Baby chicks and teenaged chicks.

Our neighbor D came over in his golf cart this morning to say hello and see the progress on our chicken coop. D has a huge fenced-in coop on his property, filled with nearly 20 chickens-- all hens, since he doesn't want fertilized eggs, and he says roosters are a pain. (To quote D, he says that all roosters are interested in only two things: F---ing and fighting. (You can fill in the blanks. This is a family-friendly blog.)

D said that our chicken coop was coming along nicely, and he said to make sure there are no gaps where a raccoon can get a paw through, because the outcome of that won't be pretty. He told my husband that a raccoon got his front paw into his own chicken coop a while back, and pulled the chicken through the wire as far as it would go. The chicken got stuck and the raccoon couldn't pull it free, so the raccoon ate the part of the chicken that was pulled through the wire, then left the rest for D to find the next morning.

When my husband told D that we were going to get baby chicks, he suggested that we get chickens that are slightly older. He said the baby chicks are very fragile during the first few weeks, and are a lot of work. And if one baby chick doesn't like another baby chick, it will keep pecking at it till it's injured or dead. D said we can easily buy more mature (but not yet adult) chickens. That way, we'll know right away if they're male or females, and we'll have a better idea of what they'll look like when they're full grown.

And then there are the hawks..... we see them circling high in the sky every day. We are guessing that they're searching the properties of people who own chickens. A hawk can swoop down and easily catch a chicken if it's out in the open and can't escape under the shrubbery fast enough. The hawks are flying over our neighbor's property every morning, but I don't know if it's ever been a successful flight. (Successful for the hawk, that is.) In my husband's words--- don't get too attached to the chickens because you never know what can happen.

With that advice, we have slightly changed our plan. No baby chicks that will have to be kept at a steady temperature in order to grow and thrive..... we are planning to get nearly-teenaged chickens-- young enough to hold them so they get to know us, but old enough so we don't get stuck with roosters instead of hens. As for the roosters...... I don't think we're getting one. We don't want fertilized eggs, we don't want to be raising baby chicks, and D said the hens are perfectly happy without a rooster crowing and strutting around their coop.

Just a little while ago, my husband was searching the Internet, looking for "teenaged" hens..... and found an ad for free chickens.... the people are moving out of state and want to give away their egg-laying hens "to a good home." Well, this is a good home.... and the coop is nearly done..... and when I decorate it with all the chicken-stuff, I would think those hens would be very happy here. My husband is sending them an eMail, to tell that family that our coop is nearly ready and we would love to adopt their chickens. I expect that my husband will not tell those people that he intends to name his chickens Over Easy, Country Fried, and Extra Crispy.

Baby chicks.... and rain. Rain!

Did you know that when chicks are just a few days old, there is virtually no way to tell if they will grow up to be roosters or hens? Unless, of course, you know what you're doing and are able to "sex-test" the chicks. My husband and I have not been educated in that sort of chicken-science, so we will have to leave it to the professionals.

Our friends K & B called this evening, to ask how we were doing and catch up with the latest news. I told her about the progress on turning the dog pen into a chicken coop, and she was excited about that. (It was K's idea in the first place to make the dog-pen into the chicken coop.) I told her about the names I've picked out for my three chicks (Dolly, Edie, and Jaye), and the names my husband suggested for his three (Over Easy, Country Fried, and Extra Crispy), which of course made her laugh so hard she was nearly crying.

I told K that we would order the chicks from the local feed store and her first question was "Are they going to sex-test them for you?" Pardon me? Are they going to what?! Then she explained that if we just place an order for six baby chicks, we could end up with 3 roosters and 3 hens, or 4 roosters and 2 hens, or (worse) 6 roosters. "Unless, that is, you specifically tell them to sex-test them for you." Every day, another lesson.

Of course, neither my husband nor I thought of that. We just figured that when you order half a dozen baby chicks because you want to raise hens that will lay eggs in a cute little chicken coop, you will get six baby chicks who will mature into six hens. I thanked K and told her that when we go to the feed store to order the chicks, we won't sound like two city-people who don't know which feather is up.

Speaking of cute chicken coops, our chicks should be very pleased with the coop when I'm done decorating it. I have found wonderful chicken coop decor at the local thrift/resale shop, for such a little amount of money. On the wall about the nesting boxes, I will hang a pretty picture of two nesting hens, which has been framed with wood and then boxed with chicken wire-- it looks like a shadow-box. Very nicely hand-made and probably had been hanging up in a farm kitchen.

Being that our vintage nesting box has four individual spots, I had to get creative with accommodations for two additional chickens. With that in mind, I bought a child-sized wooden chair that has chicken wire across the back slats...... I intend to hang that up on the wall near the nesting boxes, and I wouldn't be surprised if one of my chickens claims that as its nest. I also found an old wood bread box, with the word BAKERY painted on the front of it. When you open the door, it slants downward, which is perfect because chickens like to walk up an inclined surface to their nests...... I can put some hay into the wooden bread box and it will be a comfy nest for one lucky little chicken. (The chickens can't read anyway, so I will tell them that B-A-K-E-R-Y spells nesting box.)

Another thrift-shop treasure is a wooden two-tier shelf that hangs on the wall.... and that will be hung up in the coop as well. The shelves are wide enough to hold a chicken, and long enough to hold more than one. The whole thing has flowers carved into the wood, and it's all painted pink. (Pink. For girls-- as in hens, not roosters.)

I really have to quit going into that thrift shop (not likely). That store is an on-going, six-day-a-week yard sale, all indoors and air-conditioned, and as fast as the workers bring out the items, they go flying off the shelves. I would swear that the antique dealers in the area also shop in there, searching for inexpensive treasures that they can mark up and put into the antique co-ops in town. I have found shabby-chic decorative items for the guest cottage, and Texas-farm things for the guest rooms above the barn. And just when my husband thought I had nothing else to decorate, he decided to build the chicken coop. We will have the cutest coop in the hills.


Wonder of wonders....... we had two rain showers here in less than 24 hours. It poured late last night, after midnight, and the grass was soaking wet this morning and there were puddles in the road. Real puddles! With water and everything! (You laugh, but we haven't seen anything like that here since the beginning of May.) This afternoon, we had another good soaking shower, which brought more puddles-- but those quickly dried up when the sun came out after the rain quit and the temperature seemed to soar to 158 degrees. No complaints, though..... at least we had some rain.

The barn swallows.

When we first moved to this house, there was a nest of barn swallows on the front porch. The nest was up high, hidden from the wind, safe from the rain (if we had had any rain). There were five tiny baby birds in that nest, all screaming at once for dinner. Back and forth the mama bird went...... and we think her mate was also feeding the birds because there were clearly two adult barn swallows flying back and forth all day long with food for those tiny birds.

As busy as we were with the unpacking and settling-in, we made sure to keep watching those birds. I was thrilled one day when I unpacked the box with the binoculars-- we could see the baby birds up close, which is how we realized there were five babies, not three, as we originally thought.

The five babies weren't all that cute at first... just a mass of wet feathers and huge yellow beaks that seemed to always be wide open. Every few days, however, their feathers got more fluffy and they looked as if they were growing into those big Angelina Jolie-beaks. Still, the adult birds would fly back and forth, back and forth....... and they got to trust us as we sat out on the front porch having lunch and taking a break from unpacking the boxes that never seemed to end.

One day as we sat out there, we saw two of the baby birds perched on the rim of their nest. "Today's the day.... those birds are going to fly out." Before mid-afternoon that day, two of the baby birds were out of the nest and on top of the wide woodwork on the inside of the porch. Two others were on one of the fan-lights on the porch ceiling... and one bird was sitting next to the nest, as close as he could get without still being inside the twig-and-mud nest. The baby birds flew back and forth, from the woodwork to the nest, from the fan to the nest.... not going much further on that first day.

The next morning, as we had been doing every morning since the day the birds hatched, we looked out the window and into the nest. That particular morning, all five baby birds were on the fan-light... each baby bird sitting on top of a fan blade, and the breeze was blowing the fan-blades in a slow circle. The baby barn swallows were just sitting there, enjoying the ride, enjoying the view. Their own private carousel, free as little birds can be, without being too far away from their safe little nest.

The baby birds got to flying around the yard during the day and would come back to the nest every night to sleep. As they grew, the nest got a bit crowded, but they stuffed themselves in there, with the last one landing being the luckiest bird in the nest because he was on top of all the others. With the binoculars, we could see the smooshed ones near the bottom. But they were very content, very close, and I'm sure they all felt very safe.

For the past few weeks now, we haven't seen the birds go near that nest.... neither the adults nor the babies. The nest is still intact, and we'll leave it where it is even though it's empty. The baby birds, however, are still hanging around the property, I think. Every afternoon, along with some brown sparrows and a cardinal or two, there are five blue and brown birds in the water fountain, which sometimes I mistakenly call the birdbath. I call it that, not meaning to, for the simple reason that the birds are having a grand old time splashing around in each of the levels every day, whether the fountain is turned on or not.

