Triplets

Short and sweet, or not so much sweet, but cute: One of my Mama goats had three babies yesterday. One was small and weak. This morning she was smaller and weaker, and it was time to say goodbye or get into life saving mode.

She'll be fine. But Mama won't deal with her.

I'll have a GOAT with me at all times (not so much exaggeration) for the next couple of months. Not really what I wanted, but OK.

She's cute.

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Blue Hubbard

Got into weight lifting lately, as in yesterday. My pride and joy of the summer garden is my very own desert sub-sub-species (is there such a thing?) of a Blue Hubbard squash. I had this moment captured by camera, and not with a scale, or I would tell the weight, but it could have been close to the weight of a large bag of cat food, which is twenty-five pounds.

We'll have food into next May! Woo-hoo!

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I had a bat.

It's sort of hard to explain, but it really did happen.

Sunday afternoon in my little "office" building. Chores mostly done, and coming in to cool down with a beer, a beer that was in a beer cozy, which is of importance to the story. (If the story is important at all.) Something was chattering at me, in a very small voice. Sort of sounded like my goats, but in a tiny voice. There was the little critter on the floor. Since my back was killing me, I sat down on the floor and sat my beer down right next to me and the critter. In one soft move, critter placed itself on beer cozy and it was a bat! It looked very decorative there, and the beer was now hijacked, so I left to get a camera, all the way out by the house. So then... I got roped into some orchard decisions, and got waylaid for a half hour or so.

Back into the office. No bat on beer cozy. Warm beer! Noo! Not warm beer!

Oh, and the bat? It was cute. It had soft brown fur, which I petted. It didn't bite, so I don't think we have rabies, the bat or I.

It happened, I swear. I wasn't drunk either. I mean, it was an almost new beer.

When I was little, I knew that little people lived in a hole in the floor under my bed. Only I could see them, because they were only my friends. This reminded me of that time in my life. It was, I suppose, unreal. But I did have a bat, for five minutes.

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Chillin'. Just chillin'

They say it's been a cool summer, but it's still a hot summer. After all, we are in the Mojave Desert, ya'know. In the mountains, but still...

(Speaking of COOL, I hope the video I just shared comes through nicely, and without ads or.. I don't know - I use Firefox + it's excellent ad block, so it's very rare for me to see ANY ads, ever.)

So I'm taking it easy, reading about cool things. Wishing I could be a kid again, and run through the sprinklers... but there are none here, and no lawns. Just large expanses of sand, with some bushes and a few trees here and there. And my own created paradise of grapevines, cottonwood trees, my veggie garden. A paradise I love.

Oh, and yesterday we planted my new little homestead style orchard: Apple, plum, fig, olive, pomegranate, peach; a couple-few of each tree. And blackberry and raspberry bushes. It will be a challenge to keep them all happy. It gets cold here, too. But I can't really remember that today!

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It's been a hot summer. Here's something cool :)

Lettuce

In my perpetual search for fulfillment, nutritional and emotional, I'm sure, I set aside a spot in the garden for growing lettuce. Mixed lettuce, of the "designer" kind that you eat as little baby leaves. The kind that looks just like weeds.  See where I'm going?  My garden is not the weed free sort.  So this morning I was out there, pulling almost randomly at growing little things, putting some in my mouth and trying to figure if they should be eaten by me or the goats, or maybe not at all.  We have jimson weed here. They have some type of hallucinogen in them.  Maybe I'm just dreaming that I'm typing this.  In any case, maybe this New York style fancy garden experiment will come to an abrupt halt, and I'll just add some more squash. There's no mistaking a zucchini for a crab grass.

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Helicopter age!

So, today is my birthday, and yeah, sure, I'm feeling a bit older than last year this time, or even older than yesterday. What I'm really getting at, though, is that my oldest friend called with his congratulations.  He is, as he himself says, ninety-two and a half years old.  After he was done asking me about my health and well-being, I got to ask him how he is and how he's feeling. He told me he'd grown to see the budget age and now is in the helicopter age. My question mark must have been loud.  Well, the budget age is when the doctors don't bother repairing you anymore,  because you're not going to live that much longer anyway. Sigh, yeah. Now, the helicopter age, wow - this is what he said:
"You know how, when flying an airplane, you can let go of the steering and just let it coast, while in a helicopter you have to constantly engage hands and feet to stay on course. Well, when I go down to the mail box in the mornings, it's getting to become somewhat of a mission just to get there and back. I have to focus."

When I grow up I want to be like him.  Learn to fly a helicopter when I'm almost a hundred years old.

Oh, and this man lives alone in a two story house, does his own care and cooking, just gets help with cleaning the house.  On his night stand is a television set, turned on its side, so that he can watch TV in bed without straining his neck.

I really, really want to live my life like that. Flexibility and imagination..

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