Murphy and Arby

Arby was a sedate, rather reserved eleven year old cat when we brought him home from the Happy Tails Cat Sanctuary three years ago.  It took a long time for him to adjust from town life to country life.  He's now fourteen, and much braver than he used to be. 

He used to be very nervous about the dogs, but Murphy has been so persistently friendly that Arby finally relented and warmed up to him.  

Here is Arby; deep in primal hunting mode on the dam.  He very rarely actually catches anything, but that doesn't seem to matter to him. For him, it's endlessly entertaining simply to motionlessly crouch for long stretches of time and wait for something to move.  I figure it's sort of like watching TV.

 

When we take walks around the pond, Murphy races around at a million miles a minute.  In the pond. Out of the pond. Up and down every sidepath -- and then do it all over again.  That pup is everywhere!  Twice.  We figure that if the path all the way around the pond is about a quarter of a mile, in the time we walk one circuit, Murphy's run five miles.  At least. 

 So, in the midst of Arby's intense Zen stillness as he tries to become one with the dry grass, Murphy races up from the pond.  When he spots Arby, he puts on the brakes and tiptoes up to give his blue-eyed kitty an affectionate bump and kiss. If, by some chance, a mousie had been about to poke it's head out of a hole it's now long gone.

Arby sort of rolls his eyes but takes it in stride (actually, I think he secretly enjoys it).



Murphy doing his Odie Impression



And off goes Murphy again, doink-doink-doinking down the path.

Seriously, who could resist such a happy friend?

African Geese Come to Frogpond

Even as we're trying to downsize on the Frogpond waterfowl population, more show up.  Our school bus driver/custodian, Joe,  keeps many kinds of birds. Way back last spring we gave him four of our Muscovy drakes and he offered us two African geese.  On Friday, Joe brought them to school (the 4th graders got to meet them), Bruce drove down in the jeep and picked them up, and now they are finally here. 

Aren't they beautiful?  They're about two years old and are a bonded pair.  Until they've settled down here, they'll be living in the dog kennel by the barn.  Their former home was a smallish yard in town, so they have no experience fending for themselves.  I'm already worried about how they will do when they're completely out with the others.  It's a very steep survival learning curve out here, and if they make a mistake they're done for.

So far, they're not too sure about this place.  They can see down to the pond from the kennel and are very interested by all the activity down there in a nervous sort of way...

...and others are interested in them in what seemed like a decidedly amorous sort of way. 











 

 

These three pretty little Muscovy hens were fascinated by our exotic

newcomers.  They formed a circle and, bobbing their heads and swaying seductively, gave many sidelong glances to the geese.  They reminded me of Botticelli's Three Graces (I'm thinking that this is probably the first time they have ever been compared to ducks.  I'm OK with that).





When Big Love, our entire duck population's father/brother/husband, came over to check things out, the prettiest of the hens followed along behind. 

She tried to get past him, but he turned into her and made her back up and return to the others.



 

She, being a very young Grace, did what she was told (but didn't like it). 






In the end, though, she and her sisters (and a few brothers) managed to foil Big Love.  Here they were this morning, perched up in the pine tree that overlooks both the pond...



 


...and the kennel.

Never underestimate a determined female!


Post Script:  The geese appear to be completely unimpressed by the entire lot of them.  Just as well.

Classroom Shrine to Japan

Since all I can think about right now is school, here is something that my students got together in the classroom this week.  We were reading a story called "Grandfather's Journey" about a young Japanese man who travels to this country just before the Second World War.  This sparked lots of discussion about Japan, WWII, Pearl Harbor and the Atomic Bomb.  Then the discussion turned to 9/11.  I'm always startled both by what the students know and what they don't know (one boy hesitatingly asked, "Exactly what is a terrorist?").  It's always so interesting to watch and listen to what the students have to say -- the key is in asking the right questions. 