If the fountain is on, the birds stay closer to the edges, getting sprayed with the falling water rather than actually sitting in the water itself. When the birds are properly bathed, they will fly to the fence in front of the house, spreading and fluffing their wings to let the sun dry their feathers while they enjoy the view.

I can't be sure if those birds out there in the fountain are the same baby birds that were in the nest on our porch, but I like to think they are. Our neighbors tell us that the barn swallows will return to their nesting area year after year, even though they may not use the same nest. It seems silly to me to build a new nest from scratch when there's a perfectly good one right up there, but I guess everyone likes to re-decorate now and then.



A quote from Anais Nin-- "We don't see things as they are... we see them as we are."

Chicken coops and crawling things.

The work on the chicken coop continues...... my husband has been attaching chicken wire to the existing chain-link fence that surrounds the dog-pen-soon-to-be-chicken-coop. With the ridiculously high temperatures lately, he can only work in the morning, and thankfully the sun doesn't hit that part of the property until late afternoon. Another morning or two of chicken-wire attachments, and that part should be done.

We already have the four-chicken nesting box which has to be attached to the back wall of the coop. And then we have to figure out a latch for the gate that will be raccoon-proof. (I have no doubt that a 30-lb. raccoon would be able to open up a simple lift-latch.)

I will be looking in the resale shops for cute little hen-house things........ I wish I had bought that red and white wooden sign in Caldwell that said "Chicken House," but at that time, we had no plans for a coop. I'm sure I'll be able to find stuff like that in the shops here. A little chicken-decor might result in happier hens. (Happier hens = more eggs.)

Rather than getting four baby chicks, my husband says we should get six. "Just in case something happens to one or two of them," he said. The plan is that he'll pick out three, and I will pick out three. I'm thinking of getting three different chickens..... one red, one yellow, and one black and yellow-- so I can tell them apart when I give them names (which would be hard to do if they're all yellow or all white).

And the names for my chicks..... Dolly, Edie, and Jaye-- the names of three of my aunts. My Aunt Dolly would smile and think it's funny, mainly because my Uncle Mino always used to say that all of his sisters "looked like Spring chickens;" Aunt Edie has passed away, but I don't think she'd like the idea; and my Aunt Jaye wouldn't mind, as long as I named the prettiest chicken after her.

My husband has other ideas for naming his three chickens-- Country Fried, Extra Crispy, and Over Easy. (Everyone's a comedian.)

As for the crawling things...... we had a little scorpion in the house last night-- right on the kitchen floor. I saw Mickey playing with something on the floor, putting his paw out, then backing away right quick. As soon as I saw the tail on that thing go up, I knew it was a scorpion. I got Mickey out of the way, called up the stairs to my husband, and he came down into the kitchen without shoes or slippers. I pulled off my sandal and told him to "smash that thing!"

Which he did.... and then Mickey spent the next half hour searching every corner of the kitchen looking for his creepy crawly thing. Yuck. Double yuck. That's the second scorpion to get into the house. (That we know of.)

Just a little while ago, I opened one of the drawers in the bathroom vanity and there was a tiny lizard in there..... one of the light beige gecko-things that crawl side-to-side and look at you with those black beady eyes. So of course I screamed, which got my husband to running in there and asking what had happened now........ A gecko, that's what happened! In there with my make-up! And, of course, when we tried to find him, we couldn't. Heaven only knows where that thing is now. My husband left the room saying "City girl...."

Our neighbors here tell us that the chickens will eat all of the crawling and flying things that they find. I'm counting on that, and I hope the chickens know about that part of their job.

"The Art of Racing in The Rain"

I have just finished this outstanding book by Garth Stein..... "The Art of Racing in The Rain." An amazing character study, a wonderful window into the world, as seen and as written by Enzo, the dog whose owner works with and on cars, and whose dream is to be an award-winning race car driver. By the end of the book, Enzo's owner achieves so much more.

"That which you manifest is before you." --That quote will stay with you throughout the book. The story will stay with you for a very long time, especially if you're a dog lover. And if you don't love dogs, then beware.... you will after you've read this book.

I cried at the end. I knew I would.... I had tissues ready as soon as I got to the last couple of chapters. I was so overcome by this book that I could hardly explain anything about the story to my husband. I just held the book in front of me and told him "Read it. Just read it!"

That which you manifest is before you.

There is no dishonor in losing the race. There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.

Just read it. Read it!

Wildlife Saturday Night.

The place to be in town last night was inside the civic center at the Fair Grounds. We were invited there by our neighbors J & J-- I had called them yesterday morning to ask if they would like to come here for dinner last night, but they were just about to call us about the wildlife meeting and dinner at the Fair Grounds. For just $5.00 per person, you enjoyed a most delicious dinner catered by a Somerville restaurant that is open only on the first Sunday of every month.... and they also had door prizes (we never win anything) and presentations from representatives of the Wildlife and Conservation groups.

The food was out of this world...... platters and platters of BBQ-ed beef and baked chicken, (I didn't touch the beef, and just had a small piece of chicken) the most delicious twice-baked potatoes I have tasted outside of my own kitchen, green beans, a really good (lots of different greens and veggies) tossed salad, fresh bread, and a dessert table filled with all sorts of home-baked treats made by the farm ladies that had been baking all afternoon. Our friends wouldn't even let us pay for our own dinners... they said we were their guests because they had invited us to join them.

At the door, everyone was given those blue and white sticky name-tags: Put y'all's names right there and come on in! I wrote my name on the little tag, but didn't put it on my blouse. I have this thing against those name tags. Number one, they work just fine in a kindergarten or first-grade class. After that, it's all downhill. (Name tags are a kiss-of-death at a party.) Number two, as soon as you stick on a tag with your name on it, everyone can just read your name (if they remembered to bring their glasses) and no one has to say Hi there! I'm .........! -- which eliminates the first happy greeting from one guest to another at a party. My dear friend Frankie hated name tags also. When forced to write her name on one at a party or gathering, she would do it, but then stick the tag on her butt. (Frankie is now up on a cloud, probably pulling off every name in sight.)

Anyway..... the dinner was delicious, and we all enjoyed it. The four of us sat across from Ida Jean and Esther May..... and felt name-challenged because J and I didn't have middle names. We all discussed the food, of course, and found out that Ida Jean's son owned the little restaurant in Somerville that did the catering. I would imagine that the twice-baked potato recipe was Ida Jean's, because she said that her son always loved to cook and would keep her company in her kitchen when he was growing up. When they started giving out the door prizes, I told Ida Jean that instead of the gift certificates to the local hardware and feed stores, they should have given out trays of her son's twice-baked potatoes.

After we all tasted the cobblers and brownies, the pies and cookies, the cakes and fruit tarts, the organizers got down to introducing the presenters. There was a man from the water conversation group that stood up in front of the microphone and with a booming voice that could probably have been heard in Houston asked us "Now !! what!!! will y'all dew!!!! (do)...... when y'all's well!!! runs driiiiiiiiiiiiigh?!!!! (dry-- for those of you not familiar with a Texas drawl)" He gave us all some statistics about the population of Texas growing faster than the high level of the water table. (One man at the end of our table said out loud "Well, shut the door!") -- To which the conservation guy answered, "We're breedin' 'em, not lettin' 'em in!" -- no one at any of the tables made a sound.

Then came the main speaker..... a wildlife representative who is an expert on the tracks (footprints) and scat (poop) of everything crawling and walking around your property when "all yore lights are put out and y'all have gone to bed." He had a slide show of animal tracks... raccoons and possums, skunks and squirrels, coyotes and bobcats, mountain lions and deer, roadrunners, chickens and quail, rabbits and hogs, horses and cows, and even frogs. Not only did we get to see their paw-prints (and our friend J decided that one lop-sided track just had to come from a gay coyote-- not that there's anything wrong with that), but we got to see the size and shape of their droppings.

The wildlife expert told us that if we got down close enough to the animal's scat, we could probably make out what they had for dinner that night. (As if this city girl was going to look that closely.....) The man's favorite pictures was a series of purple-colored scat of all shapes and sizes. He was nearly bouncing out of his boots when he was showing us those slides of purple mounds and pellets. And why were they purple? "Well, that year's dewberry crop was just plain bountiful, and all the animals were feasting on those dewberries every night as soon as the sun went down....." (I've never seen or heard of a dewberry before, but I will bet the ranch that those little berries are purple in color.)

