Icky Tick

Icky tick report:

When I placed FlirtyGirl in her crate to eat, I noticed a bump on her ear. I took her to a table and looked. It was a plump dogtick. When I was inspecting the ear I saw a rush of blood inside the tick. I put FG into her crate to eat and came back 1/2 hour later with hydrogen peroxide, paper towel a string to try the tie -and -work -out- the- tick method I saw on FB the night before. (as if she would stay still LOL!)

Back to the 'operating' table. No tick, only a mush of dead cat's ear skin I cleaned up with the HP. SO! I spent the next hour cleaning out and burning the straw bedding in FG's crate without getting any of it on my skin. 

BY THE WAY, It's really hard to get straw to burn.

ABOUT FENCE! HOLLY HUMOR

ABOUT FENCE!  HOLLY HUMOR

I must be living right. I have friends who know how to do things I can’t do and tools and materials to make things happen (in the right season).

Burford Holly hedge behind Tiger Fountain

The south border of Tiger Fountain Garden is a dwarf Burford holly hedge.

Rotundafolia Holly and Althea shrub

There’s a Rotundafolia holly (named for the shrub’s natural round shape) around the corner to the east.

Burford Holly hedge and 'volunteer' under the hedge

Burford holly (in the background) has an oval leaf with a sharp point . Rotundafolia (in the foreground) has five sharp points on the sides and end of the leaf.  Every one of the seven volunteer hollies under the Burford hedge has Rotundafolia leaves. I always thought it was sort of a holly joke that all those seedlings favor the other parent but now I’m not so sure. 

Rotundafolia leaves and Burford leaves on same plant.
Wendell is getting clay off the clamshell digger as he digs  a posthole in background.

Wendell and I thought the plant we removed was one of those joke hollies because it had Rotundafolia leaves as far as we could see under the parent holly. When we moved it we saw, eight feet up at that the top, only  Burford holly leaves!  One of these days we’ll transplant those seedlings and one of these years we’ll see if they all change into Burford holly.

ABOUT FENCE! MOVING POSTS (Feb. 7, 2016)

I must be living right. I have friends who know how to do things I can’t do and tools and materials to make things happen (in the right season).

The Tiger Fountain Garden gate posts were all wrong and a holly was in the fence line so I brought in my friend Wendell Yoakum the genius gardener.  

Post packer label should stop folks
from throwing out the warped 6 ft. board.
(Fence stretcher board is on the right.)  

The bend in the post packer helps
keep knuckles away from the post.
Small enough to fit in the hole and
 big enough to compact the soil, it's
a 5/4" x 2 1/2"deck board strip.

The gate hinge side already had a post, but it was too skinny. A big post nearby was redundant; two posts to move. I’d Googled ’pull up wooden posts’ and watched demos on YouTube.  They fastened things to the side of posts and used a fulcrum or jack to lift them. Wendell simply dug a post hole (clamshell digger) next to the post, wiggled it, and pulled it out!  Then we had an object lesson on the water table as water filled the bottom foot of the hole in less than a minute. We didn’t need a crystal ball to tell us things were about to get messy. That water wasn’t going to stay in the bottom of the hole when he deepened the hole and then packed the new post. There was gravel in the bottom from the first time we set the post.  Wendell set that aside to put back in first. When the hole was more than 3 ft deep (for the 9ft. post) he added gravel, put the big post in, added a little more gravel/mud and packed it with my official post packer stick, repeating until about six inches from the top of the hole. He stopped there to let it dry out a day or two before topping it off.  We’ve learned that if you don’t pack it in small layers or mound it up when wet, a post can be wiggly forever. 

The skinny post he’d removed was rotten at the bottom and too short to use for the gate now. We went on a post hunt in the fruit orchard and chose one that used to support a long gone grape vine. (Mowing the orchard just got easier!)  

We’d set the first post so the center of the gate lined up with the garden focal point, ‘Tiger Fountain’ and the solarium doors to the north, and the other posts to the west (no tapes measures, just eyeball’d it). We held the gate next to it’s post where the hinges would be, lined up the new post with enough room for the catch to meet the gate, marked the spot, then dug the hole and planted that post too. To our surprise, we found grey gravel in the bottom of the new hole. Must’ve had another post in that spot before; North GA granite doesn’t migrate on it’s own.  

