory, making every trip outdoors a treat. Now if only the robins on the sitting porch would fledge and let me sit out there of an evening.......

Honey, I Shrunk the......

Peggy??!!!????

And then I......

Kissed this.....

OK, not really, but I did take his picture....

Serenity with Red-eyed Vireo

Skunks

On that nice evening walk a couple of days ago, I saw something I really should have photographed. I wish I had although it was not in any way pretty.

Right at the top of the hill behind the barn, just before you exit the Thirty-acre Lot on the way home, there was a big pile of poo in the road.

And I do mean big.

I looked it over thoroughlly because it was truly unique. Taking up enough geography to cover a dinner platter (not mine, thank you) it consisted almost entirely of black, woolly fur with a few clumps of yellowish white thrown in.

Huh....

I diagnosed it as a last meal of a skunk....as a participant that is, but not as a diner.

Probably the remains of a coyote's dinner party. To say that he overindulged is a bit of an understatement. He must have eaten the whole thing, fur and all. The result was big enough to belong to a bear, but we haven't seen any sign of such in decades (for which I am thankful indeed!!!) I can hear him moaning now...."I can't believe I ate the whole thing...."

Personally I would not invite a skunk to either my dinner party or my menu.

And I had no idea that coyotes ate skunks. I thought that was the bailiwick of the Great Horned Owl and pretty much nobody else.

 We have been smelling skunks almost every night too.

Then the boss saw three of them on his way out to the T-Field for wood last night. We will have to BOLO them.....the large animal veterinary clinic where we have both done business since before our lives collided has warned of recent local rabies cases in Mephitis Mephitis. Not to mention the smell.

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