Just as we were all walking into the civic center last night, by the way, we heard thunder and saw some dark clouds over the Fair Grounds. Within five minutes of walking into the front door of the center, the sky opened up and down came rain. Rain! Honest-to-goodness, puddle-making, ground-soaking rain. It didn't last but twenty minutes or so, but it was more rain than we've seen here in quite some time. Everyone at our table was saying Well, it's raining right here and that's just fine, but I hope it's raining back home on my land.

The wildlife. The rain. The land. The land. Number one on everyone's hit parade here-- their land. Number two: mark your calendars for the first Sunday of every month so you can head on out to that little restaurant in Somerville. You don't know what they'll be serving till you get inside, and if you don't get there early, you're going to just have to wait on line..... and they keep serving till they run out of food. Just one Sunday a month. And on some Sundays, they serve more than 500 people... which is probably twice the population of Somerville.

Chicken Coop 101.

We drove into town today for lunch at one of the cafes....... I splurged on Sweet Potato Fries. When we go to that particular cafe, that's all I order. The Sweet Potato Fries are (and I hate this phrase, but it works here) to die for. My husband ordered a Reuben sandwich-- and with it came fried pickles. We had never heard of, nor seen, deep-fried pickles before. The waitress, who calls everyone Honey, assured us that they were delicious. I tasted one.... it was a dill pickle, dipped in egg and bread crumbs, and fried till it was crispy. A nice taste, surprisingly, but dill pickles aren't my favorite, and besides, I was using up enough calories for the day with the fried sweet potato strips, so one bite was enough for me.

After lunch, we went to Lowe's and Tractor Supply..... my husband had measured the dog pen on our property, which he plans to re-make into a chicken pen. The dog pen already has a solid roof, and it's just far enough away from the house that the chickens will be near enough to check up on every day without having to walk farther out on the property. All my husband has to do is to attach chicken-wire to the existing chain-link fencing.... and put some wood trim around the edges so other animals can't crawl in (and the chickens can't get out).

According to our neighbors (those with chickens, that is), the chickens will know where their roost is, and will walk around the property and eat the bugs all day long, but will walk themselves back into their coop before it gets dark..... and that's when we have to latch the gate. The chickens will stay in the coop all night long, and hopefully, will thank us for their safe housing by leaving us an egg or two every morning.

We have already bought the vintage tin chicken nests.... we found the four-sectioned nesting house in one of the antique shops. A four-chicken condo, ready to place in the new coop. We also stopped at a feed and produce store in town... they sell baby chicks for $2.75 each. They had about 40 of them there this afternoon, but they had all been sold. We're not ready for new chicks anyway... we need to have a safe place to put them first.

Another country adventure....... the little baby chicks were so cute. Some were all yellow, a few were bright orange (The Little Red Hen comes to mind) and some were yellow and black. Being that we plan to get four, I think we should pick out chicks of different colors.... this way we can give them all names and be able to tell them apart. After all, how would we know who was who if all four had yellow feathers?

Gatsby's Big Day.

Well, yesterday was Gatsby's day in the sun. I took him to the local pet clinic to have him neutered........ the "Neuter for a Nickel Day." They had fifty male cats scheduled for "fixing" yesterday, and Gatsby was sixth on the morning list because we got there early, at 6:50 a.m.

I thought it would be a trial to get Gatsby in the traveling crate, but he walked right into the crate when I brought it out on the porch. Hmmm.... what's in there? All I had to do was give him a little push to get his back legs and his tail in the crate before I closed the door. And then I heard one loud meow when he realized he couldn't get out. Hey!! Where are you taking me?! I happen to like it here, you know.

Off to the clinic we went, with a silent Gatsby in the crate on the back seat of my husband's car. When we got there, we waited in the line and while all the other cats were howling and meowing and clawing at the doors of their crates, Gatsby sat there like a gentleman and just looked around. Chill out, you guys... you're behaving like a bunch of ferals.

When it was our turn, they brought us into a little room where they weighed Gatsby (11 lbs., 5 oz.) and asked me if he was allergic to any medications. We've only had Gatsby for a month... I had no idea of his medical history. In addition to the neutering, they were also giving him all the proper vaccinations. ("This is all for you own good, Gatsby.") They always say that when it's going to hurt.

They took Gatsby into the back rooms and told me that I could pick him up at 2:00. And off he went, without so much as a meow.

I drove back home to get ready for company.... our young friend Miss C was driving up with her friend A... they would be at our house by ten o'clock and planned to spend most of the day with us. And indeed they did..... we had lunch together at our house, then went into town because C wanted to see the resale shop where I've been finding such treasures (she went all around the house picking out "new" things)..... and they also wanted to see both The Cottage and The Barn to see what I've done. ("Well, I'm glad you took those dolphin pictures out of the barn.... the cow pictures are much better, Miss L.")

After the resale shop, we stopped to pick up Gatsby. Out he came in the crate, as quiet as he was when he went in. His eyes were half-closed, and we could see that he was still a little woozy from the anesthesia. C and I were in the front seat of the car, her friend A was in the back with Gatsby for the drive home, and Gatsby just sat there looking at all of us, listening to us talk, and still not making a sound.

When we got him on the back porch, Gatsby wobbled out of his crate and sniffed the air. Did they bring me back to the same place? Did they bring me back home?

Then he walked right over to me and dropped down at my feet and put his head on top of my shoes... I had been forgiven. Gatsby rubbed his face against my ankles a few times, then walked over to Miss C and her friend A and said hello to them. Are you new here too? Did they find you in the bushes? My husband came out on the porch and his first words to Gatsby were "Are you feeling okay? That operation wasn't my idea, Gatsby." I had put a little bit of food out for him, but Gatsby wasn't interested. He wobbled down into the grass, took care of business there, then went to his favorite spot underneath the back deck. He slept till after we all had dinner, then when I went outside to call him, Gatsby came bounding up the back stairs of the deck as if nothing had happened.

This morning, Gatsby was starving--- when I opened the back door, he was sitting on the doormat with his whiskers pressed up against the screen. He ate his Friskies Beef as if it were the first meal I had ever given him. Not a drop was left in that plate, and he gobbled it all up without first licking up the gravy first.

As I type this, I can see Gatsby from the window near my desk.... he is sprawled out on the stone path in the backyard and he is watching the hummingbirds. Life is good.... they took my little balls, but life is still good.

Puffy pillows...

And where have I been..... sewing powder puffs. So far, I'm sewn 256 of these cute little puffs. I have also learned that these puffs began their sewing life in the 1930s, when just about every woman knew how to sew, and they saved every scrap of fabric to use for their projects, with their imaginations being the only limitations. I would guess that the fabric scraps they couldn't use for making something new was relegated to the rag pile, so not even an unusable fabric scrap went to waste.

These cute little circles might have begun their lives being called yo-yos, but I read on one of the instruction sites that they were called "puffs" as well. So my powder puff name for them wasn't all that far off.

I have finished making one pillow... all the puffs are sewn onto it, and it came out very well. Considering it was my first one, and I had to pin and re-pin the puffs onto the pillow till I got just the design that I wanted, I was happy with it. I didn't follow the quilting instructions and sew all the puffs together before attaching them to the pillow because I didn't trust my sewing skills..... could I measure and arrange everything correctly before sewing the sheet of puffs to that pillow? Or should I take the longer way around that pillow and sew them on one by one by blessed one. Which is exactly what I did.... may have taken longer, but I was smiling when I sewed on that last little puff.

Given the colors of this pillow, I will probably give it to one of my cousins for Christmas. I have two more pillows waiting for their magic puffs-- "Puff My Pillow" (as in "Pimp My Ride"-- okay... bad joke.....). The puffs are all pinned to those two pillows as well, and now that I've had so much practice on that first pillow, sewing these next two shouldn't take as long--- I've already started on the second one. The only problem I had with that one was keeping ShadowBaby away from the pins, the thread, the scissors.... heaven forbid that little cat doesn't get in the middle of everything.

In the middle of this afternoon, the sky darkened up and we heard thunder off in the hills and saw a bit of lightning. Could it be....... would we have.... rain.......? Yes, we did. Not very much, but just enough to let the grass know that there is indeed some wet stuff up in the clouds over the Hill Country. We even sat out on the porch and watched the rain for the few minutes that it fell. That's what this lack of rain has done to us--- we're watching the rain clouds as if they're the Macy's parade. Where's the band? The Rockettes?

But at least it rained..... and with the rain comes that sweet smell of the hay, the fields, the grass, the pecan trees, the crape myrtles...... and we heard the horses and the cows on the nearby properties. The goats run for cover when it rains, and there is one cow that does not like the storms (not that we've had that many). I hear her mooing and groaning every time there has been thunder off in the hills.

Maybe that sweet little cow needs a scarf of powder puffs to brighten up her day. Jewelry for cows. Moolery. (Another bad joke.... I need to quit the comedy and get back to the sewing.)

Powder Puffs and Lobsters.

