ranunculus

The sun has finally returned, which is very exciting.  It is SO wet out there. Season to date is now 21 inches (150% of normal for this date). 
The sunny days allowed  garden cleanup to continue.  Which is very much needed. Sheesh, it is the beginning of January and there is grass going to seed! As usual the pink rose is blooming instead of going dormant. Pulling grass out of the soggy clay is a chore, but otherwise the garden is just going to disappear.  Quite a lot of evidence that the voles are still around. Grrrr.
Did a quick trip over to Fort Bragg so Richard could fix the things that hurt in my back and neck.  Also he fixed my left foot.  A few days ago I slid and fell going down a terribly steep hillside in the semi-dark. The fall didn't hurt at all but it did mess with my foot. The slip pushed the cuboid bone in my foot just slightly out of kilter.  It hasn't hurt a lot, just been a little ouchy at times. Took Richard about 1 minute to put it back in place.  I'm under strict orders to warm my foot up (and strengthen it) by pointing my toes in and up, then down and out, before getting up from bed or after sitting for a while. 
Once back from Fort Bragg  I cut pieces of what the English call "fleece" for the garden.  It is supposed to be right down to freezing tonight, and a couple of degrees below freezing tomorrow.  Amazingly enough I have peppers still chugging along!  I think they will get through the cold and really enjoy the 70F weather that is supposed to be on the way.  Also covered one of the two lemon trees (I'll cover the other one tomorrow).  The lime tree has gone into the greenhouse.  The fava beans and collard greens should be fine.  Speaking of collard greens, I find my self really liking Champion.  I still like the old Vates plants too. Both are under serious attack from slugs this year.  I've picked dozens of slugs off the plants.  I blame the rain.

Yesterday involved a hike up over Power Pole Hill and then up Fairview Hill.  The goal was to make lots of water bars on the trails in advance of today's storm.  The trails and roads all looked pretty good considering the downpours that have happened this year.  Possibly because  of work done last year and the year before.  Between hiking up, up, up steep hills and shoveling it was a great, extended cardio workout. 
Today the promised storm is moving in. It is windy, starting to rain a bit, and not very pleasant outside so we are sitting by the fireplace in the living room.
I did get lots of canning and storage jars moved up to the attic.  Lots of home canned stuff is getting eaten up, which is good!

Carrie and I did a nice ride this morning. Firefly was very eager to get out and was a good girl.  I was riding bareback as I really don't think the saddle fits her, and I don't want her to think all saddles are painful. Since I'm very out of shape  (and so is she) I got off and walked for about 1/3 of the trip.  She is very wary of any footing that might be muddy.  Water is no problem, but mud she is not fond of.  After our ride Carrie held her while I did some back tracings to send off to the saddle shop.  I'm planning to buy a saddle from a company that specializes in fitting horses.  It won't be cheap, but if it fits both Firefly and me it will be worth it. 
This afternoon was my second day of grading the road.  It is always amazing how much gravel and dirt move around during a year. I did a little work on the road day before yesterday, trying to fill in pot holes and get a tiny bit of slope on about 200 feet of heavily traveled road that is otherwise quite flat.  During the year car tires move gravel out of the most commonly used tire tracks and push them to the side.  Then it rains and the materials on the side hold the water on the road. Instant pothole.  If there is a slope down to the outside, the water has a chance to run off.  I got a lot of pot holes filled, but several of them were a bit, um, squishy. That is because there were leaves on the road and they do not make good pothole filler material.  So today, after lots and lots of cars had driven over that section and compacted things, I graded again and hopefully got enough gravel in them to stabilize everything. 
This year, with all the early grass growth, a lot of the ditches were blocked by grass and clover. Because we have had some torrential downpours that has led to erosion.  Grass is also not a very good road surfacing material so some time was spent separating the grass from the gravel.  Scraping out the ditches also recovers  gravel that has washed off the road.  Tricky business right now though, it is so wet that keeping the blade from digging all the way down to the clay layer is hard. 

