A Lovely Surprise

Last week Bob came in with the mail and handed me a package.

The package was very interesting. I'm sure the people at the post office thought so, too. Once upon a time the postmistress was my cousin and mail would have been delivered to me with any kind of description. These days we have generic employees at the local P.O. But the mail still came through. I'm proud of them.

I turned the package over, and surprise! It was from Uncle Bernard! (I covered up his address, I don't want all my single lady friends hitting on him. )

"It's from Uncle B," I said. "And look, he sent me HUGS!!!"

"Do we have relatives in England?" Bob asked. 

"You and your dad do," I said. "Your dad's grandfathers both came from the same town in Cornwall." (I hope that's not a Deliverance sort of thing.) "But this is from a fellow blogger, an internet buddy."

Bob looked at the package. It was 6 x 8 inches. He smirked, "I've heard about these internet things. Looks like he sent you a picture of himself. Probably naked."

Well, okay, whatever. I was still thrilled. And even more so when I carefully opened the package.

Inside a little wooden frame was a handmade card that said "Made for you by Carol Ward." It has lace and a golden butterfly and little flowers. It's so lovely, and so thoughtful of Uncle B to have sent it. It's like a Jackie Lawson card on paper. (She's from England, too.)

I am keeping the card right next to my computer. And now that I have your address, Uncle B, I'm refining my best chocolate chip cookie recipe to make them less fragile, so I can send a box of them to you. Katherine the Master Baker recommends waiting until the weather is a little cooler so the chips won't melt enroute. This is going to be so much fun.

XOX Uncle B!!!

Sleepy Chicks

I love to raise chicks. There are 3 of them in cheeping cheerfully in an aquarium right behind my chair at the computer as I type. Chicks in an aquarium? That's how I raise them.

No, chicks don't float, the aquariums are old, cracked ones that don't hold water anymore. Most of them were bought at yard sales. Part of the fun of raising chicks is being able to watch them play and grow. A small light bulb keeps them warm, and there is a screen on top to keep them safe. Gollie and Velcro, our 2 remaining cats, do not even pay attention to chicks. In cool weather, Gollie will lay on top of the aquarium to keep warm.

Chicks are tamer as adults if they've been spoiled with treats when they're babies. Mine especially like mealworms, dried and fresh, and hard cooked egg yolk. I also give them earwigs when I find them and flies that I swat. (If you feed stuff like this to chicks, you have to provide them with gravel too.)

These are two White Old English babies.

When they've finished eating, they often fall asleep in their feed bowl. White OE are especially easy to keep in the house. They're very tidy, very tame, and love company. I'd much rather have one of these bantams in a cage indoors than a noisy, messy parrot. Bantam poop is dry, the bedding stays fairly clean as long as it doesn't get wet - which can happen if a water bowl is overturned.

This aquarium has baby Anconas and mutts.

These will go outside to a bigger brooder box fairly soon. The mutt chicks love to scratch and forage. They kick all their food out of the bowl at least twice a day. They make a lot of dust. They're not as easy to keep in the house.

Bob and I have been working on the new pen. Right now we're waiting for aviary wire to be delivered. It's a week late. I seem to be waiting for a lot of things. Waiting to get my truck fixed so I can haul things myself. Without the truck I'm waiting for a fellow who is supposed to come and haul off my piles of tree and shrub trimmings, and waiting for someone to haul a load of junk to the dump.

I have given two old pens to the neighbor lady and we're both waiting for her husband to come move them to her house.

I'm waiting for hay to be delivered.

I'm not good at waiting. It makes me grumpy and snappish. I should probably take a clue from the chicks and learn to relax.

I'm So Brave (or maybe just stupid)

See the totally disgusted, "I'm gonna kill you in your sleep" expression on little Gollum's face? See the fire of hell shining through those eyes? She's really, really mad at me.

This afternoon I caught her, wrapped her in a towel, trimmed her razor-sharp claws, put a harness and leash on her, and gave her a bath. Yes!!! By myself. Bob was not even home.

Bob's absence was a good thing. We would have argued and yelled at each other, and probably not accomplished anything. What's the dirtiest job - holding the cat or giving it a pill? With Gollie you can never tell. If you hold her you'll probably get scratched. If you give her the pill, you'll get bit. We always argue as if one job is easier than the other and each of us is determined to take the easy one.

The truth is, there's just no easy way to handle this cat. She's small, but she's wiry. She has the attitude of a cornered cougar. That leopard whose picture was on the news recently...the one that jumped on a handler's back and injured several other fellows? Gollie has that kind of attitude. I've been waiting for a year to catch her in a good mood so I could trim her toenails. She was never in a good mood.

This afternoon I spent an hour brushing Velcro. The success I had with her made me uncommonly brave. When Gollie came out of hiding for dinner, I grabbed her and went to work.

I didn't have a death wish. The cat really needed a bath. She has been scratching, something is bothering her skin. The holistic vet site I read said to bathe the cat in mild, organic shampoo. We'll see if this works.

In the meantime, I think I'll sleep with the bedroom door closed tonight.

No French Cuisine, Please

Velcro is our old cat. She's 14. When she was young, she was a troublemaker. Now she is a perfect house cat. She's tidy and well-mannered.....wait a minute!

What's Velcro doing on the counter? She doesn't normally do naughty things like that. Oh, I see. Bob brought a couple of ears of corn in and he's cooking his dinner.

Velcro loves corn. Maybe even more than t-u-n-a. (You have to spell the word around here or she'll know what you're talking about.) She's just going to lay up there on the counter and love on that corn until Bob gives her some.

Bob says, "Velcro, I'm not making dinner for you. I'm making ratatouille for me."

"What?" Velcro gasps. "Rat-a-tooey? He's cooking rats with MY corn?"

"That's disgusting!"