I am still cutting out circles of fabric for the yo-yo quilts, which I have re-named "powder puffs." Yo-yos are just not my style, but powder puffs are, and besides that, the completed fabric circles look more like powder puffs than yo-yos when they're all sewn up and pulled tight. I've made 215 of them, all from fabric scraps that I either had in my sewing basket or bought in the thrift shop. Rather than spend the rest of my life making powder puffs for a bed-sized quilt, I decided that making pillows would be the best solution.

During one of my shopping trips into town, I bought three small pillows that were perfect shapes to hold the powder puffs. I have the puffs all pinned down where they need to be sewn onto these pillows, but I have to get invisible thread the next time I go to WalMart. I mentioned invisible thread to my husband and he said "How will we find it in the store?" I excused the bad joke because by then his eyes were glazed over because I had just spent ten minutes describing the entire process of cutting out the circles, sewing a hem around the edges, then pulling the threads to make the cute little powder puff shapes.

It has been so hot here that after early-morning errands are done, about the only thing you feel like doing is either reading or sewing or writing. However, if you feel the slightest breeze, you think it's cooling down some and you drive into town to browse around the antique and resale shops. By the time you get home, you might as well have climbed Mt. Everest because you are done in for the rest of the day. But I've already written all there is to say about the heat, so let's not get started on that again.

The lobsters....... my cousin F up in NY eMailed me to say she was "duly impressed" that we were cooking lobsters in the middle of the Texas hills. After what happened during the cooking process downstairs in my kitchen, I told her not to be impressed one tiny bit.

My husband had to drive into town (the big town, the "city," not our little Hill Country town here), and when he came home, he brought with him fresh, live lobsters from one of the waterfront fish markets. (Don't cook tonight... call Lobster Delight.)

We have steamed live lobsters many times before... which is why I bought a huge lobster pot some years ago. The pot is bright red on the outside, white on the inside, made of very heavy enamel. My dad would call it a "handsome pot," and it's perfect for cooking up the lobsters.

I blame my first error in the lobster-cooking on the heat of the day. I didn't get out the handsome red lobster pot. Such a heavy pot, and I had to use the step-ladder to get it from that tall cabinet where I store things that aren't used on a daily basis. Instead, I just took one of the large spaghetti pots from the shelf and filled it with three inches of water and put in the metal basket to hold the lobsters. The correct process here is when the water starts to boil, you toss in the lobsters (head first--- while apologizing to them) and put the cover on the pot and just let them steam for 15 minutes.

Which is what I did. Except, of course, the lobsters were in the Farberware spaghetti pot, not the heavy enamel lobster pot. Within ten seconds, one of the lobsters had flicked its tail up towards the lid of that spaghetti pot, which dislodged the cover so it was half on and half off of the top of the pot.... which gave that particular lobster's tail all the room it needed to waggle itself back and forth over the rim of the pot...... which got me to screaming..... which made Gracie start barking... which scared the cats...... and then I ran out of the kitchen.

Into the hallway I went, towards the front staircase.... yelling in the direction of the stairs for my husband, who had already heard me scream, and heard the dog barking, and heard the cats screeching....... so he was on his way down the staris wondering what on earth.....

Before he got to the bottom of the stairs, I was standing near the front door with my eyes closed, and my knees were shaking, and I was waving a pot-holder in the direction of the kitchen, and telling him he had to Get into the kitchen and take care of that lobster because he's trying to get out of the pot!

Of course, the first thing my husband said when he got near the stove was "Well, where's that big red pot?" Men. They are so obsessed with details.

I got the big red pot down from the big cabinet, handed it over to my husband without making eye contact with anything happening on the stove-top, and my husband transferred the boiling water and the lobsters from the wrong pot to the right pot. Before going up the stairs, he said "Are you okay now? Are you going to freak out again?"

Me? Freak out? Because I plunged a live lobster into a pot of boiling water and he tried to escape and come after me because of all the bad lobster-karma I have accumulated over my lobster-steaming life? I told my husband I was just fine, thank you.

After sixteen minutes (giving the lobsters one extra minute because of the wrong pot/right pot situation) I shut off the stove-top and told my husband that dinner was ready. I waited till he got downstairs and then I let him open up the lid of the red pot and take the lobsters out and put them on the plates.

To answer the obvious question here: No, I did not have a problem whatsoever eating that lobster. And I didn't apologize while eating..... I only say I'm sorry! as I drop them into the pot.

Blazing hot.

Just when we thought it couldn't get any hotter....... the weather gods took their magic wands and pointed them down towards Texas and said Y'all are going to have enough heat to broil your ribs right there on the concrete driveway, so get your grand-daddy's barbeque sauce ready. I haven't decided yet if the weather gods meant beef or pork ribs, as served in a BBQ restaurant, or our own personal anatomical ribs, which feel as if they are indeed cooking inside our skin as we walk out to see if there's anything in the mailbox. And should I really care if there's anything in that mailbox when the temperature is 110 degrees?

Enough. E. N. O. U. G. H. I know I complained last winter when I had to wear a heavy jacket in December and January to walk Gracie around the block. And I also remember complaining about the heavy rains we had last year..... and heaven knows I had a few choice remarks for Hurricane Ike as it passed over, under and around Houston, Galveston and Clear Lake. But in all the years we have lived in this wonderful, beautiful state, I can never remember complaining because it was too hot. Consider this my formal complaint to the weather gods: It is Too Hot. (And don't even get me started on the lack of rain.)

Walking in the heat doesn't seem to deter Gatsby, our outside cat, from following me and Gracie as we walk down the road a bit in the late afternoon. In his whiskered cat wisdom, Gatsby has decided that he needs to melt himself on top of my left shoe every third time I take a step with my left foot. This melt-down position puts Gatsby's nose on top of my toes, while the backside of his body is stretched out from my ankle to my calf, with his tail curling around my knee. Needless to say, it is impossible to take another step until I de-tangle Gatsby's body from my leg and allow my left foot to continue on the path. And that path is hot. Blazing, unmercifully hot.

As soon as Gracie finishes with her walk, she will stop right in the road and look at me. "There is no reason to walk further. I am done." And she turns to stone. I no longer try and make her walk a bit longer for the exercise.... it's just too hot and Gracie is getting older now. So we turn around, and so does Gatsby, and we make our way home.... or try to, as Gatsby hugs my feet and rubs his nose against my toes and hugs my ankles with his paws. My cat AngelBoy used to have some of these same moves, when he wasn't busy making patterns in the corners of the carpeting.

It was so hot today that I considered letting Gatsby into the house. He must know it's cooler in here because he will lay right on the mat by the kitchen door with his little gray nose up against the screen. When I open the door, Mickey and ShadowBaby will no longer hiss at him, so I think they're becoming acquainted.

I am keeping my promise. Gatsby is an outside cat, and that's that. (We'll see how dedicated I am to that promise when the winter months roll along and the winds blowing through these hills turn cold.)

What kind of cloud are you?

Okay, we have a cloudy day here this morning. The weather wizards have predicted, in all of their mighty wisdom--- rain. We remember what rain is, don't we? That soft wet stuff that falls from the sky and makes everything green and lush and fresh-smelling. Unless, of course, you have a hurricane and the rain pelts down hard and smashes everything in sight. But let's not put that thought out into the universe, especially since hurricane season has begun.

We seem to have the correct clouds today--- not the big white puffy ones that you used to stare at while flat-out in the grass when you were a kid..... (there's a bear...... that one looks like a snowman..... and that one looks like the fifth grade nun!) Today's clouds are just gray and scattered, and hardly clouds at all..... it looks like the sky is just a mass of blotchy gray.

So maybe...... if all goes well, we really will have some rain today. I refuse to count the sixteen raindrops of the other day as a "real" rain. Never, in my wildest dreams, would I have ever thought I'd get tired of sunny and hot days. But this year has just about done me in. Non-stop heat since the beginning of May....... with just about every day reaching 100 degrees and then some. (It was the then some that has made everyone cranky.)

On the bright side....... (and there always is a bright side)...... our dog Gracie and our outside cat Gatsby have become best buddies. When I walk Gracie up the road after dinner, Gatsby follows us.... sometimes meowing all the way, sometimes so quiet that I have to watch where I'm stepping or I will fall over that cat.

Walking with Gatsby goes something like this: I take two steps to the right as Gatsby veers towards my legs, three steps to the left as he side-steps in front of me, two steps to the right and then he stretches so I have to stop walking until the back part of his long body catches up to the front of him, and then I have to repeat that whole process. Sometimes Gracie will nudge Gatsby along with her nose, but then that slows Gracie up and she's right in front of me and if I'm not paying attention I will fall over her. I have to wonder if any of the neighbors are watching me weaving left and right and patch-working my way down the road. I'm hoping that I am just a dot on the horizon if they happen to be looking out their windows.

