Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

 Just testing to see if I could blog from the phone.  And apparently I can. I remember with the other phone I couldn't figure out how with the other phone  So anyway.  Here is a milestone the car made yesterday.  Ha

 Why DO we collect things? Here is what Google told me: "Knowledge and learning . Relaxation and stress reduction. Personal pleasure (including appreciation of beauty, and pride of ownership) Social interaction with fellow collectors and others (i.e. the sharing of pleasure and knowledge)"  Or, under the heading: "The Psychology of Collecting" "Collecting can be seen as a form of self-expression, identity construction, social interaction, emotional regulation, cognitive stimulation, or aesthetic appreciation . However, collecting can also have negative aspects, such as compulsiveness, hoarding, addiction, or isolation. Sep 26, 2023"  Over the years it has always made me wonder, and as I age and look back on the things I have collected, especially as relates to having lived here in Missouri, I think it's more just personal pleasure for myself and those I have known. The other day I was cleaning the little nook above the fridge, where I just toss t

 Yes, this one came from out of nowhere and bloomed first.  Actually it was the bloom above it, but the first bloom was damaged when I covered them to weather the frost.  There are a few of them that came on all at once now, but the yellow one was the next to open. I love this rich shade of yellow. Then this one bloomed.  But now I am not sure if this is the one they called "blue" or not.  If it is supposed to be blue, it falls a bit short of attaining that worthy goal. Then this one came along and surprised me: So far these are all the ones that have bloomed.  I need to get more colors.  I have my eye on an orange shade in one of the iris bulb catalogs.  Or I have thought of getting a white one. This one above wasn't one of Betty's irises that she'd given me a few years back.  This one was from the Maxwell house; the house my mom lived in when she came here, just up the road from us, sort of catty corner to Gail's place.  Florence Maxwell passed away in 2004

Every year it's always fun to see which iris will bloom first.  At first I thought it was a race between the yellow and blue one: The Yellow Iris   Or the Blue...  (I think this is supposed to be a "Blue" iris) I wish I'd taken the time to focus the camera.  Ellen always gets frustrated with me and my lack of camera skills.  Haha... And actually the yellow won between these two, but it was this one that came in first.  It just popped right out and surprised me.   Unfortunately it's a bit damaged because I covered all of them night before last. The temps got down into the lower 30s.  Gail's thermometer said 30 degrees, ours only said 32, but ours is under the carport, so it's probably not exact. There are quite a few blooms coming on, and after they did all that hard work to produce them, I didn't want them to get frozen, so I hauled out the old sheets.  Of course now the stems are a bit wonky, but that is OK, the blooms will be lovely anyway.

A bit different from the winter sunsets of a couple of months ago.  The grass is green, the trees are starting to get green, and the sun is doing its level best to shine through the clouds. Spring is almost my favorite season of the year. 

 I have heard that saying pretty much all of my life, off and on.  "Never say never, because that is exactly what will happen to you."  Maybe that is right.   I have said never a few times in my life and at least twice it has indeed happened to me. My first never was when I was a teen.   I was never having children.  Ever.  My mom knew better. This is the result of my first never.  Haha...  On Monday she and her team did their presentation at FBLA State competitions in Springfield.  They came in 5th place; very excellent, but just one spot shy of qualifying to attend Nationals.  They were bummed, but proud of themselves at the same time. My second never, of course, involves the first photo above; teaching. When I graduated from high school my father was determined that I would go to college.  I had very little drive when I was in my teens; no clue of what direction I wanted to take in life.  I was content to enroll and attend the local university there in Northern California;

  All around me my neighbors have irises blooming...even as of over a week ago.  Here my irises are just now throwing up bloom stalks...or whatever they are called.  It looks like I will have quite a few blooms this year.  I am excited to see what they will give me. The irises blooming this Spring will be a bit bittersweet though.  Many of them were given to me by a precious lady from church.  Betty.  Betty loved her flowers; she always had lovely flower beds all around her house.  She had irises around her house, and down her drive, I believe.  In any case, quite a few years back I'd mentioned at a ladies meeting that I wanted to start growing irises, so she said she'd give me some when she separated hers in the fall.  I wish I'd written down all the different colors she gave me, but I quite remember she gave me yellow.  They are all so lovely.  About 2 years ago I bought myself 4 different colors of irises; two different "black" irises, and two different "b