Then the students began bringing in things from Japan: a pair of wooden shoes, a fan, a parasol, a bottle of saki (full!), a poster showing the characters for Beauty, Truth, and the like from a students father's tatoo parlor, photos and medals from the war, a music box ("made in Japan"), a doll, oragami cranes...It started as a trickle and it grew to a flood of things.  By today, we had so much that the items had overflowed the little desk I was using to display them. 












It's spontaneous things like this that remind me why I love teaching.

I especially need to focus on this tonight because tomorrow (Saturday!) I must attend an all-day science workshop. 

Off to bed.

The Other Glover Brover

The Glover Brovers still live under Bruce's gloves on the front porch.  They have sort of taken over the front of the house.  Nighttime is when they emerge from under the gloves and stake out their territories around the front door.










 Their forces are spread out all over the area .  No bug is safe.





They may be small, but they're definitely a tough lot. 













The last Glover Brover is the scariest of all...

Corny's Diet Setback

Corny's strict diet of a meager half flake of hay twice a day continues.  I'm not exercising him as often, but he still gets run around three or four times a week.  He's hungry and unhappy.  The last week or so, acorns have ripened and are pattering down from the oaks in the pasture.  Corny has taken to eating them.  Acorns have a bitter taste (tannic acid) and can be toxic to some horses -- obviously not to him.  They also are fattening.  Sigh.  It may sound like this is the diet setback I'm referring to in this post's title.  I wish.

On Monday evening I cleaned out Corny's pen and forgot to go back and latch his gate.  I didn't realize this until very early Tuesday morning when I heard Bruce hollering from outside that the horses were out.  Luckily, they hadn't gone anywhere and stayed around the house.  Corny had no reason leave -- he'd broken into Sarah's rubber food container and consumed almost an entire bag of  Equine Senior.  That's about 40 pounds of high-calorie horse chow.  Horses are notorious for being able to literally eat themselves to death, and this was exactly how they do it.  I was furious with myself for leaving the gate open and very worried that Corny might colic or come down with laminitis (both life-threatening conditions).  Bruce was able to work from home that day, so he could keep an eye on our boy. 

To my relief, although Corny is an utter pig, he also has an iron constitution.  Other than looking a little uncomfortable and pooping out some of the BIGGEST horse turds I've ever seen, he showed no outward ill effects from his food raid.  OK -- well, he also did look a little puffier around his middle.  He had cause.

Yesterday evening we cut and then raked out all of the dry grass from the round pen.  Then we moved Corny down there and hopefully this will be a better place for him; at least for now.  As you can see from his face, he's not happy with the changes in his life.  He promises not to ever eat another acorn and to never, ever walk out of an open gate without permission again. 

Not surprisingly, I don't believe him: he stays in the round pen.

A little while ago I went down to check on him and kiss the baby boy goodnight.  If he could have managed it, he would have cuddled in my lap.  He looked so sad and lonesome.

But a mama cow and her calf came to the rescue.  They wandered over to munch on the mountain of dry grass we'd raked out of the pen.

When I left, he went over to hang out with them from his side of of fence.  Thank goodness for bovine baby sitters.

Dead End

Here is another sign that I'm absolutely in love with.  This one is smack dab in the center of what would be the center of Copperopolis if it were big enough to have a center.  Which it isn't and doesn't. 

Bruce, I and Murphy discovered this sign one hot Saturday morning while waiting for the Jeep to be worked on in town (if there was a town.  Which there isn't).  We were just killing time,  aimlessly wandering up and down the streets behind the shop, when we were stopped dead in our tracks by this.    -------->

OK, the sentiment on the sign is, in itself, fabulous: so boldly informing the reader that their GPS is wrong.  But then, the writer goes on to mispell "private."  How stunningly adorable is that????

I love this town (even though it's too small to really be a town)!!!


