A puppy!

I have been lonely since Shiloh died.  At first I just missed her terribly.  Over the past few months, though, I have missed her company out here on our little farm. 

She was always with me when I was outside.  I never walked to the chicken house alone.  I never went for a jog by myself.  Even while I cut the grass, she was close by.  While I absolutely love my home place and being away from the busyness of the city, I need a friend to share it with me.

Today, I am meeting my new friend.

 

He is an 11 week old miniature Australian Shepherd and I will meet him in a couple of hours.

 

I'm so happy!

 

 



A November gift

Today was a gift.

I suppose that every day is a present that God gives us, but he gift-wrapped this one even more special than normal.  If this mid-November Saturday had been gray and rainy no one would be surprised.  After all, we are in the waning days of fall, winter is looming on the next calendar page.

But today is one I dream of all year.  Perfectly sunny, warm, and all in tints of yellow.  

I walked around the yard soaking up the sounds and views around me.  The slope to the boat landing leads to the back waters of the Alabama River.  Much of the year it is muddy, but today the water came up to the bottom of the landing.  It is hard to tell, but the shiny place at the bottom of the picture is the river.

The birds and squirrels accepted today's gift with a playful attitude.  They sang more, chattered to each other, played in the big oak.

I've always heard that robins signal the coming of spring, but that would be if you live in more northern climates.  Our yard was full of robins today. 

As I roamed around I found my way to the top of the hill in our yard.  We share a driveway with Daryl's parents.  This is where the drive splits, theirs to left, ours to the right.

At the back of our hill is a small burial plot.  A few years ago when Jackie's cat, Scarlett, died I buried her at the base of a tree.  It was just me and her on a rainy day I'll never forget.  I placed a small piece of flagstone on top of her grave as a marker.

When Shiloh died we buried her next to Scarlett.  They would never have been this close to each other in life :)   Scarlett's stone stayed flat for years, but Daryl stood the stones up and I like it that way.

One day I'd like to put a place to sit and reflect and enjoy the beauty on top of our hill.  And when I am gone and cremated I want my ashes scattered or buried there.  Not because I want to be buried next to my dog, but because I can't think of a better resting place for the earthly me.  

The eternal me will already have gone on to endless days just like this one.

I voted for Twinks

About 30 thirty years ago Daryl and I were part of the Farm Bureau Young Farmers, which at the time was an accurate description of us:  Young Farmers.  I don't remember the entire purpose of the organization, but I do know that it was an attempt to promote farming in our area.

One year we organized a beauty pageant.  I have no idea what that might have had to do with farming, unless we were attempting to recruit beautiful young women to drive tractors and ride horses.   And, while I don't remember very much about that event I do remember the name of the winner:  Twinkle Andress.

Daryl fell in love with the name Twinkle and decided that day that if he ever had a daughter her name would be Twinkle Greer.  I, on the other hand, was not so sold on that name for our daughter.  I have forgotten the story that the original Twinkle told us about her name, but we had no such story and the name didn't fit in with our other children's names.

How would it sound to say, "I'd like you to meet my children, Ben, David, and .....Twinkle."

Daryl was serious, though, and I tried to find names that would work with Twinkle.

Twinkle Ann.  Twinkle Louise.  Mary Twinkle.  I was trying.

As it happened, though, when we had our little girl, level heads prevailed and we gave our daughter two family names: Jacqueline, after my dad, Jack, and Anne, after me.

Jackie grew up knowing that her "almost" name was Twinkle.  In fact, Twinkle was one of her nicknames.  Other people heard about that and started calling her "Twinks."  Twinks was part of her email address for years and sometimes, even now, a friend at church will ask me how Twinks is doing.

It seemed a shame to have a name be such a part of our lives and never have a family member wear it.  So, when we named our cat, Twinkle was an easy choice for us all.

The original Twinkle grew up from her beauty pageant days and became a wife, mother, business owner, and....a politician.

When I saw her name on the ballot today I did the natural thing:

I voted for Twinkle!

Bath time for Della

Yes, this picture is fuzzy, dark and just low-down not very good.  But, it was the only way to snap one of a chicken taking a bath.  Miss Della here doesn't want me to take a picture of her taking a bath, a sentiment I can totally understand.

A chicken bath can be a long, drawn out process.  First she digs a shallow tub in the coolest dirt she can find.  In this case she is under the trampoline.  Then she sits down in her bath tub and uses her feathers to throw dirt all over herself, in and around every little feather.  Then comes the soaking.  She just sits and enjoys the peace and quiet.  After her little soak she stands up and fluffs her feathers up until she is a round ball of a chicken.  Then comes the shaking off of the dirt.  This process makes a little dust storm that surrounds her whole body in cool, dry cleanliness.

Aaahhhh......

The bunny in the middle

I am having a great time learning all about my grandbunny, Ollie.  He lived with Jonathan, Daniel, and Bella, but his whole day was spent in a smallish rabbit hutch.  Now that he has moved to the country he has room to run and jump and play.

If he wants to.  And right now I'm still figuring out what bunnies like to do.

