Keeping Our Own Domain

Pulling weeds and pondering angels this morning; an odd combo but so relevant for today in America perhaps.

With all our rains the past few months, nature has gone wild in our yard. Prolific pig weeds, ghastly goose grass, sorry sedge, canny crabgrass, and quack grass (needs no adjective!) are my sworn enemies. 

But then I find the things I actually wanted and planted are trying to take over one another too! I spent a good deal of sweat and time today trying to tame the sweet potato vine enveloping the fish pond, the 4 o'clocks sprouting in the liriope, the forsythia crossing the border, and the trumpet vine trying to establish itself in the lawn. 

This all reminded me of Jude 1:6 that talks about "angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode."  I cannot even imagine how God felt when angels whom He created from nothing and who had the perfect life in heaven, decided they wanted to do their own thing and escape the borders of safety and joy He had set for them.

Even the flowers and veggies I plant and tend, I didn't really create, and their rebellious rambling still frustrates me.  Oh, how, we must break God's heart when we jump the fences He has set for us too!  Trying to re-label sin to make it more acceptable, ignoring or revising His clear teachings, and forgetting it was He who made us, and not we, ourselves. 

Forgive our sinful sightseeing, Lord, and thank you so much for your patience, longsuffering, and mercy when we abandon our proper place as well.

HOUSEKEEPING THOUGHTS

Something died in my garden shed.  A quick gagging search did not reveal the stinking source; mainly because my shed was a mess.

It is only a few years old and I fondly remember how fastidiously I kept it the first couple seasons.  With lots of space, shelving, good storage, a potting bench and plenty of containers, it even boasted a window air conditioner.  It was actually nice enough that the granddaughters, Haley and Abby, with friend Emily had a sleep-over in it once. No one would want to do that now!

My excuses

·         Several hasty springtime plantings and leaving little messes

·          Using the shed for finishing new doors and window frames for the house addition

·         Some fall yard and garden clean-ups when I was simply tired of working outside and just shut the door for winter.

·         A good clean-up became a daunting task.

The horrible smell, however, required action on this Saturday morning and I had a lot of time to think as I moved things, cleaned, hauled out trash, and scolded myself for keeping some of the junk.

First musing: I wondered if many of our prisons are filed with the results of neglected housekeeping too.

 Is it possible that some parents are enamored with their new baby and spend a lot of time with them when they are small, cute, and obedient?  Our intentions are good but then in the pressures of life we begin to ignore little issues that need to be corrected.  Things pile up, the situations become messy, the housekeeping is abandoned, and the door is shut on the problems until one day we realize something is rotten and it is just too hard or too late to deal with the clean-up.

Second thought:  a child’s environment is vitally important too.

I eventually found the source of the stink in my shed.  It is hard to believe 2 tiny mice could smell that bad but they did!  

The real problem was that Mama Mouse had built her nest right beside a sack of rat poison.  Supposedly it contains an ingredient that keeps rodents from stinking in case they expire in your house walls.  Possibly it worked because she was not in sight and probably her babies died of neglect after she disappeared.

This made me consider that what parents feed on and what surrounds our kids matters too. Have we also tried to raise our children in dangerous and deadly habitats? As Christians, do our lives and homes look any different from the world’s?

I am resolved today to be more diligent in tending to my own “house”,  to encourage younger people, and to thank God for a wise son who does the same every week.

The world is too much with us.  William Wordsworth

I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart.
I will set no worthless thing before my eyes.

Psalm 101:2-3

TROUBLE IN THE PLUM THICKET

It was a perfect evening for picking more sand plums and as I liberally applied the mosquito repellant, husband Bob cautioned me to watch out for snakes in the tall grass.  I think we’ve only seen one in the plum thickets in all the years we’ve picked, but he especially hates snakes.  He will deliberately swerve to hit one on the dirt roads, then back up and run over him again just to make sure!

I slipped my cell phone in my pocket and loaded a couple buckets in my good blue pick-up.  First mistake.

I waved bye to Bob who was leaving on a tractor pulling a hay trailer to the other side of the river for an early start in the morning.

A few minutes later thunderheads made a lovely backdrop for the grazing cows and the green hills below as I crossed the cattleguard in the pasture and I snapped a pic with my phone.  Wonderful inventions aren’t they? 

At my favorite plum thicket I soon had ½ a bucket full, there were no bugs biting, and I was priding myself on my evening’s activity choice when I heard something ahead. I was not alone in there! Deer?  Snakes?  No, up ahead of me were 2 cows and one of them was trying to calve in the middle of those thorny bushes.

This was strange because a cow usually goes off alone to calve, but then I noticed their ear tags; consecutive numbers.  We get most of our cows from the same big ranch in Colorado and we’ve observed part of this phenomenon before. 

Two cows consecutively numbered will have been randomly loaded and come off the semi at our place 12 hours later side by side.  They pretty much stay close for years.  They graze together, drink together, get bred and calve at almost the same time, and come through our working chute next to each other nearly every year.  But this was a new wrinkle; camaraderie in calving too?