 Yesterday we went to the Preferred Pump Customer Appreciation barbecue in Springfield.  This is the company Gary gets his water well supplies from...well...one of the companies.  Every spring they have a barbecue.  It is a pretty big deal; they have 66 stores all over the US and every year they have two big retreats.  You earn points with every purchase, which you can use as credits to attend one of this trips.  I think they always go to Las Vegas, and then this year there vacation trip is to Aruba.  They have an entire hotel booked for 3 weeks, and you pick the week or few days when you can attend.  They do this for customers and employees alike.  I think if you don't get enough points with them you can pay for it, but I am not sure how that works.  We don't do that big of business to worry with such, and we neither one would be very comfortable anyway, since most of the vacation pictures they show involve alcohol in some way or another.  The other pictures they show of their

 Above is the lunch I had yesterday at the house where I do caregiving once a week.  The H House I will call it.  Mr and Mrs H had their 68th anniversary last week.  He was 17 and she was 20 when they got married.  They are both in their 80s now.  I don't recall if she ever held a job outside the home.  They raised 4 children on the farm; a dairy.  One son passed away here a couple of years ago.  His brother still runs beef cows on the farm there.  All of her married life, I suspect, Mrs H has always cooked 3 meals a day, because when I arrive there at 8 AM it isn't long afterwards that she is wondering what we are going to cook for lunch.  Generally it's simple sandwiches or potato soup, but yesterday it was steak, leftover pulled pork and roasting ears.  I took a picture to send to Gary, since he appreciates such things.  Someone of the family had given them the steak, I believe, the pulled pork was leftover from another day and the roasting ears had been on sale. Gary an

  Since Ellen was off to a track meet after school yesterday, and Gary was off with his family to the total eclipse, I didn't have to worry about fixing any supper.  So Bella and I took off on a little walk down to the creek.  I didn't actually take any pics of the creek, but here is one of the little springs that we have on the place. This is actually right alongside the road, track, path, whatever you call it, that goes down to creek bottoms.  I tried to get a shot of the water with redbud blooms floating on it, but they aren't very visible. There are quite a few trees that have fallen across the spring bed.  They make for enchanting bridges. This last photo above is of further up toward the milk barn, though that is still quite a hike away up the hill yet.  But it's about where the spring water emerges from the spring bed.  Further on up it was quite dry.   I had put Bella back on her lead by this time, you can see it on her in the pic above.  If I didn't she wou

 For the sake of a lack of anything really cohesive to write about here, I will just post a series of random photos I have taken the past few days.  A couple of them I might have posted on Facebook.   Photo #1.  Here is Smudge with Ellen.  I took these on Smudge's birthday, April 6th.  She is 4 years old now.  We got her from a rescue a gal had in a place she rented south of Buffalo.  Her name was Julia Stidham.  We got a new kitten there in the middle of the freaking COVID-19 pandemic, it was June 2020, because our cat Matilda was old, 15 at the time I believe, and because Ellen needed a distraction during the lockdown.   What was heartbreaking about this is that Julia, the young woman who was starting up the pet rescue was killed in a one vehicle wreck just 6 months later; it was mid-December, I believe.  She was just in her mid to upper 20s and left behind 2 young children, as well as her husband.  So heartbreaking. Photo #2:   Here are a few scrubbies I recently loom knitted. 

(OK, so this is Saturday now, and I think I started this blog post on Wed maybe...but the internet has been super spotty, so this didn't post...ugh)  Monday evening and night we had a couple of storms come through.  We didn't get hit very badly, but we did have a tornado warning for our immediate area...meaning there was a tornado overhead, but it didn't touch down.  Scary stuff.   Needless to say we didn't get a great deal of sleep that night.  AND...it took out our internet, which is radio based, I am sure it took out bits of their whole network.  They got around to our tower later that afternoon, around 5 or 6 PM.  This is Thursday and our internet service has been spotty since.  We will see if it will even save this post. South of us there were a few barns, sheds and outbuildings blown away.  And quite a few trees downed.  We had one dead tree blown down, and quite a few limbs, but nothing major. 

  Usually I never bother with planning or keeping a written record of what I have planted where, or what should go here or there.  I have tried it once or twice, but have never followed through with keeping track of it.  It would probably be handy, but what with so many variables going on, I just don't bother.  This year will be no exception. It's not that I just throw things out willy-nilly, I usually have a plan in mind, or at least a reason for planting things where I plant them.  But often my plans go awry for one reason or another, usually a crop failure, or a cat digs up the area, or my child has other ideas, or a certain spot gets drowned out by a record rainfall.  Last year the volunteer tomato plants I took pity on pretty much overwhelmed and squelched my okra and beets.  This year no volunteers of any kind will be tolerated; unless the volunteer is a sunflower.  Then it will be relocated.  I am not going to deny the birds their sustenance.  This year the two garden be

