I wondered how many times I had walked right past her before I noticed the spectacular web and her tiny, but colorful, black and yellow abdomen. She was the smallest female garden orb I had ever laid eyes on. There was no telling how many trips I made in a day, up and down the front … More Keeper of the Orbs
This past weekend, FD and I decided it was finally time to close the pool for the season. We were still enjoying the warm dog days of summer, but it was evident that autumn was just around the corner. Evenings were cooler now, and a few hints of fall color were making a splash in … More Nodding Off
Earlier this year my friend Lynda, from Life on the Farmlet, approached me about the possibility of her driving from Alabama to meet me here, and then going on north to Nebraska together to view the solar eclipse. The center line of the pathway of totality was indicated to run very near the town my … More The Universe Conspires
Exasperated, I carefully made my way back up the slope, watching behind me as I made the ascent to the house. Foolishly, I had gotten a little too far away from the protection of the buggy and left myself wide open as a target. Just the day before, I had been working on a little … More A Force to be Reckoned With
When we purchased the pecan orchard last August, FD and I were both aware the property had a thistle problem along its south and west boundaries. For much of the autumn and winter months, when the thistle plants were in the rosette stage, FD would pry the dinner plate sized plants up with a shovel … More A Sticky Situation
Early yesterday morning while I was enjoying a cup of coffee on the back porch, I noticed some odd movement down in the canyon near the dry creek bed. Fetching my binoculars I observed a fox squirrel rolling around, flipping, jumping straight up, and then back to rolling in the red dirt. I wondered if … More Squirreling Away
When I was eight years old, my folks bought a small house on the outskirts of town. They had been renting farm land for many years but, one day out of the blue, the land owner decided to burn all his buildings on the property and lease the whole thing out to a company that … More Summer Friendships
Years ago when FD and I owned a little house in town, a pair of Bewick’s wrens set up a nest on our back porch. We were especially excited about this nesting since the bird house they chose for a nesting box was a small, wooden creation my dad had crafted as a young boy … More Front Porch Nursery
After taking the previous week off to spend time with Emily and Sidney, a niece and nephew from Nebraska, FD and I had a lot of mowing to do yesterday. Just before Em & Sid arrived, the drive shaft on the brush hog mower broke, so mowing in the orchard came to a stop. The pasture on … More Fawn Season
Last week, the previous owner of the pecan orchard began moving some of the farm equipment he had left behind after the sale of the land in August last year. Old farming implements, several broken down pickup trucks, a couple of cattle feeders, a couple of stock trailers, a brush hog mower, a broken tiller, a … More Parents on the Rocks
Lately, the weather has been favorable for continued work in the pecan orchard. There are times when I feel like I have not made the slightest dent in all of the cleanup that needs to be done on the fifty-two acres of land and, more specifically, in the orchard itself, where 142 pecan trees have dropped limbs … More The Consciousness of Mindless Work