I have made the appointment for Gatsby's "fixing" at the local animal clinic. Local being a relative term, since very little is really local this far into the hills of the countryside. On the night before his surgery, his last meal has to be at eight o'clock. Now that should be fun... this once-starving cat who is now used to getting a last portion of Fancy Feast at 10:00 at night will be sitting with his nose to the back door waiting for me to come out with his dish. I will just have to stay away from that back door and not look at those green eyes of his.

The clinic will not accept a cat if it's not in a carrying case..... and that will be a challenge on the morning of Gatsby's surgery. I have no idea how I'm going to get him into that crate, but I guess the best way is to just pick him up and guide him in there, and hope that his claws don't come out and sink into my skin. I can see it now.... driving down the road with a screaming Gatsby in the back and my wrists and arms bleeding all over the steering wheel in the front. (And let's not put that thought out into the universe either.....)

"Oh goodie.... another cat...."

That must have been what our dog Gracie was thinking when she came face to face with Gatsby, our outside cat. Our neighbors would call Gatsby a "Barn Cat," but I don't think he spends much time in the barn. He loves the porch, which wraps around the whole house, and he likes to spend the hottest part of the day underneath the back deck. There must be a cool spot down there, because when he comes out (yawning and stretching) to have his lunch, he doesn't feel any hotter than a lukewarm piece of toast.

Gracie is used to having cats in her life..... heaven knows we've had more than our share over the course of Gracie's thirteen years with us. If Gracie sees a cat outside, her dog-sense kicks right in and she will chase the cat.... which is exactly what she did with Gatsby the very first time she saw him. Gatsby's paws raced him across the property and he went sailing underneath a board of the Barn that seemed to have been raised up just for his escape.

On each day after that, we put Gracie on her leash so she could see Gatsby but not chase after him. I kept telling Gracie that this gray cat was ours, not a stray anymore. Gatsby must have quickly realized that Gracie was restrained because he just stood his ground and hissed, but didn't make a move to run when Gracie was on the leash. It took a couple of days for Gracie to learn that Gatsby was here to stay, which meant she wasn't allowed to chase it away. ("I knew she didn't mean it when she said NO MORE PETS!')

Yesterday and today, Gracie and Gatsby were nose to nose, just half an inch away.... and Gracie was wagging her tail and sniffing Gatsby's nose and whiskers. I'm wondering if it was a serious hello on Gracie's part, or just a sniffing-exercise to determine what kind of food Gatsby was eating. ("Is she giving you dry food or the good canned stuff? -- And if you're getting the canned stuff, would you like to share?")

Going out the back door used to be so simple: Open the back door inward, open the screen door outward and listen to that wonderful farm-house squeak, and out you go. Not these days. Now we open the back door slowly, making sure that Mickey Kitty and ShadowBaby aren't right at our heels because they want to go outside and see Gatsby ("Whatcha got out there?"), make sure Gracie isn't nose-to-nose with the door because now she knows there is cat food on the back porch.......... and then before you open the screen door you have to make sure that Gatsby isn't right there on the door mat with his whiskers pressed up against the screen because he wants to come inside. ("Whatcha got in there?!")

Two cats wanting to go outside, one cat wanting to come inside. One dog wanting to lick up every bit of cat food in sight. No more pets indeed.

Exploring Hill Country towns......

We have driven hundreds of miles every week, finding quaint towns with little cafes and interesting antique and resale shops. Some of the towns were tiny, with less than 300 people living there, and some were too big for our liking, like Round Rock, population 86,175.

We have been to Smithville, LaGrange, Burton, Somerville, Independence, Bastrop, Caldwell, Cameron, and a bunch of others during the past few weeks... I can't remember the names of them all just now.

Today, we went to Rockdale (population 5439) in search of "The Antique Queens," a wonderful antique co-op that we walked around for nearly an hour. Found some nice hand-embroidered pillowcases there, as well as a old milk bottle for just $5.00. (I have been searching for an old glass milk bottle for weeks now.... finally found one with a reasonable price.)

We drove into Thorndale (pop. 1953)... half of the fields there were bright green, as if they had been rained on quite a lot, and the other half were dried and brown and aching for water.

In a town called Thrall, we saw acres and acres of cotton fields.... little white puffs of cotton blooming on bushes, as far as your eye could see. Amazing. How in the world do they get all that cotton off of the plants....... do people still pick it by hand, or do they have machines for that now? I didn't see a population sign in Thrall..... maybe it's too small a town to put up a sign.

In the town of Taylor (pop, 13,740), we had lunch at Louie Mueller's BBQ--- a dark old barn of a restaurant that was featured on the Food Channel show "Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives"-- we heard about the restaurant from one of the antique shop dealers.... and it seemed to be the only place in town for lunch. No air-conditioning in Louie Mueller's, and the temperature today was 105. No salads or veggies either at Louie's, so I had to make-do with sliced turkey and peach cobbler. The cobber was delicious, the turkey was fine once I cut off the pepper-rub that was smoked onto the skin of the turkey. The line was to the door when we walked into Louie Mueller's, and nearly out the door by the time we had finished our lunch. Popular place, even without air-conditioning.

In the town of Hutto (again, no pop. sign) we saw hippos on nearly all the lawns, and in front of nearly every shop in town. There was even a shop called "All Things Hippo," so I'm guessing that the hippo is the mascot of the town.

Round Rock..... the last place we went to..... and even though they had a very nice Antique Mall, the prices in that huge store were out-of-sight, for mostly everything we looked at. That town is too big for us now.... we're used to the small, quaint towns, not the noisy big shopping-mall towns. With apologies to all who live there, we could have done without Round Rock, and I doubt we'll go back there anytime soon.

There was a town a couple of weeks ago...... I think it was Smithville. They had a hair salon there whose sign out front read "Curl Up & Dye," which I thought was both creative and hysterical. That's why I like the smaller towns..... the people who live in those sleepy towns have time to think.

In one of the little towns a while back (maybe it was Bastrop), we had lunch at a little cafe called "Gracie's," which was too cute for words..... and just the fact that it was the same name as our dog, we had to try it. In one of the shops near Gracie's, I had seen a vintage embroidered sampler which said: "We make a living with what we get, but we make a life with what we give." I would have been happy to buy that sampler, but the price was as high as the moon.

Scorpions & coyotes & snakes, oh my....

Life in the Hill Country is different than life in Clear Lake. I think the worst critter-problem we ever had in Clear Lake was when a mama raccoon left her baby in our attic. We sealed up the hole in the roof before we knew there was a baby up there, and of course the mama kept coming back night after night, trying unsuccessfully to get back in. Meanwhile, the baby crawled around the attic and fell into a hole in the attic floor and landed inside the wall behind the dishwasher.

We had to pull out the dishwasher, cut a hole in the wall back there, and out came the beanie-baby-sized raccoon. My neighbor and I fed it milk and water with a doll bottle, then we named it Vinnie (after Vincent VanGogh, because his ear got folded back flat during its fall), and then my husband put his foot down and said we had to give it back to its mother. Which we did, that very night, when mama raccoon came searching for her lost child. Vinnie went screaming into the night when his mother lifted him out of the laundry basket that I had set out on the back deck. I'm sure he had visions of being cuddled forever in a cute little blanket and fed with a Tiny Tears baby-doll bottle.

Here in the hills, however, there are more critters and creatures that I can count. We haven't seen a raccoon yet, but I know they're out there because a trash bag was torn to shreds one night when we didn't put it into the trash can. We can hear the coyotes at night-- especially the little ones, who cry like puppies when their mamas are out searching for food.

We also have armadillos, which make little tunnels in the leaves and the mulch in the flower beds. I saw an armadillo walking out near the back porch one night-- it froze in its armored tracks when it saw me, then it waddled into the bushes till I came inside. I haven't seen a possum yet, but I have no doubt that they're out there in the woods beyond our pond.

There are crickets of all shapes and sizes, most of which jump away from you when you get near them, and they do make that crick-crack, crick-crack sound.... which scared me half to death the first time I heard it because I thought it was a rattle snake. I don't even know if rattlers are in this part of the Hill Country, but there are other snakes that are all over this county. One of our neighbors used a brick to kill a snake that was right near his front door. "It came up that close?" Yes, indeedy... said J. Good grief. The first time I see a snake, I know I'll be locking myself in the house for at least a week. Maybe two.

