Definition of a good Day

 Tuesday June 1st: Dax's Birthday and my day off  work.  Tuesdays off are always planned for, yet scarcely achieved.  This Tuesday, no different:  calls and texts poured in from 7:30 to 9:30. I had promised my boy a run since we woke, by 9:30,  he was mad:

Our general contractor was replacing the roof on a run-in shelter.

And the pool man was requesting a status update on the pool cleaner.  Check!  We literally ran all over the farm accomplishing management duties, yet, still sort of getting my day off.  Dax most excellently tested the pool.  A+.

Snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat. Dax got his Birthday run.  All 18-1/2 miles of it.

Miss Suki stays within 10 feet of me at all times, so her GPS collar doubles as my own record.  

She and I ran 12 miles.

For the love of dogs... they keep me alive.  I wouldn't run if it weren't for them.

Their joy of discovery is my pleasure.  

The thrumming of Dax and Micah running past me at Mach 1 drowns out the sad slap-slap-slap-slap noise my feet make.  With a bum heart, reworked knee and steel plate in my foot, I'm no longer the gazelle whose feet make only the slightly plinking sound at each step.  Nope, I've turned into a geriatric moose with a gimpy gait.  

Yet, still I plod on.  The dogs always wait for me.

Sometimes I wish we didn't have to stop running, keep running, keep discovering.

I could follow these little butts anywhere.

We were heading back when I stumbled upon a cow pattie.  

The neighbors lost a cow again, so off we went looking for it.

After my second lap back around the farm, I saw 8 Hueys  flying overhead.

Yup, sign from above that it's going to be a great day.  My only ride in a helicopter was with my dog Cole, over the mountains in Tennessee.  It was pure magic.  My pilot had just retired from the military and he performed maneuvers only allowed in Afghanistan. Ever since then, when I see a helicopter, I stop, stare and relive swooping down mountainsides head first.

The perk of living between three military bases.

Happy birthday to my 4 year old Dax.

Nothing better than a good run to turn a destructive dog into a vegetable.

Remember the buggery required to remove the airplane tires from the brush cutter?

Well, inner tubes arrived and tire man wanted the wheels ASAP. 

Grumbling a little that I had to leave the farm on my day off... until I saw this on a back road:

Heirloom variety Gladiolus, self propagating in the ditches around here. Yup, gonna be a great day.

Around 3 PM, the dust settled, the phone stopped sending me notifications and Dax's birthday celebration resumed.  Meatloaf in the making.

The beginnings of my masterpiece.

The attempt was for it to be Suki's doppelganger.  

She seems unimpressed with the mashed potato frosting and sweet potato ears.

My boys, on the other hand, have more discerning palates.

Don't ever share an ice cream cone with Micah, I speak from experience. 

 We all ate way too much.  

All of them are sawing logs and I'm now, finally, about to start my Auditing and Law assignments that I had planned to begin almost 12 hours ago at 10 AM.  

Sometimes, plans need to go the way of the dodo bird and turn a bum day into pure magic. 

Sign of Life

 Sending y'all a sign of life from my agricultural research station in Alabama.  It's almost been 2 months since my last post.  It's been well over a year that I've been wanting to tell you about my bees.  There just isn't enough time in a day for all I want to do.

Since being back in school, I've adhered to a very Spartan regiment of 3 priorities.  #1 Work, #2 Dogs and #3 School.  Farm work is 7 days a week, no matter how you try to squeeze time off in between the cracks.  Homework just has to get done between the hours of 9 PM and 7 AM.  

And that's why only the trifecta of priorities ever get tended to.  Social life, projects, gardening, leisure, all on the perennial back burner.  

It's a choice. 

My only regret is that I don't get enough time in the tractor seat.

The tedious and unrelenting business of managing and contractors keeps me from my first love:  machines.

Why I love weekends:  I can work in peace. 

This Saturday night was spent removing 4 wheels for the articulating brush cutter to get new inner tubes installed.  

Nothing is ever simple:  ever seen a 15 bolt lug pattern?  The tires are airplane tires, they don't play.

I love weekends, I can cross tasks off my list, and I even get to take lunch at noon, not skipped or relegated to 3 PM.  Writing this post over lunch on Sunday, no contractor has called looking for a part, just me to delegate to.  Bliss.

Home Archeologist

 Discovering new adventures right out your own back door.

A couple years ago, I delved deep into the history of this property.  I interviewed past land owners and went to the county courthouse to research owners going back 100 years.  I never knew until now that something interesting sat on the foot print that my trailer now occupies.

After every rain storm, a little hillside by my carport erodes slightly and exposes glass shards.  Begrudgingly, I collect and discard them all before any of the dogs can cut themselves.  

I hypothesized it was a previous tenant who'd burned their trash maybe, at most, 20 years ago.

Oh so wrong.  

I happened upon an amber Clorox bottle bottom.

They quit manufacturing them altogether in 1960.  This one is from 1945.

The plot thickens.  