Before calling it a day, Wendell dug up the holly, took it to the garden and covered the roots with compost to hold it a few days until I decided where to plant it. I don’t have to hurry because this is winter and the plant is dormant.

ABOUT FENCE! JUST DIGGIN' IT.

ABOUT FENCE!

I must be living right. I have friends who know how to do things I can’t do and tools and materials to make things happen (in the right season).

Just Diggin' it.

The clamshell digger (2ft. depth marker) has black topsoil.
The auger (3 ft. marker) has red clay subsoil on it.
Not shown, plywood scrap to slam the shovel onto to get the dirt off and make it easier to rake or hoe the dirt back into the hole. Use 2 to keep subsoil separate from topsoil.

30 years ago we began fencing Daddy’s lot in Parrott, as soon as we got dairy goats.  We began with a barn (shed roof apron around the old garage) and three 25 ft. x 25 ft. pens where we rotated goats and gardens.  The fencing had to be 6 ft. tall to keep goats in and predators out. 6 ft. fence, posts 1/3 in the ground = 9 ft. posts in 3 1/2  ft. deep holes with room for gravel at the bottom.  You can get most of the way down with a clamshell post digger and then have to switch to an auger because there's not enough room in a deep hole to pull the handles apart with a decent load of dirt. Bond got his workout putting in that first goat pen. We had cross braces in every corner, 28 holes or 98 running feet! Eventually we fenced in the south acre pasture, after we bought a one-person gas powered hole digger in a frame, that even I could use.

Time to Plant Posts 

We began fencing in winter. As the days grew warmer the ground got harder. Our neighbor, Frank Alston remarked, “Everybody knows there’s a time to plant and a time to harvest.  Around here there’s a time to plant posts. That’s wintertime. In summer this clay is hard as concrete; you may as well give up and wait for winter.”  I got around that with a single drip irrigation emitter on each spot for a day before digging. That way the water went straight down to soften the soil.

The goats are long gone.  The fences keep dogs, cats and gardens separated.  

Daddy 'Poked Me' From Beyond the Grave

Our dogs just loved my dad. He grew up with dogs worthy of the long stories he repeated whenever we asked.  But he only owned one during his adult life, and that great dane, Missy-dog, stayed at home with Mom while he lived in a apartment to teach at the University during the week or traveled.  At times we couldn't tell if he'd come to visit his house, us, or our dogs.

Birt, our newest house dog would've been especially enamored.  We've been taking him to work with us at our office/studio.  Although we provide rawhide chew sticks to keep him occupied, Birt prefers paper towels and napkins out of the office trashcan.  If Daddy was still around, Birt would have a handy supply at every table and in every chair because Daddy left a trail of tissue.  Whenever Daddy wiped his beard clean he'd put the napkin in his pocket so he'd have one to go with the rest of his kit, a pocket sketchbook and pen. And there's a limit to how much a pocket will hold.

Last weekend I finally got around to moving obstacles from the concrete pad in front of the ancient garage we use for storage.  In 1997 we had hurriedly  unloaded a mess of 16ft. long heart pine boards torn out during renovating our buildings where the office/studio is now.  We'd planned to return that week with a crew to put the wood up on racks and then use it for sculpture crates.  The strong young men who worked for us soon moved on to other jobs, and then the European Union passed a law that all wood shipping crates must be stamped 'kiln dried'.  That put that project on the back burner. For 16 years.  True, most of the wood had been eaten by termites and I could throw it on the truck by myself, but enough boards were heavy enough for me to welcome having two teenagers to direct.  Troy and Ka'Harie have been helping me clean up all the abundance ever since they moved to Parrott three years ago. It has been a long list.

