Spring is Happening

After a long, dry winter, we have been getting some rain for the past two weeks. Yesterday it was sunny for a while, so I ran out and snapped some "spring is here" photos. Then I realized that spring flowers are pretty much the same from one year to the next, and maybe people get bored with them.

If so, you can skip the rest of my post today.

Bleeding Heart. It took several years to get this to grow and bloom.

A camellia I grew from seed.

A really bright camellia, not shy.

Lots of flowers on this camellia.

Plain old chard. I planted some in the flower garden just for fun.

A late variety of daffodil.

Daisies and pansies

The Frog Castle. Named by little Jack.

Totally brazen tulip.

Back yard tulips that survived the chickens.

Red tulips are best.

No, yellow tulips are best.

I'm glad I took these yesterday. Today it is storming. If the rain gets too heavy, it will knock all the tulips down, as it does about half the time. That's okay, I've got a season's enjoyment out of them already. Next: the lilacs are starting to bloom!

More Plans that Fizzle

If we are destined to live until we learn all the lessons we're here to learn, I'll evidently be here quite a while longer.

The lesson I cannot seem to learn is: Do NOT make plans.

I like to make plans because, frankly, I'm a bit of a control freak. I've been worse since I had health problems and can't just run around and make up time. When I have things to accomplish, I make plans at least a day ahead of time.

This week I got a card from my doctor and also a call from her nurse. "You're overdue for blood tests, get in this week and have that taken care of." I'm okay with that, my test scores are always good, I don't even have to obsess about them. But there was a lot to do this week and I didn't get around to going for the tests until today, Friday.

I had water aerobics at 9. The gym is not too far from Kaiser, but their lab doesn't open until 8. I planned ahead by putting on my bathing suit and packing all my gym stuff the night before. This morning I grabbed everything at the door and left in plenty of time.

When I got to the lab, it was crowded with people, spilling out into the chairs in the hall. I had to take a number. When I finally got to the desk I asked, "What's up? I've never seen it like this." Evidently several doctors had sent out cards to their patients at the same time, suggesting they get blood tests this week. The blood department had to borrow personnel from elsewhere to handle all the business. I didn't get blood drawn until 9:15.

But FIRST, when I got to the desk, I was handed a pee cup. Well, that was sure fun since I was wearing a bathing suit under my clothes. A tight bathing suit that's really hard to squeeze into. Hope there were no hidden cameras.

While sitting in the waiting room I had noticed there were only 2 blood suckers on duty. A fairly old lady and a very young guy. I decided I wanted the older lady. So of course I got the young guy. I think blood suckers should have a minimum age of 35, the younger ones don't have the same touch. Actually they don't have ANY touch, in my experience.

By the time I finally got to water aerobics it was 9:30 and the class was half over. But it was a warm, sunny morning so I got an unplanned half hour after class to just float in the pool and mellow out.

I still haven't learned the control freak lesson. I have to go back for an optometrist's appointment this afternoon and I'm already trying to figure out what I should wear and when I have to leave here to be there in plenty of time, and what do I need to bring up to make sure it all gets handled properly. Probably should have just stayed there this morning and slept in a chair.

How Does He Doooo That?

Son Bob is studying (to me) some of the most boring stuff on the face of the earth. He's working for a 2-year certificate in HVAC. That has to do with heating, air conditioning, refrigeration (like the cold boxes at the grocery store) and the computer controls it takes to operate and monitor them.

As I've mentioned before, Bob has always been a strange kind of student, the kind that drove his teachers crazy. He's very social. While a teacher was talking, he could carry on conversations with two or three other kids and still - when the teacher stopped and said "Bob, what did I just say!" he could repeat probably the last 3 minutes word for word and the general gist of everything else.

Bob is dyslexic. He can read fairly well now, but he doesn't retain visual information well. Auditory information, however, goes directly to his brain and stays there.

On Thursdays he often asks me to read a chapter or two from one of his Refrigeration books aloud to him. Gaaaaaah! Gag me with a spoon. But I do it. I just plug my eyes directly to my mouth and read away, avoiding any engagement by my brain. I read really, really fast to get it over with. When I get to the end of a chapter I ask Bob the questions, thinking there's no way he could have retained any of that information, but he always does.

