Ordinary Time

I'm in the middle of reading Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mex. Yes, I know I am very late to the party on this one. I hadn't felt up to it. Last week I listened to an interview with Du Mex about her new book, Live Laugh Love: the secret history of white Christian women and the world they made. I will be reading this one; it's currently on my hold list at the library. The interview seemed to make it seem as though the second book builds on the first, so I figured it was time to finally read it.  It is as hard and disappointing and infuriating as I expected it to be. Sadly, it is also completely unsurprising. I really just need to plow through it and be done with it. With that ringing endorsement, I do encourage you to read it, especially if you are (or were) a Christian and have found yourself being completely mystified as to how so many people who are supposed to believe in love, goodness, and mercy have so completely lost the plot. It will answer a lot of those...

The other day, while I was driving Y. to do the onboarding for her new job , we passed by a pond that often has birds of various sorts in it. It was a jackpot day. Y., who is always on the lookout for birds, noticed that there were four egrets. We paused to admire them and moved on. Coming home, I paused to see if they were still there. They were, but they had been joined by a blue heron. So I took a picture.  You can see them if you enlarge the picture, but I'll make it a little easier. Take time to notice the bits of wonder around you. K. is here for the night, so he got in some picture taking. Here are a few of them. And my favorite.

This makes me happy, and I figured you could probably stand to see some happy news as well.  Duck has been the lone duck for quite a few years now. She always seemed happy enough, but I always felt a little badly about it. That was a big reason for the ducklings we added earlier in the summer. The big question for all of us was would Duck accept these newcomers as fellow ducks. She had been the sole duck for so long, we weren't sure.  Well, I'm happy to report: While Duck will still take herself off and do her own thing every so often, usually she is hanging with the other ducks and doing ducky things... swimming, walking in a line, taking naps, having excursions, etc. Seeing Duck happy makes us all happy. 

The view from my barn, that is. And I am filled with thankfulness every single time I'm out there. 

The pasture is kind of out of control with things the horses don't really like to eat. J. usually mows them with Chuck the Tractor. This time we thought, "You know who really like this plants? Sheep!" We have sheep. We have portable fencing. We had a plan. So J. and G. set up the fencing in a corner of the horse pasture. This morning, before I turned out the horses, they brought over the sheep.  The horses were very interested in what was going on.  The sheep got right to work.  We weren't sure what the horses would do when they were turned out. The answer was not much. By the end of the day, the sheep had eaten down about a third of the weeds. I expect it will take them another couple of days to eat this patch down. But don't worry! There are plenty more patches in the pasture for the sheep to eat. 

Owning horses often feels as though it is an endless procession of repairs, both to the infrastructure and to the horses themselves. This was the state of one of the stalls this morning.  My money is on Major as the perpetrator because he does like to lean and has quite a bit of body mass to put behind that leaning. J. did some temporary repairs this afternoon and will reinforce everything tomorrow. He keeps wood on hand because he's always needing to repair something, but the supply is dwindling.  That's the infrastructure piece, now into the horses. The ponies are now sporting five poultices on their feet between the two of them. When the farrier was out a few days ago, she found the beginnings of an abscess in one of Buddy's hooves. That's one poultice. Moving on to Vienna, she has them on all four feet. The good news is that the farrier didn't see any damage from her insulin spike which means we caught it and acted in time. But she still has some soreness becaus...

I don't know why I've been so tired the past two evenings, but I have no energy to write anything of substance. Maybe I need to find a different time to write blog posts. Or maybe I really am just tired. Either way, for tonight you get to enjoy a picture of some of our ducks in the pond. 

Illinois has had a tough go of it these past few months. Most notably we have broken all sorts of records for tornadoes. As of June 21, there were 196 documented tornadoes (I'm sure the number is higher now) which is more than twice the next state in the list has seen. So that's fun.  Then, over the weekend, Iowa decided to share its torrential rain with us. There was over 4 inches of rain on Saturday and yesterday was an enormous storm. (No tornadoes this time though.) Flash flood warnings were going off all over. This was the prelude to showing you this video of our "driveway" yesterday. J. went out to see what the state of things was. He stopped walking when the water level was going to top his boots.  The creek in front of our house had definitely overflowed its banks. Today things are nearly back tomorrow, but definitely damp. Duck has enjoyed it immensely.  Having put in that nice seque to poultry, the other thing that happened yesterday was that L. deemed Chick...

There was a lot going on this weekend... Two birthdays, Father's Day, a big family party hosted by W. and MC, and a surprise gardening event. The birthdays were D.'s and J.'s.  D.'s birthday was yesterday which coincided with the party. Last year W. and MC decided to host an extended family party in June because the stretch between Easter and Thanksgiving, when we usually all gather, seemed like a long stretch. The P. Family were invited, too, because they are pretty much family at this point. Someone decided that D. needed to be sung to, at which point K. got this awesome picture. It's too bad we don't have any fun when we're together, huh? (l-r: a P. Family daughter, P. Family Dad, W. and D.) Also yesterday, TM and JH came but with a tree for me. JH works for a large plant growers and loves plants. The last time they were here, I was asking JH about recommendations for what to do with the front of the barn because I was tired of it looking... abandoned.  ...

Food is really one of the joys of summer, isn't it? In the past few days we have enjoyed salads completely from the garden, we picked the most cherries from our trees since we planted them, and the hens are going all out in terms of egg production.  (These were from several days; we'd let them pile up a bit.) Strawberries are ripe this week, but I don't know if we're going to get time to go picking this year. Of course, once you pick a bunch of fruit, you have to do something with it. I know I don't have time for that. Maybe I just buy some already picked to enjoy fresh. I also noticed that the black raspberries are starting to grow, but we probably have another week before they're ripe.  The perishable nature of summer fruit, though is also a problem. With pears and apples, they can sit around for a bit if I don't have time to do something with them immediately. Summer fruits? Not so much. And that is all I have for you tonight... my musings on future guilt...

A photographer friend ( April Duda Photographer ) came by last month to take pictures of the farm. I got the photos today and I couldn't be happier. They're beautiful. Here are some of my favorites. (And if you're on FB, there's more here than I shared there.)