I thought about calling Bob to come back and look at Mama 318 before he got too far away, but I could see a foot coming and in the right position, so I figured all was well.  Second error.

I decided to move out of her view and wait 20 minutes and come back to check.  Third bad decision.

When I returned, the other cow had gone over the hill to graze but 318 was down and in trouble.  Since I hadn’t driven a work pick-up, I had no gloves, or rope to try and snag a foot and pull. I called Bob but by now he was too far away.  He called our German helpers but they were both at night church 30 miles away and the neighbors nearest me were also gone. He just said “do what you can and call me.”

When I got down close enough to grab the calf foot and try to find the other one, the cow suddenly got up and trotted out of the thicket.  While weighing the possibility of walking her down to the pens, the baby’s head came with tongue hanging out and I knew I couldn’t stress them any further.

About five minutes later she delivered the baby, immediately got up and began licking her baby vigorously but it was too late.

It doesn’t matter how many cows you have or how many births you’ve participated in, it is still sad to lose one.  She was a good, big, and gentle mama and she’d done all she could.

I left her then to her instinctive cleaning.  Probably when we return in the morning she will have stood over him all night keeping the buzzards and coyotes away. It is a heart wrenching sight.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if, as I drove away, number 319 came back to check on her sister and they kept the night vigil together.

Leaves of Grass and Ladybugs 

I decided to begin cutting back the ornamental grasses on this beautiful spring day after a long Oklahoma winter.  Sometimes I have burned them back before the new green sprigs started and I can tell you it is a much faster, less labor intensive procedure, but Bob told me at breakfast that a new burn ban went into effect this morning, so there went that plan.

Ornamental grasses are my favorite perennial landscape material.  They deliver a good show in all four seasons, are easy to start and propagate, and best of all...not heavy drinkers. 

Their only downside is that they need an early spring haircut.  This usually results in huge piles of debris to rake, load, and haul off…some sniffling and sneezing because of the dust they have caught and stored here on the plains…and a few blisters to my hands from the repetitive motions of the clipping.

But today I was glad that I hadn’t burned them as I began to notice dozens of Ladybugs crawling out beneath my clippers.  “So, Ladybug, where did you spend your winter?”  “Ahh, the Lordbug and I vacationed here in the region of Maiden Grass.  And you?”  “ We traveled a bit further to the other side of the garage and wintered on the Isle of Zebra Grass.” 

As I cut and piled away, I began to wonder about Ladybugs.  Why are they called that? Are the males called Ladybugs too? Do they resent that?

Taking a break with diet Dr. Pepper in hand, my reliable computer experts tell me that Ladybugs got their name from farmers in the Middle Ages who felt these beneficial beetles were sent from heaven to eat their pests and thus called them the Beetles of the Blessed Lady. There are many species, but most are yellow, orange, or scarlet with black spots or stripes. 

We farmers and gardeners still welcome this carnivore majority because they feed on harmful aphids or scale insects in our crops and yards.  Some people even buy them by the gross and put them into their fields or landscape. A few varieties are pesky vegetarians, however, and prefer to lunch on our plants.

Miscanthus with a bad haircut

Blogging is much more fun, but Ladybug curiosity satisfied, I must return to the twelve other grasses awaiting their bad haircuts.  Thankfully my trusty push mower will efficiently take care of the hundreds of clumps of liriope grass waiting out there next week.

When the grass disappears, the new growth is seen, 

and the herbs of the mountains are gathered in

Psalm 27:25

Ode to Lamps

My stash of wedding and baby gifts was depleted so I've restocked from one my favorite multi-department stores, Gordman's. My go-to wedding gifts are almost always lamps or clocks. 

At our bridal showers in 1966 we got lots of kitchen stuff and 23 sets of bath towels!  In those days the only items we registered were flatware and dishes, so sometimes you received lots of the same other gifts. I'm not complaining; some of those towels lasted twenty years!

Bob's favorite wedding gifts, though, were a magazine rack, a lamp, and a footstool: more masculine type home furnishings I guess.  Since then I've always leaned toward purchases I imagine the grooms will appreciate too. 

A Gordman's find

But I've decided that I actually have a weakness for lamps myself and they say you buy for others what you really want yourself. As you might suspect, we have lamps and clocks in every room of our house!

Some lights have stories behind them, like this cowboy lamp on Bob's desk.  I bought it under a pecan tree in Texas. My sister and I were trying to shake it free of its nuts when a man headed to a flea market with a trailer load of western decor pulled into the lot beside us to see what in the world we were doing.  He helped us reach the higher branches and we struck up a con-versation. When we found out what he had on-board, he unpacked some samples and I promptly bought this one.

Some like these above I've purchased at The General Store in Kiowa, Kansas for a couple dollars. Love a usable bargain!

Some years ago I admired a lamp made of an old meat grinder and metal colander which my sister had found at First Monday Trade Days in Canton. After studying it for awhile I came home determined to make some myself.  I found lots of the grinders and colanders cheap at junk stores, got some electrical kits and learned how to wire them. I sold and gave away several and kept this one. It's a great conversation piece and the holes in the colander "shade" cast a nice light pattern as well.

