Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

In past blog posts I likely have touched on this, but I am going to just go with it again because it amuses me. This past weekend Ellen's friend Daveigh stayed overnight.  That is her truck there behind our Kia, Optima.  I believe her truck is a Chevy Silverado.... obviously an older model.   Gary was talking with Daveigh about her truck.  She and her dad got it when she started driving and made it a project that they worked on together.  So Gary was asking her different things about it.  For one thing the other owner used a cheap spray paint to paint it red.  Since Daveigh doesn't have a garage or carport the red has faded into this dark pink color.  She intends to repaint it when funds allow.  In the meantime she has a pink truck.   Gary asked her if the truck has a name.  "Yes," she said. "Molly".  We laughed.  But only because we had named the Kia not long after we got it, around 9 or so years ago.  We b...

In the 20 years I have been here on the farm we have had 3 cats: Matilda for 16 years, Smudge for almost 5 years and now Chica for just a month. This was Matilda.  Her mom was a stray who had her kittens behind a stack of old tires in Gary's red building. It was fun to watch Mama cat raise her kittens and teach them how to hunt.  She'd bring grasshoppers or frogs to them to teach them hunting skills. We gave away Matilda's siblings and Mama disappeared, much to my heartbreak.  Matilda was about 3 months old when her mom disappeared, but she kept her early hunting lessons close to heart.  She was an outside cat at heart.  She spent much of her time in the hay barn curled up high on the hay bales.  In winter she became an inside cat and loved to curl up in my lap, but come warm spring days she'd be outside and not come in for days.  I'd feed her on the porch.  But often she wouldn't eat what I left out because she caught her own.  We rarely had...

  On the mornings when I am not feeling up to the climb back out of the creek bottoms, I take Bella down to the old sawmill on top of the hill and just let her run and chase squirrels and whatever rodents that are around in the piles down there.  I stand in a small flattened place and do exercises or just stand and pray.  This is my view looking slightly to the left of where I stand. The fold, ravine, holler, or whatever you would term it, between the two hills there leads down to a pond at the bottom of the ridge I am standing on. Years ago it never would hold water; it'd fill up during a hard rain, but it would drain in a few days.  It is holding water now, or had been.  We have been short of rainfall the past few months, since this past summer, so it is really low now.   The green field below is where Gary has been cutting hay every summer since he quit the dairy.  Depending on rainfall he will get anywhere from 15 to 30 bales of hay. ...

 Much of this I have posted on Facebook, but I feel perhaps it bears posting in here as well, just for posterity's sake.   Ellen knows the gal who is the fill-in editor at the local newspaper, The Buffalo Reflex.  She gave Ellen the questionnaire to fill out for this little blurb they have every week. This came out last week.   Ellen actually got her picture in the paper twice last week.  Here is a closeup of the second one: Only Ellen, who was not scheduled to be on a float in the Buffalo Christmas parade, could end up with her picture in the paper for being on a float in the Buffalo Christmas parade.  We were standing there watching the parade when the OMB (Old Missouri Bank) float went by.  Her coworker there in the green sweater hollered at her to climb on, so off she ran and clambered onto the float.  Gary and I, when it was over, then had to follow the tail end of the parade over to the factory parking lot where it started so we could p...

  On Tues, today is Friday, our neighbor Bonnie, gave me a couple of grapefruit.  Perhaps that is an odd thing to wax nostalgic over, but nonetheless it brings back many memories. My father was a big believer in the power of vitamin C to cure all ailments.  In the bathroom cabinet he kept a bottle, it was  indeed a brownish glass bottle, of chewable vitamin C tablets.  We girls; Leslie, Teresa and I, would occasionally amuse ourselves by getting them and watching each other's faces as we chewed one up.  They were not mixed with any sort of sugar or flavoring whatsoever, just tiny pills of straight whatever-it-was they used to put the actual vitamin into a tablet form. Just thinking about it makes my jaws pucker up.  Haha! The faces we would make! I believe Dad usually encouraged us to do this when someone had a cold, or even thought they were coming down with something.  It was supposed to be a preventative measure as well as a curative one. To ge...

