It's been awhile.

I thought it was time for a give-away - whaddya say? 

Up for the offering is "Retro Aprons" by Cindy Taylor Oates.  This is a small booklet with the how-tos of a variety of apron styles - short, full, ruffles (hey Carolyn Renee!), pleats, you name it.

Nothing fancy in joining in, either.  Just put your Jane/John Hancock down in the comments.

I will draw the winner Wednesday morning.

We all need MORE aprons!

Monday Musings.

Where do those songs come from?  The ones that pop into your head out of your internal music box's ancient history?  I had dropped something and said, "Oh, Susan."  Sigh.  "Susan, Susan bo-boosan, bananafana fofoosan, fee fi momoosan, Susan."  For those of you youngsters that think I have finally gone off my rocker, that is from a dusty old song, called "The Name Game".  It ranks right up there on an intellectual level with "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini".  Never heard of either?  Go to your room!!!  Kidding.  But where, in Heaven's name, did this song come from?  I feel like my brain has one of those jukebox-type-thingies and it whirls around of its own accord - slipping a song out of a record sleeve (never heard of those, either, have you, you whippersnappers...) and pops it onto the phonograph (oh, never mind.) 
I have been mightily musing about the nuances of denial, stubbornness, and genetic make-up.  I have plenty of both denial and stubbornness, which is enhanced by my German/English/Welsh/French heritage.  Plus, I still have that nugget of child's brain that refuses to mature.  And, let's not forget pride and ego, both of which I am not lacking, being human and all. 

By now, y'all are saying, "Yes, yes, but blah, blah, blah, what is the point here?"

The point is, I have realized that I cannot be and am not, the picture of single-homesteader-almighty that I had convinced myself that I was, is, am.  It is a shock, I tell you.  (Didn't I tell you I was Cleo, Queen of De-Nial?)  As should be obvious to anyone who has read these rambling posts for a couple of years now, I exist in a slurry of random thoughts most of the time.  I realized this was the child-nugget-brain (sounds like a great theme for a bad sci-fi movie, doesn't it?) running interference so that the mature part of my brain would not be able to focus on reality.  Wow, there's a sentence for you.

A daily conversation within my mind goes something like this:  MB (mature brain) "OMG, the goats have destroyed part of the fence again."  NB (nugget brain) "lalalalalalala".  MB:  Why am I always so tired?  NB:  Hey!  I have time to put fencing around that raised bed!  I don't have to leave for work for another 15 minutes! 

See the problem?  Well, MB has finally muscled to the frontal lobe and things are going to have to change.  Can't say that I'm not disappointed, but I am not disillusioned.  NB refuses to release its hold on the vision of Homesteader Susan Extraordinare, which is just fine with MB and me.  But, in the meantime, I've let go of the beekeeper vision and will be letting go of the dairygoatmaid vision.  I remain a fulltime employee off-stead, single person with two hands (maybe two-and-a-half, if I squint my eyes and go with NB), gardener, keeper of the homestead, shepherdess and flock tender.  And fighter of all things rodentia.  That will have to do for now.

Fizzled.

After searching without success for guinea keets, I decided to take matters into my own hands and bid on some fertile eggs on eBay.  Let me say that I am very glad I didn't pay a lot for them.  15 eggs went into the incubator (with its automatic egg turner - I've learned a few things) and this many hatched:  0.  I was diligent in my monitoring of both humidity and temperature.  The thermometer was new and worked properly.  There were no fluctuations in room temperature.  Zippo.  That's disappointing.  Now I'm trying to decide whether I should try it again, or keep checking craigslist in the hopes that all those who rushed out to get Guinea keets found out how much noise they make when they grow up and are trying to unload them as fast as they can.  A girl can hope, you know.

I've been robbed!

As if dealing with the 'spit-mobile' wasn't enough ugliness for the week, I came home to find that my lettuce had been pinched.  Eaten.  Gnawed.  Stolen from me!  Muttering about the terrible things I was going to do to the little buggers, I rounded the corner of the house to find -- they had eaten my parsley, too!!!!  (Cue in Elmer Fudd singing to the Loony Toon rendition of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries - "Kill the Wabbit!  Kill the Wabbit!")

Thought this was safe in the coldframe - maybe the large, succulent
lettuce leaves waving ripely from their pot was just too
much of a temptation.

Radicchio centers - gone.

If you can bigify this, you will notice the nekkid parsley stems.

I have noticed that the rodentia population is rampant this spring.  I have gotten over the cuteness of chipmunks - all 500 of them - after they chewed down my sunflower starts for the fifth time.  I am beyond over the not-so-cuteness of the ratties (see #5).  I am now narrowing my sights on the dwindling cuteness of the army of rabbits that skitter across the homestead.  Of course, I know that rabbits + lettuce = they win/you lose.  That is why I planted my lettuce in a coldframe with 12+ inch sides.  They scaled the ramparts!  They also found the one little hole I missed that led them into my herb bed.  Ergo - scalped parsley.

Sunflower seedlings cut off at the seed (bigify if you dare - it's not pretty). 
However, Morning Gloriesmust not be on the
 chipmunk diet - they were not touched.

It's a good thing I am a morning person.  I had to squeeze in rabbit-proofing my coldframe and herb bed.  Just as I was ready to pat myself on the back for winning another battle, I came across my bee balm.  Something has eaten all the buds off the stems.  But wait!  There's more - some'one' had completely unscrewed the bottom of my hummingbird feeder.  What the...?!  I am thinking squirrels, as a bear would have ripped the sucker off the holder and smashed it.  Uncle already!!

