Tried to make bread

It was to be a zucchini bread. A sweet one. I don't like sweet bread, but people around me do. So I looked up recipes on the internet, here in the office, which is by the barn yard. Wrote down some stuff. Carried ingredients back to the house, which is not too far away, but a few minutes. Set to work.

I'm not really a baker, even though I do make most of our bread at home. I make it very basic, and in a bread machine. This was different. The recipe called for eggs and baking soda and baking powder, and such.  I heaped things in the bread maker. Then I thought about the ingredients, and realized the author must have forgotten the water. I was having a glass of wine at this time, since I was having an adventure in cooking, and we were going into the evening. Cabernet.

I added water. About a cup. (I'm OK, but not great, with a measuring cup. Or a glass of wine.)  Oh, it got runny. Added some more flour. Then some more corn meal. Still runny, but I tried to cook it anyway.  Twice, and again this morning.

It's not going to happen. I don't know what to add next. Now, if I try to lift this out of the bread machine, the whole mess will go out through the bottom and I will have to kill myself.

Guess I'll have to go to the house to deal with it before the ants arrive.

Update and photo.  The thing settled into a semi solid mass, and I fed it to the turkeys. It smelled good.

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Dear friends - and yes, they are dear.

Why do they always show up when I have no decent clothes on? Or none at all.

I love our friends.  I also love, when it's a hundred degrees out, to shed most or all of my clothes.

That's when they drive into the ranch. And I scramble for whatever it may be that passes for... ranch wear. Yesterday it was a coat. Don't know how that one was still hanging in the barn since winter.  Prior to that it was a Chinese black robe with a red dragon on the back.  I also have had on a long-ish skirt that served double duty as a mini dress. More, I'm sure.  They must think I'm really bizarre

I'm not really a nudist. I don't much like any -ist and -ism things.  I'm also not suggesting that friends do not drop by to visit. I'd love some to come here right now, and we could have a beer and I could joke about the.subject.

And I do have clothes on right now.

Here's a photo I took of another naked ranch resident:

At my age, if I'd been a lizard, I'd be a pair of boots by now.  So no picture of me.

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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 :)