Our low to the ground Cesky Terrier needed a bath last night. His furnishings and skirt are easier to comb through if he has just been bathed and conditioned, and he was a dirty, tangled mess. His breeder recommended Pantene shampoo and conditioner since it doesn’t dry the dog’s skin. My dog has nicer shampoo than I do!
Our dog loves his baths. We keep dog towels in the entryway closet, and when he sees me take them down he races to the bathroom, sits by the tub, and looks expectantly at me. I have never seen a dog who liked baths as much as our current terrier. Our previous Welsh and Fox Terriers hated their baths and tried to avoid them. I attributed it to their bring earth dogs and being uncomfortable in deeper water. They hated going to lakes. Our Cesky is as earthy as they come, but we have never had him to a lake to see how he would approach the water.
There were after-bath zoomies, of course, and then I brushed and combed out his tangles. He seemed pretty happy.
Any interesting pet bath stories? What is your philosophy on hair care products?What sort of bathtub would you like in your bathroom?
We are incredibly spoiled, and order six pounds of coffee beans every six weeks or so from this coffee place in Brookings, SD. The beans are dark roasted. I place the order on-line, and they arrive, freshly roasted, sometimes the next day via Speedee Delivery. They are Carmen Pampas/San Ignacio blend beans from Bolivia/Peru, and for every pound we order the coffee place makes a donation to destitute schools in Bolivia. The coffee tastes heavenly. We like it strong. We only drink it in the morning. The box of beans is redolent of coffee aroma, even before we open it.
I really don’t know how the coffee place and Speedee Delivery manage to get the beans to us so quickly. It is 500 miles from there to here. We only drink coffee we brew at home, and never go to coffee places in town. I like my coffee with half and half and sugar. Husband needs heavy cream and sugar in his coffee. We use a Bodum French press pot to brew our coffee.
The other day I was able to greet the Speedee Delivery guy when he delivered our coffee order. He told me he couldn’t stand the smell of coffee, and it was really hard when he had to go into coffee shops and got all these boxes of coffee beans to deliver. I sure hope he didn’t have to drive 500 miles to deliver ours! Poor guy!
How do you take your coffee?What cooking smells can’t you abide? What comestibles are you fussy about?
I got a farm magazine the other day and one of the headlines is: “Baby kangaroo poop may hold the key to reducing cows’ methane emissions”. Huh. I googled ‘baby Kangaroo poop’ because I was curious about how many hits there would be on that and how much research has been done on baby kangaroo poop. 2,070,000 hits. I didn’t venture past page 1, and most of the sites are what it’s like inside a kangaroo pouch and how to they stay clean? Which is a good question that I hadn’t thought about before. (The mama ‘roo licks it out to keep it clean. Plus, she produces antimicrobial substances which helps it all stay OK in there.) The things you learn.
And in regard to cows’ methane emissions, “… previous studies had already shown that instead of producing methane, the kangaroo microbes produce acetic acid. Further research revealed that the bacteria only occurs in baby kangaroos, not adults.” *
And the acetic acid prevents methane from producing. It’s been tested in the lab. The next step is testing in live cattle. And the hope is to add it to the diet of cattle. Hmm.
When does a dog start to shed? What triggers that? Bailey still has her thick winter coat and she’s not shedding yet. We’ve been brushing her, and she hasn’t lost much yet. I know other years, it was hot and well into summer before she started to shed. We should just take her to a groomer and get her a haircut.
The crops need a rain. We’re at 770 GDU’s; +245 over normal.
Oats is shorter than we’d like considering it was planted April 14. Corn is doing OK yet. And the soybeans… well, they need a rain to get going. If a seed is sitting in dry dirt, it won’t sprout. It’s hard to believe just a few weeks ago I had wet fields, but the top 3 inches are dry now and the fields are rough looking.
They always say to get seed in the ground ASAP. Beans that were planted two week before mine had the moisture and look good.
This year, just for the heck of it, when planting soybeans with the drill, I left two rows open, plugged one, left two open. That makes 2 rows 7.5” apart, then a 15” gap, then 2 more 7.5”. Why not try it I figured.
