WordPlay

Morning in the dog yard…

Dogs: We are full of US!!

We have a routine. Dogs get fed; Belle and Dart go outside.  Connery stays inside to inspect the house until he’s ready to play, at which time he presents himself, and we have a round of fetch.  Then out he goes.

(Why special?  Because he so often hasn’t felt well this past winter, and I need to assess him…and when he doesn’t feel well, being special helps.  And when he feels fine, then I get to enjoy it!)

Connery: I AM SPECIAL!  BAWH!

(I told you he talks in all caps a lot, right?)

Then the horse gets his morning feed and chores, and then it’s off to the dog yard for chores, where the dogs are waiting.

Dogs: It’s our turn!  We rock!

Dart: See my toy!  See my toy!  See my toy!

Connery: Me!  Me!  Me!

Belle: I will help you keep those two boys in line, hee hee!  I bark at you, boy dogs!  You Beagles!  You dogs with legs!  Behave yourselves!

Me: Yes, yes.  You’re all quite wonderful.  But I have a job to do.

You may guess what this is.

Isn’t that special?

Dart: Throw my toy!  Throw it!  I make mooing noises at you because my toy is so special and I want you to throw it!  I throw myself at your feet!  I wiggle uncontrollably!

I have one hand free, so of course I do.

Belle: Bark!  I bark! That boy dog is being rambunctious!  He has long legs!  He’s brown!

Connery lurks. Dart’s toy isn’t one he wants.  Belle is just being noisy.  But he is a working dog and he has things to do.  And he is a tracking dog, so he knows how to do them.

Connery: Over here!  I found poo!

Yes, Connery helps me clean up the yard.

Dart is unmoved by this display of responsibility. He dashes up the hill that borders the yard–quite steep, if short, and it could probably use a retaining wall but at this point is covered with chipper shreddings from the nearby recycle station where they take brush and offer really cheap, crude ground covering in return.  In a land of adobe mud, these shreddings have saved my sanity.

Dart loves the hill. He loves the chipper shreddings.  He LOVES to throw himself on his back and sled downhill head first, upside down, wiggling to scratch his back all the way.  With the favorite toy of the moment in his mouth as he goes.

I am so, SO sorry that I haven’t been able to get a picture…but even if I had the camera, my hands are usually otherwise engaged.

Connery: Over here!  I found poo!

Yard dogs, watching me from the hill

Bonus pic! Because Connery...is about...to...SNEEZE!

Well, INCHES matter.

One inch, said the weather critters of the impending snow. Three if over 7500′ altitude (we’re just below 7000′).

Fifteen inches later…

Snow means a waterpack on the mountains, and good slow water soaking into the sucked-bone dry ground.

But so much snow all at once? On our gravel driveway and hilly dirt road, that equals “snowbound.”

I dug out the barn. I worked on the driveway.  I took ibuprofen!  I dug some more and helped a kid who got stuck at the corner in the family van.

I stared at the remaining snow blocking my car and said, “No.”

But!  I still got the mail from the rural community box.  I might not have 4WD, but the mailman does.  And I have four HOOF drive.

Duncan was somewhat excessively proud of himself and his patience while I leaned, jostled, and made aurgh noises, trying to manage the awkward angle of that flat, tray-type mail niche.

DuncanHorse: ONE of us is dignified.

But hey–we trundled right on past those those stuck cars we passed along the way.

Dart Beagle hasn’t seen snow–just the massive hailstorm from October (still undergoing repairs…).  So this All at Once deluge was of some surprise to him.

I took lots more pictures, but the camera ate everything but this. Boo!

Dart Beagle: I MUST EAT ALL THE SNOW!

Dart Beagle: I MUST PEE ON ALL THE SNOW!

Which is a pretty convenient sequence when you think about it.

Connery Beagle: I love my dogloo.  You fool.  BAWH!

[Connery's just being dramatic.  He spent most of the time inside.]

The camera ate the pics before the entrances were tromped open. Boo!