Today he had 30 "homework" questions that require written short answers, they weren't multiple-choice. He asked me to read a chapter to him while he did his homework. Just the thought of how that would work put me in brain freeze. I asked him to please clarify, sure I'd misunderstood the request. Nope.

So I read the chapter while Bob sat at the counter with his back turned to me. By the time I got to the chapter questions and hour later, he had finished the homework. He answered every single chapter question with no hesitation. And then he packed up and took off for class.

I'm still sitting here in a daze, waiting for enough brain cells to recharge so I can remember what I need to do with the rest of my afternoon. Take a nap? Yeah, that sounds good.

Bureaucratic Doublespeak

For those who don't have your own EIR to read, I thought you might enjoy this sample of bureaucratic literature from Sacramento County. It's from the Aesthetics section, page 5-5.

"At build-out in 2072 the mass of the landfill will be more prominent on the horizon. From east and west views the landfill will nearly triple its mass horizontally and increase its vertical massing from approximately 280 in elevation feet to 325 feet. The 1994 Environmental Impact Report (94-0319) identified this massing as a significant and unavoidable impact. However, its significance is in part derived from the horizontal and vertical massing relative to the low relief of the surrounding landscape. Furthermore, this increased massing will occur over six decades, providing years for those within sight of the landfill to slowly adjust to the slow-growing silhouette."

What does it actually say? That the landfill is a big stinking eyesore. That it will become an even bigger eyesore. The county does not plan to do anything about that (therefore it is unavoidable).  It just LOOKS so big, though, because the land around it is low and flat. And anyway, it's going to grow slowly enough that people might not notice.

There is no truth in the land of bureaucracy. 

I should try thinking like they do…My butt isn't really so big, it just looks that way because of the skinny people I'm standing next to. And besides, it greq so slowly no one will notice.

Stupid, Stinking, Dumbass Local Government

Have you ever had to read one of these? I have. I hate them. They make a pit in the bottom of my stomach. For the past 25 years the Sacramento County government, overseen by a Board of Supervisors, has been trying everything they can think of to turn our farming community into whatever project of the moment strikes them.

They got their toe into Sloughhouse more than 35 years ago when they snuck in and bought property without telling the seller they intended to turn it into Sacramento County's dump. This is lie #1. 

Picture this, if you will: Sloughhouse is a long narrow valley between Deer Creek and the Cosumnes River. To the north it's bordered by foothills. To the south is the slightly higher plain that is Wilton. Jackson Road is a two lane highway that goes through the valley, taking traffic to Amador County to the east. Sloughhouse is about 15 miles from the city of Sacramento to the west, and 5 miles from Rancho Murieta to the east.

The dump - Kiefer Landfill - sits in the foothills just north of Deer Creek. The oldest part of it is unlined, which means that dump juice leaks into the Deer Creek aquifer. The dump was supposed to close after it had been in operation for 25 years. This is lie #2.

The dump did not close, the county decided to make it bigger. Because it was polluting water under neighboring farm properties, they declared that everything within a designated space around the dump would become a "Buffer Zone" for their festering problem. This would be cheaper than actually cleaning up the problem, though they were gambling that the pollution wouldn't spread beyond their arbitrary line (a gamble they lost). This zone included parts of several people's properties. They bought some out, they threatened condemnation on others. They didn't end up with everything they initially wanted. Like my property and a couple of other pieces. I'm not sure why they gave up on mine, perhaps the appraiser went back to the office and reported the snarling, rabid lady who met him at the door and told him in no uncertain terms to get his ass off the place and don't ever come back? I'm sure he'd seen the same at my aunt's house, but my property was not needed for a dump expansion. Whatever.

Some farmers owned land that stretched from the foothills (where they had their houses), on down through the bottomland. They sold their entire pieces to the county, opting not to keep just the bottomland. (You can't get a permit to build a new house on the bottomland because it's a floodplain.) So this put some cropland into the county's hands as well.