For your viewing pleasure - the 6+ lb. piece (all one
piece) of matted, felted llama fleece that came off
of the mad camel on Monday.

We had us a camel rodeo!

Lordawmighty.  It was not a pretty sight, let me tell you.  Kevin Ford arrived early morning and I had closed the gang in the shed for the night - since there was rain forecast for the next 200 days.  He set up and we moved the three sheep through quickly and without too much fuss, although Linden seemed to feel the entire process was way beneath his dignity.  He's an eely thing, for a fat little sheep.  I always stop to admire Juno's beautiful, black, dense, velvety pelt.  She is such a beautiful sheep.

Then I went into the shed to put on Apria's halter.

It got real exciting after that.  She was surprisingly good about my putting the halter on.  And she came out without too much hesitation on the lead.  Then she noticed that there was a foreigner in the mix (Kevin) and we had us a hootenanny!  She was a whirling kaleidoscope of dirty dreadlocks.  She bucked.  She bounced.  She carried on.  Then she finally dug her heels in.  Part of the problem, of course, is that her vision is impaired.  We were finally calmed down when she stepped in a feed dish.  We repeated the dance a few times until we got her moved over to a sizable tree and tied her lead tightly to it.

It wasn't too bad at the start - Kevin had to work his way through about six inches of heavy felted fiber on her neck.  And he is a blade shearer - no electric gizmos for him.  Apria was wary, but he was making headway until....he neared her legs.  Now Hoosier was no fan of leg shenanigans, either.  But hoo-ha, my Aunt Marie!  Hoosier was nothing compared to the appearance of the Evil Inner Camel!  She bared her teeth, she screeched, she gurgled, she spit, she kicked, bucked, danced and looked like a possessed thing.  I braced her on one side, Kevin draped himself over and gingerly clipped her legs and haunches.  He laughingly said there was one llama he sheared that would put his head back and spit straight up.  And then it rained down on everyone.  I kept a very close eye on her head after that. 

The "Before".

"Does my head look fat?"

The process was punctuated by worried bleats by Linden, who has taken quite a fancy to Apria.  I don't blame him.  The entire experience would have chilled the blood of even your most shock-resistent teenager.  After about 20 minutes, we were both breathless and all that was left was her mid-section.  We decided that it was a good idea to just shear her down from head to toe and not have to revisit this Llama version of The Exorcist for another year.  Then we looked down at her hooves.  They need trimming.  Then we looked at each other, and I busied myself gathering wool (she must have been carrying a 10 pound wad of felted fiber on her neck), while he hurried to cram his blade and kit together.  I kidded him that she was a perfect warm-up act for the next three llamas he was heading off to shear.  While he laughed weakly, he sure was moving fast toward his car and escape.  I think a gallon of Rescue Remedy is in order for hoof trimming.

Sigh.  So, it wasn't the "wool" that made them look fat.

Monday Musings.

So, where does integrity step in vs. good manners?  I have been thinking about this a lot lately.  I was raised with a heavy accentuation on 'good manners'.  I never EVER referred to the parents of my playmates or any adult, by their first name.  Ever.  It's not quite so bad now, since I have friends who are my parents' age - and they would tan my hide if I called them Mr. and Mrs. T.  And, by golly, I think they could!  And, since I now have no idea where I was going with this opening salvo, having started this post last week, I will leave it dangling here at the moment.  Hopefully, the purpose of this quest will revisit me.  Along with my sanity and memory.

I have learned many new things over the past week. 

1.  Contrary to what I have been told (and then have passed along to others as Gospel - mea culpa), one can have chipmunks AND rats.

2.  There is no such thing as one rat.

3.  I hate rats.

4.  Rats are cagey and smart.

5.  I'm tired of talking about rats.

6.  Apria did not have a full shear NOT, as I was led to believe, because her previous owner was too busy.  It was because she becomes a stinkin', spittin', buckin' CAMEL!

7.  I still am a victim of De-Nial.

8.  My vision of myself is completely untethered in reality.

Rats?  See #5.  Apria?  More in next post.  7?  8?  I am still musing on these.

Goodbye, Big Sweetie.

Riley came to live with me the day before Bernie arrived.  He had been neglected and abused and I took him in thinking, how different could it be between a Bernie and a Riley?  About 90 lbs!  He was the sweetest, most loving dog, even after all the pain and loneliness he had endured.  Then he took umbrage with a neighbor - nothing vicious, but he felt he was protecting me and grabbed her arm.  Unfortunately, this particular neighbor was the highly litigious type and, after many weeks of veiled threats of lawsuits, I reported the incident to my insurance company.  They promptly dropped me.  And I could not find another insurance company who would cover me as long as Riley lived under my roof.  A heartbreaking search led (with divine intervention, I am sure) to Tara and her family.  They took him into their home and hearts and loved him mightily.  And he them back.  Due, most likely to his early neglect and abuse, he developed a neurological problem that could not be cured.  They nursed and loved him along for almost a year.  Recently, he had reached a point where he was in much pain and wouldn't eat.  They had to make the decision - such a difficult, loving decision - to let him go.  We all will miss him.  He was a good boy.

p.s.  I need to add that it was because of the kindness of my sister and her husband that Riley was rescued from his particular hell in the first place.