Like a Bug on a Windshield

photo by Kathryn Scott My dad never killed a dog while I was growing up. A few times he had to jump into his pickup and go run dogs off that were chasing the cattle. It's the country code. If your dog chases livestock, he is guilty of a capital crime. Horses attempting to flee barking, snarling dogs often break legs. Cattle being chased run and burn off weight, often being off their feed for awhile. Sheep crash into fences and hurt themselves and the list goes on. A livestock chasing dog costs the farmer money, sometimes a lot, and they escalate and begin killing sheep and goats. Dogs that chase chickens usually catch them and kill them. The attack also stresses out the rest of the flock causing hens to stop laying and molt. These dogs usually get three strikes. The punishment the first two times, is harsh enough. The dog is sentenced to having the decomposing chicken tied around his neck until it rots and falls off. Kind of an echo of Rime of the Ancient Mariner. If you

I really wanted that last drink of coffee. Some days are like that. They seem to be starting off well, but then go down hill in a hurry. A few weeks back, or a couple, anyway, I was having a good day. I had just restarted my compost, building up layers over two feet high and ready for more "green" material (that's fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds and/or grass clippings). Since the neighbor's chickens like scattering my compost, I placed a scrap of plywood across the open front. Kathy does the leaf raking around here and she had three trash cans of leaves and two big, somewhat compacted piles ready to be hauled to the shredder. I fired up the shredder and made short work of the three barrels and one trailer load and had enough shredded product to fill the wheelbarrow three times. One load went in the garden, around a few tomato plants as mulch. Good stuff. I loaded another wheelbarrow load, probably destined for the compost. We mow our pasture-size l

First, let me say, that there is a fine line between a blog and a Christmas newsletter. I probably stomp all over that line at times. In some respects, I'm trying to find the current focus for the blog, but I'm stretched a bit right now. In addition to the two blogs: I'm writing a Christmas play for the 84 year old Little Theatre in Winston-Salem, NC; we're deep into gardening season; and now it's dewberry season. But first, Rose didn't like the photo of her I used in my last post, so here's a better one. Like I said, things are crazy right now. Hot weather moved in early, so my radishes bolted and my peas only produced one meager picking. Various weather issues and other things forced me to pare down the garden, so I'll try to get carrots and kale planted in time for a fall garden. Right now, I need to be getting mulch made and put down, plus, I think it's time to restart my compost pile. The tomatoes continue needing to be raised up on their

This is my little dog Rose. Rose found me fourteen years ago in the parking lot at PetSmart and adopted me. Not the other way around. Rose is a long-haired Chihuahua. She's kind of bossy, possessive and protective. I used this photo because it's the view of her I see most of the time. Rosie is a lapdog. When we first became chair mates, her hair was redder. She was also a bit more agile. It was not uncommon for her to jump up onto my lap or jump down from the bed. Now she wants to be picked up and she wants to be helped down. She's not the first of our dogs to come to grips with aging. It's been interesting and enlightening to watch their behavior change as they begin to deal with increased weight, joint pain and a sense of mortality. I bring this up because I've had to come to grips with my own aging process. In the past, I've always pushed myself to keep working, in spite of heat, humidity and UV index. Recently, I've had to come to accept

For the record, I love coffee. I love all coffee except that last cup in the bottom of the pot. If it's really burned, it goes in my compost bucket, unless it's cold, then it goes in the front flower bed for fertilizer. I'm told that old coffee has nutritional benefits for plants, just like used coffee grounds, but without needing time to break down. Did I mention that I love coffee? Coffee is the first thing I consume every morning and the last thing I ingest at night. I love espresso, latte, cappuccino, cafe coffee and chocolate covered coffee beans. The thing is, I love my coffee and I want it every morning. I'm probably addicted, but I don't worry about it. After forty-seven years I have never had an overdose of coffee requiring emergency medical treatment. We use a ten dollar coffeemaker from Dollar General Store and it does the job of making coffee just fine. Occasionally our coffeemaker gets clogged up with minerals from our well water. We use water

Where I grew up in Northeastern Oklahoma, strawberries were an important crop. They were so important that school started early in August so we could be out by May fifth in order to work in the strawberry harvest. Each year, my sister would sign us up to pick. We would stand in the dark down by the highway until the crew truck picked us up. We were the only kids in the back of the truck with six or eight grown men. We would arrive at the berry farm just as the first rays of dawn were breaking above the horizon and the strawberry plants were still wet with dew. We would get heavy wooden carriers with a dozen wooden berry quarts (nowadays they use plastic) at the berry shack. A row boss would assign us rows and we would go to work. The strawberry plants grew in wide rows several hundred feet long. Each picker was allowed to pick from her or his side of the row, only. The row bosses carried ax handles and enforced the rules as they saw necessary. For many of the itinerant workers