So it’s a good thing I went out and took piccies of the wild Christmas trees two days before all this snow fell.

What, you don’t have wild Christmas trees? Around here we apparently grow them on the National Forest land.

Yes, the sky was that blue.

PS And Sunday, because of the immediate warming trend and the strength of the mountain sun, we had…wait for it…THE MELT.  *splooge*  Like butter in a microwave.  Turns out there’s an awful lot of water in all that snow…

If you’re on my FaceBook or Twitter feeds, you watched this one unfold.  The evening clouds  coming in over the mountains weren’t a surprise–we knew about the rain.

When the hail started, that wasn’t a surprise, either. Biggie marble-size hail is common enough around here.  It squalls through in pretty short order.

I mean, usually.

This time, there was nothing usual about it–although as golf balls started to spang off glass and we crated the dogs away from the windows, we still thought it would pass.

Because, I mean, usually.

But within moments I was pressed against the leeward office window, watching DuncanHorse hurl himself around a paddock slippery with accumulating inches of hail–scrabbling, falling, and beyond rational equine thought.  Talk about feeling helpless…oh, I cried for DuncanHorse!

This lasted for approximately…forever.

(Yes, I’m pretty it was about that long.)

The hail piled up in drifts that would take days to melt, sandblasting the world.  When it finally–FINALLY–eased, I went out to comfort Duncan with his blanket (he’s too dignified to call it a blankie, but same effect), and gave him bute and a bonus snack of hay.  I won’t say he leaped into my arms upon my arrival, but it was a close thing.

The next days were all about discovering damage: Garbage can, holed; gutter drains, bashed; van, battered (to the tune of $6600), one solar tube cover split.  The roof damage is of yet undetermined–the special insurance catastrophe teams are here,  but taking weeks to work through the backlog.

Our scrub Oak, scrubbed. The dear little thing does still have a leaf or too...if you look closely.

My lush fall wildflowers turned into food processor fodder; we lost a little yard tree and are crossing our fingers for this year’s other painstaking transplants.  The wild juniper/pinon arroyo lands around us were thinned to a veil–neighbors across the valley are suddenly visible.  The wild grasses  were flattened, the roadside ditches held mini-glaciers of hail flow, and the giant sunflowers canted wildly out of the ground under their own weight.

Our thriving, bushy catnip

Smashed Asters probably ought to be the name of a band

OH.  The agility equipment.  Battered, shattered, shredded. I saved the table (it’s already repainted) and the A-frame (ditto), but the dogwalk…maybe salvageable, maybe not.  Insurance folks check it out this week, along with the teeter, tunnels and broad jump–and the barn, which gurgles mysteriously and has water in its structure somewhere.

Um.

As for DuncanHorse, it took five days before he shook off the soreness and the shock, but he’s back to being his opinionated self and would not care to admit he was ever in need of a blankie and a hug.

All in all, that storm left behind a little slice of damage remarkable for its completeness. No exposed car or household in this little area escaped; no skylight survived.  While most of the damage occurred tightly local to us, the storm also hit weirdly northwest of us to wreak havoc at Kewa Pueblo.

However.

In the end, it’s all part of living along the Sandias. If the beauty of these high desert foothills is dramatic, so can be the weather.  It’s also part of horsekeeping at home–and of being so drawn to the outdoors that the damage to the trees and flowers and the small creatures who perished now feels so deeply personal.

Tucked in by the house...a wee gaillardia, the lone survivor

Of course, that doesn’t stop us from crying about it, or floundering to fit repairs and recovery into the following weeks, or wandering around in shock at the gut-deep understanding that no matter how well you prepare and provide for your outdoor kids, when nature comes along, it’s not always enough.

Patty at the Write Horse sure knows it, too–Friday gives us the storm from a Risotada Training point of view.  But until then, we’re all still just putting things back together.

PS Dear Editor: v. sorry my proofs were pushing that deadline…

Probably there are a whole lot of things you’re happy not to know about flies and their little fly babies.

