Butterfly Study

This is one of my favorite sites on our property. I'm really loving the Purslane this year - it's always beautiful and colorful and seems virtually indestructible. Gotta love that. The front pot broke (I was rolling it across the driveway and one side just split off). I really love the pots and didn't want to just toss it, so I put a rock under the pot that didn't break and then leaned the pot that was broken up against the rock. Funny enough, the big rock is holding the broken pot together. And I love that the Purslane has found its way down into the crack in the pot and bloomed.

The sunflower (we have one lone plant that decided to grow and bloom next to the driveway) is approaching the end of it's life cycle I think - or else it's hunkered down against the heat...

Tim gave me a crape myrtle bush earlier this year. We couldn't remember what it was until it bloomed recently.

It's been one week since Abner was put down. We miss him. Even with severe cataracts, almost complete loss of hearing, a skin disorder and a bunch of other things, he was a very loving dog. He'd claimed Tim as his human and was unconditionally devoted to him. I can't tell if the other animals know he's gone, or what their relationship is to Abner not being here, but it seems like their pecking order changed a bit (although Abner was pretty near the bottom of the pecking order despite his age) and things have been much calmer around here.

I caught site of a butterfly in the garden the other day. He stayed long enough for me to catch several shots. He had part of one of his wings missing, although you mostly can't see that.

And this critter felt perfectly at home in the roses - including with a camera stuck in his face. Life is short grasshopper. Enjoy.

Peaches and Partnerships

We've been eating peaches and eating peaches and eating peaches lately. We got a flat from Costco and can't stop! They are terrific right now. We're saving the seeds to plant our own little peach orchard. I've read that you can't count on the seeds to produce the same tasty peaches that they came from (but they never said you couldn't TRY!).

The articles did say that peaches are really prone to diseases though. Another fun fact: The US produces more peaches than any other country. Peachy-keen.

The babies have been very cute lately. Although yesterday, Ms Gray (the mom) brought a dead squirrel onto the deck for the babies to eat. I'm happy that the babies are learning to eat local...ah...produce....because I want them to catch the mice and the rats that we sometimes have around here. However, I'm not big on those kinds of meals served on our deck. It'd be one thing if they cleaned up after themselves (versus just cleaning themselves). Anyway, I had to put on rubber gloves and remove the remains of their meal myself.

And I just don't like doing that.

I think we'll end up keeping all three of them. 5 cats for our place isn't too many. But we will have to get them fixed. The average life span of a cat out here is about 2 years. So I'm not too sure it's a good idea to have them all fixed. If we'd had the first two cats fixed, we'd only have 1 cat right now and that's not enough for all the cat-work there is out here. We'll see. I have to think about it.

This guy is needs to go into modeling. He's a natural.

Sherman is learning to love the cats as well. He really doesn't mind them. Even shares his food dish with them. He usually lets them eat first. But if I give him any special treats in his dish, the cats better watch out. He's not so likely to share then! (These next couple of photos are taken through the door - that's why they're a bit foggy).

It's down to 87 degrees!

Working in the garden this morning since it was "cool". Cool, such a relative term these days. It's 87 degrees at 1:40pm. And that's kinda amazing around here. Tim and I are out working away in the yard. I'm done for the day and now working on photos from last night (and these below).

I found this guy in my garden. I've only seen one like this once - when all of the sudden this bug just fell out of the sky - no trees overhead - just pure, blue sky - and this giant bug just careens through the air in a downward spiral and hits the driveway in front of my toes. It's about 3 inches long, so it's no small bug (reminds me of the time I went to the nature museum in San Jose, Costa Rica. They had dead rainforest insects pinned on bulletin boards. There was one beetle that was 8 inches across and at least 12 inches long. Unbelievable. I realized that science fiction and horror movies probably weren't that far from reality!)

This guy was alive and just sitting in the shade in the little garden we have at the base of one of the rain gutters. It's dark and holds a bit more moisture there than most anywhere else on the property. He seems too big for his body; he had a hard time moving (or at least it seemed to me). Does anyone know what this is?

Grandma Louise was just chillin' on the front sidewalk. Despite that she's a completely outdoor cat, she keeps herself looking pretty good, doesn't she?

The Wandering Jew Plants are blooming again. I gave my sister some to take back to Arizona with her last weekend and the slight pruning we did to get her clippings caused them to flourish and bloom all over again.

These are my echinacea coneflowers. I'm not sure what it is about these plants, but I really dig them. You can see the heat distress they are going through by looking at the burned tips on this one.

This is a different type of coneflower. I trimmed this one as it'd reached the end of its bloom. We're saving seeds from all of our flowers this year. I've got lots of containers and Tim's labeled all of them. Each time one of the flowers that contains seeds dies, we "harvest" it and put the seeds in the container. This one still looked so pretty that I grabbed a shot of it before the seeds go into their container.

It's Hotter than Hot

It is hard to make myself get anything done this past week. It has just been too hot. We were at the Dallas Bridal Show (our Standing Ovations Events company had a booth there) and just loading and unloading the car was enough to give us heat exhaustion. One day, driving home, the car registered 113 degrees (probably from sitting in the sun all day) and when my forearm accidentally brushed the metal VW decor plate in the center of my steering wheel, I actually burned my arm!