We had a baby chick hatch in the incubator last Sunday evening. (S)he was a week early! I wasn’t expecting any until next Monday, the 12th! It’s usually 28 or 29 days to hatch baby chicks or guineas. Guess the mom had been sitting on this one a few days already.
Well, s/he did fine and it’s in the pen with the mail order chicks which arrived on Tuesday. Everyone is doing well so far.
Other projects at home this past week, I got the corn planter and drill cleaned out and put away, outside for now. The concrete guys are here working on my outside slab. I am VERY excited for this outside slab!
I’ve also got the new pump for the pressure washer, I’m rebuilding the fuel sediment bowl on the old 630 tractor, I’ve cut grass, I’ve ordered lumber and picked up some ‘re-stock’ windows for the shed project. I returned my extra seed, and I hauled that fertilizer wagon to the auction site. Normally, you can’t really exceed about 25 mph when towing a wagon. They don’t trail very well and will sway left and right. I could do 26 mph with the fertilizer wagon and only have a little sway. Any faster than that and it swayed crazily. Get that sway bad enough and it will flip the wagon over on it’s side and mess up your day.
I was 15 miles from home with 5 miles to go and in the mirror, I saw a mouse climbing up the wagon frame. Wow! I thought, 1) Where did he come from; where had he been hiding?? And 2) he’s going to be so confused when we get there! But about then he lost his grip and fell to the road. He failed to scamper away for the few seconds I could still see him. Yeah, some trip.
We had one guinea chick hatch on Wednesday, I could hear it cheeping before s/he even got out of the shell. Number one, he’s a crazy chick! Kelly calls him ‘Speedy’. I think s/he, the chick, really just want’s a friend.! Thursday another started to hatch, but s/he didn’t get out very fast, and that membrane dries up and gets hard and I finally cut him out. He took a long time to come around, but he’s doing real well now. And Friday morning we had 2 more. They’re all crazy!
And at the theater, we finally have working AC in the theater! It took 10 months from when we first moved the seats and painted ductwork.
Volunteers painted that in August and it got hung up, got beams on the roof in January, the rooftop unit arrived in May, and then it was just finishing the ductwork connections. And I’ll tell ya, that was far more complicated than I expected! It was really interesting observing the guys doing it.
But now it’s so cold in the theater, I may need sleeves!
Wednesday I was at work sitting at my computer on a Teams meeting (it is like Zoom) when a call came up on my work phone. I could see from the caller ID it was from a 60+ year old friend of ours who lives with her very elderly mother. Her mother has declined in health significantly but expects our friend to maintain a huge yard and vegetable garden without the benefit of ever teaching her how to garden. She has never phoned me at work before, and I was worried something calamitous had happened to her mother.
It was very hot here Wednesday. Our friend had a simple question. Could she water the vegetable garden with the oscillating sprinkler? We had steered her away from sprinklers and encouraged her to get soaker hoses to avoid the fungus and waste of water that comes from aerial sprinklers. This she has done, but her garden is so large she was afraid parts would suffer with the slow pace of soaker hoses. I told her of course, use the sprinkler, but not on the tomatoes or the peas, as they are so prone to fungus and mildew. I get calls from her like this all the time.
Our friend trusts us implicitly regarding her garden, even when our advice is contrary to the somewhat goofy ways her mother has gardened in the past. I guess what we advise makes sense, because the questions keep coming. Sometimes I am amazed how absurd my life is.
What can people trust you to do or help them with? Who do you trust implicitly?
One of my reasons for moving back to Luverne, MN, after I retire is the town theater. I have posted about it before. It is an old but well preserved vaudeville theater that is still the center of town activity. Current movies are shown regularly, as well as live concerts. and there is an active local theater group that puts on plays and musicals.
I want to act. I want to be in a play even if I am the maid. I haven’t participated in theatre activities here because I work full time and I have too many odd relationships here to feel I could really let go and act as the character I was given.
I know there aren’t many roles for women my age, but I am hopeful I could find someone to portray.