 According to what everyone else around us has been doing we are a bit late in getting anything out into the garden.  Many, if not most, local gardeners have had lettuce, onions and other cool weather things planted for a few weeks.  Gary's Aunt Kathy has had lettuce growing in a little planter in her front yard for a month or more.  We usually wait 'til the end of March to get going.  So all day yesterday was dedicated to gardening. I got the weed eater out and sheered off the garden beds here by the house.  Then I got out Little Brother, my rototiller, and tilled them up.  Later in the evening I planted every onion slip and bulb I'd bought in the second garden bed.  I am going to head to Greasy Creek this morning and get more. Gary was feeling much better yesterday; he's on the recovery end of this bout with COVID, so he did quite a bit of stuff, too.  He got the mower going, and mowed the lawn where it's been getting shaggy.  He spread some dairy dirt on the b

 Yep,  Gary got COVID again.  For this reason I haven't been on here blogging.  The only time I blog is when I am on the laptop here, and when he is sick this tends to become his domain.  I am quite, quite sure I am going to come down with the beast here in a few days.  This time he had like over a week of mild congestion leading up to it, and that is what I have had the past couple of days.  I am doing everything I can think of to keep Ellen from catching it here at the end of the school year.  I follow Gary around sanitizing everything he has touched or sneezed on; same for myself.  Every door knob, drawer handle, faucet handle, counter food container, door jams...whatever.  I have stayed "quarantined" more or less, in the bedroom.  Last time I caught COVID that seemed to work; no one else caught it.   In any case, in the past few days Gary has sold off all but two of the calves.  One has a sore foot and the other one is only about 6 weeks old.  I miss watching them out

 Last week was busy.  Seems we ran from here to there and back again.   Here are a few pictures from last week: This weekend is the Purim.  Last Sunday I taught my chidlers (you would have had to have read The Big Friendly Giant to catch that reference to calling children "chidlers") the story of Esther.  It was a fairly abbreviated lesson, as I only have 30 minutes for the entire class, and we have to get in greetings and prayer time and general organization, but we hit all the high parts.   This week we are going to bake cookies.  The formal name for these are Hamantaschen.  That is the name the Jewish settlement in Germany gave to them.  And there is a whole history in itself with these cookies.  But in Israel they are called "Haman's Ears."   Since we only have 30 minutes I baked these up, but kept a few of the dough rounds for the kids to fill and then bake.  They take about 15 minutes to bake. This should be fun!  These are super good!  This recipe is just

  This was a lasagna I made last week.  I used zucchini slices in place of the lasagna noodles.  Just make the meat sauce the same as always, but put slices of raw zucchini in place of the noodles.  It was delish. Everyone really loved it. It was super easy!    Well, bummer, I forgot to even post this entry.  Sorry.  

 Here I am back with a few updates and random observations. Yesterday we went to Springfield for Ellen's t1d checkup.  It went well.  Then we went to a couple/three places in Springfield. Gary parked in one place and then Ellen and I went our separate ways.  Ellen went to a thrift store; Uptown Cheapskate.  It was OK, but their prices were a bit too "uptown" for second hand clothing.  Ellen says she likes Plato's Closet better.  To me they are both much of a muchness, but Uptown Cheapskate was super spendy.   While Ellen was in Uptown, I went to Hobby Lobby, because I needed doll hair.  Haha...  Walmart has yarn, but just not the colors or types I need.  I love going to Hobby Lobby and just looking down their yarn aisles.  In fact I have only been through about 1/3 of the store because I really have no interest in looking at the other part of the store.  Usually we are in a bit of a hurry anyway.  So I enjoy the yarn: Yummy! That it was all on sale was a great bonus!

 The daffodils are really blooming now.  This is much earlier than usual, it has been so unseasonably warm.  I love these double flower ones.  I transplanted them from the old homestead on the back ridge over to here.  Daffodils are not native to the US, so I often think of who would have planted them over there on the old homestead.  Was in the sisters who last lived there...up until 1968, or was it the original Howard clan who homesteaded the place?  We shall never know...not in this world anyway.   Yesterday I got 3 bags of cow manure/compost and started working on my iris beds; combing the dead leaves and trash out of them.  Here in the bed closest to the house is this lovely flower.  I forget what it's called at the moment.  In any case it was one that was given to me when my mom died a couple years ago.  She would have loved it; she loved all flowers.   So far none of my irises have started to shoot up a bloom stalk, but they are usually a few weeks behind the daffodils.  Eve

