Early start

11/21/07 Wednesday
Good morning Y’all. I’m off to a good start and so is Cherie. Woke up at 5:30 and was out the door at 7:15, mostly at the puppy’s insistence. We don’t usually let them out of their room till it is light enough for them to go outside. By then they have been whining to get out for over an hour and when released their exuberance at being free is expressed by running throughout the house and jumping on us and the bed. That they have recently discovered they are big enough to do. Once discovered it has become a destination for them. First thing we do in the morning is pull the bedspread up to protect the sheets. We try to only allow them up by invitation but you know how that works. We are suckers for those big eyes and generally softies when it comes to our babies.








It was one of those sunsets yesterday where one picture wouldn’t do. One of these days I’ll get a better camera that I can use different lenses on. There is a lens that can capture a panoramic view showing much more of the horizon. Sure wish I had that yesterday. Sunsets evolve as the sun keeps dropping below the horizon and out here in the big West Texas sky it can make for some dramatic visuals. So here are several pictures.







After taking the morning walk with the dogs I got to work wrapping the air conditioner for winter and the cold snap that is coming tomorrow. You know duct tape is a farmer’s best friend and I used almost a whole roll on this job. It’s tape designed to be used outside so should hold up well to the sun. It better at seven bucks a roll. But it sure doesn’t want to stick well when it’s forty degrees out. I cut a piece of plastic that something had come wrapped in, think I got it at the landfill, and wrapped it around the unit first. Then I took the roll of saran wrap that Cherie got at Sam’s Club and wrapped that all around the air conditioner about a dozen times. To hold it all down I gave it a good dose of duct tape. Later I’m going to caulk where it fits in the window. I should have done this when Jib and Jab installed it this summer but never got to it as is often the case with me.

Yesterday I went to the well to get that all wrapped in insulation. Some animal has dug under the pressure tank and excavated so much I’m afraid the soil will collapse and the tank will fall in. I filled it with rocks, dirt, and some of the bits and pieces left over the years of things being replaced on the well. I need to make it a point to keep checking on it. Then a pack rat made a home under the barrel top I had covering the pressure valve. The sucker filled it with cotton from Bud’s field next door. This isn’t good and they have a reputation for chewing on wires. That could cause some big problems. I hate using poison because it will kill any hawks that might eat the dead rat. Perhaps I can find a better trap. The regular rat trap wasn’t enough to take care of the rat in our garage and there is another one in the old henhouse. It hasn’t even bothered the trap I put in there.

Today I will put as much of the rye seed down as I can. I figure that with the snow or rain that’s supposed to be here with the cold front it would be a good time. I am pretty sure that a freeze won’t hurt ungerminated seed as most seed freezes in natural environments anyway. I’m gambling that we will have a period of above freezing temperatures long enough for the rye to get established and then hope it will survive. In total I am putting out four hundred and fifty pounds of seed. Sure wish I could have done it sooner.