Oh, I wish was you.

It hasn’t been bad here this year, really–not compared to the valley last year when we lived not only next to a herd of sheep, but the aquecia. In fact, with that historical watering system all around us and flies being so keen on incubating in damp, warm places, I suspect that place was just plain Fly Heaven.

It was not Horse Heaven. Not come July. No talking in the paddock unless you wanted flies in your mouth. Flies bounced off our bodies and worse, into and out of our ears. I went through hundreds of dollars of fly bait, fly spray, and fly masks.

The Height of Horse Fashion. If you read horse nose language you see he is Not Pleased. This is because he believes he should be eating.

I had already done every possible thing with my own yard, but here’s a fun fact about flies–they have a quarter-mile range. Jammed into the valley with its unique urban-rural agriculture, we didn’t have a chance. Not even with my trusty fly predators scattered around on a monthly basis.

*insert fly predator love*

Baby Fly Predators, still sleeping in their shipping package

This year, we’re out in the foothills. No sheep, no aquecias (the arroyos manage our water, and otherwise we xeriscape), and lightly scattered horses. The fly predators had a fighting chance…at least, until a month or so ago.

I ran into trouble because–and here is a little tip about flies–the fly traps have to be placed just right. The right amount of sun, the right amount of heat, and the correct proximity to their favorite hang-outs.

What the human wants is to put the trap–one gallon of stinky fly bait in water–in a place that won’t affect the neighbors or the house, or stand vulnerable to horse investigation.

And they have to be placed that way ahead of the seasonal surge, which around here is triggered by the monsoon.

But here in my new location/climate…I didn’t know what the flies would want. My instinct was that the flies would want to be HERE. And HERE had no protection from Horsie Incursion.

After repeated failures, I gave up and put the trap HERE, surrounded by a little bulwark of juniper logs.

DuncanHorse still gets to it. But not very often.

So now it’s a working system, if too late to prevent the population surge–and complete with that pungent but odd fly bait. Not immediately nasty, just sort of, “Gosh, I wish I hadn’t smelled that.” And then, as you realize how the slightest molecule instantly adheres to your skin and doesn’t let go, “Gee, I REALLY wish I hadn’t smelled that.”

Solution: scrub until the affected skin is gone. Works a charm.

But then there’s later. After a few days…as the flies begin to collect. As they DIEEEEE. Then it’s not just fly bait, it’s rotting flies and fly bait. A gallon jar with four solid inches of dead flies over the world’s nastiest liquid (we can’t call it water any longer). Oh yeah.

But hey! The flies think this is even MORE exciting, so the trap works even better!

Yay!

And then comes the day. The fly trap must be emptied, rinsed, and rebaited.

Han Solo: What an incredible SMELL you’ve discovered!

This is that smell.

And this is when you learn what you really, really, wish you didn’t know about flies:

They’re explosive.

You heard me.

BOOM!

Yes indeed. You gotta dispose of the accumulated mass of flydom JUST SO.

OR ELSE.

While frantically trying to not actually touch it.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

And here, I had intended to insert a photo showing amazing masses of potentially explosive flies.  However, this afternoon I had an uncharacteristic fit of mercy and good taste, so instead….

Look! Pretties! My first-year gaillardia! California poppies! Sunflowers! (Can’t take credit for those…they plant themselves.)

These annual sunflower plants are about twice as tall as I am...

These gaillardia ought to spread nicely next year, and be good and thick!

Poppies! Poppies! Poppies! I hope these pretty little things come back next year...

…Monday

Yes, you heard me.

Pish.

Pishing, it turns out, is a birder thing.  Which I know because this past weekend was International Migratory Bird Day, and it happens that there was a big bird doin’s  just less than an hour from here, at Salinas Pueblo Missions National Park at Quarai.

TOTALLY COOL Northern Waterthrush, a warbler. Yes, we saw it by the edge of a small pond/large puddle.

