It isn't funny

There is a run on Ivermectin paste at the store when I went to get some horse wormer for my mules to do their routine worming.

For frickin' real?

Well, I suppose. The ones who don't want a vaccination have heard that Ivermectin can treat or prevent Covid. And yes there is an Ivermectin for humans to rid them of parasitic worms. Like the dude who drank from our neighbor's creek when he was visiting 25 years ago and got some nasty parasites. He said the meds were about as bad as having the parasites. He was sick for a long time. The lesson there is not to drink from a creek when cattle poop upstream from it. 

I had a real live person tell me that getting vaccinated would magnetize me. Damn, her source was a Dr. Tenpenny [that name should say something]. I took my keys and tried it...they kept falling off my forehead. Hmmm, IF I could keep track of my keys by being magnetic, that would be awesome.

How useful I could be to pick up nails and bits of metal around construction sites.

No way.

But people are getting a bit unnerved. Our county is averaging a death every few days from Covid right now. And it is not the elderly. Moms and dads in their 40's and 50's. Or they could be grandparents. 

But the vaccine changes your DNA and makes you into a robot or a zombie or...something. I guess I'm not clear on that. 

Other reasons for not taking it are numerous. Like, ... we are healthy and just fine. We already had it once. I have no health issues so I will be fine. I am not old and infirm so I will be fine. Or it hasn't been tested enough.

With Billions of doses administered around the world, I think it might just be safe to say that the vaccine has sort of, kind of, maybe been tested? 

I know some people who had some adverse effects. They felt crappy for a few days. I felt tired. But I didn't get magnetized, I didn't grow a third boob [thank goodness], and I didn't even lose my freedom of choice. 

My good friend and hiking pal decided not to get vaccinated. He suspects he had Covid last year and has decided that he will be fine when it comes around again. I explained that we would now follow last year's precautions of still hiking together, but going in use vehicles. 

You know, he is good with that and we remain friends. I've made peace with the thought of those who wish to remain unvaccinated. 

Visits of all persons will be outdoors no matter their status. Our place, our rules.

After all there is always bleach you know and light. A big beautiful light you could stick up your bum.

If I offend anyone, I am sorry/not sorry. 

But really. Horse paste wormer? My mules make the worst faces when I give it to them.

I got shot! ....

Ok. No drama here. I'm talking about the vaccination. 

The nurse that gave to me was excellent! I never even felt the poke. 
Drink LOTS of water I was told by my neighbor who works at my Dental Office when I dropped off my payment. The folks at the Department of Health said the same thing.

"Lots of water. Listen to your body. If you feel tired...nap." 

You know what is kind of weird? I enjoyed visiting with the nurses and the girls while waiting for my 15 minutes. I enjoyed visiting with my neighbor who works at the dental office. Yeah. I felt like it was a BIG day out. 

Plus I got to catch up on the ridge information. One neighbor had a quadruple bypass and a prefab house is going in on the corner. That makes 3 brothers from the same family moving onto what was once cropland that was inherited about 25 years ago by their father.

My upstairs neighbor and I got our shots at the same time and plan on having outdoor coffee or wine together in 2 weeks to celebrate.

Other interesting things. 

We watched crows hunt down a rabbit. 

Mica the white mule has heart failure stemming from breathing issues and heaves or equine COPD. One part of the day she is fine, the next? She seems tired and naps a lot. Rich has had her for 20 years. She is not in dire distress, her heart rate and respirations are normal, but she has "regurgitation". The blood backflows because her heart doesn't work like it should. 

The super dry conditions aren't very helpful for Mica. I moved her to a grassy area with Fred and the 2 of them did fine but were obsessed about not being able to see the rest of the herd. Stubborn old mules! They ate the nice grass and pounded paths of worry with their hooves along the fenceline. I'm going to try another tactic if we don't get rain soon. 

~~ Last night when I went to bed my arm started to ache and I figured I was in for a bad night. 
I slept soundly except when Rich dropped stuff in the kitchen around midnight getting his nightly snack. I'm a light sleeper and I bolted out of bed. I thought he fell. All good, ... he dropped frozen pizzas on the floor while fishing out the ice cream bucket.

~~ Insert Eye Roll here~~

I woke up and was surprised that my arm didn't ache like it overnight. I did chores, gave Mica some meds for her breathing and took a walk at daylight with Charlie.

Do you see what I see?

