BOSTON — Man, I love writing that dateline, at long last, three years since we last stepped out of Logan Airport into temperatures 30 degrees lower than in Texas. We are here on the first day of summer, after enduring, like most of you reading this, a scorching end to spring that presages a torturous next three months. Heck, maybe four.
So here we are in our favorite city to visit, my mother’s birthplace, a place steeped in history and so familiar to us by now that it is like returning to an old friend. An expensive friend to be sure. Boston is not a cheap place to visit. After staying home...
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Looks like we’re going to have a bumper crop of dirt daubers this summer. They buzz around the shop and in the garage, building their vertical dirt mounds and acting indignant when I use a plastic paint scraper to knock down their nests. Luckily, you would have to step on a dirt dauber with bare feet to get stung. But they are rather annoying. They dive bomb my face while I’m rowing in our mini-CrossFit gym down in the shop. I guess they’re attracted to sweat, and there is plenty of that this summer.
Actually, it’s officially still spring as I write this. Sigh.
Dirt daubers are members...
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My brother-in-law Jim took a look at Pancho the Donkey’s legs last Saturday evening while visiting. “We need to trim his hooves,” he said and promised to return the next afternoon with his trimming equipment and some fence panels to build a temporary pen. We would have to hem Pancho up to perform this process. Neither a donkey nor a horse is going to just stand there and let someone mess with their hooves.
Pancho is on permanent loan from Jim, who knows about equine issues. He showed up with his trailer and toolbox with trimming tools. Using the three-sided shed that provides Pancho shelter...
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Mowing season has commenced here on the farm. Actually, it began on May 1 with a first mowing after most of the wildflowers had gone to seed. Clumps of skinny white flowers remained in bloom, so I practiced my zero-turn techniques by shearing circles of Bahia grass while leaving standing the flowers, exotically identified as Prairie Fleabane in the PlantSnap app. Further research indicates the Cherokee and Houma tribes boiled the roots to use as a diuretic, and as a healing aid for kidney ailments or gout. I tucked that factoid back in the memory bank should either ailment arise, and my doctor...
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