Oh, Give Me a Home Where the Buffalo Roam....

...and I'll show you a house full of shit!

The Rancher and the Bag Lady made a little day trip today to a town a couple of hours away to pick up the Rancher's uncle. He had surgery several weeks ago, and is back in town for some follow-up treatment. He will be staying with the Rancher and the Bag Lady, so the Bag Lady will be busy helping him get to appointments and such.

The trip was fraught with sightings of swans, but unfortunately, the Bag Lady was not quick enough on the draw with her camera, so you'll just have to take her word for it! She saw swans on three separate ponds, as well as a sandhill crane in yet another location. She did manage to get a picture of a field full of buffalo..... (click on the picture to enlarge)


Her computer time might be slightly infringed upon by her house guest, so try not to have too much fun without her, okay?

Weekend Report

It's very common in this neck of the woods to wait until the long weekend in May to plant the garden. Victoria Day falls on May 18th this year, which is next Monday.

The Bag Lady and the Rancher are not common people, though, so they planted their garden this weekend! The Bag Lady just checked the forecast for this week, and she is happy to report that they are predicting moisture on Tuesday. Unhappily, that moisture is supposed to be in the form of snow..... sigh.

Along with planting the garden, the Bag Lady and the Rancher did a tour of the ranch and collected up all the old tires that they had scattered here and there, having used them for various things (weights to hold down the tarps over the haystacks, for one thing) and took them to the landfill. Whilst there, the Rancher threw a tire that was full of dirty water out of the truck. Unfortunately, it didn't land exactly how and where expected, and the water splashed out of the tire. The Bag Lady saw it coming, and managed to move far enough that it did NOT hit her full in the face, but did get her quite wet and dirty from the waist down. Lovely, stinking water that had been standing in that tire for a long time!

So the Bag Lady decided this morning that she had to wash clothes. Then she recalled that the last time she ran her washing machine, the floor felt wet, so she pulled it away from the wall to watch the hoses to see if they were leaking. All went well, until she pushed the machine back into place and discovered the floor was wet. The bottom of the tub turned out to be the culprit, which, according to the expert she consulted, probably means she needs a new washing machine.

And last, but not least, another calf made an appearance on the weekend! I promised kcinnova to name the next male calf after her, but this one is female. So, unless kcinnova wants to wait until we have a male, we'll name this one Casey!

Cuteness

The Bag Lady had big plans for a video for you today, but her computer had other ideas. Freakin' thing won't let her load the pictures from her camera into her computer, so there goes that plan!

Instead, she will share some cuteness with you. Here is the Rancher, with a friends' grand-daughter, going out to look at the baby calves (Grandpa is keeping a close eye on things off to the left.)




She had to be carried back from the pasture because her rubber boots gave her a blister, but she was pretty excited about those baby cows! And a Bandaid fixed the blister.

Have a great weekend.

The Last One Standing.

JavaChick mentioned in a recent blog post about her dislike of team sports, which got me thinking about how certain things shape you and your outlook on life.

When I was young, I despised team sports. I was not the most coordinated kid, and certainly one of the "outcasts" - tall, skinny, awkward. I was invariably chosen last, or next to last, for whatever team sport we happened to be forced to play. I was a shy, sensitive child, and afraid of everything. With good reason - my face seemed to be a magnet for whatever ball happened to be in my vicinity! I was hit with baseballs, volleyballs, basketballs and medicine balls. In the face. Every time. And occasionally on purpose.

The team captains were always the most popular girls in school, and excelled at sports. They would fight over the other girls in their clique, leaving the rest of us standing there, dreading the moment when we would be the last one standing; alone, unchosen. It was a horrible feeling to know in your heart that you and the mentally handicapped girl in class would be vying for last place! I still remember in elementary school, standing on the windy ball diamond, alone and humiliated, when the team captain said something to the effect that she guessed she'd have to take me in order to even out the teams .... I blamed the wind for the tears in my eyes!

It was a cruel way to choose teams, and it wasn't until junior high school that we finally had a teacher who seemed to recognize it and divided the teams more equitably by lining us up and taking every second girl for the opposing team. Didn't take the popular girls long to figure out how to get around that by standing with the girls they didn't want on their team in between them! But it saved the rest of us the humiliation of standing alone, waiting to be chosen.

Of course, I did exact a small measure of revenge on some of those girls. I could whip a lot of their butts when it came to badminton or some of the track and field sports! But the humiliation experienced on the ball diamond has stayed with me all these years, and I think it has shaped how I view myself and my place in the world.

So you can keep your baseball bats and soccer balls, but put a badminton racquet in my hand and you'd better watch out! I will be the last one standing.

Randomness

Here are some random photos from the past few days.

The Bag Lady goes out early every morning to check the cows, looking for new calves. This is one of the sights she sees on her early morning forays (the dugout where the cows go to drink)



Here is the latest addition to the herd:



And the Bag Lady spotted a flock of swans flying over the ranch the other day. She did her best to take a photo of them (but got mostly sky, which is why it is an unusual shape - she tried to crop it to make it easier to see the swans.)


Thanks to Hilary for correctly identifying the logo on the grass seeder as a Lely. If you haven't seen Hilary's blog, check it out because you are really missing out on some fabulous photographs!

Can You Read This?

Here's something for all of you to ponder.

This is an old-fashioned grass-seeder, and the lettering is all but worn off. Can anyone figure out what it says?

Of course, there is no prize involved, just the satisfaction of being able to tell the Bag Lady what it says!

Close Encounter of the Glass Kind

Tragedy almost struck at the Bag Lady's house the other day! She was inside, just about to go outside, when she heard a thump - a bird had struck her kitchen window! She went outside as the Rancher, who had been walking toward the house, picked the unfortunate thing up out of the flower bed. The Bag Lady corralled the cats in the house, and she and the Rancher had a good look at the little finch.


He did not appear to have broken anything, but he was certainly stunned. The Rancher set him on the ground, but the Bag Lady decided that wasn't a good idea, so she picked him up and held him for a few minutes. His beak was open, almost like he was having trouble breathing. He made a little trilling sound and started blinking his eyes.




He finally seemed to be recovering well enough to stand on his own, and his digestive system was still working, so the Bag Lady set him on the feeder. She watched from a little distance away as he tried to reorient himself.


After about 5 minutes, he seemed much better, so the Bag Lady went up to him and offered her finger - he stepped up on it, looked her in the eye, then flew away!

These little finches had been hanging around the Bag Lady's bird feeders for a couple of days, but they are notoriously shy and difficult to photograph, so the Bag Lady was pleased to have the opportunity to get a closer look. She was also quite relieved that the poor little guy survived his close encounter with her kitchen window.