One black Morel.
I find this very interesting because it is so dry here. The moss is brown yet a morel found enough moisture from under the leaves to come up. The tree above it is in its first years of dying so I follow the root system each year and come up with one or two black morels very early in the morel season.

Today's plan. Drink lots of water and take a nap if I want to. I'm not going to do a lot of Farm Work. I'll move Lil' Richard to trim around my MIL's old car and Sven the Goat to do some trimming next to the old tractor.

Maybe I'll go and scout out some trees. 

Here is our home in black and white [Infrared]. This is the north side of the house.

This is the tidy view that doesn't show the wrecked garage and the mess that would be behind me. I love this place. 

Stay well. I'm chillin' today.

Little celebrations

The riding mower needs a new inner tube or a new tire ... well let's say filling it up every time we used it last year was a pain. 
Hubby actually got out there and took it off! Three years ago I had to have the neighbor come down and help me do it. 

I worked on the pasture weeds and since we were waiting on rain, I couldn't burn the piles of elderberry, sourdock and burdock. It seems as though it is an never ending battle and around the middle of May I generally give up and resort to just weed whipping the plants in spots. The heavier woody stuff gets the machete. However, I have made progress over the years.

My afternoon schedule was to run to a place in town where our local Dept of Health had set up a clinic for vaccinations. I'd scored an earlier vaccination by juggling different sites. My neighbor and I were signed up for the same time. We drove separately and stayed in our seats for the 15 minutes, then we were done. 

I took the flat tire to the guy we have always purchase our mowers and chainsaws from. I like shopping and supporting local people and this guy was a kid when he started out.

He'll fix the tire, get a deck belt for hubby's big ol' zero turn and I purchased an early gift for myself. A nice self propelled mower. I was tired of pushing that old crappy mower up the side hill. Happy Day for me.

I walked out into the pasture and stood. Pretty quick Sunshine walked up and I took her out and saddled her up. I told hubby that I was going to ride our land and just head on down to the creek.

What an ugly shadow of us! 

She was pretty sure that she'd rather not leave her buddies so she just stopped and waited for a bit. Every mule offers hesitation the first time in the year when they leave their pals.
Sunshine gets over it quickly. 

No photos of us following the trails we went through the woods. I was too busy watching out for branches to duck. She took a deer trail instead of the nice wide ridge trail the bulldozer had made for us.

We came up on that group of male Tom Turkeys. They came walking and strutting through the leaves sounding like a heard of elephants.
I love this mule.
She perked up, ears forward and nose flared. I could see the Tom's bright red heads as they walked through the brush. I was hoping they all didn't take off like thunder.

Sunshine took a huge sigh and then we carried on zig zagging down the steep hill. When we ended up on the ridge trail, I dismounted. Always the first time out with a crupper she gets a bit tail swishy. Just her way of saying she would like me to know that the slight tug on her tail head was a bit bothersome.

By midsummer, she ignores the crupper. I may put a britchin' on her saddle this summer to avoid tail swishing and ear twitching.

For a job well done we stopped in our creek bottom and I let her grass on some of the good stuff in the creek. She thought she was in heaven.

Then I tried something no one has tried before. I wondered if I could ride her upstream and around all those boulders and downed trees to hunt for morels later this year.

There is no easy way out of this creek unless you are willing to climb. 

Blurry shot with my pointy shooty camera.
I asked her to negotiate a deep pool of water with a boulder on one side and a tree on the other with no other way around it.

I have to hand it to her. She looked at it, sniffed it, then stepped into it and walked through it. She has all the calm of her donkey dad, Bruce. And lots of the thinking of her mom a scatterbrained arab/quarter mix. Her mom when faced with a difficult situation would stop and think in the woods.
In a field or wide open space ... she'd just go bonkers.

I like an equine who thinks. Sunshine thinks hard all of the time and misses nothing.

Below we check the forest fence above the creek. Wow, it is easier to ride her than walk it!

I counted two insulators that need replacing.

We then climbed out of the valley and headed home. That was enough of the rough stuff for the day. I told hubby that I may take nippers and the machete and clean up the trails the mules made last year in the woods.

I said I could ride much more right at home than trying to figure out if the 4 wheelers were going to be out on the neighbor's land.

Above...one of the Bell Necklaces my mules wear. It alerts slumbering wildlife to get up and move before we get there. Never have any of my mules freaked at wild life, but they do get startled when a herd of gobblers suddenly come out of nowhere and thunder overhead. Most of the time they get stiff legged and stand still.

Then they sigh and we move on.