What role would you want in a play or musical? Who did you pretend to be when you were a child?What roles have you had?
Oh. terriers!! Ever since we got our Cesky Terrier in May, 2022, we have kept the basement door shut to keep him from going into the basement to chase the cat and do indiscriminate marking to claim the territory as his own. This rather isolated the cat, but we tried to give her as much attention as we could.
Being a terrier, Kyrill turned getting to the basement into a game and a challenge. He would wait for any opportunity to get down there, lurking to see if we forgot to shut the basement door, then racing down the stairs, chasing the cat, and eating her food.
We picked him up from the boarding kennel yesterday, and I decided to change strategies regarding the basement. Before we picked him up I put a gate in front of the basement room where the litter box and cat food resides so the cat could get in but Kyrill couldn’t. He was so excited to see us when we got him home that he didn’t even notice the basement door was open. Once he noticed, he immediately ran downstairs, but, because we didn’t chase him and because he wanted to be with us he came right back upstairs. He ran up and down rapidly a couple more times, but eventually settled on the sofa with me. The cat walked into the livingroom several times and he ignored her.
I could kick myself for not doing this earlier. Now I have a much happier cat who can wander upstairs as she wishes, and a dog who is probably waiting for an opportunity to make some other activity into a game.
Why is it we want what we can’t have? What have you wanted and then regretted once you got it?
We are back from our trip to South Dakota, happy but weary. I noticed as we drove our Honda van East out of Bismarck on Thursday that the odometer passed 153,000 miles. It wasn’t too long ago we were thrilled to get a vehicle past 100,000 miles. What happened?
We have two vehicles- a 2011 Honda van and a 2014 Toyota Tacoma pickup. I am unsure how many miles I should expect to get on the Honda, I really don’t want to think about getting a new vehicle just yet. I need to rethink the need for a van if we have a pickup. They are all so expensive, and I come from a father who never in his life bought a used vehicle. It was unthinkable in his opinion.
What vehicle did you get the most miles on? If you got a different vehicle, would it be new or used? What is your most memorable means of transportation?
It’s hardly fair that down here in our valley, it’s colder in the winter AND hotter in the summer. It’s not even noon on Thursday and it’s 89°. Plus, we don’t always get the breeze. What a cruel, cruel world.
I just took the back off the chicken coop and turned on their fan. Supposed to get baby chicks next week. They won’t hardly need a heat lamp.
The corn is growing, soybeans are just coming out, and the oats is looking a little rough in a few spots, but it’s coming along. We think the cold and rain right after planting affected the oats. Oats doesn’t like wet ground, plus there may have been enough rain to wash out some nutrients. We’ll have to see how it does. The co-op is getting ready to spray for weeds in the corn, and to spray the oats with fungicides and to prevent broadleaf weeds.
I’m officially done working at the college for the summer, but considering I wasn’t there last week when I was supposed to be, I have to go back and at least haul out garbage and put some things away and sit in the dark theater for a few minutes and have my talk with the room and just feel the energy. Yeah. I do that. All the people and activities that have come through the theater in the last 12 months, it’s good to take time and reflect on them.
Our neighbors who rent our pasture have brought cattle out.
The cows were really interested in my cutting grass right next to them the other night. I just didn’t have a camera on me.
The next show I’m lighting, ‘Raisin in the Sun’, has gotten through the first few tech rehearsals and it should be getting easier now. My friend Paul has been working night and day on the set. Three doors, a window, full vintage kitchen with working sink. And what a lot of props in this show! (It was funny to watch the cast try to figure out the record player).
The directors are from the Twin Cities.
You probably all know the plot or have seen the movies and know it’s about a black family. Finding actors of color in Rochester is difficult; in the community theaters, there may be a few. At the college, we might have two or three. So to find eight for this show, plus understudies, took a lot of community engagement before-hand. And there’s a lot of new people! I know one actor, who was at the college 13 years ago. It’s a good group of actors, and they’re doing great, and it should be a good production.