I've made a start on the paperwork on my "desk".  The bills are paid and details entered.  
10 minutes ago it was dark and pouring rain so hard we couldn't see the nearby hills. Heck, even the other side of the circle, 125 feet away was a bit misty.  Now the sun is shining.  Apparently we will have a few dry days before the next storm moves in which will be nice. 
Edit: the above was written a couple of hours ago.  It has been a beautiful day since then. 
We went down the hill to town for a few minutes, mailed my letters and got some food.  On the way down I touched up the road a bit more. Mostly things are looking very good and no flooding.  My clearing out of the culvert area has worked very well, water is barreling through, and I hope it is carving the channel on the downhill side out a bit.  Lots of robins chattering away  in the tall trees down around the culvert.  A red shouldered hawk is hanging out near the house.  Dark Eyed Junco's are sitting on my amaranth plants eating the seeds. 
The greenhouse has a small window in the roof.  It is perfect for getting airflow moving through when it is warm or hot. The kit comes with an automatic opener/closer which I did not install because it gets both too hot and too cold here for it to work.  In our high winds the last few days that little window blew off.  Yesterday I was able to get it back in place and install a hook so it couldn't open. The wood on the hinge is still broken, but it is doing a good job of keeping in the heat. 
M just brought me a little bowl with pieces of Lively pepper that we picked from the garden yesterday.  It is really good.  I have no idea how those pepper plants have survived. 

Yesterday's trip up Red Barn Creek to work on trail maintenance was lovely.  Kinda wet, but lovely. 
You may remember that I went off with some of the folks from the Grace Hudson Museum ( https://www.gracehudsonmuseum.org/ ) to pick Dogbane, sometimes called Indian Hemp. At the time I didn't post a picture of the plant. Here is a clump of Dogbane growing -in- the creek.  There is a small green bit of grass coming up through the clump. This is the right time to harvest these plants, the stems will need to dry before use, but the plant is dormant. 

The river came up and did a little of very half hearted flooding yesterday, mostly it just ran bank full.  Today it didn't rain till well after dark. Tomorrow's forecast is for 1.25 inches, enough to bring the river right back up again, but I doubt the flooding will be bad here very close to the headwaters of our Russian River. 

The cows wandered into the horse pasture yesterday evening, prompting Donald and I to go out, cut a tree and a limb off the fence (they were fairly small) and get the fence working.  My it is nice to have repaired the wire under the road! It makes the whole system work better.  The meter says it is carrying 8 jewels, which is enough to make you really, really, really wish you had never touched the wire.  Speaking of he cows, they seem calm and happy so whatever was scaring them either isn't there any more or isn't in this pasture. Since there really is no boundary except a wire fence (with the gate open) I hope that whatever it was has moved on.  Donald and I walked from the top to the bottom of Jungle Pasture today and saw nothing out of the ordinary. No tracks even.

Due to the forecast of flooding and holiday traffic I took Donald to the Smart Train today. Tomorrow there might be flooding and it will be raining.  Today it was a pretty nice drive. 

Tomorrow. Chores around the house, replace light fixture at the Red Barn. 

I just ate a lovely pickled okra.  So yummy.  Must grow more okra next year...

Yesterday before our work on the Red Barn, Donald and I worked on the road.  It was pelting down rain which is ideal for showing just exactly where to use the shovel.  I got involved with some blackberry vines down by the neighbor's pond and have several nasty scratches which are still making a nuisance of themselves.  We got wet enough that we had to turn around and get dry clothes before going to the barn. Fortunately it isn't cold.  
Yesterday night I got a text that there were cows out in the horse pastures.  Cody said he'd come in the morning. 

Today the Fence Charger project began with running a new ground wire from the outlet on the southeast side of the barn through the 4 tackroom light fixtures and then through the new conduit to the new outlet on the northeast corner.  The outlet works properly, the fence charger got moved to its new location.  We cleaned up and headed home.  I had just sat down in my easy chair when the sense that "something wasn't right" turned into "I know what I forgot!"  While I -had- grounded the outlet to the regular barn grounding system, I had NOT run the 8 feet of wire needed to hook the fence charger to the special fence charger ground.  This is bad because fence chargers burn up if they don't have a ground.  Donald and I jumped in the car and ran back down.  It didn't take long to run that last cable (and for Donald to find the missing hammer).  Once again we cleaned up noting that tack room #1 needed a new light fixture (simple pull chain light).  