Within the first week of moving here, we got acquainted with a scorpion. My husband found it first, or rather, it found him. He was in his bathroom, and it fell on his shoulder.... fell right out of the air conditioning vent... onto his shoulder and then to the floor, where my husband promptly smashed him with his foot (which was thankfully in his slipper at the time). Then he brought me the tissue-wrapped scorpion so I could see it.... he said he knew it would scare me, but I needed to know what they looked like. I was so scared that I didn't look too close.... all I remember was a smashed reddish-looking thing wrapped up in a Puffs tissue. Since that morning, I have never walked underneath an air-conditioning vent without first looking up, and I won't sit under one of those vents in a restaurant. Apparently, when it gets very hot, the scorpions go searching for water, which leads them to air-conditioning units, which can lead them to the vents if they've a mind to search that far. Just our luck... a scorpion who read the Lewis & Clark stories found our air-conditioner and he set out to discover new lands.

We are inundated with bees and wasps, ants and spiders, dragon flies, crickets and lizards. But we also get the nice creatures--- hummingbirds and bluebirds, horses and cows, goats and chickens, barn swallows and purple martins, and countless butterflies, along with a peacock or a wild turkey now and again. We had a nest of baby barn swallows on our front porch when we moved in here. We watched the mother bird feeding her just-hatched brood of five, and they all survived. The baby birds grew from soggy skinny skeletal-looking creatures into full-feathered, blue-chested, brown-winged swallows. We were out on the front porch the day the baby birds decided to try out their wings for the first time. And we watched every day as they flew around the columns of the front porch and played in the crape myrtles. Back to the nest they came every night, piling in there one on top of the other and we felt sorry for the poor little bird on the bottom.

We're mindful of the scorpions and the snakes..... and careful of the spiders and the wasps. One of the reasons we're thinking about raising some chickens is that they will eat up all the crawling and flying things-- including the scorpions. They will not, however, keep away the snakes. The snakes will be attracted to the chicken coop because they will want to eat the eggs. Which is why the guy at the feed store told us to keep in a good supply of the heavy white ceramic eggs that look real-- the snakes will swallow those heavy fake eggs and then go off and die.

(This is about where you can start humming that theme song to "Green Acres," if you've a mind to.........)

Yo-Yo Pillows & Quilts.

On one of my trips to the resale and little antique shops in town, I bought a rectangular-shaped pillow that was designed to look like the American flag.... blue/white in the upper left corner on a background of red and white stripes. I spotted the pillow from across the room, but it wasn't till I got close to it that I could see how it was made-- it looked like pressed-flat round flower shapes, and the fabrics had all sorts of designs. On the price tag, the dealer had marked it "Yo-Yo Pillow."

I bought that pillow for one of the beds up in the guest rooms of The Barn. Everything in The Barn is in a Texas, red/white/blue theme, and that pillow looks great on the blue and white quilt on the bed up there. As with everything "crafty" that I buy, I look at it closely and either determine that it's too complicated to make and I'm thrilled that someone else had the talent and the time to do it..... or I decide that it's easy enough to do and would be something I'd want to try.

I did a Google search on Yo-Yo quilts and found a pattern and instructions. Easy as pie. All you need is some 100% cotton fabric (very inexpensive in the thrift and resale shops), and of course it takes time to make all those yo-yo pieces. The fabric needs to be cut into circles, four inches in diameter. When you measure out the four inches, the instructions said to cut 1/4" past your pencil mark on the fabric. I found a plastic container lid that was exactly the right size and it's been easy and fast to measure out the circles. (You make the pencil marks on the "wrong" side of the fabric.) I found that the best thing to do was to first measure out all the circles, then cut out all the circles-- then you can just relax and take your time with the sewing because the fabric is all ready for you when you're ready to sit down and sew.

I tried to sew the circles while sitting at the table in the breakfast room. That didn't work, because either ShadowBaby or Mickey Kitty jumped up there with me and tried to capture the needle and thread (dangerous for cats, to say the least), or they were playing with the circles I had already cut. When they had settled down and decided to let me sew, one or both of them made themselves comfy and sprawled out on their backs and looked at me upside-down with that "just look at how cute I am" expression on their whiskered faces. Too much of a distraction, not to mention the fact that I don't want them up on the table. ("And why not?" say the cats.) Plus, whenever I sew anything, it just seems more comfortable to have everything in your lap so your arms aren't raised up to a table. About the most I really sew is a button here and there, or a hem, or sewing up the pockets on white slacks, but for whatever reason, sewing these little fabric circles just appealed to me.

The best way to sew the hem around the perimeter of the circles is to be in a really comfy chair and have the fabric resting on your lap, and you just sew a hem around the circle with a loose basting stitch. You hold the fabric right side down, so when you're looking down at that circle, you are seeing the "wrong" side of it. Then you just fold over a little hem (folding fabric towards you), following the pencil mark that you have made, and keep folding and using that basting stitch till you get to the other end and your circle has a complete hem all around the edges.

Now comes the magic part..... you pull the thread and the circle will start closing up into a ruffled flower-shape. I tend to keep my finger in the center of the circle while doing this, because you want to leave a small hole in the center of that flower. As the circle closes and ruffles-up, you spread out the shape so it's symmetrical and nicely shaped, then you use your needle and thread to make a couple of knots so it holds its shape.

When you're done, you have a cute little round pressed-flower shape, or yo-yo, as they call it. The finished flower is about half the size of the circle that you started out with-- I can only imagine how many of those you would need to stitch together a quilt. According to Google, these Yo-Yo Quilts were made in the 1940s, and now they're getting popular again. The pillows would be faster and easier to make.... the little yo-yos can be sewn right onto a plain pillow of any color or shape..... and the variety of fabrics that you use will determine the design of your finished pillow. The fabric circle you begin with changes dramatically when you're finished with the hem and you pull that thread to make it ruffle up and get smaller.

I don't know why they called them yo-yos, though...... it's round like a yo-yo, but that's about it for the similarity. Maybe they thought a "Yo-Yo Quilt" was a snappier name than "Ruffled Round Flower Quilt." Whatever you call it, I'm glad I started this. It's fun to find different fabrics, it will be interesting to see what kind of design I can come up with when I have enough of the completed yo-yos, and if I keep on making these, I can probably finish up a couple of pillows before the holidays and give them as gifts.

Re-reading the above, checking for spelling mistakes, I found an abundance of run-on sentences. Also an abundance of........ It is what it is. What comes out of the brain goes straight to the keyboard at times.

Hot, with a capital H.

I have no idea why my husband continues to check the weather.com site every morning. The weather hasn't changed much here since early May. On any given day, it is either a little hot, a lot hotter, baking hot, or broiling hot. Add to that forecast a hopeful comment by the weather wizards: "We might just get a rain shower this afternoon, folks... keep your fingers crossed and hope the sky opens up because we all sure do need that rain." (As my cousin F in NY says: Hope floats. We don't exactly know why hope would float, but it sounds good -- sarcastically optimistic -- and she says that every time someone says "I hope....")

The Hill Country weather hasn't been much different than the Clear Lake or Houston weather. Each area has been setting heat and dry-spell records, although a few good soaking rain showers pelted both Clear Lake and downtown Houston not too long ago. Our part of the Hill Country had showers last Friday, but that seems like a century ago now because they weren't heavy soaking showers, and the rain that we did have just made everything hotter and steamier. (We're just never satisfied, are we?)

I spoke to my Aunt Dolly this afternoon. She is finally, after two years, getting used to her new home with my cousin S in Florida. After living in South Ozone Park (Queens, NY) for 85 years in a house built in 1922 by her father (my grandfather), she was more than reluctant to leave that big old house. When my grandparents landed at Ellis Island more than a century ago, they settled in an apartment in Little Italy. When Grandma and Grandpa decided that "the city" was getting too crowded and too busy for their growing family, Grandpa bought land out in the countryside of Queens and built his three-story house, complete with a full basement that had a big kitchen (to use when the first-floor kitchen was too hot in the summer) and a little wine-pressing room. "La gandine," they used to call it-- and I'm not at all sure of that spelling.

That house on Inwood Street was the family home for all those years, until just two summers ago when my cousin S finally, finally convinced Aunt Dolly to move to Florida with him and his family. South Ozone Park was very family-friendly when I was growing up. Needless to say, with the passing of years, that section of Queens isn't exactly "the countryside" any longer.

So there's Aunt Dolly, in "too sunny, too hot Florida" (her words), making the best of it in her nephew's home. He has a beautiful house near Orlando, and most of Aunt Dolly's furniture is right there with her (whatever would fit into her private rooms), but it still isn't her house and that's what took so long to get used to. My 96-yr-old Aunt Dolly is as sharp and as active as she was when I was a kid..... there is just no slowing her down. Since she's been living in Florida and not having to take care of a big house all by herself, she feels she isn't getting enough exercise. Every day, Aunt Dolly walks up and down the staircase of S's house at least ten times. Eighteen steps up, eighteen steps down, she said, and she doesn't run because she doesn't want to encourage S's children to run up and down the stairs. "They could fall and hurt themselves," she told me.