In their Negative Declaration for the buffer project the county said their intention was to have all lands remain in the same use that they were previously. (For those of you abroad, a Neg Dec means the project won't cause significant damage to require mitigation.) Well, this was lie #3. 

Ever since the county has owned land here they've been trying to change everything. First, the farmers who were leasing the property had to go through the county's bid process, because the county of course doesn't operate on a handshake like the rest of us have for a hundred years. 

At least twice a year I hear of some new project that some county idiot is proposing for MY community. Once I heard they wanted to turn it into a golf course. None of us play golf. Isn't it more important to supply food? Another plan was to turn it into some kind of park. Those of us who live here joked that they could put in lookout points where people could park off the highway and observe the growing mountain of the dump. There was a plan to put a bike trail along the Cosumnes River, which would have made it considerably easier for people to steal copper from our water pumps. No one ever came out here and asked what we residents thought about anything.

Now, you need to know that the only thing that has saved us so far is our own County Supervisor, Don Nottoli. He was born and raised in nearby Galt. He worked for our previous supervisor when he was young and took over that office several years ago. He knows us all by name. He and his assistant Pat have come to our rescue, not only from the county, but also from Caltrans' stupid projects. If it wasn't for Don, we'd probably be long gone. So I don't include him in my assessment of county government.

I think it was in 2009 that the county first started talking about creating a special planning area (SPA). They held carefully contrived public meetings that pretty much allowed them to ignore the very vociferous comments they got from this community. And now they've put their plans into a 400-page EIR. Citizens have the opportunity to write comments and submit them. That deadline is April 3. I just got the EIR last week. They plan ahead to cut your comment time down to as short as they can because, once again, they know they are not going to like what they hear. 

So that's a couple of weeks to examine every word in the document with a fine tooth comb, because it's a landmine of hidden intentions, partial truths, and glossing over big problems. I have only read 4 pages so far, and found that they want once again to widen Jackson Highway to 4 lanes through Sloughhouse. Why? Caltrans tried this and gave up, there's no room down here for a 4 lane highway without cutting a wide swath through valuable farmland, or removing every house down here. The houses were all built when Jackson Road was used by stagecoaches, it's NOT as one county employee (who probably moved here from Los Angeles or the Bay Area 5 years ago) suggested, that we were all stupid to build our houses so close to the road that has now become a major thoroughfare. Of course if you eliminate all the houses, you get rid of us pesky people who live here.

I'm beginning to understand what it must have been like for my Polish ancestors, living where every conqueror in Europe rode through. We in Sloughhouse have done a great job of preserving our riparian habitat, of taking good care of our farmland, and of providing reasonably-priced fresh vegetables directly to the public. Even through a constant attack from our own county government. 

I will undoubtedly be in a pissy mood for a while, sorry about that. 

Baby Pigeon Report

The baby pigeons are growing and doing just fine. The gray baby has most of its feathers and is eating on its own when I'm not looking (it's not stupid, if you admit you can eat on your own, no one will feed you). Here it is a week ago.

And here it is now.

The gray baby is such a sweetie. It jumps into my hand and rides to the counter where I feed it, then jumps down onto the paper towel. It opens its mouth for either the tube or some pigeon peas. All it takes is a soft touch to handle it. I love this pigeon.

Here is the white baby a week ago.

I'm not trying to pop its head off, I'm trying to steady its head so I can feed it. This baby is not a sweetie, it thinks it's a dragon. It wants to be fed, but I have to pry its mouth open every time, while it beats me with its wings. I think its parents should thank me for bringing it into the house. Here is the "white" baby now.

It's not really white anymore, it has spots and a dark head. Those wings are already longer than the gray baby's wings, and it can really use them for a karate chop.

This is my pigeon-feeding assistant.

Gollie doesn't bother any of the birds when they're in their cages, but she always looks like she's ready just in case one of them happens to fall off the counter. (Pigeons don't fall off things, that's why their parents can raise them in precarious places.)

There haven't been anymore incidents of babycide out in the pigeon coop. That's because there haven't been any babies. I've been replacing real eggs with these:

Hopefully the adults will all get paired up and the single ones will start hanging out in nightclubs and leaving the families alone. In the meantime, there are 4 pairs sitting on these plastic eggs. I call it pigeon birth control. Oh my, would Rick Santorum disapprove of that? T...S...