 I think this is my Christmas cactus.  It has spiky leaves.  I think the Thanksgiving cactus has smoother leaves....well, I know they aren't technically leaves, but you know what I mean. This is the second year this has bloomed.  I love it.  So pretty.   Of course, these have to be "forced" to bloom.  I don't really have a safe dark spot to put it ..well...I would have if I'd clean out a cupboard or a wardrobe...but whatever.  I put it in the bathtub of our dinky bathroom and put a dark cloth over it.  I keep it there for a month or so...all of November at least.  I noticed a couple of weeks ago that it was starting a few tiny buds on it.  I left it in the dark a little bit longer, then took it out last week.  It doesn't have a great deal of buds or blooms, but enough that it will be lovely for a couple of weeks at least. Last year I repotted it after it bloomed and it nearly died.  I'm not sure what to do this time....

  This amaryllis was from a lady who gave her whole huge pot of them to Aunt Kathy's cousin; Mary Lou.  Kathy had them in her front yard...the whole pot of them actually, one fall and gave both Gail and I a few of them.  They are super determined to survive because I do just the bare minimum to care for them.  They bloom, then leaf out.  I keep them in the house until it gets warm enough in later Spring to leave them out on the porch.  I leave them on the North side of the house, under the air conditioner, so they get the condensation dripped all over them.  I bring them in before they freeze and generally just let them die back. I do fertilize them occasionally over the summer and fall. Though I am really not sure if they need it or not.  The leaves just naturally die back.  I vaguely know they need a dormant period, where the leaves die back, but I don't know when exactly that is supposed to be.  This year the leaves had died back duri...

  Today, during the 11 AM service time we had our annual Christmas program.  We were seated near the back so we didn't get a clear view of anything, but the whole concept was was fairly simple; an adult couple narrated the Christmas story straight from different Bible Scriptures while youths from all age groups acted it out. No lines to memorize. As they went along in between here and there were a few Christmas carols that we were all invited to join in. This all made for an endearing Christmas program.  All the kids, of all ages, got to partake if they so chose, and of course all of the adult parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters...etc, were able to enjoy seeing their precious poppets perform. When the production was over and the cast were standing on stage we were all invited to stand and sing another Christmas carol during which they went around and lit our candles.  It was nice, but there were a couple of notable moments.  For one thing, if...

 Here it is the 13th already.  This has been a busy week, with little slow down in sight. I had two sub jobs this week; a full day at the highschool and a full day at the elementary school.  I'd say the elementary school was more difficult, because my charge was in a mood.  Haha...  There were quite a few kids in moods.  Two weeks before Christmas break, and all sorts of testing and EVERYONE was in a mood, even the teachers. Anyway I also had Bible study one morning and then our Ladies group's monthly meeting another morning this week.   Today I go do my caregiver job...I don't really think of it as a job, per se.  It's more like going over and hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa for the day, helping them with random chores.  Such sweet people.  Time is just flying by so fast.  In 5 months Ellen will be graduated from high school.  I can hardly believe that. Let me check my camera roll and see what I've been up to picture...

  Google is being glitchy about which pictures it allows me to post.  I have more pictures on my phone than what it shows when I try to post one here, so the "this and that" I am going to post here is partly based on what pictures I have available to post. Hence my first subject is this kitten.  We, Ellen and I, decided to call her Chica, but it just doesn't fit somehow.  Oh well. Smudge is learning to tolerate her, and will even show interest in playing when Chica is on one of her playing fits; romping around like a cat gone wild.   A funny thing about Smudge; she, like many in the family here, has a weight problem.  At her last vet visit she'd gained a pound and was up to 16, which is very chunky for a cat.  The vet says that cats only need 1/2 cup of kibble per day.  Smudge would eat that much for breakfast and then pester for more. All. Day. Long!  For the past 6 months I've only bought her weight control food, painstakingly measured...

  For Christmas and other gift-giving holidays we tend to spoil the littler children in our lives with as fancy of store bought gifts as we can afford.  Then, depending on age of course, they spend more time playing with the trappings than with the actual toys  The same is true of kittens.  I bought her a couple three new toys with bells and feathers and all.  Does she play with them? No.  She prefers a little length of yarn and any random cardboard box lying around.   Good thing she is so cute.