Mid July Update

The Corn Festival came and went. I sat with Katherine at her booth part of the time and we mostly watched people. I didn't get any pictures. People seemed to be buying lots of vegetables, but weren't spending much money at the craft booths.

What have I accomplished so far in my retirement? Not much. My car, spending all its time on the farm, is always dirty.

I've spent some time doing yard work, as my gardening stool will testify.

I've been trying to keep up with the summer weeds and keep the drip system unclogged. We had trouble with the main pump on the warm days and sand got sucked into the system. The problem seems to be fixed now, so I'm happy about that (until I get the bill).

Here is something I planted for the first time this year that has been a real delight - Salpiglossis.

It's a small plant, but has been covered with bright purple flowers for a long time. Next year I'll try to plant them en masse. I'm trying to stay away from Green Acres until I get the garden spot ready for the late summer and early fall flowers. When I'm in the yard, I always have lots of help from these little critters.

There are lots of lizards this year. Now that we have no peafowl, and there is no outside cat (though sweet Georgie never bothered lizards) the nosy critters have no fear. Or maybe they know they're camouflaged.

I wonder if I could train a lizard, using mealworms? I have plenty of time to try. What would you train a lizard to do? Sit? Stay? They already do that. Sing or dance, maybe.

Corn Festival

The Corn Festival at Davis Ranch is this weekend. Come on out and say "hi" if you've nothing better to do. If I'm not at the house, I'll probably be in the back yard painting chicken pens. You'll recognize me, I'll be covered in brown and green paint. I'm a sloppy painter.

If not there, I may be sitting for a while at Katherine's booth.

The corn is ripe, of course, and so are the tomatoes. There are also green beans, snow peas, beets, melons, strawberries, blueberries, 3 kinds of summer squash, 3 kinds of cucumbers (plus some small ones for pickling).

I WILL get back to blogging regularly, eventually. Everything is fine here, I'm just very busy with real work. You're not going to believe this new chicken pen, it's huge (6 pens in one shed) and lovely.

I'm making a trip to the Roseville Auction on Sunday morning to rehome a few roosters. There are 31 new babies coming up, so some of the older ones need to move on. Especially a couple that have become very mean. There's just no cause for that around here. I mostly don't like the possibility that someone will see me whapping the heck out of a seemingly cute little bird with my shovel because it's spurred me in the leg. I'd like to retain my aura of gracious dignity.

To clarify, I don't take birds to the auction just because they're old. In fact, several old ones are living out their lives here. Those going to the auction are all a year old and have proven antisocial either to people or to other birds. They are no longer welcome at the Inn.

4-H Alumni at the State Fair

This is pretty much just for the "locals." The following was a notice in the Sacramento Bee. It would be fun if all you "kids" who used to hang out at 4-H events at the fair would go and participate.

.................

July 23 and 24 will be 4-H Alumni Weekend at the California State Fair, and as 4-H prepares for its centennial anniversary, organizers in California are assembling portraits of its members.

At the fair, the California 4-H Foundation will be photographing anyone connected to the program in a portable studio. The studio will be open at the 4-H booth from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. July 23 and 24.

Photographer Christopher Irion will be shooting the portraits.

Alumni can also receive $1 discounts on fair admission that weekend, and a coupon that can be redeemed for a prize at the 4-H booth. For more information, visit www.ca4h.org.

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The notice doesn't say anything about wearing your whites. I wonder how many of you can still fit into your 4-H clothes? OK, well the boys should be able to still wear their hats and ties. At the very least it seems like you should wear something green.

Proof

This picture proves a couple of things.

1. We do have a cat named Gollum that lives in our house. She is very small, about 4 pounds. She is 6 years old and has been exclusively a house cat since she was 4 months old. She still acts like a feral cat. She's afraid of everything. Many people who who have been to our house often have never seen her. (She lives up to her name.)

2. Jonathan is not only good with computers, he has a magic touch with cats too. Gollie not only comes out of hiding when Jon is here, she amazed us all and let him pet her. He also had a plate of food on the counter, but this is not a cat you can bribe.

Pheasants Graduated

This morning Bob caught the baby pheasants. It wasn't easy, the main goal was to keep them from freaking out and damaging themselves and their feathers. I don't know anyone who handles birds better than Bob. He managed to get them all with no mishaps. Here is the odd-colored one. Does anyone know what color this will be?

Bob put the babies in our cloth-sided cat carrier. It is dark and soft. They cuddled up together and rode very well. Again, no damage.

I took the babies back to George's house. George is the farmer who accidentally ran over the mama pheasant when she was sitting on her nest. He gathered the eggs. Katherine incubated them and I raised the babies.

This is George putting the carrier in a secluded place in his huge farmyard.

The babies were very cautious. It took them quite a while to check out their new surroundings and leave the carrier one-by-one.

Some immediately flew up into the nearby trees and others snuck off into the shrubbery. I was glad to see they could fly so well, and that they were still sneaky, even though they'd been raised by hand. We sprinkled lots of scratch feed around for them, and George and his wife Judy put out some shallow bowls of water. I think if the babies can stay hidden in the shrubs for a while, they'll have a good chance of surviving. There are grain fields all around the farmyard where they can live eventually.

This was a great experience. Next year I might try raising some pheasants and quail to turn loose on our own property, down by the creek.

There is no hunting allowed on George's huge farm, nor on ours. If we can keep trespassers out, the birds should thrive. We catch 2 or 3 people a year and toss them out. They're always belligerent. "Where am I supposed to hunt?" they ask. As if I'm obliged to provide something for them to blast away. "How about your own damned back yard?" I answer. Some people don't understand that just because land looks empty doesn't mean it's public property. They should live in Texas for a while, where there is practically NO public property, and I doubt anyone messes with those landowners. At least not more than once.