Mama Mia

My life is not always as dull as it seems, sometimes I get out and have a great time. This week I got to see the national touring stage production of Mama Mia! I went with Melanie (my former workmate) and her guy, Adam. We had the best seats EVER...front row center. As Melanie said, the actors could spit on us, we were so close.

This will be my next sewing project. I'll make it for Melanie, she could totally wear it. It's her color, too.

One of the things I love about ABBA is the fans. We are all people who like to have fun. 

I still have only 2 CDs in my car. Both of them are ABBA and I play them all the time. So, of course, I know all the songs. That makes it easy to sing along. The people who wrote the play seem to know this about ABBA fans, so at the end of the play there is a medley of songs that encourages the whole audience to stand up and dance and sing along. This is something Melanie and I would have done anyway, but it's more fun when you have lots of company. It reminded me of the 15,000 people in Las Vegas who sang "Hey Jude" along with Paul McCartney a few years ago. 

With all the dissension in this country, most of it the result of butt stupidity, it's so neat to be able to share a good time.

Aparagus!

These photos were taken by Rick Grimshaw. The fields are muddy for the first time this winter.

But there's asparagus to pick. And eat, of course. We're having some for dinner.

It's officially springtime in Sloughhouse.

Water Aerobics

Getting myself up out of bed at 7 a.m. on a stormy day to get to the water aerobics class takes as much effort as the class itself. Some of it is mental effort, I have to invent new lies to myself. ("I have to wash my hair anyway, might as well do it at the gym.") This morning, with steam wafting from the 85° pool, I was reminded of the hot springs macaques of Japan. There were 8 of us this morning. We looked a lot like this, except we were all wearing hats.  

Bad Parenting?

The past couple of weeks have been rough ones in the pigeon pen. I've found 3 dead babies on the ground. This past week I found a baby in the middle of the floor, it's sibling nearby and dead. Two days later there were two very small babies moved out of their nests. I'm not sure if it's bad parenting, or if there is a child abuser in the flock.

This is the first baby I found alive on the pen floor. It took about an hour for this baby to adapt to being tubefed and kept in a warm, clean place in the house.

Now it whistles when it sees me coming, opens its beak for the tube, and cooperates nicely to have pigeon peas rolled down its throat. I'm not sure how I'm going to integrate it back into the pen when it's older.

I had my eye on this baby and its sibling from the time they were hatched, hoping nothing would bother them, and thinking I might have to bring them in if it looked like there was a problem.

I wanted to leave them with the parents as long as possible. It's very hard to handraise a newborn pigeon, it gets easier when they're a few days old.

This baby's sibling had been dragged out of the nest and pecked, all in about an hour after I checked them. I brought them both in right away, hoping they were old enough to tubefeed. The injured sibling didn't have bad wounds, but it did have an impacted crop. It's parents had been feeding it full-sized peas. I wouldn't do this, myself, until a baby was as big as the one in the top picture. I tried massaging the crop and that seemed to loosen up the stuff inside it, but this morning the baby was dead.

The remaining small one seems to be doing fine. I mixed a little yogurt with its food, something I read about online and am hoping will help. So far, so good.

These babies are in aquariums in the den along with the chicks and Bob and his computer. There are now 9 barred bantam OE (1 succumbed), 4 Anconas, and 4 bantam Dominiques. Next week I can move them to larger brooders in the GARAGE!!!

Goodbye and Good Riddance

To all my friends and relatives who have put up with my complaints about the crap in my garage over the years, this was a great day.

First time the Jeep has seen sunshine in 27 years. First time I've been able to walk through the garage and not trip over boxes of useless (but precious, of course) junk in 25 years.

Pony Fun

I met some friends at a small horse show on Sunday. Most of it was boring, western pleasure especially is a snoozer. Even the horses look half asleep. There was a little excitement when a so-called horse trainer got dumped in the ring. That was interesting. She was not hurt.

Most of the people at this show did not have huge fancy trucks and trailers and immaculate horses that have been trained to perfection. They seemed to be regular people with backyard horses who were out having a good time.