I keep saying my life is slowing down. Next week. I’ve rescheduled a massage for the third time. I’ve rescheduled a fire alarm inspection twice, and the dentist once.
I had to stop at the Farm Service Agency on Thursday and do my crop certification. I tell them what I planted where and when and how many acres. That information is used to determine cropping history and eligibility for payments in the event of natural disasters or other government payments.
Their map acres don’t match my map acres and they map out all the waterways and I end up with 55 fields on their maps. I only have about 19 fields on my maps. The staff there is always great and I hand them my maps with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is, and they figure it out. I come back later and sign it.
I started cleaning up machinery. Swept out the cab of the tractor and power washed the outside.
Started to wash the next tractor and the power washer made some terrible grinding sounds, and then it didn’t make any sounds anymore. Hmm.
I spent a few hours one day riding around in a big truck guiding the driver as he applied calcium chloride for dust control on the township gravel roads. It’s a fun way to spend a few hours.
Spotted 5 sandhill cranes a few different days. And we’re still hearing them call.
I got most of the soybean fields dragged to smooth them out. I’ve stopped now because the beans are too close to sprouting. It sure is dusty and dry, (see header photo) and every spring I’m reminded how much I rely on the ‘texture’ to find my path. It’s harder when it’s this dry and the ground didn’t work up well.
I also use a boating app that maps my route. That way I can at least tell if I skipped a spot somewhere. I use a free version, so I don’t get a map, I just get the path.
It is useful especially at night and trying to find where I left off in a field. I saw a drivers ed car: ‘St. Joseph Driving School’ with a Renaissance style image spread across the whole drivers side of St. Joseph. Considering ‘Catholic.org’ says Joseph is the patron saint of dying, maybe that’s not who I want for a driving instructor. But it seems like a great name, and it was a great image for the business!
Hauling my fertilizer wagon and some other small things to the auction in Plainview.
Next week, NEXT WEEK, I’ll start working on the shop!
We drove to Brookings, SD yesterday, a 500 mile trip. There was lots of road construction. I also noticed a few electronic message boards that the various Departments of Transportation entities had installed. The SD message boards won the prize for cuteness with “Be a thinker. Use your blinker”. I was greatly amused last winter to hear a rather conservative member of the ND Legislature wonder if the ND DOT was sending subliminal messages to citizens on the boards. He was quickly shut down.
Son found some messages on-line that I liked:
Get your head out of your apps.
OMG are you texting? I can’t even.
100 is the temperature, not the speed limit.
Visiting in-laws? Slow down, get there late.
Texting and driving? Say it: I am the problem. It’s me!
What would you like to see on electronic highway message boards?
When I was a junior in college, I went on a month long seminar to England, France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland sponsored by the Religion and Philosophy Departments at Concordia College in Moorhead. We studied the transition from medieval to modern in thought, literature, art, and architecture. One of our stops was Higham Ferrers, a small town in Northamptonshire noted for its memorial brasses in the church.
The most famous brass is that of Laurence St. Maur, (pronounced Seymour), a parish priest who died in 1337. The brass dates from that time, and was originally on the floor. In 1633 it was placed on a tomb about four feet off the ground. . We were able to do rubbings of the brass on black paper and gold crayons. It is six feet long and two feet wide. I managed to get mine home rolled up in my backpack, had it framed, and managed to haul it to Winnipeg, Indiana, and North Dakota in one piece. He hangs on our hallway with framed Jim Brandenburg photos. You can see the top part of the rubbing below. It was hard to get a good photo without glare.
He doesn’t look too happy. There is an inscription farther down around his chest, ornately decorated robes, and two active dogs at his feet. He doesn’t have a head dress, but I gather that many brasses did, and the brasses were often used to show the decedent’s sense of style. Animals at the feet were often symbolic of how the person died. Flowers were also popular and symbolic. I read about a brass on someone named St. Margaret of Antioch who had a dragon at her feet. I gather that she was swallowed by the Devil in the form of a dragon, and emerged from his side unscathed.
What inscriptions or symbols would you wanton your memorial brass?
Trail Baboon 