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, Cody was continuing to be puzzled by the actions of the cows.  They have been bunched up pushing on the fences, trying to get out, ever since he put them in Jungle pasture.  These include old cows that have been coming to that pasture for 10+ years and have never caused problems.  Yesterday they were all in.  Today most of them had leaked through the fences into the pastures to the south.  I want to put up a trail cam and see if we can figure out what was scaring them. The older cows have years of living with mountain lions and bears.  They aren't especially afraid of them as neither a black bear or a mountain lion will usually attack a 1,200 # cow.  Calves yes, but there are only two, fairly big calves with the herd and they are fine. Coyotes aren't a threat.  Dogs will run cows but usually they will leave marks on the cows, shredded ears, bitten off tails or bites on the legs. None of that is apparent on these cows.  For now we have let the herd into the House pasture where they are much more content. 

Because the cows moved into the House pasture we closed the gates around the house itself and turned on the electric fence. Mostly this is to keep the cows out of the area directly in front of the house.  When Donald and I returned for the second time I wanted to double check that the fence was on.  It was, but Donald noticed that the fence was "snapping" near one gate post. Snapping indicates a short to ground which is bad. I know this particular problem, it has been an issue in the past. I think the wire that runs under the road was done with the same batch of wire that failed at the Red Barn.  After a rather lame attempt to patch it, we pulled a new wire through the pipe  that runs under the driveway.  Really didn't take long, but it was getting dark and the third flashlight of the day had dying batteries. It was sprinkling on and off.  We turned on the power and then had to replace the last 8 feet of electric fence tape which clearly had broken some of it's tiny wires and was also shorting. The final test of the fence showed it to be good.   By then it was full dark and definitely time to go in.  



 

The next storm is due in later tonight. The car had to go in for an oil change, which thankfully M and Kim mostly wrangled.  M also drove the Gator back from the Cow Corrals where I had been using it.
I really wanted to finish painting the "feet" of the new/used picnic tables.  I scraped and sanded off more rust and managed to get everything painted plus the benches changed out on table 1 (I wanted all aluminum benches, but table 1 started out with wooden ones).  When that project was done there were leaves to remove from the road.  Yes, this is the third time I've removed leaves from the road this year and it is very nice that they are almost all on the ground for the year. . Fortunately that, and the dry weather, made it easy.  Unfortunately leaf removal didn't start till 2pm. It was almost 6 before I was done, and getting really dark.  The leaves on the last section were a very pale tan, so I could see when they moved. 
For some reason I'm tired.

We had a lovely sunny day again for the annual Christmas Bird Count.  Not as many birds as last year, but we did see a kestrel  --  And -- a golden eagle twice!!
M recorded the eagle a couple of weeks ago, so I was on the lookout.  Yesterday I was up on top of Split Rock with Denise, my farrier.  We saw a bird fly by, actually below us because the rock is 4 stories high and up on the canyon wall.  My instant though was turkey vulture.  We have a lot of them. A fraction of a second later my brain said: nope, wrong wing shape and slightly browner - and it is flapping it's wings.  Then a red shouldered hawk attacked it, repeatedly. Hawks don't bother vultures.  Today we saw it again and saw it close it's wings as if to dive, another thing vultures never do. Vultures flap a couple of times and then soar. Our group today agreed that it had to be a golden eagle. 
I saw a downy woodpecker, which was new for me.  We have tons of acorn woodpeckers and some piliated woodpeckers but not downy's at the house.  So that was fun.  Also the meadowlarks were singing at Split Rock, and I love them.  Sadly Duck Lake, which is a vernal pond, had no water in it yet, so no ducks.  Last year there were several wood ducks there. 

We had a good time at practice today.  Only 5 riders, but three of them were new.  I got Firefly out and walked her through several obstacles. Then got on and did more obstacles. I also asked her to stand quietly a lot, not something she is always good about.  Fortunately several of the horses around us were providing a good role model and she did great. 
Tomorrow we have eight riders, I think.  Had 10 signed up, but two canceled.   One I had expected to cancel, the other is slightly surprising, but this morning was really foggy and they have to haul over a twisty road.  Tomorrow is supposed to be clear, but I'm not betting on it.