There were a lot of kids showing. Not the kind whose parents were doing all the work for them, the do-it-yourself kind. It was so much fun to watch them. This group of kids had miniature horses that followed them around like dogs. (You can see how warm it was by the girl's shorts and tank top.) These kids had body-clipped their little horses. You can see they don't have the sturdy little legs and cobby body of a Shetland.

Some of the little guys were still shaggy in their winter coats, like the one below. This boy was spending a lot of time talking to his horse. They were buddies.

One of the parents said that the little horses had been rescued from a bad situation and the kids were in a group that was taking care of them and learning to handle them. The kids were all waiting to show their animals in a halter class. They also participated in showmanship. The horses - let's just call them ponies, okay? - are too small to be ridden.

Here's a pair in the showmanship class. The girl is checking to make sure her pony's feet are properly positioned. The pony is making her work.

Showmanship is a great way for kids to learn how to handle their animals. It doesn't matter if they're showing horses, sheep, pigs, guinea pigs, chickens, or rabbits, the lessons and skills are the same.

This is an actual pony, not a miniature horse. I'm not sure what breed, it seems bigger than a Shetland and smaller than a Welsh. This was my favorite pair to watch at the show. The little girl was all business and in the first class or two the pony was not cooperating. He whinnied and bucked and didn't pay attention, as only an annoying little pony could do. They placed last in the first class. The girl was not pleased with her little troublemaker. Her mom met them at the exit gate. "He didn't do very well, did he? You know why? Because you're not being fair with him, you're in his mouth and picking on him. If you don't want to do this right and give him a chance, just go load him in the trailer and we'll go home today." (To be entirely fair, the pony WAS being a stinker, but the mom did a good job using the situation as a learning opportunity.)

By the end of the day, the pair was working like a team, and they won their last class (they are on the left).

The two little girls on the right were also fun to watch. Their regular-size horses were ancient. The oldsters were content to carry their riders around the ring as long as they didn't have to be too far apart.

Showing horses can be very hard, horses are just so big and they aren't eager to please like a dog is. They can get you and themselves into trouble, they can get distracted and walk all over your feet, snot on your clothes, whack you with their heads. But little girls don't care.

See? She smiled like this all day. This is little girl heaven. I know, I've been there.

We watched some classes with adults in them, too, but they weren't as fun.

What's Going on Here?

When you're messing around with the zoom lens on your camera, sometimes you get the strangest pictures. Can you figure out what this is?

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Does this help?

Taken in a warm-up ring at a horse show. The two people in the middle weren't even that close, the lens just makes it seem like 2 centaurs smooching.

Pigeons in the Sun

It was sunny and warm today, almost 70 degrees I think. The pigeons really needed to get out and stretch their wings, so I opened their door and sat outside with them for a couple of hours to guard against the hawk. Then I put fresh food in their feeder and they all flew back in the pen and I closed the door. Such well-trained birds they are. I had my camera with me and took some pictures so you could see how pretty pigeons are with the sun on their feathers.

Big Red, who survived his run-in with the hawk

Little Red, his wife

Furniture shopping, choosing just the right stick

Oh no, she didn't measure the door. Will it fit?
She tried twice and it didn't so she backed up and looked at the situation,
 then turned her head sideways and the stick went through the door.

Even plain old gray pigeons are beautiful in the sun.

Piebald pigeon.

Piebald pigeon, back view, looks like modern art.

Miss Freckles

Big Spot guards the door, all who pass must have his permission.

Old German Owl

A couple of years ago when Katherine went to the poultry show up north in Eureka, she brought me back a little spotted pigeon, Val. Today I have about 26 pigeons and at least half of them are spotted. None are white with brown wings like the Taganrogs. Only one purebred Taganrog baby was ever raised in the 5 or 6 years I've had them, and I raised that one myself.

I do like to raise purebred chickens and show them, but I love my pen of mostly mutt pigeons. They're so colorful and fun.

This year when Katherine went to Eureka, she sent me pictures of the pigeons that were available. This is the one she brought back.

