Construction of what will be known as Pancho’s Pond is at last underway in the pasture where our donkey spends his days. The only good thing about this dratted drought is that it dried up the land to where Gaylond, our seasoned equipment operator, can actually move the dirt around.
Gaylond started in late March, first by running drainage ditches across two pastures to dry out the land, which clearly has at least a couple of underground springs. That worked well, but he suggested we wait until later in the summer. Pushing mud around can get expensive. We’re more interested in it being done...
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EASTERN TOWNSHIP, QUEBEC — Christiane, the raconteur for our Three Pines Tour, arrives at exactly 8 a.m. at our auberge in Sutton, one of the towns in the Eastern Township, which starts about a dozen miles north of the Vermont-Canada. While French is the dominant language in Quebec, this area in large part was settled by Loyalists (as they were called) to Britain in the American Revolution, so English is also commonly spoken.
Chris, as she prefers to be called, spent 35 years working for the Royal Mounted Canadian Police in their counter-terrorism division. After retiring, she ended up helping...
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FENWAY PARK, BOSTON — We have returned to the shrine of my youth after a three-year hiatus caused by the pandemic and a move to the country in the middle of last summer that precluded any opportunities to travel. It was worth the wait.
My Beautiful Mystery Companion and I are seated on the third base side, in prime foul-ball territory about 10 rows from the field. Several of the fans, both adults and children, have brought baseball gloves to the park in hopes of snagging a souvenir. If I somehow catch one, I’ll give it to the cute little boy behind us. (I didn’t.)
The Red Sox uniforms...
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SOMEWHERE IN THE EASTERN TOWNSHIP, QUEBEC, CANADA — We left Boston after four days and headed north through New Hampshire and Vermont just barely into Canada, to a pleasant village called Sutton in what is known as the Eastern Township. It was settled in large part by colonists loyal to the British crown during the American Revolution. French remains the dominant language, however.
I had decided to splurge and rent a BMW SUV. When I arrived at Logan Airport to pick it up, the rental clerk informed me no BMW SUVs were available and offered a Buick SUV. Really? A Buick and not a Beemer? As we talked,...
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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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AUSTIN — I am back in one of my happy places, doing research at the Lorenzo de Zavala State Archives and Library Building, located across the street from the state capitol. Busloads of school children wander around the verdant capitol grounds beneath the pecan and oak trees while squirrels chatter at them. A field trip to the capitol is a fine way to end the school year.
I first flip through the pages of an 1840 edition of the San Augustine Journal & Advertiser, a one-year run that appears to only be available in a print version at this library. Most of what I have researched has been...
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Olive, the dumpster-diving kitten rescued by daughter Abbie last summer after we finished eating at the Olive Garden — hence the name — has finally been allowed to venture into the Great Outdoors. She has been strictly an indoor kitty until this week and spent hours staring longingly out the picture windows into the backyard. My Beautiful Mystery Companion — aka the Cat Whisperer — and I were both leery at letting such a small creature out there where hawks, owls, coyotes and other predators abound. Olive watched with envy as Tater and Tot, her new older brothers, prowled the backyard....
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