It just so happens that I love watching birdies.

For sure I need to learn the resident birds of this area, which are different from the birds in the valley I saw last year (including the niftymost flock of nighthawks, the wonderful gobbling sandhill cranes,  and a gorgeous black phoebe).   Here up against the east side of the Sandias, so much of what I’ve seen is new to me.  This flycatcher, that nuthatch, a different variety of the junco…

After the bird drought I found while living east of Flagstaff for a decade, it is a veritable feast.   So add in International Migratory Bird Day and…  Well.  I swoon!

On this particular IMBD,  we had not only the birds, but the guides–birding gurus Hart Schwarz  and Tyler Huning.  Inevitably the birding group–thinned somewhat by a cold, cloudy day and high regional winds that manifested as only a brisk breeze in the birding zone–spread out, and I ended up with Hart Schwartz, futilely and not too stealthily trying to siphon his brain.  (sadly, my brain is not nearly big enough to hold all that knowledge).

It was Hart, after a discussion of the ethics of pishing,  who declared mankind’s inalienable right to pish.

Piiishhhh psh psh psh!

Yup, like that. Apparently sometimes–say when you’ve had a bird singing and it’s gone quiet–you can spur it back into activity by pishing it. There was some discussion over whether this was “okay,” (birding ethics lesson!) and in short order, all was settled. It is, I have learned, a basic right of mankind to pish!

Something oddly reassuring about that.

Plus, of course, it was the perfect opportunity to make all the expected puns.

Not that I would do anything like that. Puns. No no, not me. Certainly not a cheap and easy pun.

Never.

*coff*

Anyway! The official bird count will be up on the Park’s event page, and I’m sure it’ll be much longer than my own list.  Off the top of my head?  (And not counting the ones we heard but didn’t see): Wilson’s warbler, northern waterthrush, lark sparrow, spotted towhee, violet green swallow, lazuli bunting, dusky flycatcher, yellow warbler, kinglet(?), catbird, turkey vulture, raven (not sure which), crow, bushtit(?), ladder-backed woodpecker, morning and collared doves…  Oh, I am running out of brain again!

(And that’s not counting the Swainson’s hawk we saw on the way, or the summer tanager we saw on the way back! Also, total bonus:  going through the teensy no-intersection townlets as we trundled along the bottom edge of the Manzano mountains, we came across Ray’s One Stop:  Gas-Groceries-Liquor-Woodyard. Indeed, something for everyone!)

But mostly, I just plain had fun with a group of complete strangers who quietly and amiably had instant fun together, in Pursuit of  Bird.  Boy, I hope I can go to this event again next year!

Wilson's warber. Totally adorable. Flit! Flit!

The violet-green swallow, who finally perched at the top of a juniper and posed for us after teasing us for hours

Lazuli Bunting--the final bird of my outing, and how perfect is that, to cap off the day?

PS: And at the homestead…brown-headed cowbird, house finch, and Cassin’s flycatcher…
PPS: Those piccies are from (and linked to) their respective pages on the Audubon Guide site!

posted on Monday

Okay, maybe we can’t blame this entirely on Nature. There is, after all, a barn involved.

A barn that was snugged up against trees, and then which seems to have shifted slightly over the winter. End result? There’s this one stumpy piece of this one branch of this one pinon tree that’s jutted up under the sheet metal roof.

There, it waits for the wind to come from a certain direction, and it commences to SKREE SKREE SKREE SKREE.

If Duncan doesn’t go insane from long-term exposure, I will. At least it’s behind the hay stall and not in his very ears.

Plus, you know…it’s not good for the barn and all that.

The problem is…in order to reach this one piece of this one branch of this one tree, I have to climb, hatchet and saw in hand. Not far, because it’s not the sort of tree you can truly climb at all–just a gnarly clump of juniper and pinon, hard to squeeze into, some of which have trunks that are slightly off true and you can kind of…levitate there.

If you’re careful.

And then the offending branch is still over my head.