Changing gears; this has been a strange weekend.  It's been impossible not to do a lot of thinking about 9/11.  I'm still trying to come to terms with this cataclismic event that happened ten years ago.  On this Sunday morning, September 11, we awoke to the power being off.  My first thought was that terrorists had done something during the night.  That's the reality of the world I live in today. 

As it turns out, the power was out because of an outage from numorous lightning strikes in the area over the night.  We also had a lot of nearby grass fires.  Luckily, none were too close.  By noon the electricity was back on and we were back to normal.  Still, the day felt surreal and unbalanced.

I think that September is my least favorite month.  It is such a tired month.  No longer summer, but still hot.  Not quite autumn, but still over and done with.  Everything is dusty and on its last legs.  The chill of autumn is longed for.  I can hardly wait for the winter rains...

Meet Murphy



Murphy is right in the center



Murphy.   He's a Border Collie/Labrador Retriever cross and is now about a year and half old.  He comes from an "accidental" litter of 12 puppies that were born on the dairy where one of my former students lives. 

It took several days for me to decide which of the puppies to take home.   I would stop by the dairy on the way home from school and just sit with the puppies and observe them dinking around and playing.  I loved at least three of them...  

                

...but, after a lot of reflection, this little guy was the one who came home with me.  He had that certain "something" that I was looking for.  Such a cute little boy!  I liked how he looked directly into my eyes.

 Seal and Arlo, our older Border Collie/Lab mixes gradually accepted Murphy as one of the pack.  They are brother and sister and have now reached the ripe age of 11.  Murphy's energy and playfulness has been good for both of them.                                                                     

And this is Murphy today.  He's absolutely in synch with everything at Frogpond.  He loves to swim.  Chases anything that is thrown.  Adores the cats.  Is gentle with all the birds.  Guards the house with his life.  Loves his place in our family.  And he and Bruce have a bond that is amazing.  I can't imagine life here without our boy.   

This is what happens...

...when you don't shake the eggs.

Yup, twelve (plus or minus) more baby ducklings have hatched.  I simply couldn't bring myself to shake those eggs.  No excuses -- I just couldn't do it.  So now we have a whole new brood of babies to deal with. 

We've steadily gone forward with our plans to logically deal with our overpopulation of ducks.  We bought this freezer last weekend and set it up in the garage.  Now we have a place to store all of those hypothetically butchered drakes.
We'll see what happens.  I can't even shake an egg.  Can I do the whole duck slaughter thing???

                                                         I hope so (I think).  Stay tuned.

Cribbage, Frogpond Style

    I used to think that I didn't like playing sports or games because I had an uncompetitive nature.  For years I gave myself moral Brownie points for not enjoying trying to best my fellow human beings -- my heart simply being too kind and evolved to take pleasure from this sort of juvenile one-upsmanship.  However, I now realize the real reason I don't like to compete:  I absolutely hate to lose.  I am, to put it bluntly, a really bad sport.  Therefore I only play games where I have a very good chance of winning (or, when I was much younger, had a very good chance of cheating at and not getting caught).  Anything involving throwing or catching a ball or (God forbid) running really fast has always been way down on the list of things I will do because I'm really bad at all of them.  But put certain games in front of me, and a ruthless gleam comes into my eye and I'm ready to do battle and mop up the floor with my foe.  These days, that foe is generally my own dear Bruce.  Which brings us to...



The Breakfast





 Cribbage.  Most weekends Bruce prepares a breakfast/brunch and we settle down at the table to eat and play a game of cards.  Saturday morning he made a fabulous fritatta with bacon, cheese and our own purple potatoes accompanied by toast and Frogpond blackberry jam.  Sadly, I didn't think to snap a picture until after we'd consumed two wedges of the fritatta -- it was that good.

 The game proceeded sluggishly for me; I just never could quite catch up.  My pegs are the dark ones in back of Bruce's silver ones.  OK, I don't like to speak ill of Bruce, but I think that he was inwardly gloating.