[The strap is hanging off her side...I'd started to unsaddle her. And yes her mane is wild yet. I will roach her mane once the weather stays warm.]

Many little celebrations for my Wednesday.

Color me happy.

Welcome April!

I've been a bit out of sorts lately. Let's go ahead and blame it on hours and hours of cutting down brush/Elderberry trees and piling brush. I even participated in a weak attack of a burdock patch. 

I don't know my limits sometimes. I think, just a bit more...just a bit more! Then there was the old tree that blew over on the line fence. Hand sawing and more fixing in the cold winds is hard on these gnarly old hands.

So I decided to NOT do any brush work for two days [it was too windy any way]. I read two books and did some hiking in the creek with Charlie. 

Our state just opened up vaccinations for all ages. That means I can sign up on Monday! There is an option for J&J locally here in town, I'm hoping to get it and be One and Done. 

I am all for still being socially distanced and using precautions. But with both of us vaccinated, I will feel a bit safer going to an open air gym this summer, hiking with more friends, and even visiting.  People who are not immediate family and don't get vaccinated or use any precautions will not stay with us in our house. 
I think I lost a friendship over that ruling. 

My thoughts on that? Well, they were the only folks that came and stayed anyway except for the occasional visit from my son. So not much will change.

I cannot impose my will on others. Oh wait, OF course I try to! That is human nature.

Found things yesterday.

Elfin cups:

Tree reflections at the fence line between my west neighbor and I.

Sleeping Dragon:

The dragon is in a spot I recently cleared. There is a small rock outcropping that I cleaned up last fall and pulled all the noxious weeds and buckthorn sprouts. I've seeded it to grass and plan on putting ferns and perhaps some wild ephemerals in the area. I'm going to try and make it my little 'get away' spot close to the house.

Cell phone shots of on top of the rocks and below the rocks. I used hay chaff to cover the grass seed.

The mules won't be able to get in here, I'm putting up a single hotwire to keep them out. 
This is very close to the house too. I'm going to get a few chunks of wood as stools so I can come out here and read in the summer. Well, that is the thought.

My deep shaded woodland experiment. 

Well there it is. Happy April 1st. 
I'm taking some long time friends who used to be neighbors on the Ma & Pa's hike today.

I am looking forward to it. I used to babysit her children. Now the oldest is taking driver's ED! 

Time flies.

Shot #2

So some of this will be about the second Moderna Shot for hubby. He recieved it yesterday at the Madcity VA. It was a nice day and we picnicked in the car on the way home.

So we ate out and had what we referred to as a 'late lunch date'. 

Today started out with thunderstorms and downpours which really reduced the snow cover and caused a small quick run off of water. Fog moved across the landscape and it really looked eerie.
Rich said he felt okay but just tired when he got up. Tired. After he did his morning routine, he complained about feeling tired. I told him that was normal for some folks and just to go lay down while I finished doing laundry and other things.

Then it was 'quiet' time for most of the rest of the day. The third time he laid down, Charlie decided he needed to be there too. He did his grunting thing that means he wants something...and I put him on the bed next to Rich. He immediately slid under the big blanket and lay with his back against Rich's. 

The outdoor temperature got up to 62 degrees. But my job was to sit and keep an eye on hubby.

I decided to work on my photo project. Whew, I sure did.
I have a lot more but better stop here? 

If nothing else it will be fun for others to look at this when I am gone.
Hmmm. Or not. 
I must do things that cause me joy.

I decided to watch a video on composites. 

I wanted to try one then. Something simple and not to difficult. I guess it started because I saw some 'overlays' and Photoshop Actions advertised that *will make your photos stand out!*
Um.
I realized that something I've done for years with 'creating' a sun flare or creating Bokeh and overlays... is now a thing that people sell in combo packs to drop on your photos...TO make them better! 100% guar---um---teed!

Excuse me while I cough. A photo is good if you take a good photo. 

And I will be the first to admit, I love editing and having fun.

Well I had time to literally twiddle my thumbs after making cookies for Rich. [I know he doesn't feel wonderful because he didn't scarf them down.]

Challenge.
Make a composite. 

Photo one:

Photo Two:
The Bear cut out...

Photo three:
The Composite.

I was surprised by the results and rather pleased.

Well, back to keeping and eye on Hubby.
He says he kinda feels like crap. Body aches and fatigue, no fever but a bit chilled.

His comment as he drags his butt off to bed again?

Better than a ventilator I think....

Stay well.