With visions of "American Pickers" invading the garage, and room to park and fill up (finally! because we re-cycle) our curb side trash bin, the first storage item I got rid of was Daddy's suitcase with summer clothes.  I remembered seeing him in each shirt, pair of pants and even the turquoise swimming trunks, on our trip to Mexico the summer of 1966.  That trip was before he discovered guyaberras. Those were distributed to family members when he died in 2005. All these shirts were dacron polyester/cotton mixes no good for rags and too hot for us to wear even if we overlooked the paint stains.  Still, I set aside 2 and the only pair of cotton pants, tan classic bell bottom corduroy Wranglers, knowing it would be a miracle to get out the funky old garage smell.

I put the shirts and pants in to soak over night in 20 Mule Team Borax and Wool Light. 

This morning I finished the cycle on the heavy-duty agitation mode and spun out the water.  I pulled out the pants.  There were little pieces of paper stuck to them.  I checked the right pocket.  Sure enough, an ancient  much agitated wad of paper napkins. 

Hi, Dad!

Leaf blower haiku

Leaf blower, ginko
leaves fly off roof edge in waves.
Yellow rains below.


Leaf blower, ginko
leaves fly off roof in waves.
Yellow rain, not snow!


Leaf blower, damp limbs,
inspired, coals become inflamed.
Stand-by, chaperone!

Tonight I learned that if you put the kitten's medicine in canned catfood, inside a cat crate, with the door shut, (on accounta the kitten is busy playing on the floor with a Q-tip) the dog can still eat it!

camouflage

We took apart an old wood pile mostly filled with cast off twigs, anywhere from 1 to 3 inches in diameter and up to 6 feet long. Moved some to our wood rack on the porch to see us through this winter and burned the rest which were rotten and bug eaten.
Following our habit when working around any old structure in the woods, with cell phones in our pockets, we moved slowly, watched for movement, watched our feet and stepped away now and then to let any hidden reptiles make a calm exit. As is usual with any spot that 'looks like a good place for a snake' we found none. Not sure if that's disappointing or not; some critters are really beautiful.

However, about half way down, I found evidence that it HAD been a good place for a snake to shed its skin.

When I took this photo I put a ruler next to the skin to show the size. Snake skin stretches as it peels off, so this really wasn't very large for a timber rattler. Perhaps this was the snake that lost it's life in the showdown with Copper, the cat. (Truthfully, the one Copper cornered and our good neighbor, Paul, shot.)

Later in the day I spied this stick which is obviously the inspiration for the the timber rattler camouflage.

Uninvited Guest, Again!

The second time the raccoons came to dinner when I was feeding the cats late at night, I turned around and they backed off with a "you don't see me" and "I'm not really here" attitude.

A week later I turned around, saw one coming into the yard and clapped my hands to scare her away, as I don't want her to become habituated to humans and get shot for unusual behavior by someone who is afraid she is rabid. After all, our county was declared a rabies danger zone last month. This time she stopped and gave me a "What did I do?" look.

I went inside and got my camera. The flash didn't seem to slow her down at all and she didn't leave a bite for the patient cats to eat. That lazy 'coon has ripe figs on the other side of the fence.

This is my convenient cat food station. I scrub both bowls daily with blue soap and the broom, then top up the blue bowl/ anti-ant moat before renewing the kibbles; more in the morning, less (for the raccoons) at night.

Ants out of the blue

Summertime is definitely here in South GA. The lightning bugs are few and far between. The June/Fig bugs have come and gone. The trees are humming all day and night with cicadas. And this afternoon, in the Albany Home Depot parking lot, I picked up my leftover lunch drink, took a big swig of icy cold water to quench my thirst after an hour in air conditioning, and realized that my hand was suddenly covered in ants...Ptooey!

They weren't inside the left over hamburger and fries in the bag on the floor, just all over my drink. And who could blame them? It must've been over a hundred in the car.

I shook them off the cup onto the pavement and then onto the nearby grass (and added the cup to the burger bag in the car. I'm no litterbug).

I'll never know if the ones left in the car were headed home to Parrott, or off on a journey to a galaxy far far away.

You just never know what dogs are going to bark at. Part 1

Yesterday Pieface repeated his "Whoop!" bark for about five minutes.  Last time I heard it he was following the progress of an old chicken snake as it moseyed under the dog house and out under the fence, finally into the woods.