  As we rounded the last corner, he had a great hand and his pegs zipped around it.  My little pegs were left choking on their dust.  At this point I tactfully mentioned to Bruce that dark grey storm clouds were about to spill over the horizon.  He didn't care.  Not. One. Little. Bit.  

     

    And then, just like that, the tide changed.  I looked at my cards and saw that I was holding twenty-four points.  To the celestial sound of harps twanging and angels singing, my little black peg did its own bit of zipping forward. Suddenly I was in spitting distance of Bruce's lead peg.  In the exact same instant that he got a worried look on his face, I began smiling and golden sunshine was spilling through the clouds (umm...did I mention that I hate to lose?)

 Bruce had the last deal.  He shuffled.  And then dealt me a lovely hand which was all I needed to dash across the finish line ahead of him.  I think that my peg was thumbing its nose at his pegs.

Ahh, sweet and glorious victory! 

    In case you hadn't noticed, not only am I rotten loser, but I'm an insufferable winner too.  I'm incredibly fortunate to have such a kind  husband to put up with me.  And he made breakfast too  (however, just for the record, I did wash the dishes).

Horse and House

    The nice woman vet came on Thursday and checked out the horses.  To our immense relief, Sarah's not as badly off as we thought.  She is underweight, but not alarmingly so.  We're on track with what we're feeding her, but are to add a cup of safflower oil to her Equine Senior ration to boost the calories in it.  We will also have to have some sharp points on her teeth filed down, but we can have this done with a different drug than the one that caused the convulsions last time.  She's now getting an anti-inflammatory pill  twice a day to see if that helps with her stiffness.  Finally, it turns out that the lump on her jaw is caused by wads of food getting stuck in a gap where she's missing a tooth.  Pull out the wad and - voila! - the lump magically disappears.  She also needs to be bathed twice a week with medicated shampoo to take care of a skin condition.  Although it sounds like there's a lot wrong with our old girl, everything is manageable with nothing drastically serious (other than old age, which we can do nothing about).  I'm happy.

    She also told us that Corny is fat.  Who knew?  We're supposed to be able to feel his ribs when passing our hands over his sides -- ok, so it's been so long, that I didn't even know the guy had ribs.  She then informed us that he's not supposed to have butt cheeks above his tail.  Corny begs to differ and was not pleased to learn that he still needs to lose about a hundred pounds -- the starvation diet along with the cruel exercise program is to continue (I'm actually relieved that he's not as grossly overweight as I'd feared).  He also will need to have his teeth filed down and a wolf tooth in the back looked at and maybe pulled.  Normal stuff.  Looks to be an expensive month for vets, though!

    The first morning of the Labor Day weekend.  Thank God for these three days in September that was put in place to honor workers.  This particular worker is a teacher who is relieved to have a short break from the craziness and hectic pace that mark the first few weeks of every school year.  I use the gift of this extra day to try to catch up on all the work I've let slide around Frogpond since school started.  I intersperse this with sitting at the dining room table, trying to catch up on all the work I'm already behind in with school.  The irony isn't lost on me.  That said, I'm also looking forward to some time to kick back and do a bit of absolutely nothing at all. 



    The one thing I'm over-the-moon, dancing-the-happy-dance grateful not to have to worry about this weekend is cleaning the house.  Once a month two wonderful, hard working ladies come to the house and clean it from top to bottom -- gone all the spider webs, dirt, scum, cat hair and the general yuck that marks life in the country (read: mouse poop).  Yesterday was the day Rosario and Agada came and swept, mopped, scrubbed and polished every room in the place (except for Bruce's lair...er, office.  If you know Bruce, you know why).  They even fed Bruce a lunch of homemade lamb burritos (with leftovers waiting for me in the fridge, bless their kind hearts).  I came home from a long day at school to a tidy little house that positively glowed with the care that had been lavished upon it.   Such a blessing!



Clean House (with dear Zelda already hard at work shedding hair on the floor)