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