It's that time of year again. Dewberry season. The wood is filled with big white blossoms that will become juicy berries in only a few weeks. In the years when we have rain over the two weeks before the buds open, we get extra large flowers, followed by extra large berries. Dewberries grow as runners along the ground. They have both male and female plants and grow as biennials, putting forth new growth from the roots one year, and producing berries on the previous year's growth. Blackberries produce more berries in less space, but they can get out of hand. In Oregon, most blackberries are treated as noxious weeds. They produce impenetrable hedges of thorny brambles and grow rapidly in moist areas. Like blackberries, dewberries are considered a nuisance in many areas, where they are invasive and difficult to control. However, dewberries tend to grow on single canes along the ground at a height of no more than eighteen inches. Dewberries were once heavily cultivated

It's finally spring out here in the woods. After a long stretch of below average temperatures, way below average rainfall and mostly above average winds, I am finally able to transplant some of the many, many seedlings that have been suffering in the greenhouse. The sunshine is nice, but I have to be aware of heat and UV exposure. It's easy to overdo when there are so many chores to get done, especially since I tend to push myself to get just a few more plants into the ground, do a little more watering and prep just one more bed. I'm not the only creature out getting started on what is now a shortened growing season. Birds are singing their mating songs and building nests. A pair of roadrunners has been staying close to a large cedar tree where they've built a nest. Whitetail deer are moving in larger groups, but soon the does will go off on their own to prepare for birthing their fawns. The frogs and toads have been singing most nights, trying to attract mate

Things have been tough lately, what with having to prioritize. There are things that I would like to do, things I seriously want to do, things that have to get done soon in order to meet a goal, and things I need to do to meet obligations. I would really like to get out and hunt for mushrooms, so I don't miss morel season again this year and I would like to build a small hugelkultur bed, just to try it out. Then there are all those leaves and pine needles that I haven't gotten raked up yet. I have plenty in the shady corner of my garden, as well as between rows, but I will want more as things get big enough for mulching. Oh, and I want to prepare some beds out front for more pepper plants and a few other things I've got to get tomatoes and peppers transplanted into the garden or I will have to repot them. Soon. But the weather forecast seems to always have just one more freeze before it's safe to set out tender plants. That novel that was due on the 25th wa

The rains came and here I am without a working rain gauge. I'm keeping a record of what days I water and also, when nature waters. When it's me, I try for about one inch in the garden. It would be handy to know what nature is going for. I started back last Fall keeping a written log of what I was doing, plus, I printed homesteading journal forms and began filling them out. Unfortunately, the forms asked for information I have no use for and didn't ask for some things I have since wished I had recorded. Like rainfall. Last year's notebook helped a lot with this year's planning, but lacked some information that could have been useful. Once I started sprouting and planting seeds, I realized that certain specific information might really help me next year, but I had waited too long to recover lost data. I started my pepper seeds with damp paper towels in plastic bags. It would have been good to have specific information on what germinated when, and when I moved

Lake Thunderbird Some changes are good, like from winter to spring. Others are not so good. Every time we have to go into Norman, the city is bigger noisier and the traffic is heavier. It seems like hundreds of acres of farm land become cookie cutter housing and huge apartment complexes every week. That's not just my imagination, others see it too. And every trip into town, I notice more businesses shutting down. Not that that's always a bad thing. Long John Silvers, Arby's and Wendy's locations have been boarded up. The Mexican Food Store is gone, and that probably isn't a good thing, since the International food store has been gone for awhile. The highway out here has become four-lane for about half the way and that has led to more traffic. It's also the time of year when campers, boaters and fisherman flock to Thunderbird, which means we no longer have the lake to ourselves. We also no longer have the big box garden centers to ourselves. I al

So much of our lives we take on faith. It's an uncertain world out there in every way possible, but we take it on faith that tomorrow will come and we plan accordingly. The sun will come up tomorrow (or the Earth will continue to rotate overnight). We believe the seasons will continue to change (Spring is the season that really likes to test our faith--as in, will it ever get here?). We take it on faith that we still have five miles worth of gas left when the little gas pump-shaped light goes on. It isn't faith that causes us to believe that since we've hit one red light we'll hit 'em all, that's pessimism. Gardening is a real test of faith. To begin with, we take it on faith that we know enough about what we are doing to pull off some kind of crop. We even mistakenly believe that our garden will look just as good as the ones in the magazines, even though it's more likely to look like the poor, dried up kitchen plot from a spaghetti western. Again,

Our future doom has been a frequent topic on this blog. I'm happy to announce that we are still on the verge of the end of the world. A report a few days ago said that the Yellowstone super volcano is building pressure and is causing some concern among the geologists who study such things. That in and of itself is no big deal, but an article in the news last week quoted a stranded  alien time traveler from thousands of years in the future who said we should be worried. He wasn't clear on the details, but he seemed pretty sure that something is going to happen, sometime. I understand his confusion. I didn't pay attention in world history class, either. People living on the East Coast probably feel that the end is near. They are currently getting two inches of snow an hour, on the heels of last week's big flooding event. We even have a new meteorological term: "bomb cyclone." It's sort of like getting a category one hurricane and freezing temperatures