It's an Old German Owl. It has the coloring of the Taganrogs, and the same short little beak. I haven't put him into the pigeon pen yet, it's good to keep a new bird isolated for a few days just to make sure it's healthy. When I do put Ogo in the pen, I won't be able to let the pigeons out to fly for quite a while.

That's becoming very hard anyway. That nasty little hawk that has killed several of my pigeons did not migrate out of here this spring. It appears to have moved into the area. That's not surprising, since there is a large flock of feral pigeons in the area.

By next year my group of mutt pigeons might be even more colorful. And also have some cute hairdos.

Banned in California

I saw a list of animals that are banned as pets in California yesterday. Each picture gave a reason why it was illegal to keep the animal. Some are just too obvious, like tigers. Of course you shouldn't keep a tiger for a pet, though if you do you'll probably be eaten eventually and then the rest of us won't have to abide your stupidness.

Ferrets are illegal because they can negatively affect native wildlife. I've known people who lived in other states who had ferrets and loved them, but I've also seen mongooses running all around in Hawaii. Raccoons are bad enough, so I support the no ferret rule. Though I wonder what would happen if it was legal to keep a neutered ferret? If it got loose, at least it wouldn't proliferate. But then you'd have all the stupid people again, the ones who wouldn't get THEIR ferret neutered because they'd want to make money selling them, or didn't have the money to neuter them in the first place. I'm thinking these people live in trailer parks and have dozens of guinea pigs in their living room. (I'm not imagining this, I've seen it, it was amusing and terrifying at the same time.)

I think it's also not a good idea to keep hedgehogs, but the reason given is so dumb. Because there might be a germ on their quills? Using this criteria, no one should keep a dog that's big enough to bite off their faces, either, but the reason would be "there might be a germ on their teeth." I think hedgehogs are so cute, but am totally satisfied watching the home movies Uncle B posts from England, where there are actually hedges for these animals to live in. Our only hedges are in the center divide of freeways, not good habitat for anything.

My Aunt Beth has a nice collection of ceramic, wooden, and stuffed hedgehogs. I'd have a similar collection of armadillos if they were easy to find. (And small. And cheap.) But there are plenty of domestic animals that are legal to keep as pets who need a home.

A Welcome Sight

Mini Daffodils

Baby Time!

What was I doing out and about at the crack of dawn on a day like this?

I was on my way to the post office, I'd just been called to come pick up this package.

My first chicks of the season! I'd ordered 10 barred Old English bantam chicks from Cackle Hatchery in the midwest. Let me say right here that I don't want to hear any doodoo about how chickens should raise their own babies and it's cruel to hatch them in incubators and mail them across the United States. If you want to believe that, please do, just don't try to sell that story to me because I know better.

Usually you have to order 25 chicks at a time because that's how many it takes so they keep each other perfectly warm inside the mailing box. But Cackle Hatchery has devised a way to send 10. This is the box that would hold 25 chicks. Inside it is a smaller box, with insulation all around it. They also had a little piece of spongy wet stuff that the chicks could peck at and get moisture, though I doubt they did that.

I took the chicks out of the box one-by-one and gave each a few drops of water. I dip a small paintbrush in water and let the chick drink the drops. You could just shove their beaks into a bowl, but I find the paintbrush method less stressful. By the time I'd unloaded the last chick, the first two were already running around in the aquarium, jumping for joy.

By the end of the day, there was one chick that wasn't quite as lively as the others. It was obviously a little older, its wing feathers were visible. So I cut up a couple of mealworms and used the paintbrush to put a piece into its mouth. It ate the rest by itself, eagerly.

Here are some of the babies.

Here is a view of my brooding arrangement.

I use aquariums because I like to sit and watch the babies. It's a good way to make sure they're all doing fine. Also you can spoil the heck out of chicks this way, they get accustomed to seeing people and expecting treats. Sure makes it easier to catch them when they're grown up.

Did you recognize the workbench from a few days ago? It was $67 from Home Depot. It took a quart of paint and went together in 3 minutes, just like the label said it would. It has not (to my knowledge) been used to support anyone's vices, however.

Katherine is hatching some eggs from my own birds, so there will be more babies as the month progresses.