In the barn we have three separate chicken pens.  Harry, the rooster, and his little friend live in one pen and the rest of the chickens lived in the other two.  When Ollie came, we shooed the hens into one pen and cleaned out the middle section for a bunny house.  We got Ollie settled, then Daryl and I went inside to eat supper.  When we came back outside, Ollie had gotten into Harry's home.  We found a small space in the fence that didn't look big enough to squeeze through, but apparently it was just big enough.  Ollie seemed content enough, but Harry was quite concerned about this new hopper.

I had one of those "fiddle-dee-dee, I'll take care of it in the morning" moments and left Ollie to spend the night with Harry.  The next morning when I went to check on everyone, Ollie had left Harry and crossed into the other chicken's pen!  Ollie didn't seem as content to be in the pen with 20 chickens and was looking around to find a way out.

I coaxed Ollie back into his home and attached chicken wire along the bottom of the entire pen.  I had solved the problem of keeping him in his pen, but now I needed to learn about rabbits.

This is what I have learned and figured out so far:

1.  A rabbit can be frightened to death.   I would hate for that to happen, but from what I have seen so far, he has come much closer to frightening the chickens to death than the other way around.

2.  Rabbits are smarter than chickens.  I can just tell.  Being smarter than a chicken is not a steep hill to climb, though.

3.  Rabbits can get bored and when they are bored, they try to get out of their home.  We certainly can't have a bored rabbit in the family so I looked online to see what the rabbit equivalent of video games would be.  After my quick search I packed up a box and took some toys out to Ollie:  an empty coffee can, the plastic lid from the top of a Tide container, a telephone book, some clover from the field, an upside down garbage can to sit on with a gangplank to walk up, a piece of pipe to crawl in, and I left the box.  His pen looks like a messy day care playroom.  Rabbit heaven, I'm sure.

4.  Rabbits have sharp claws and they will use them if you try to give them a hug.  Ollie doesn't need a hug.  And my hands are healing nicely.

I think we will be good friends.  As soon as I figure out this hugging thing.

Bye-bye Kitty

The kittens turned 6 weeks old over the weekend so it was time for them to find permanent homes.  I decided to take them to the Humane Society to be adopted and I wanted them to get there at their cutest age to guarantee an adoption.

I cried when I left them.  Don't really know why, but I did.

Daryl took this picture of the five of us last week.  They were CRAZY fun!

Tomorrow Daryl and I are headed out on a road trip to visit with our Oklahoma family.  The high on the day we get there should reach about 103.  And it is usually breezy in Oklahoma.  In Alabama when you combine heat and a breeze you call it a convection oven.  We should cook very quickly.

Enjoy your Labor Day weekend!

The State of the Kitten Nation

In between cat feedings, cat baths, and cat naps we have had a lot of time for cat exploration time.

Aren't they cute?

Aren't they sweet?

And they are free!  No, really, I'm not charging anything as an adoption fee!  I'm just a giving person like that!

I think I might just keep this one for myself.  Sarah might take one.  Any takers on a couple of bottle-fed, litter box trained, sweet, snuggly kittens?

Cat herding

On Friday evening, I was a little tired.  And when Shiloh began crying at the door begging to come in the house, and Twinkle got determined to sit on the couch in the exact place I wanted to rest my arm, I said, "I don't want one more 'thing' to need me".  

Well, some evil spirit must have heard me because Saturday morning I heard a loud, persistent little meow in the garage.  When I opened the door a tiny, skinny, black kitten was sitting there.  Crying.  Needing me.  I leaned over to pick it up, and instead of running away like many of the "wild" kittens around here, he wanted to be held.

We have a few feral cats at our house.  They are descendants of a long line of cats who have lived around here for many years.  Occasionally, one of them will be a little tame, but for the most part they are pretty wild.  Their job is to keep the mouse population controlled.  My job is to feed them.  We have an agreement.

I knew that a litter of kittens had been born because I had seen them a couple of weeks ago.  I had never seen who the mother was, but assumed that the babies were being taken care of.  I guess I was wrong.

Little Black Kitty spent the day resting in a box in our kitchen.  Saturday evening David and Daniel were outside when they heard another kitten crying.  That was good because now Little Black Kitty had his brother, Little Tabby Kitty, with him,  (Let's just say they are all boys.)  I thought I had seen four kittens in the litter so I assumed two had survived, two had not made it.

Yesterday morning I heard a kitten crying outside.  When I looked out the back window to find the soundmaker, I saw the mother cat.  She was irritatedly allowing a kitten to nurse.  When she saw me, she ran to the window, looked into my eyes, and ran away.  I knew what she meant.  She just couldn't do it any more, would I please help her.  Outside I found the other two kittens.  They ran right to me and into the box they went.

I think the little fellows are between 3 and 4 weeks old, but I'm not sure.  I bought some kitten formula and a little baby kitty bottle.  They are eating well and starting to be comfortable with us.  I even saw them wrestling with each other this morning.

I'm giving them a bath every evening to get rid of their fleas.  They don't mind it as much as you might think!  This picture is after their bath.  I know it is fuzzy, but they are rambunctious children and won't sit still to be photographed.

This morning I heard another kitten.  What I thought was a litter of four must have been a litter of five.  When I went out to check on the little one, it ran away from me.  Mama Kitty came running behind it and when she saw me she ran away, too.  I'll take that as a sign that the two of them can take care of each other.  But, I didn't tell them that I don't want one more thing to need me.  I won't be saying that again!