I had found some old pavers buried almost a foot deep while I was planting shrubs around the house a few years ago.  Now, I'm sure there was an old house here.  They disposed of their trash as is the custom in these parts: throw it over the hill behind your house.  My neighbors still carry on this time honored tradition... unfortunately.

They can't see it anymore, but I can.  I don't despair, I fertilize the shrub row I planted 5 years ago in the hopes of obscuring the growing debris pile.  Anyway, I have a great view out the backyard in the Winter time.  My little tin can sits on a piece of Civil War history.  

I can see clearly through the trees to a deep ravine that starts beyond my back fence. 160 years ago, Confederate soldiers entrenched themselves in earthen works there called Sandfort C.S.A., they dug into the ravine walls, allowing them to ambush any Union forces passing  on the nearby road.  To sustain themselves, they drank from the natural spring to this day feed the lakes on the property.  A previous owner told me of the artifacts he had found around the source of the spring.  He even told me of the tin cup he had left 30 years ago nestled in rocks at the source.  I found it and buried it there for another budding archeologist to find in 30 more years. 

Adventure, it's just out your front door.

Firsts

 Celebrate the wins in life. 

Friday night, I ran for the first time in over 2 months.  Earlier in the week, I had taken Dax, Micah, Suki and Pippins to the Boonies all on a mush line.

With Dax as the front man, it was not the kind of experience I'd like to repeat.

After Dax's little ordeal with a funky infection on his legs that didn't resolve for months, I've been heeding the vet school dermatologist's stern admonishment to keep Dax out of the swamps. No small feat, when wetlands bisect the entire property and for some reason, he's not happy unless he returns from a run muddied like he's been tossed in a Shake'n'Bake bag.

Back to the drawing board.  I set Suki up on a third GPS collar and decided to free run them, yet with the requirement they stay within 50 yards of me instead of our previous 300 yard zone.  

Suki is probably the smartest dog I've ever had.  Either that, or Dax is just dumb as a box of rocks and makes everyone else look stellar. Pippins' sight is too compromised to run off leash.  Blind in one eye, I can't risk she runs into a branch and pop her surgery eye... I could've bought myself a new horse trailer with the money I put into that little gelatinous orb.

It was a 5 mile adventure that I do care to repeat, but my soggy, atrophied legs will need to slowly be reintroduced to it.  

To help me out, Uncle Cristian has been taking Suki on adventures with him when he does his security rounds.  

I think he's hooked.  

Once you run with a dog, running solo pales in comparison.  

3 preceding pics courtesy of Carattini Photography

The Hummingbirds Are Back!

 The hummingbirds are back!  They have a very distinctive squeak, I hear them more than I see them.  Unfortunately,  I saw my first one this season stuck up in the clerestory windows of the barn. Once they get up there, they never figure out how to fly down the 15 feet and escape out the big barn doors.  I usually use a telescoping duster to gently knock them off the window to force them to see the open doors.

On Friday morning, this wee little male just flew higher into the peak and disappeared. I didn't see him again until he fell in the aisle just as I was finishing feeding the horses.

Ordinarily, if I catch them right away, I can prevent them from dying from metabolic collapse by administering emergency warm sugar syrup.  I hold them in a dark box for an hour and pump them full of carbs, then release them.

This little man wasn't even sticking his tongue into the syringe, not a good sign. I figured some syrup was seeping into his mouth anyway because I could see him swallowing.  He barely opened his eyes.  Only plaintive little squeaks.  Give up on him?  No way.  Back in my youth, when I thought I could save the world, one injured and stray animal at a time, I had read 'Behaving As If The God In All Life Mattered'.

The author put into prose how I felt about even the most 'insignificant'  animals.  In my mind, there are no insignificant animals, they all play an important part in the ecosystem.  Most importantly, they all have the will to survive. 

A friend once asked me why I was nursing a baby squirrel back to health, "It's so small, what does it matter?".  It matters very much to the squirrel, this is his only life and I'm quite sure he's attached to it! 

Same deal with the hummingbird.  When most of us can't find our way around town without a navigation app telling us where to turn; this little guy, with a brain the size of an elderberry, manages to migrate thousands of miles twice a year, making it through all the storms we'd had the previous night... no way I was going to let him die an ignominious death in the barn.  He is significant.

I decided to bring him in the house, propped him an on heating pad and went about creating him a little habitat in my bathroom.

Throughout the evening, even though his eyes wouldn't open, I kept administering the syrup.  I turned the lights off and let him go into torpor overnight (to help him conserve what little energy I had built up in him).  By morning, he was squeaking and he flickered his tongue into the syringe.  

https://youtu.be/ElJjJ_aDDv0

When he ventured off his branch and started flying laps in the bathroom.

 I knew he was ready.

https://youtu.be/CelOYg3aMNY

He's still around!  The males also make a little honking noise, he beeped at me when I came home last night! 

So, get your feeders out.  They're back.  But, please bring your feeders in on cold nights, you can kill them if they drink really cold syrup.