Some catching up

Boy, you’d think nothing was going on around here. At least Tom isn’t blogging about it anyway. He’s busy doing lots of little stuff, like raking gravel on a couple of hundred feet (60 meters) of our driveway. Since there is a slight sideways tilt to the drive, every time a car goes up the gravel shifts slightly downhill. After awhile, like a year, the road has moved several feet and needs to be brought back. Nice work if you can get it (ha ha).

New doors went on the pantry. I sawed off a woodpecker-holes-filled fence post that I’ll make into a coat rack in the entry. I’ve put up marker posts near the septic tank lids and the leach line valves so people won’t drive cross-country and hit them. At least they’ll know where to aim to cause mighty damage. Since a bear broke into our grain barrels we moved the horse feed into the garage. Ground squirrels can smell the grain and they chew at the rubber gaskets on the roll-up doors. The kitchen was invaded by nasty little red ants, the kind whose sting is very painful. For awhile I was getting them to gather around some tasty bait then sucking them up with a hand-held vacuum cleaner. I think I finally got them, since there are almost none left. And those are welcome to the bait traps I have set out.

Every once in awhile we get the smoke from the Rough fire south and east of us. It is now the biggest wildfire in California and has been roaring along for over a month. It is nowhere near either of our ranches, and is on both Park and Forest land. It is only twenty-five percent contained as has been the case for most of its history. Hilary tells me that she has heard that the Forest Service is planning to put up protection for the buildings that could be threatened, then let the fire run its course into the winter. I applaud that idea; let nature be natural instead of trying to "save" the overgrown forest.

Karla finished a week of cooking at the high ranch. It brought back memories of the old days—getting up at an ungodly hour, slaving away in the hot kitchen most of the day, getting to bed late, then re-starting the whole routine the next day. She met some really intriguing people during her stay, though, and they will be coming down to the foothill ranch to play their original music on our Steinway grand. Today I emailed our piano tuner to get it in fine shape for them. Karla is really excited to get back into her first love, music. She performed a few of her songs for them and they loved them. This could be the start of something big, or at least wonderful.

I hope to keep up the blog a little better, but when I’m on a tear, I forget things.