All Purls. No Swine.
After sorting out the gates a few days ago, I moved on to the arch and the climbing rose. Got that done yesterday and this morning. Next--tree planting! (I live in a lovely, shady, rural environment. But over the almost 40 years I've been here, many of the existing--not necessarily all that great--trees have died… Continue reading The Next Project–Because, Out Here, There Always is One
A goat rodeo is a slang term for something going totally, unbelievably, disastrously wrong, and there’s nothing left to do but to sit back and watch the trainwreck. In other words, a goat rodeo is a chaotic situation, fiasco, or, more vulgarly, a shitshow--dictionary.com I've been there. After thirty years as a goat owner, I finally gave… Continue reading Gate Rodeo: Not My First, Nor (Likely) My Last
Oh, yes. Many have come before: Entertaining Angels: The Gift from God Edition Entertaining Angels: Life Comes Full Circle Edition (AKA the "Little Chick Chick Edition) Entertaining Angels: The Lamb in the Living Room Occasional Quote of the Day: Entertaining Angels And the one that started it all Entertaining Angels: Four-Legged Ones, Mostly Which brings… Continue reading Entertaining Angels: Here We Go Again Edition
Years ago, I set up a rain barrel here at Chateau Right, to collect fifty-odd gallons of rainwater at a time that I could use to water the plants in direst need during a prolonged drought. (Yes, I do have running water on the property, but it comes from a well, so I'm careful.) On… Continue reading EarthMinded FlexiFit™–An Unobtrusive, Effective, Rain Barrel Diverter System
I do love the plant genus Helleborus. Known as the Lenten Rose, it’s certainly living up to its name in 2023, after a few years of not doing very much. (To be fair, when it comes to my garden, I wasn’t doing very much during those few years either, so not entirely the plants’ fault.)… Continue reading What the Hellebore?
I have always loved Shrove Tuesday--Fat Tuesday--Mardi Gras. There are no carnivals here at Chateau Right. (other than the general joyous mayhem that always transpires when out for a walk with two very large and energetic dogs, or the daily crowing and self-congratulatory strutting about of Chinggis the rooster), but, all my life, every Shrove… Continue reading A Shrove Tuesday Miscellany
This post requires a bit of imagination. It involves what used to be called a "poetic conceit," in the days when it was allowable to speak in simile and metaphor, or to employ metonomy or synecdoche, secure in the knowledge that your audience didn't have to know what any of those things actually was, or… Continue reading The Headwaters of the Mississippi, and a Few Other Things
Beautiful morning today, down here on the farm, although a fleeting recollection of the old saying, "Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning," did run through my mind. (True to form, the rain starts tonight.) But my first thought took me back to my high-school days, and the first time I read The Odyssey end-to-end… Continue reading Rosy-Fingered Dawn
I've had Whistle pet trackers on my Great Pyrenees dogs for at least a decade. I haven't really kept track (see what I did there) of the technology, what it was, how it's changed, where it is now. (As a 30-year IT professional myself, I have a deep aversion to wasting time looking at how… Continue reading A Review of the Whistle Pet Tracker–Short Answer for Rural Dwellers: Look Elsewhere
About a week ago, I made an executive decision: Come this next Sunday, I’m sending almost all of my sheep to the auction. All that is, except: Dizzabel, the tiny lamb who entered my life last January when I discovered her, down the bottom of the field, in the snow, crying, at about 10PM when… Continue reading Changes: Down Here on the Farm