I figured I'd better check it out.  This time he didn't seem to be traveling, just nosing the ground by a sweetgum tree, jumping back and whooping three times,.  He'd cornered the biggest copperhead I've ever seen.  That's what I assumed from the eight inch loop I could see sticking out from under the leaves.  It must've been 2 1/2 or 3 inches thick with that beautiful dumbell pattern shaded from pinkish light tan to black.  I know better than to pester a poisonous snake, and don't have any trouble identifying a copperhead. 

This was #5 in the 30 years we've lived here. 

#1 was about 8 inches long.  It scooted out of the tall grass I'd just mowed, threw up a mouse and stayed put while I raked up the hay.  I made Erin keep a eye on it from a safe distance (not far enough according to Erin who wanted to go back to the house) while I worked.  We left it there when I finished.

  #2 waited in the carport while I went inside to get a clear plastic box to drop over it.  I called Roy Cannington to come get it.  He kept the poor thing in a terrarium for about a year before it died. 

I stepped on #3 who nipped me in the heel which generated a $24,000 hospital bill.  I don't walk and talk facing behind me anymore.  Our neighbor killed that one so it could follow me  to the hospital, for identification.  You wouldn't want to spend that kind of money if it isn't a poisonous snake.  The bill for the anti-venom was $19,000.

#4 was laying low under a woodpile in the yard with Minnie Minster going postal as G.G. and Bart stood by looking worried. I dragged them into the house and called Stephen, who was working at Sound Play.  It took him awhile to get over here as he had to make the snake handling sticks first.  We searched the yard for forty five minutes to no avail.  Just in case it came back while we were on vacation the next week, I made Stephen walk the dogs  when he fed them and lock them inside.  Never could have done that with Pieface.  

I don't think I should count the cast off skin I found in the workshop, fifteen feet from where I found #2.  It was probably his, and increased the irony over #3 because I had been watching for snakes IN the house that spring.

Back to #5.  Last evening   I just pulled Pieface into the house and hollered to Bond who came outside with his shotgun loaded  in less than 2 minutes. You guessed it, the snake had disappeared.  We asked Pie to show us where it was again.  His nose told him it had gone under the fence into a bed of variegated vinca.  We couldn't see it and didn't want to cause a confrontation that might harm the dog so we gave up. 

I kept Pieface in my office for about an hour.  When I left the room to freshen my drink he was up to his old tricks.  He ate my crackers and tagged two spots.  I was more than delighted to put him out again.  He checked and the snake had moved on.

We were relieved because it was a challenge to our philosophy that all creatures have a purpose and reason to live.  Killing snakes, even poisonous ones, is not on our agenda unless it is a direct threat to our family.  (Remember, I love ALL living things.)  Civic duty also played a part in our attempt to slay #5.  Bond would have shot him if he'd seen him.

Perhaps it helps to know the statistics.   On the average 4,000 to 7,000 poisonous snake bites a year  are reported in North America and on the average fewer than four  fatalities.  Diseases transmitted by rats and mice (the primary food of snakes) kill many more people than snakes.  The majority of the bites are to people who handle snakes for religious or other reasons. Compare this to  37,248 FATAL car accidents in 2007.  Basically, I'm 9,000 times more likely to die in a car accident than to die from a snake bite.  

In either case I'm not worried.  I am cautious.  I am a defensive driver.  I also keep on the look out for snakes.  Pieface can't be all over the yard all the time. 

More Abundance

When we asked Grandmama why she wanted to live in Parrott, GA, she would hold her palms up and say "Abundance, abundance." This winter I decided to switch my morning wake up routine from coffee to tea. I'd take my little teapot of Constant Comment with honey and cream on a tray with toast and a tablespoon of deli ground nothin' but peanuts peanut butter plus jam in to the lower bedroom in 'the tower.' Kept the pot hot on the oil filled electric heater. Quiet time with my mac and photos or words (all before I got DSL at home). One sleepy morning I took the pot off the kitchen shelf, took off the lid, looked in and wondered: "Who the hell left these tea leaves in my teapot? "

I'm the only one to make tea. I use a tea bag...THESE ARE ANTS! IN THE TEA POT!"