 So this photo is apropos of nothing really, just something to stick in here.  The only thing it really has to do with anything is that I see the sun setting behind this tree most every evening while I am walking.   During the six years I cared for my mom I really neglected my health and, as a result, gained a deal of weight.  The only exercise I really got was dairy chores, and they were not significant enough to do much practical good.  Unless you count tossing random buckets of grain into feed bunks and wrestling the occasional new calf to get a bottle into it.  But there wasn't much consistent effective exercise going on.   I have blogged on here about exercise before, and maybe that humorous entry is one of the ones I listed to the side.  But here is my practical entry on the subject.  I have found it difficult to get consistent exercise, even with gardening, due to random reasons...mostly excuses.  But the majority of the property here is dedicated to livestock and is, in sea

 This little fellow wouldn't cooperate with me for a good photo, but he is the first of our calves to go to a new home.  Gary registered all of our pure bred Angus calves.  This one is going to a place near Elkland, MO to a guy who is raising him to breed his little herd of Angus.   We have two Angus/Holstein cross calves; both heifers I think...one might be a bull, I am not sure.  We are not sure what we are going to do with them, but they will be privately sold.  As in; we will not take them to the sale barn.  Gary listed the calves as for sale on Craig's List yesterday morning and got a call just an hour or two later.  There is also a different guy who was interested in buying all of the registered bulls as he raises and sells them himself.  But he wasn't going to come look about them until the end of the week.  I'm kind of glad the guy got this first bull yesterday.  I like to know they are going straight to their new permanent home from here.  I've not let myse

 Sometimes I go through my camera pictures on this phone and wonder; What in the world was I trying to get a photo of with this picture?  Usually I have to think a bit, but then I figure it out. I took this picture above when I was out walking in the fenced in garden.  This weed is the first to bloom in Spring, so the bees just flock to it.  I took this because somewhere in there is a honey bee and I was so pleased to see her flying around collecting pollen.   Just last week Gary was up cleaning out around the old Homestead house on the back ridge with the bulldozer.  He pushed an old dead tree over and discovered it was a honey bee tree.  He was heartbroken that he'd done that to them.  I told him that they would find a new place and recover.  The queen would find a new dead tree and they'd make a new hive.  I have heard that they will even transfer all of the honey over to it.  Those old dead trees can't stand there forever and must eventually fall apart on the bees anywa

 Yesterday Gary had me come out and help him at the new corral.  We set up the new corral a few months ago and now he has added a squeeze chute on to it for the purpose of sorting, vaccinating and what not.  Gary attached a scale to the chute to weigh them as well.  He wanted me to help him set up and calibrate the scale.   It wasn't hard, so it didn't take long.  Then he wanted to test it, so he got some feed and tolled the herd up to the corral.  Most of the calves wouldn't go in...that would be this group here that you see.  A couple of them did though, and we got them in the chute and weighed.  Calf #286 weighed 575 pounds, and calf #284 weighed 560 pounds. Both of those are the calves from the Angus/Holstein cross cows.  They are not registered.  The other calves have been registered with the Angus association. I think they are all so stinking cute!

  After 3 months of dinkering around I finally have a certificate to be a substitute teacher in Missouri.  It is, of course, my own fault it took so long.  I really ought to have called in to the main admin office and asked about the whole application process from the get go; but doing things in a logical manner has never been my M.O.; hence my rather disorganized life.  But, I have persevered and conquered; at least to this point. In December I talked over with Gary about my becoming a substitute teacher in our county here.  Gary was for it, so I did what the random FB posts say to do; went onto the school's website and clicked the link to apply for a job.  Then I waited maybe 3 weeks to be contacted.   *crickets* So I started asking around, asked a friend at the admin office, where I should have started in the first place.  She advised that they never did get my online application.  So I got a paper packet application from her and learned from her coworker who handles such that I

 The past 2 or 3 Saturday mornings a few people from church have been meeting at the church and going running.  Today 2 walkers joined the group; that would be me and my neighbor.  Another of the runners joined us in walking.  A---  took this photo of the runners with her phone, as she was in the center of the road.   The runners went 2 miles down the road and then back for a total of 4 miles, we walkers just went one mile back and forth for a total of 2 miles.  It was fun.  But I really need new shoes.  I just wore my old broken down shoes and now my feet hurt.   It took us walkers a bit over 40 minutes to do our two miles.  The road is pretty rolling, as you can see.  You don't really notice it that much when you are driving, but when you are on foot it's a bit of a pull up and down them all. After 3 days or so of rain and clouds it was nice and sunny today; fairly crisp actually.  It was in the upper 30s at 8 AM when we met.  But we were pretty well warmed up by the time we