Pep Rally

Pep 

Rally

The band played 

as the cheerleaders

danced their admiration

football players flexed

the crowd cheered

flashes seared 

the night

with

hope

the field emptied

except 

for a 

crumpled 

schedule

tumbling 

in the wind

as

the 

lights

went 

out

one

by 

one

Connecting with Poets United:  Poetry Pantry

Random 5 Friday...A Day Late

A Rural Journal

One:  Spring is taking a toe hold on the farm.  Today it is sleeting and snowing.

Two:  Andrew and Hubby are in Nashville.  Andrew and his band are playing for the "powers that be" to see if they have what it takes. They are having a great time.

Three: The farm dogs are quite happy with the change in weather as are we all.

Four:  Daughter is still not walking from her car wreck but improves every day.  This has been a long haul for all...since November.  I imagine we are all equally ready for things to return to "normal".

Five:  My creativity seems to have atrophied but it will return. This week I have read "Shoot The Moon" and "77 Shadow Street", both very good and very different.

Oh, My...

I just realized I have been lax in my posting but sadly have had little to say.  I'm all talked out.  I'm stuffed to the gills with wonderful and some strange food.  The litter from opening packages is cleared. The next to last guests have returned home.

There is some sense of order in my world again. I am comfortable with order.

I sit in my area crocheting, checking now and then on the injured daughter still here.  Zander plays with Legos while his mother naps. Monday we return to the doctor.  Some one comes here three times a week and does what ever they do with a wound vac.  

Tuesday we drop Bonnie at the vet's for her shots, check up and spaying.  Hubby has a doctor's appointment the same day.  I'm hoping I don't get the places and patients mixed up.

Wednesday I take recyclables to turn in an hour away.

Friday, Zander's school begins again.  Monday Andrew's and Jake's begins.

And we begin the year to do it all over again.  We are grateful and blessed.

Happy New Year.

Electronically Erratic!

I rewired an old lamp this week, sewed on some missing buttons and patched some clothing.  I can build fence, buck hay bales, fix some plumbing leaks, doctor my own animals and a varied amount of other things...especially when it involves playing with power tools.

I can operate a camera on automatic

to show how much Bonnie has grown

and how much she dislikes sitting like this...

but give me an programming problem or a hardware techie problem I'm like a fish outta water.  I've had a few friends direct me how to fix this and that and they've saved me. On my own I am lost.

I've always been one who likes to know the reason WHY something works or WHY I have to do it a certain way.  In my mind if there is a reason, I can do it.  This frustrated my parents, my teachers, my employees and still frustrates the people I'm around.  For some helpless reason I can't fix electronics unless I know why it has to be done that way and I don't have a clue.

Since lightning hit our phone I've lost my wireless extender signal to my quiet room.  I have the phone company wireless that grabbed my Netgear that piggy backed my D-Link.  When the phone company "helped" me get back on line, they did something that keeps my Netgear from "seeing" the network...I think I'm using the correct terms. I've done a reset on Netgear.  The computer will "see" the phone company router and will "see" the Netgear but not at the same time!!!

I've poured over pages of directions and nothing made sense to me at all.  Those of you who can read direction manuals as easily as See Spot Run, I applaud you.  When someone says, oh, just do this or that and you'll be fine.  NO, I won't.  I don't get it!!!

So I sit in the art/craft/sewing/creating area with Xbox pounding on my right and Gunsmoke or Bat Masterson booming behind me...through walls.  I need my quiet room!!!  

I guess I can pay a Geek fee to get my peaceful spot back.  After all I did save that much by doing my own plumbing this week.  

Beating The Weather

There are always last minute things you think you need to do before a cold front arrives.  Storing water hoses, wrapping faucets, winterizing items you KNOW you're not using until spring...the list goes on forever.

Monday when it was summer, we worked in short sleeves and high seventy degrees.  A south wind attacked the valley the entire day.

The water gardens were deleafed and topped off.  The Koi in this and the perch in my other garden will survive the freezing temperatures just fine.  I place a board or small post in the ponds to keep an air hole for the ammonia to escape.  It also makes it easier to crack the ice without harming the fish. I'm sure there are more leafs today. I will make my rounds with a net and remove as many as I can. The leafs containing tannin will make the water brown and my Koi do not thrive in that.

The boat has been tarped and winterized.  It's in the pasture because the barn will be filled with other working machines and the boat shed has been reassigned as the truck garage for winter.

All hands on board for a full clean up.  Of course with pecan trees in the yard clean up is an ongoing event.  

The chickens and all the animals have fresh deep hay beds.  Tools are in their respective spots, mowers winterized, and anti-freeze added to vehicles. 

The crew headed to our main spring.  This is the source of our home water.  Conveniently it is pumped to the houses.  We no longer have to carry water like we once did many years ago.  The spring needs its last "cleaning" for the winter.

Here Andrew is post hole digging the sand out of the rock "barrel".  Placing the sand in the tractor bucket is far easier than carrying it away in a bucket the way we have done it.  Through time the sand builds up but the pump is submersed yet suspended above the bottom.  We lower the level of the sand so we don't have to do this on a cold day. 

The pipe from the barrel to the pump is insulated and covered for winter after all the grass is cut, the water cress removed and the spring is given a general stir up to move clippings etc on down the creek.

When the family first moved here they capped a wooden barrel over the spring source and water would fill up the barrel and fall into the creek.  Dad remembered helping his dad build the rock surround when he was very young.  One year when I was cleaning the spring I found old barrel staves in the very bottom, a piece of history in my hands.

The right equipment makes the job far easier than it was.  Andrew is practicing being a worker by leaning on the handles.  The spring is clear and fresh in a short time. The pump is turned on and like magic water is in every faucet again.

