Summer's Over!!!

Can I hear a few amens?  I was stumbling across the living room this morning at 4:30 (dog toys, mouse bits, gnawed marrow bones - it's a jungle in there) when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a little green light...blinking at me.  What the?  Once I got a light on and let the dogs go barreling out, I realized it was the 'Icy Conditions' light on my new indoor/outdoor remote thermometer.  I repeat, what the??  Then I looked at the outdoor temperature:  34.1 degrees.  It's September 11, folks. 

So, even though it is forecast to go up to 80 tomorrow, I am declaring Summer officially O.V.E.R.  Just to prove my point, I pulled out the cucumber plants, which were way skeevy anyway.

The Pearlies spent a chilly night outside again.  After noodling it over this morning with my herbal tea and no breakfast (had to fast for 14 hours for a blood test - it's gruesome), I decided that, if the Pearlies were too stoopid stubborn to go inside a nice, warm coop for the night, Mohamed would bring the coop to them. Just call me Mohamed Sweezie Mohamed.  I am going to build an enclosure around their roosting area.  It's just what I need - another project.  On this subject, I had an interesting conversation with my doctor.  She has Guineas and likes them.  But her approach to her limited animal husbandry is, what she calls, the Darwin Approach.  She orders 50 keets from Murray McMurray and, after six weeks, lets them loose.  When they've all been either picked off or took off, she orders more.  I told her that I thought this approach was not a great omen for her patients.  She thinks I'm a riot.  I think I am serious.  My approach seems to be Marshmallow Woman - or, I Am Here For You, Please Make My Life A Living Hell.

Hoops are going up over the Swiss chard, which is healthy and dense.  Like nothing else in my garden.  I am still on a day-to-day watch with Flora, but we seem to be making a tiny bit of headway.  Kay (the Angel in cute acorn jewelry) came over on Sunday morning and we rassled sheep, goats and a camel.  They all got Ivermectin shots and Apria got wormed.  She is definitely a five-man project.  So everyone is done for now.  I just checked my second favorite apple orchard and they have apples, so an apple-picking trip may be in this weekend's forecast.  Everything on the job front is static, so I am taking the stance that no news is good news.

Monday Musings.

I am musing a lot about loss, recently.  And change.  The two don't necessarily go hand-in-hand, but they often are as tighly bound as white-on-rice.  As I get older, change becomes more difficult to weave into my life.  I chafe at it.  I ignore it.  I get cranky.  Eventually, I lie on my back with my feet in the air and give up.  I do think I am spending too much time in four-legged company.

Recently, my friend, Kay, told me about some old-fashioned method that her grandmother used to keep cats from bolting out the door, across the yard and to their inevitable (mostly) doom.  She buttered their paws.  Apparently cats hate having anything on the bottom of their paws, so they run a few steps, stop, then sit down and clean their paws.  By the time they are finished (all you cat-owners know how meticulous this cleaning is - takes forever), they've forgotten why they were in a mad dash and either poke around where they are, or go back in.  Pure, unadulterated common sense.  I just love these wonderful, old-fashioned solutions to problems.  I was wondering why it's so hard to come up with ideas like this now.  I think it's because we are all in such a hurry to get to work/get chores done/hurrysowedon'tmissDWTS that we don't take the time to look around and see what's out there.  I mean, I have three cats.  Do I take the time to watch them closely to see what makes them tick?  No.  Would I have known my cats well enough to know that they HATE anything on their paws?  No.  Interesting.  Does anyone else have some wisdom from their grandmother/father to share?

I am very surprised at how much I am fascinated by the guineas.  Especially since they drive me to distraction on a daily basis.  Case in point:  Saturday afternoon there was a supercell of storms heading our way.  It was quite spectacular on a radar screen.  They were predicting very high winds (60 mph), heavy rain, thunder, lightning, the whole 9 yards.  Since my guineas still will not go into the coop at night, I figured I would wait until they were doing their usual contrary thing - going in during the day - and close them in so they wouldn't get their feathers blown off.  As usual, they were all in except Lonesome George/ette.  Anyone who has owned guineas knows that getting hold of one is tantamount to catching a piglet.  You are killing them.  It is the end of the world.  Torture and hell is at hand.  So I got a towel and managed to drop it on LG and, as I maneuvered him/her into the coop, it caused the same hysteria in the other five and two shot out the door and out of the run, into the main yard.  At that point, it was starting to blow, the rain had started, and I had had it.  I figured they at least had each other, so headed for the house.  Of course, this cavalier approach never lasts, and I ended up making about six attempts to at least get them back in their run.  We were lucky and only got a good downpour and not the tornadoes to the south.  The duo were zipping around the yard trying to avoid the chickens and, when it finally got dark enough for the chickens to go in their coop, I managed to prop open the door to the guinea yard and they went in on their own.  Guinea fowl owning is good for your cardiovascular health, but is aitchdoublehockeysticks on your mental faculties.

A recent word verification (I am not a robot!) was 16 agefit.  My first reaction, was, "Oh, 16!  I wish!"  But do I?  I think not.