Remember my previous post about the hatchet? About how you let the weight of the thing do the work for you?

That doesn’t work so much when the target is OVERHEAD.

Also, wood chips fall in your eyes.

So I’ve gotten out the old tree saw (also older than I am, and in dire need of sharpening) and have a new procedure…a moment of sawing. A moment of chopping. Come back tomorrow.

This could take a while.

But you know, that’s okay. Because if there’s one thing I learned in the process of becoming a writer, it was persistence. Or maybe it’s the other way around…it was persistence that got me here.

Five pages a day. Day after day after day. It adds up to books. Over thirty of them at this point, and if you count the ones I wrote before I was even trying to get published…

So. Half an inch after half an inch after…

And hey! Look what persistence has done with the juniper nursery!

posted on Wednesday

I love my new barn.

I especially love my new barn on nights when I’m settling down to sleep and I suddenly think the dreaded thought:

Did I close the hay stall door?

And then I pad through the darkness to the office, flip on the back light, peer through the window, and say, “Why, yes, I did. Go, me!”

This is such and improvement on get dressed, put on shoes, gear up for weather, head out several layers of doors and the yard gate, and walk around to where I can see the front of the barn.

It really is.

It’s actually not a new barn so much as it is a nearly new barn, constructed just over a year ago upon the move from Arizona to New Mexico, and then recently relocated here. And boy, was it painstakingly positioned–exactly so I can look out that window for exactly that reason. Well…and to check on the horsie, too.

So, you ask…what’s this about manure landscaping?

“Run-off from the yard has to drain away from the barn,” I said as the site was under construction. Really. I said it many times. I’m pretty sure a note of desperation entered my voice. Why, I might even have gotten a little…testy. The response was always, “It’s not done yet, it’ll be fine when it’s done.”

Problem is, I guess, I never did stamp my foot. Because then one day it was done, and…well.

Water runs directly at the barn. Laser targeting. Distinct downhill.

El Nino winter? The hay stall floods. The horse stall is mud. The area in front of the stall door is…

One of these days someone is going to come looking for me and find nothing but a feebly waving hand sticking up from the mud.

The stall floor is now lined with double-layered stall mats, and that’s helped a lot. Just outside the stall entry? I’m stumped. And after the snow-rain of the past couple days, I’m desperate! The ground is half frozen, half mud, and I don’t want to disturb the wood shredding-covered ground where it’s still stable. So what do I have to work with?

Right.

Horse poo.

And so I’m trenching; I’m building high ground. I’m directing the water as I can, with the materials at hand.

Yes, it is I.

The Happy Poo Farmer.

*DELETE PICTURE OF INDELICATE POO FARM*

*INSERT PLEASANT PASTORAL VIEW FROM DRYISH DAY*

posted on Monday

For some reason I had occasion to think about this today.

(I just cannot imagine why.)

But it’s true.  Using a hatchet is just like writing.

No, no, no–I don’t mean the part where errant CEs get hold of your work or the typesetting process accidentally–well, you don’t even want to know.  That’s more like weedwhacking.

I mean the part where you choose between working or letting it happen.

Okay, you’d think: Pick up the hatchet…aim it…hit something with it.

But no.

It’s: Pick up the hatchet, aim it, and let it hit something.

The hatchet does the work, you see. If you let it.

Okay, mostly. You gotta give it some swing, but it’s not a mighty man-grunt swing. It’s just lining things up to happen and then providing some momentum. And if you try too hard? You get cramps in your forearm, and in your hand, and the blade doesn’t ever bite deep. It skids off the wood, or it takes these bitty little hacky chips. You get in your own way.

So, writing. You try too hard, you over-think it, and your brain starts to steam. The words don’t work well with each other. They don’t bite deep. You get in your own way.

Just gotta line yourself up and let it go.

Is that too profound, or what?

(But where would we be without pictures of the agility yard process?)

The Pristine Juniper Nursery

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CHOP CHOP CHOP