In the past a spring cleaning day was an event attended by all members of the family.  Mom cooked while we all got down and dirty in the spring branch, pulling cress, cutting grass, moving the sand on down the stream while capturing crawdads for fishing in the evening. Yep, an all day event for six to twelve people is now a four hour job for three.  I ran the camera and did some straw bossing, so make that two.

Eighteenth Birthday, Registered To Vote and Registered For The Draft

Looking cool in his found Ray Bans

Showing off

Fishing

Shopping for amps

with Faith

Fender won the pick

  

Know we are very proud and 

love you "to the moon and back"

Happy Birthday, Andrew!

Fishing Rocky Bayou

Our favorite place to go when the girls were young was Rocky Bayou that joins White River on the Stone county side.  If you were to back track this creek it would pass in front of kinfolks' houses from the ancient past.  We would wade through the section where I learned to "grabble" fish, where I caught crawdads for bait.  Blue Hole, where we swam and even where Hubby's kinfolk lived (and oh, the stories I have!)  Mother used to warn me and my daughters to be careful who we dated, they might be kin to us.

Back on track to the adventure of the week...Rocky Bayou is a gravel creek  When the river is up you can motor in easily. Other times there is a small channel of only a few inches depth that you must fly over...Hubby can do that.

The waves ripple from our landing.

 This is a honey hole for bass.

The fishing begins while I take pictures

 thinking I am in heaven.

The bass are biting!

These wonderful rock ledges shelter many fish

but not from Toni and Hubby.

Yep, that's my Dr Pepper.

Toni shed his shoes early.

I kept mine on but I was connected 

through the water and the rocks...paradise!

We jumped ship leaving Hubby behind catching fish.

Toni and Andrew headed to the place they used to swim.

Low but still beautiful.

Hanging ferns grew on limestone cliffs.

See all the rocks?

I found just a few to bring home.

Every one needs a day like this now and then.

The fish were released

and we motored toward home.

Before...

our collective family had cattle, horses, cancer, Alzheimer's, and heart trouble we did much river playing. Today we went again to some old favorite spots.  We caught a few fish but released them.  It was beautiful.

The boat that has set unused met White River today in Guion Arkansas, still a sand mining town and the place where Hubby grew up. 

The bridge that connects Izard County with Stone County was not here when we were residents.  If you wanted to cross the river you had to drive onto a state owned and operated ferry.  If the river was too high or too low you didn't cross. The citizens liked the isolation but things always change.

The boat unloaded was tested by Hubby while we readied things to be loaded.  The sun was warm but it was late afternoon so the weather was not as intense as it has been.

We flew up the river in the inboard motor boat that Hubby had considered selling.  Glad he didn't but it is difficult to take pictures when the speed does not allow you to open your eyes.

I risked a picture over my shoulder as we flew up the river.  Toni's hair will show you the speed along with the wake we left behind us.

Even the backwards shots showed the idea conditions for water reflections on the river.  

We fished on a creek off the river until sundown brought the fog with it.  It was time to head to the ramp.

Sundown, fog and speed...another shot over my shoulder told me I should have my life jacket on.

We beat the fog and the dark to the loading ramp.

A Blue Heron patiently waited for dinner in the river weeds. 

As we landed a gentleman greeted us seeking help. He had started to launch his boat and had some engine trouble.  He removed the cover, found an active wasp nest and in his hurry to retreat he had lost his motor cap in the water. Hubby motored over.  The men shined lights in the water as Andrew dived under to retrieve the man's motor cover.  My heroes.

Loaded, tired, happy with darkness and fog dropping their curtains we headed home.  On that ride we saw four large Buck White Tail Deer, one doe and a rattlesnake almost big enough to swallow a fawn. Pulling the boat, we could not go back to retrieve the snake...big monster.  He not only would have made a good hat band but I'm guessing maybe a belt too.

It was a good day and a good time to reacquaint ourselves with White River.

I Think...

All heroes don't wear capes.

Everyone can get along.

Tears are as real as

raindrops.

Mark Harmon is not the only guy

who can rock this haircut.

Funny faces are fun.

Fires can be like revenge

especially with thorny plants.

Sometimes I Have Help...

or people who like to play.

I can't reach this high to trim.

Thanks to Hubby, Andrew and Bonnie,

yes, she is in the bucket, too,

I have some higher limbs trimmed.

Tree Trimming and Other Death Defying Acts...

We have been trying to catch up before the summer heat kills us. You who have acreage or a farm know you never get caught up but you have to keep trying.

The Mulberry tree had some dead limbs that needed trimming. Solution...the ever handy bucket on the Kubota.  I have used this method for roof repair but running a chainsaw is something I really don't like to do especially fifteen feet off the ground while trying to hang onto a tree.

At first we have an operator that controlled the bucket while shouting instructions about being careful and even yelling, No, Pa-Pa now and then.

Then we have two monkeys in a tree and no one on the tractor. Gray hair getting thicker for me!

Oh, Good Lord!

Why don't they just get down?

Fire bug that I am here is my reward. While the monkeys were in the tree I clipped briers, bird poop plants and a general clearing of messes in one small spot.  Under this fire lies the lightning struck tree, trimmed briers, bushes and what ever I could find.  

I worked till almost dark while one by one the helpers left me to clear the mess.  I don't understand when the machine work is done the men seem to disappear leaving clean up for me.  I think there may be some short coming in my training method.

The clearing looks good and we shall move on to another spot.  One twig, one trim, on foot at a time.  That is what we must keep in mind or we would be completely overwhelmed with the tasks needing completion.