I cracked a rib last week and it hurts like heck. No, don't feel sorry for me. I don't deserve it. It's really stupid how I did it. I was sitting on the deck in one of the plastic wicker chairs and I dropped an appointment card I found in my coat pocket. It landed on the deck beside my chair. Did I get up and bend over to pick it up like a smart person? No, I didn't. I leaned over the arm of the chair and reached as far as I could with my left hand. With my fingers still six inches away from the card, reaching became painful. Did I get up and pick up the card like a normal person. Oh, no I didn't. I pushed past the point of pain and stretched until I heard something snap. Then I got up and picked up the card like anyone else would have. Since I'm an old hand at breaking ribs, I didn't bother going to the hospital. Unless the rib is puncturing a lung, there isn't much they can do, except maybe give me painkillers, which don't work for me. I alrea

Only a few days ago I was planting onion sets with temperatures in the mid seventies. Monday afternoon we went hiking along a bird watching trail at the lake. It was windy, and we didn't see any birds. Yesterday, Tuesday, the temperature was in the twenties with freezing rain. It would have been a good day to stay inside and drink hot tea, but we had to get the grandson to a doctor appointment in Oklahoma City. Traffic was terrible, as per usual, but the roads weren't too bad. During the three hours we were in the medical center, more freezing rain fell and the clinic closed early. We had to drive through parts unknown to find a Walgreens and fill a prescription before we could get back on the Interstate to drive home. Once home I tried to get some good photos of the ice, but the pictures don't really do it justice. The fleeting beauty of winter ice. This afternoon, fifteen minutes after the sleet began. Evening before last, we were watching a f

When I announced I was suspending this blog, I expected it to be long term, but I found that I missed it. So I logged back in and discovered my readership has tripled since my last post. What's up with that? So I'm back, the blog has a new look, and I'm going to start including photos when they seem appropriate--or even when they don't. Kathy and I like visit the lake every chance we get, even after dark. Last night we were on our way back from a trip into town and decided to stop in at the South Dam Area. The sky was beautiful and I managed to get a fairly good picture. I thought you might like to see the photograph I used for the new background. I don't know how to write HTML, so I'm limited to customizing the templates available from Blogger. It would have been nice to show the really colorful part of the picture, but I would rather write than fight with software. The past week has been eventful. The U.S. of A. hasn't exactly been domina

After struggling with this decision for awhile, I've finally come to a decision. Once again, I will suspend this blog indefinitely. I've been doing some juggling for awhile, but recent illnesses have made it harder to do. I have a novel in the works, the third in the Eaters series, which has spent far too much time on the back burner. I also have a new novel in the Adamanta series that I'm working on and have an April deadline for a completed draft. My other blog is very time consuming. First, it requires research, I must get my information straight and get up and do some gardening or cooking to write about. Next I must do the photography (which only occasionally comes first) and the photo editing. Finally, I write the post, set it aside for a day or two, come back and edit it, and then post. Besides the writing, having teenage boys around takes up plenty of time and adds to my time in the kitchen and out of house. Really, this blog takes more time, because I have to

Traditionally, this has been the time of year I head west, especially to the Northwest. Not every year, but when I do go it's always during the January lull in the weather. The middle of January always seems to have a week or so where the skies are blue, the roads are clear and the days are a little warmer. This year I've spent the first couple of weeks of the month as a caregiver to sick family members, I had a few hours this morning being taken care of, and now I'm doing another round of care-giving. It's been too cold for weaklings like me to do much outdoors. The wind cuts through the warmest coats. Most of the wildlife has been staying out of sight, save for the few little birds who seem to delight in this weather. It's only a couple of weeks from the start of garden preparations and then it's back to work. I plan to remain dormant just a little longer. Stephen P.

Hugh Mackay said: "Nothing is perfect. Life is messy." I've always liked that quote because it is one of the greatest truths of all time. It pretty much sums it all up. When someone asks where you've been, you can either tell them in varying degrees of detail or simply shrug, but the bottom line: life is messy. There's another quote: Man makes plans . . . and God laughs. It's been attributed to various people including Michael Chabon, but it may also be an old Yiddish proverb. I can relate to that on a minute-by-minute level. It doesn't matter what I plan, what I end up doing is completely different. Now part of that has to do with having a life partnership. I plan, Kathy has other plans. Right now I'm living in a situation that's complicated by having a grandson in an alternative high school situation. Another grandson has a serious illness. Sometimes the first grandson needs to get to school at the same time his brother needs to be at a c