Weekly update - July 21, 23

It's been quite a while since I've done one of these. 

• Emmy and Java are still completely ignoring Major Tubbs, though in the barn, Vienna will happily let him greet her. In the field though, it's like watching a less-popular girl trying to hang around the popular ones. Since the arrival of the new horse, Emmy and Java have decided that maybe Vienna can enter their circle a little bit. Vienna loves this, even more than she wants to befriend Major Tubbs. Every so often, I'll see her standing in between and nicker at him, as if she's saying, you're okay, but I really want to be friends with those other horses. Vienna seems conflicted, Major Tubbs seems lonely. It's still early days yet. 
• I think we are one of the few places in the country with decent weather. I took advantage of it and deemed it "tack room cleaning day". It really needed it. Here is everything emptied outside.

Of course I didn't get a before picture, so you'll just have to trust me on quite how disgusting it was. I'm probably going to be coughing up dust for days.

And the after. I'm so excited to have a chair that is empty and available to sit in again.

• I'm never raising chicks in the cold spring ever again! Having them in the small coop on the back porch has been so easy.

After a couple of days we opened up the door to the rest of the coop and they've been happily scampering up and down the ramp ever since. They're getting far more exercise than our other chicks who were stuck in a brooder box.

• Heard this afternoon as L. was walking through the kitchen. "Well, I'm off to create an army of platypuses. See you later."
• And since we're discussing a certain child, I found this on one of her math problems this week.

She's not wrong.

• I don't hear a lot of news, but I did catch a whole breathless segment about the heat in Phoenix. I will admit that the number of days without a break from the 115°+ heat is unusual, but the actual temperature? That was my childhood. It would always be at least 115° for part of the summer. I even checked with my mom just to be sure I wasn't making it up. But it's not new. Most of the summer it was too hot even to swim and we would go at night when it didn't feel as much like being in a rotisserie. Okay, rant over. There's a reason I live in the Midwest.
• At teatime we are reading Storm by George R. Stewart published in 1941. It tells the story of a storm that hits California and all the little interconnected reasons things happened. One of the main characters is the storm itself. It's considered one of the first eco-novels. I'm enjoying it, though I'm not so sure about anyone else. What I'm exceedingly aware of is how much things have changed since it was written. This was a world without computers and all of the forecasting was done using hand written maps based on weather information from a great many places that would report to the National Weather Bureau. I find I need to stop at least once a day to explain what is going on because it is something that computers do now. It's also more than a little disturbing to realize that the book is eighty years old. I still kind of think of the forties as being about forty years ago.
• There are often many times where I think certain children of mine should have their own laugh track. Timing and sense of humor is definitely well developed.
• I really have to just accept the fact that I am only really a gardener in the month of May. This is my way of telling you not to ask about the vegetable garden.
• And even though certain states are going to hell in a hand basket (and I desperately hope they won't drag the rest of us with them), I must be feeling somewhat existentially secure because I have done precious little canning this summer. I did get all those berries and cherries frozen, however, so that's something.
• R. saw the neurologist last week, and for the first time since she has been home, she has been deemed stable enough to go to yearly visits. 
• People are starting to get in the swing of summer. It took a bit longer this year for some reason. But this past week I've seen game playing, art making, book reading, and walks in the forest. 

• K. enjoyed his first day of work, though he came home and fell asleep.

And with that, I'll say goodnight.