I had mailed my aunt a beaded hair net that I found in an antique shop last week. It's a vintage net, in its original package, and hadn't been opened till I slit the cellophane in the shop to check the net before I bought it. Aunt Dolly has been wearing her long hair in nets for every minute that I can remember. Everyone in the family has been searching for the nets for months now, because she couldn't find any in Florida. "These stores down here have nothing good, nothing important," she told me. (I told my aunt not to say that out loud if she happens to be walking near the Florida Chamber of Commerce offices.) She did find some "wear once, toss away" nets that are worn by cooks and food servers, but they weren't "lady-like," she told me.

She was thrilled to get my package with the beaded hair net...... and now, of course, we're all back on the search again. One hair net is fine, but more would be better. Aunt Dolly wants to have one net for every day, one for Sundays, and one for "special" days, as she said.

I told Aunt Dolly that feeling so great and still looking as pretty as Loretta Young at 96 years of age should make every day a "special" day.

=^..^=

My blog profile used to say that we had three cats. Now it says two. When we moved here, my blue-eyed AngelBoy (my beautiful, prissy, super-fussy Birman who made many appearances in this blog) did not take well at all to the new surroundings.

I truly think he missed the old house, he missed his screen-porch, he missed his usual routine. In this house, the cats have a new domain-- the TV room, which has a huge bathroom "en suite," as the realtor called it. Our TV room used to be the master bedroom for the previous owners of this house. The cats have free run of that room, plus when I open the door to the TV room, and close the doors to the hallway and the dining room, they can also roam around the kitchen and the breakfast room. That "en suite bathroom" is now the litter box room for our cats.

Well, the new terrain just wasn't enough for AngelBoy. He wanted to once again feel the breeze on his white whiskers, I guess, because he would sit by the doors in the TV room and meow his blue-eyed heart out. I tried to explain that the porch didn't have screens..... he looked at me with that "Well, why in heaven's name NOT?!" (A look that I had come to know quite well over the past thirteen years with that cat.)

With each passing week in this house, AngelBoy reverted to his old habits--- habits which made us keep him on the screen-porch of the old house for most of his life with us. And when he wasn't on the screen-porch, he was in the laundry room, just to keep him away from carpeting, and hopefully avoid his mind-boggling "accidents" in the corners of all the carpeting.

Of course, this TV room here had carpeting, wouldn't you know. And no, we had no immediate plans to take up that nearly-new carpeting, either. And AngelBoy christened it many times during the first four weeks that we were here. Out came the carpet cleaner, out came the brushes and the sponges, and that blue-eyed beautiful cat of mine would watch me clean up the mess. ("Pardon me for saying so, but you missed a spot right there.") There were days when I would have gladly booted his little blue-eyed, whiskered butt right out the door. We have twenty-three acres here.... I would have lost him for sure, if not to coyotes, then to one of the huge hawks flying around looking for the neighbors' chickens.

But you can't do that with a de-clawed Birman who has been an inside cat for thirteen years. Especially with his fussy, prissy little attitude, which would have resulted in him getting beaten up by the wild rabbits here, not to mention the coyotes and the hawks. He was not a "street-cat," he was a "Where is my blue pillow and blanket-type of prissy cat." And everything had to be blue.... his food dish, his blanket, his little pillow, his litter box. Did he know that he was color-coordinating all of his accessories with his eyes, which were bluer than blue?

On the last night of AngelBoy's existence here, I caught him sniffing the carpeting in a corner of the TV room. I jumped up and told him "Use your box, AngelBoy--- use that BOX!!" And that cat knew exactly what I was talking about because I had said that so many times over the years--- when he heard the word "box," he would walk into his litter box and use it. Not that night, however. He did walk into his litter box, though, and he turned around and stuck his head out from the opening, and he looked at me. I really thought he was using his box, and when he came out, I told him what a wonderful blue-eyed boy he was. Then I opened the box to clean it, and there was nothing in there but litter. Into the TV room I went, and there was AngelBoy, doing his business in the corner.

I lost it. I was so exhausted by the move that I just lost it. I picked him up and just shoved him into his litter box, telling him how bad, bad, bad he was. He meowed and cried, and just looked at me. And I cried too. And then I went upstairs and told my husband that I just couldn't cope with "that cat" anymore. He knew, of course, which cat I was talking about. We've never had such problems with the others.

We talked about the options. Find a new home for him? Who is going to take a 13-yr-old cat who sniffs around the corners of carpeting looking for a soft place to squat down? Make him an outside cat? He isn't even smart enough to stay away from cars, to come in out of the rain, and he can't even climb a tree anymore to get away from another animal who might see him and decide that a Birman might make a good dinner.

We called the local vet. He asked me all sorts of questions, the final one being "How long has he been acting this way?" When I told him "Twelve out of his thirteen years with us," he gave us his office hours and told us to come in.

So we did. I could barely look into those blue eyes of his before we left. This beautiful fluffy lavender-point Birman-- how could something so lovely have so much of the devil in him? On the way to the vet's office, AngelBoy meowed and cried--- this from a cat who was always quiet in the car, who was content to be in his crate as long as he could see out the window. I held him while the vet gave him the injection, and I buried my head in my husband's shoulder and I couldn't stop crying. I was, in effect, killing my cat, because he was killing me. It was horrible. I felt so badly for three days, then realized how much easier my days were without having to cat-sit AngelBoy every minute of every day. That sense of relief made me feel badly also. You can't win with cats. They are what they are, and you either have to accept them as such or you don't.

Two weeks after AngelBoy "left" us, a stray cat appeared on the back porch. A charcoal-gray male, about a year old, with iridescent light green eyes. Skinny, starving, pathetic. Clearly scared, wouldn't come near me, but when I left food on the porch and came back in, he ran to the dish and ate every bit of it. Not until the third feeding, a day-and-a-half later, did the cat trust me enough to get close to me. Then, before he ate his food, he rubbed up against my leg-- a feline thank-you for the Fancy Feast beef.

I promised my husband that he would be an outside cat, and I intend to keep that promise. He is, truly, an outside cat.... and he seems content outside anyway. My husband knew that cat wasn't going to leave because the first thing I fed him was a whole can of Fancy Feast. "That cat is going to hang around," said he. But my husband didn't care-- he said he would be a good "barn cat," and take care of the mice. (Do outside cats chase mice if their bellies are filled with Fancy Feast?)

On the fifth day, my husband came up with a good name for the cat--- "The Gray Gatsby." This cat, with his long legs and svelte body, looks very elegant, and his gray coat is tipped with silver-- he looks like a Russian Blue. And those green eyes--- not as mesmerizing as AngelBoy's blue eyes (thank goodness) but striking just the same. We call him Gatsby for short, and he has made himself at home here. He sleeps on the back porch, except during the heat of the day, and then he finds himself a cool spot underneath the back deck. He comes when I call him.... he already knows his name, and I have to be careful when I'm walking outside now because he will take every opportunity to weave himself inbetween my ankles and sit on top of my feet.

My life with cats was sealed, I believe, when I was just a baby. The first gift my Aunt Dolly ever gave me was an infant-sized white bath towel with a kitten done up in applique patch-work on the front of it. That towel was always with me, propping up the bottle in my crib, used as an impromptu pillow for a nap, and it's still with me now. It is hanging up on the towel rack downstairs in the bathroom where the litter boxes are. The kitten applique is faded a bit, and I don't use it as a hand towel because I don't want to keep washing it. The more I wash it, the more the patchwork will fade. That kitten towel is 57 years old; my Aunt Dolly is now 96.

Without even trying very hard, I can still see AngelBoy's face. I can still hear his lilting, lisping meow in my mind, and his blue collar with his blue bell is hanging up in the laundry room. My husband took his collar before we left the vet's office that day. That day. Sometimes when I'm in the laundry room taking clothes out of the dryer, I will jiggle AngelBoy's collar so I can hear the distinctive sound of his bell.

That blue-eyed cat was with us for thirteen years. And there are days when he is still here, but I don't have to check the carpets anymore.

So we have two (inside) cats now, plus Gatsby (outside). Does this make us a two-and-a-half cat family?

Music night in historic downtown Brenham.

My husband and I drove into town tonight for a free concert by "The Big Otis Show Band." Apparently, all during the month of July, there have been free concerts-- last weekend was music from the 1950s and 1960s..... we didn't know about it, so we missed a lot of good Beach Boys' music, among others, of course. Tonight was the final show in the summer concert series. (Wait a minute.... we still have a lot of summer to go here.......)

The town closed off the streets around the downtown area tonight, and the only cars allowed through were the old "muscle cars" of the 1950s and 1960s..... they had a nice display of vintage, fully restored cars parked along one of the main streets. They even had a vintage Shelby on display, along with an original-year Mustang.

