Rising Tides

Remember my pond rebuilding project (click here if you missed that story)?  For a while, it was looking not-so-good.  I know it is because of the drought and the heat and I kept telling myself that I should be glad that it had any water in it at all.  That all sounds good, but it is hard to keep in mind when you're faced with a big, ugly, smelly hole filled with rather nasty looking water every day.  Especially when the terrible heat drives one's dog to swim in it anyway...

However, since the above photo was taken on August 7th, the drought has come to an end here and we have had several big storms that brought considerable rain with them.  With the rain, the water level in the pond has come up nearly five feet...

The water is still full of fine, clay silt and it will be for quite some time, I think it will be Spring at least before the silt settles out.  However, if you can look past it, you can see that the water itself is clear now...

The silt certainly does not bother the masses of frogs who moved back into the pond almost as soon as there was enough water to wet their backs.  They have laid masses of eggs, which are already starting to hatch.  In addition, I've seen at least one of the painted turtles sunning herself on the rocks and last week, Riding Buddy was here, and we both saw a bird visit the pond that neither of us had ever seen before.  It was some kind of Sand Piper we think, but nothing either of us have ever encountered.  I tried to get some photos, but it blended into the clay shore so well that it was nearly invisible.

As for the little salamanders that I am so fond of...a few days after the pond was dug out, I walked around the outside of it.  I saw hundreds of the salamanders and I was upset at first, but then I realized that they weren't dying at all.  They were making their slow way out into the woods and resuming the bright orange coloring of their terrestrial life stage....

A Red Eft - the terrestrial life stage of a North American Newt

It is simply amazing to me how such tiny creatures can survive this kind of upheaval and disruption...

And yet they do.  The pond is not even refilled yet and already, it has more diversity and signs of life than it has ever had.  In the Spring, I will add fish and I look forward to seeing what other sorts of creatures move in to investigate.

Sunday Stills - Somthing Bizarre

This week's challenge was to take a picture of something bizarre or in a bizarre way.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to really do this challenge because I just had surgery.  However, just a couple of months ago, I took these photos of some kind of moths who were literally hanging out on the brooder lamp I had in the barn as a night light before Ramsey was born.  I have been meaning to find someone to send them to to try an figure out what they are.  They are VERY bizarre and I am curios about them, I've never seen anything like them....

There were about 5-6 of them and they hung out here, totally unmoving, every day for several weeks...

 
They are about the size of a fifty cent piece...

If you look really close, you will see that they actually have arms that they grasp onto things with...

  As well as big, beady eyes....

It doesn't really show up well in the pictures, but their wings had a dry, leathery quality to them.  More like a bat then a moth.  What also fails to show up is that their wings had a skeletal structure in them with barely visible claws at the ends.  Again, very like a bat.

So, anybody have any clue what these are?  They are gone now that the light is gone, but I am still curious.

Just Say No to Drugs

Well folks, I still am in the land of the living out here.  I have had some trouble with all the drugs poured into me on Monday and they have been slow to wear off.  Have you ever read one of those little leaflets that comes with every drug - the part that always says something like, 1 in 10,000 people will have adverse reactions to this medicine?  Well, I am that 1 person, every time.

Ironically, I have been having the most trouble with a drug called scopolamine, which is supposed to lessen the side effects of anesthesia.  Instead, it has compounded and multiplied the negative effects of all the drugs and added a whole host of troubles all on it's own.  The worst of it is that it takes 108 hours to wear off, that's 4 1/2 days, and when it finally does, it does not go quietly.  Rather, it causes a whole lot of trouble as it is leaving.  It suppresses absorption of other drugs so when the scopolamine finally started leaving yesterday afternoon, I not only had problems from it, but all the other drugs it had been suppressing climbed out from where they had been hiding and jumped on top of me.  All this, in spite of the fact that I quit taking anything other than ibuprofen as of Tuesday morning.

I also just couldn't deal with the narcotic painkillers they gave me.  I would honestly rather deal with the pain then the drugs.  Pain is a demon I am familiar with, I know it's forms and faces.  The monsters of opiate induced dreams are demons I can't fight.  I swear, if everybody responded to these drugs the same way that I do, the "war on drugs" would come to an instantaneous end.  You wouldn't be able to give the damn stuff away and I know I will never willingly touch any of them again.  I even feel bad throwing the pills away for fear that they might find their way into the ground water and inflict themselves on some poor, unsuspecting fish.  I think I will mix them with some good old fashioned road apples, seal them up in a plastic bag and send them to the land fill.  Hopefully, by the time they escape their manure immersion therapy, they will have been rendered inert and harmless.

At any rate, it is Saturday afternoon and at some point this morning, I hit that magic 108 hour mark and I feel better.  My pupils no longer resemble mismatched serving platters, I am speaking in real sentences and my thoughts feel like they belong to me.  I am tired and a little sore, but that I can deal with.

I am going out to sit on the bench by my back door.  I will play Frisbee with Tanner and after a bit, the donkeys will notice me and come over.  They do every day.  Ramsey will start in on my shoelaces, trying to figure them out.  Emma, my sweet Emma, will put her head and neck over my shoulders and make soft snoring, huffing noises in my ear - a donkey's way of giving and sharing affection.  Is it any wonder that donkeys have been shown to be the best therapy animals in the world?

I'm Back

Well, most of me is back and really, who needs a gall bladder or a uterus anyway, right?  Right.  Treacherous little devils that they turned out to be.  Good riddance I say!

Thank you all for your kind messages and comments.  I do appreciate them even when I rarely find the time to answer all of them.

For now, I have to get back to my convalescent job, it's a tough one for me.  In the meantime, how about some random Ramsey pictures....

 

  

Surgery

I wasn't sure I would post anything about this, but I may disappear for a few days and there are some folks who may notice and get worried...I am having some surgery in the morning and I may drop off the planet for a few days. It is noting too serious, I am just having a couple of body parts removed that have proved troublesome and been deemed unnecessary.

Don't worry about all my critters.  Farm Buddy is going to look after Tanner and help out, Riding Buddy is going to come over and dole out Donkey Chow, ear rubs and butt scratches.  I think I've got everything covered.

Maybe I will have time to catch up on all this computer stuff while I am convalescing.  I am not a very good convalescent, I need something to keep me busy.   In the meantime, is this not the cutest, little snout you've ever seen?....

Sunday Stills - Summer Time

This weeks challenge is summer time and what it means for me.  Summer time means berries for breakfast each day when Tanner and I go out walking...

Tanner loves berries too and picks his own along the way...

 Summer is swimming in the pond (hopefully, I'll get to join these guys in my own pond next year)...

Sun through the trees...

 

The Queen Ann's Lace popping up everywhere (except for the horse pastures, since another name for this plant is wild carrot.  It never makes it to the blossom stage with equines around:)...

When I drive, I see these along the roadsides, massing in the hundreds.  They remind me of huge satellite arrays I've seen photos of.  I always get mental images of bunches of little gnomes or elves working unseen to get their Queen Ann's Lace arrays tuned in properly.  Sometimes, I make up stories in my head about what they might be communicating to one another...the places my mind wanders to when given a chance....

Summer means grass growing and mowing...

And for some here, summer means the occasional nap in the shade. 

Objects in the Sky

"IS THAT THE MOON?????"

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