I keep thinking I'll get up early and do some gardening before it gets too hot. But when I walk the dogs first thing, I'm sweating before I even get halfway down the driveway! And by the time I have walked them down to the mailbox (a half mile), I'm done with any outside activity until the next morning when I walk them again.

We took the boys for a walk tonight (which means that Tim and I rode on the golf cart and the dogs did the walking) and I took these photos. I've touched them up - but just to give you a feel of what the heat feels like - the touch-ups are my attempt to translate the feeling of the unrelenting heat into a visual.

Our apple trees are dying. Even with watering them, the heat is just too much.

Even though these things look really dry, they seem to be hanging on, no matter what the conditions.

There's not much moisture to keep the dust down on the road when the pickups drive by. This is at the back gate of our 26 acres.

Even the dry plants just don't seem to have the energy to fully unfurl and let their seeds go.

I took the next shots at dusk and allowed the flash to do its job. I thought it would be a tiny bit cooler at dusk. I was wrong.

And, back at the house, we are mystified as to why our Parasol tree is wilting. It gets the right amount of water - but is it just too hot for our special tree?

It's a bit embarrassing to show how our veggies are doing. We are doing the "upside-down" planting this year. Well, this red pepper shows what the heat can do to even the hardiest plants.

Isn't the yellow pepper below just about the saddest thing you've ever seen? I'm hoping we can salvage it and the red pepper above. We lost the tomato plant and probably the watermelon plant.

This is my ivy plant - which is green even in the darkest of winter. I'm not sure if I can revive it from this condition though.

The sunflowers are cycling - they bloom and then die fairly rapidly.

But, even with all the dryed up plants around, there are some that thrive no matter what.

And there you have my philosophy regarding the current conditions we are facing both nationally and globally. There are some that thrive no matter what because they can adapt to the reality of current conditions. I'm working on my adaptations to thriving in the current conditions we're facing as I write this.

Butterflies and Musings

Well, I've turned 50 now. Somehow, that should make me a better writer! Wise, sage, knowing, woman. Yeah, well. I don't find that it has had that effect. Maybe I have to be 50 longer than a week? I've started a project to improve my writing (just in case you've read the blog and thought "Geez, could she be a bit more colorful? Could there be more of a story-line here than just 'here's what happened at the ranch today'?").

Well, the best I can say about that so far, is thank goodness we live in an age where people are caring less and less about proper grammar and punctuation!

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. I have the time and I've had the complaint that I haven't gotten enough reading in for years now. So, I've been reading everything. Blogs that interest me. Online newspapers (NY Times). Posts on FB and links that get posted as well. Books that I've owned for some time now but either haven't started, or worse, haven't finished (hard to pick up where I've left off when I 'left off' more than two years ago!). Magazines - both hard copy and online.

And what I've found most fascinating recently is an article from EnlightenNext Magazine - "2012 A Time of Extraordinary Change" from the June - August 2009 issue. It's an interview with John Peterson, founder of Arlington Institute (a think tank of futurists that consults to the Pentagon, the White House and business). What he's got to say is truly about a time of extraordinary change in the next three years.

Now - how is that relevant to Sage Creek Ranch? I've been sensing for a while now that Sage Creek Ranch is about more than our living in the country; living with more peace and serenity - but is about building a future for the times that are coming. Exactly what those times are, I don't know. But it seems that owning this land is perfectly the right thing to do. And, even if I'm wrong about the times ahead, we'll still enjoy this place and invite others to do so with us.

This is the 'front yard' of the house. Morty's cage hangs prominently. Lately, it's been hanging very still in the very hot, wet air.

The front step. I love the way this looks.

I found a butterfly in the front garden and took these shots. He wouldn't sit still for very long, so most of the shots are of him flying.

We don't have as many butterflies in the gardens as we usually do at this time of year. Not sure why. The few we do have have splendid, royal-looking wings.

Where are you finding beauty today?

Happy Trails

Not sure what the problem is today, but I've been trying to upload these photos literally all day...I finally gave up on a couple I wanted to load. I'll try again tomorrow with a different post.

The photos below are some of the trails at Sage Creek Ranch. The trails go around the edges of all the property. We walk them every few days and that's all it takes to keep them looking like trails. I never realized how little it takes to kill what's growing - just a few steps on it every couple of days and nothing will grow there.

The trail below is one of my favorites. It's on the back of the 26, right on the fence line for the Corps of Army Engineer's property and the lake. You can't tell from the photo, but it's an uphill walk. It was one of the first areas we walked on when we explored the property - and my instant affinity for it was one of the "signs" I got that we should buy this property.

The photo below is the front gate for our property and the neighbors. This shot was taken from inside the property looking out to the highway. We share the driveway with the neighbors. From our house to the gate is .5 miles.

These bushes are constantly changing - in any given day, different areas of the same bush will be in different stages of growth or decline.

One of the babies. Want a kitty?