The music was wonderful..... everyone singing along with "Dock of The Bay," and "My Girl," and "Play That Funky Music, White Boy." Great band..... and everyone was so focused on the music right there--- no one had a radio, no one was hosting their own party in the middle of the audience..... the show was the center of attention and proved once again that Brenham is a small town with a big heart. Wonderful evening.... there was a nice breeze blowing down East Alamo Street, so that was a nice bonus.

I love this town. I am so happy, so thankful to be right here in this spot on this planet.

Hot, hot, hotter....

Now that yesterday's rain is gone, we're back to our 100-degree days. There have been days since moving here in mid-May when the temperature got up to 108.... totally broiling outside. We don't have the Gulf breezes that we had in Clear Lake, and being that we're in the middle of all these acres, there is nothing to absorb the heat except for our house and property.

Friends from Clear Lake have visited..... ooohing and aaahing over the house and the fields. We are still pinching ourselves, and I say that out loud all the time. It is amazing to me to look out of all our windows and see nothing but land that we own.

Speaking of windows, there are 52 in this house, plus four in The Cottage, and six in the guest rooms of The Barn. Plus doors all over the place leading to the outside..... 8 in the house, two in The Cottage, two in The Barn. The Cottage is cozy, shabby-chic, very cottage-y. The Barn is purely Texas..... two bedrooms, living room, bathroom, full kitchen on the second floor of a huge barn that was built to hold farming equipment and livestock. The Barn holds nothing except all the Texas-country decor and furnishings on the second floor. We are not into farming equipment and livestock. Not yet. (I have learned to never say never.)

The previous owners lived in the upstairs of The Barn for two years while they were renovating this house. Built in 1907, they moved it here from a nearby town, and set it down on this hill overlooking the 23 acres. This prairie-style Victorian farm house was lovingly updated and fitted with central air-conditioning and all the nice stuff that makes for comfortable living, but the integrity of its 1907 history is all intact, complete with original stained glass windows, original wood flooring, a grand staircase, and original cupboards in the kitchen and dining room.

I knew from the minute I saw this house that it was meant to be for us. The wrap-around porch, the columns, the porch railing.... so much of this house is similar in style to the house I grew up in, back in Woodhaven. So many years ago.... a life-time ago. Millions of memories ago.

This house has a good feeling to it...... I knew that the minute we walked into it. During other house-hunting searches, I would walk right out of houses that didn't feel good. I can't explain it, but I can sense it when I feel it.... and out I would walk, not wanting to see anything else in those houses.

We are very much at home here, and I'm hoping and praying that we never have to move again. This move was a big one..... it totally exhausted and overwhelmed me for so many weeks. While my husband was out and about meeting neighbors and shopping for groceries, I stayed right here and unpacked all the boxes that I packed back in Clear Lake. Over 200 of them. When I think of those boxes now, it's hard to believe that the unpacking is all done. This is a larger house than we had in Clear Lake, so the furniture and everything else is arranged in more rooms...... and everything looks as if it's always been here.

But....... the heat..... and the lack of rain. That's been exhausting as well. Such high temperatures really wear you down. We've been trying to get errands done in the morning, so when the sun really kicks in around noon-time, we're back here and not broiling in the middle of the Wal-Mart parking lot.

About the only thing that gets us outside in the heat of the afternoon is when the neighbor's goats jump the fence and start munching on the grass on our property. I don't care that they're nibbling on the tall grasses out there..... I just don't want them in our backyard or in our garage.... they will eat "anything not nailed down," according to our neighbor D. I don't want to walk outside one morning and find goat teeth-marks in the porch furniture or the little green frog statue by our back door..... and don't even let me think about goat footprints on top of my car, for goodness sake.

When we were in Navasota yesterday, a few people sitting around one of the antique shops were talking about goats. One man said that his wife should quit naming the goats, because the goats tended to die as soon as she figured out a name for them. He didn't seem to care that the goats kicked the proverbial bucket, however, because he had some good "family hand-me-down recipes" for goat stew.

Goat stew for dead-in-the field goats. A frying pan for non-egg-laying chickens. And did I tell you the one about having white ceramic eggs in and around the hen house to keep the snakes away? The snakes will swallow those heavy ceramic eggs and then slither away and die because they can't digest those heavy unnatural eggs. Nice. Sort of a humane way to kill off the snakes that might kill your chickens.

This is where the theme song for "Green Acres" starts going through my mind, but I refuse to sing it out loud anymore.

Rain? What's that?

It finally rained today...... after such a long dry spell that the grass sounded like Kellogg's Corn Flakes as you walked on it. Last good rain storm here was at the beginning of May. We have a large pond on our property which is bone dry. It had filled up with that May rain, but the previous owners discovered a problem with the perimeter of the pond, so they emptied it out and had a "dirt company" come in to correct the problem before the closing on this property. So now we have a perfectly-dug pond, but a perfectly dry one. Two or three really good long rain storms will fill it up..... so that's what we've been hoping for. Never thought I'd be hoping for rain.

We drove into Navasota this morning. We have been taking day-trips to the towns around here, browsing through the antique and resale shops, finding cute little cafes for lunch. Today's lunch was at "Navasota Seafood." It was recommended to us by one of the antique shop owners. Amazing little place..... a one-woman show. My husband ordered the fried shrimp, I ordered grilled shrimp on top of a green salad. Being that it was our first time there, the owner/cook gave us a fried catfish fillet and two little cups of seafood gumbo to taste. Everything was delicious... felt like we were right at home and having lunch in our own kitchen.

As the woman cooked, she was talking to us through the little window, and telling her grandson to make sure we had plenty of napkins and cold water. As we were leaving, she gave me a hug and told my husband to take a piece of homemade lemon cake "for later." It wasn't until after we left that I realized we hadn't asked her name.

We have two guest houses on this property.... a cottage and a barn. In all the little antique and resale shops we go to, I am on a constant search for decorative things for both. I found a black and white wooden cow today in Navasota... stands about as high as our dog Gracie... and it looks quite at home in the living room of the barn right now. I also found a little rope-backed children's chair.... rope on the back and also on the seat. Six dollars for the chair (which now holds a small pile of Texas books), and just five dollars for the handpainted, handmade cow. With prices like those, how could I not have bought them?

The best "find" of the day--- a vintage tin chicken roost...... it will hold four hens, two on the top row, two on the bottom row. We don't have chickens yet, but we've been talking about getting some, and four chickens sounded about right to us. There is a feed store here that will order day-old chickens for us. If we get them that small, I'm hoping they will get to know us and not be pecking away at us every time we to to feed them or take their eggs.

The man at the local feed store told us the chickens would last two years if we had a good strong pen around the roosting house (which we haven't built yet). What happens after two years? He said that's about the time we would be wanting them for dinner because they don't lay too many eggs after they're two years old. What?!? I told my husband right then and there that no chicken of mine would be ending up in my oven or on my dinner plate. It was right about then that the man in the feed store was probably singing the theme song from "Green Acres" under his breath.....

Welcome Back........

It's been a while....... I ended my blog shortly before we moved here to the Hill Country. My laptop had imploded (not a good thing) and my husband couldn't find the problem and I didn't have time to type anyway because I was busy packing boxes, boxes, and more boxes. Amazing how much stuff you can get into a 2500 sq. ft. house in thirteen years.

When all was said and done, over 200 boxes were packed, and we moved everything to our new home in the Hill Country of Texas. My laptop came with us back in May, but it wasn't till just last week when it was up and running a being a laptop again, rather than a big gray paperweight.

My fingers have been itching to write. I thought it was time to quit all of this, but I was wrong. I've missed the blog-writing... and even thought of keeping a journal (a written journal) but then I decided that typing is faster than writing, and where do you keep all those journals after you have filled them up? We have enough books in this house as it is.... I don't need to be finding shelf space for journals. Our new home sits on twenty-three beautiful acres in Brenham. Quite a difference from the quarter-acre that we had back in the Clear Lake subdivision. It's been an adjustment, to say the least, but a good adjustment.

There is a lot to write about this house (built in 1907) and the town (home of Texas-famous BlueBell Ice Cream)..... we are finished singing the theme song to the old "Green Acres" television program. Been there, sung that. These past couple of weeks has been the beginning of normalcy here. My laptop is finally working, there is nothing left to unpack, my fingernails are growing back after the abuse of packing tape, cardboard boxes and bubble-wrap, and I even have time to put on nail polish again.

My husband and I had a great night at one of the neighbor's homes this evening... having dinner, meeting new friends, playing cards, and laughing a great deal. I'm sure that when we all said good-night, we were all thinking how fortunate we all are to be living in the midst of these rolling hills on this part of the planet. Field of Dreams. That is the name we have given to our home and the property. We are thrilled to be here on these acres, thankful to be right here in this town, in this state, in this country.

As George Dawson would say (and did say in his book of the same title): "Life Is Good." Amen, George. Amen.