The Fleeing Summer

 
I've come to believe that summer passes by so fast in an effort to just keep up with us. It is our busiest time of year (on a ranch), which is why I've been remiss about updating everything on my blog. I am outside most of the time, then steal a nap in the afternoon, forever play catch-up with the mundane chores in life and then back out to water the garden and landscape projects. So, I think I'll just post photos of my 'life at the present' and let it go at that. I hope any and all who may read this have had as busy a summer as me...the good kind of busy...and just as enjoyable.

Haying time...bringing bales home for the winter.

Freshly picked Nanking Cherries

Part of my flower bed...the new landscape project. My swinging night life consists of all of my evenings spent behind a hose; another view below...

My dear husband was at a ranch auction and he bought an old treadle sewing machine for me. The cabinet is beyond recovery, but I took the darling little machine out and the drawers will be re-purposed when we complete our mudroom-porch this fall. One entire wall will be shelves and cupboards. I want to use all old doors and vintage "junk". The tiny teddy is one I made years ago.

On a junk-hunt, I found a cute little old dish-drying rack to display some of my old china in.

"Ribbon" is coming along nicely. Here she was grazing while there was a branding going on in a nearby corral.

My Galpals and I got together for our MaryJanesFarm sisterhood meeting and we made mosaic goodies...mine turned out to be a tea-pot planter(?). Almost all of the broken glass and china that I used came from the homestead dump that was once my gr gr grandparents place. I am the little old white-haired lady.

My pullets should begin to lay sometime in October. At the moment, I am trying to play a role in the demise of a hawk that has sinister plans for my hens! I've shot at him 3 times with my 22, but with no success. Fortunately, the girls learned all they need to know about hawks after witnessing 2 of their sisters being attacked...one killed and eaten and the other I saved by running the hawk off. If only I'd had my gun then. The pullets run from one covered kind of place to another around the barnyard and when they hear the hawk's voice, they run and dive, dive, dive for cover! Chickens Are Not Dumb.

Above: a beautiful print I found (eBay) that I'll frame and put in the porch when it is done. Thus far, I've found a great barn-board bench, an old door to hang lots of doorknobs on for decor thingies, an old gate to hang hooks on for coats, a GREAT old step-back cupboard that I'll paint a olive green, old suitcases for storage containers. I'm on the hunt for a harvest table to live under the bank of windows, but I may have to have one made to suit the place. I'm so looking forward to at long last having a mudroom-porch and a covered, screened-in patio! Useful rooms are so fun to decorate and I'm stoked to see them when they finally are done. My husband has been hauling hay home every day for a few weeks. There's just not enough of him to go around and afterall, summer is for fun too and he loves to rodeo when he can get away from the ranch.  Well, that's all for now. I need to go out and put some chicken wire around my new run for the pullet-girls.  Happy Trails...until we meet again.