Sometimes I re-design and embellish flea market lamp bargains too.

As you can see, our style is western, so this Kokopelli dancer lamp with a copper shade is a favorite birthday gift from my sister RoJean.

Right now I'm on the hunt for just the right lamps for our new guest suite addition.  Maybe lamps are my current hobby, but with our diminishing eye sight, they are at least a practical one!

Chasing Geese

A friend’s post on Facebook today invoked a funny childhood memory from the 50’s about geese.

One time we had two tame geese on the farm.  I don’t know if they were wild geese with their wings clipped or domestic geese, but they were dark colored. Mom thought the geese would eat pests and clean up the sticker patches.  She was a thrifty soul and probably thought this was a great solution.

We three kids weren’t particularly fond of fowl though because cleaning the chicken house was a disgusting, dusty, and stinky job we loathed.  Gathering eggs from under a pecking and disgruntled setting hen was something else on our most hated list. 

These two geese had free run of the farm, and after being chased a few times, we kept a respectful distance from those big wings, webbed feet, and menacing beak!  RoJean, Timmy, and I weren’t at all sad when Gander Goose met his demise under the wheels of a truck. 

We tolerated mean mama only because we were fascinated by her nest of eggs under a feed bin in the barn.  There were story book pictures in our minds of darling little fluffy goslings playing follow the leader around the farm.

One day after weeks of being terrorized by the whole brood, I was leading my 4-H calf around behind the barn when I heard brother Timmy’s go-kart start up on the other side.  Hearing the squawking and commotion, I came around the corner to see feathers flying with Timmy in hot pursuit. There were already several hit and run victims flopping in the driveway. 

Mother said later that being the older sister I should have stopped the slaughter, but I just stood there in mutual agreement and amazement to his remedy to our problem!

Mom was mad at us, but I also recall that our only punishment was finishing killing off the injured geese, and cleaning up the go-kart and the mess in the barnyard.  Maybe mother was weary of watching her own backside too, but whatever the reason, we never had geese on the farm again.

Today when I see chefs on the Food Network touting the delicacy of roast goose and goose liver pate, I shudder, but I also wonder if our farm cats enjoyed the fresh morsels we left behind that day!

Culling Cows

We keep an identification and performance record book of our cows in the pick-up at all times and we refer to it daily when checking cattle. We would be lost without it.

When we buy new cows, they are usually freeze branded with letters and numbers on their hips telling us their birth year.  The also have a corresponding ear tag, but often they lose these tags and the brands fade.  So while they go through our chute and have our own brand put on them, I write a little color description of each girl in the book: black, red, baldy, or brockle.

In a herd of 400-500 cows, however, there are many who look the same and further physical details are needed for identification.  For instance cow T680 is black with white on the left side of her bag or Y390 has one black eye and some white on her tail tip.  At this early stage of the game these are the only details known and their slates are pretty clean; no personality or production disorders are known or written yet. 

When they give birth for us the first time we write down the date and a description of each calf. If the cows are healthy and productive, we usually keep them until they’re 10 years old. In this time some of their records become blotted. They may have bad hoofs or legs, an eye problem, a knot on the neck.  Having trouble calving unaided, having a bad udder, or not enough milk will send her to the sale barn pretty quickly on the Wright Ranch.

Personality characteristics become part of the record too.  One may be a wanderer, always climbing through a fence to greener pastures and requiring more than a single wire electric fence.  She might be very protective of a new calf or turn mean when she’s penned and needs to be watched.  A few are tree hiders. We’ve had some cows who leave the herd two weeks before calving, hiding until the calf is several days old and costing us lots of time looking for her and wondering if she's dead.

Some good traits are recognized also:  gentle, good mother, lots of milk, will take an orphaned calf if necessary, chow dog (first to the horn and the protein pellets!)

The culling gets harder when she just gets old, but has caused us no problems yet. This year some old favorites went to the sale barn.  P101 had a spotless record, was gentle, raised good calves and would let you touch her nose.  M313 calved twins alone twice and raised them herself nicely.   N80 was a big black beauty. 

We’re not horse people anymore so in the fall we drive the herds to the Wilson portable corrals with our 4-wheelers, push the calves back out into the pasture, then begin sorting the cows on foot.  

I don’t get in the pens with them very often any more because I can’t climb the fence fast enough if something goes wrong!  So I stay on the outside with the cull lists I’ve made from the book ahead of time for each group.  The guys sort off the ones I tell them need to be culled and whose calves are old enough to wean.  We load the cull cows and haul them to the sale barn.

I thought a lot about our culling criteria this year and how I fit the description myself.  Bad knees, not tall enough, only produced one live offspring,  not content with the same feed every day, not very herd-bound, tends to enjoy being alone more than most, likes to explore and travel, resists being driven, irritable when confined...

I’m sure glad God’s culling standard isn’t based on looks, health, performance, or personality!  What a blessing to know that Jesus’ blood continues to wipe my record clean and the only criteria for entering heaven and staying in His herd will be that I loved and obeyed Him.

       For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation 

through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, 

we will live together with Him.

I Thessalonians 5:9-10