So Long Maggie

This is what Connie and I call "Maggie's Lips". She had a toy that was a large set of lips and teeth. It was a riot to see her with this thing!

• Below is Mag with her stuffed toy. She would get one then dutifully dismember it's eyes and nose then keep it until we sneaked a different one in on her. We got them at yard sales for next to nothing so she always had something to play with. When she brought one to us, it was time for tug-o-war and fetch.

Here's the Wonder Dog baby sitting some leaves while she's on guard to defend us from the next golf cart that comes along. We live about a mile from River Island Golf Course so a cart will come by from time to time. She hated those things for some reason.

Magga-saurus after an obviously difficult night
guarding Rancho Relaxo. 


Magga-saurus after another obviously difficult night
guarding Rancho Relaxo. This happens a lot.

                                                                            















Maggie the Wonder Dog guarding the front yard. Not much ever got by her. We've never been invaded by the Japanese and no Gypsies ever got down the driveway that we can tell. You can see why; just look at this ferocious specimen who is diligently on guard! And, despite the fact that we never gave her any garlic, not a single vampire has been seen on or near our property!!

 They say that “all good things must come to an end”. That is, indeed, the case at the Ol’ Ranch. There wasn’t anything gooder than Maggie the Wonder Dog but we had to say “good-bye” to her. She  died Thursday night. As you may imagine, it’s been a long and sad day.

It’s hard to part with such a friend as Maggie. She was always there as part and parcel of the ranch and certainly a part of our hearts. Day or night, rain or shine, rare was the time that she wasn’t joyously waggin’ her shaggy flag and greeting us when we came home. When we returned from a weeks-long trip away from home, she was overjoyed to see us again. She would even haul one of her prized doggie bone treats out for us just about each time we came home. We would gleefully receive them then she would gleefully take them back.

Then, there were the regular tussles to see just who would get the prized stuffed toy. Mag would bring her stuffed toy over and the war was on. I would grab it and toss it into the next county and she would fetch it and then would hand it back but wouldn’t let go. Ah, the tug-o-war was on! After we were both worn out, she would let loose and she would let me win and I would toss my hard-won prize “out yonder” and she would race after it to rescue it.

Maggie was the official greeter at our annual yard sales. She absolutely loved her position. When one of our regular participants found out that she was gong to be missing at the next sale he noted that it just wasn't going to be the same without her and kiddingly said we should cancel the program. She was that loved by all.  

Maggie's "Aunt Joyce", our neighbor, was saddened as well. It was she who tended to Mag when we were out of town. Joyce has recently lost a dog of her own and two prior to that so was quite empathetic with our loss.

She had not been feeling well for more than a week. She began coughing and her respiratory rate was rapid and shallow. That was concurrent with a loss of appetite and lethargy. She did appear to be hydrated (and we saw her drinking water) so we figured that there was little about which to be concerned and that whatever it was that was ailing her would soon pass.

Much of her day times were spent lying in the shade. There was no pep in her step on the whole but a couple of days ago, it appeared that she was getting better.  Last night, she was lying in the front yard in one of her usual parking places. Though appearing to be about same as usual, I guess I knew that she wasn’t going to be with us much longer. I loved on her a lot and told her how much we loved her and how much we appreciated her and her love and her dedication to us. She soaked it all up and loved me back with a lick or two. You could see in her eyes that she was so sorry that she had to leave. She knew. I did too….but didn’t want to.

This morning (Friday), when I went outside to check on her, I found her lying still on the front porch directly under our bedroom window. Though leaving, she wanted us to know that she loved us and wanted to be near us and that she was doing her best to be a good guard dog.

We certainly had our faith on the line for our love dog. Our dog is blessed and we couldn’t think of any reasons for our beloved pet to suffer illness. But, we had to do the math and we were rather shocked at what the numbers added up to: Maggie was around 18 years old! We staggered at that revelation because, other than a little graying around the muzzle, she had not shown much aging hardly at all! She had always been so spry and alert that it hadn’t occurred to us that the dog could simply be wearing out! Of course, I had been searching the Net about the symptoms and the picture quickly became quite clear: Maggie had been presenting all of the symptoms of congestive heart failure. It became obvious that we didn’t have a failure of faith; we merely had a failure to do our math. She had been utterly healthy her entire life; her heart simply gave out.  

Rancho Tostado is now Rancho Crispo. When we walk across the lawn, it’s like walking on Kellog’s Rice Krispies. Our “ditch water” (river water channeled to us via the “Pleasant Valley Ditch Company”) used for irrigation is “on 3 days and off 6” but….I hate buts….hardly any water is entering our water gate! That leaves us with “drip irrigation” at best! There’s not enough water pressure to even push a sprinkler! I will attempt to install a lift pipe of some sort so that we can get water into the gate so our weir will fill and we can get enough water pressure to run at least a couple of sprinklers and a couple of drippers.

Our casualty list is fairly short: we lost a few of our small fruit trees. That really hadn’t been thriving anyway but it still fries me. It isn’t the end of the world but we’re going to have to stay alert with a water can handy if needs be and keep the rest of our trees from getting too thirsty and croaking on us.

Today was “Yard Sale Saturday”. I had hoped for “Boxer Saturday” but that didn’t happen. Connie and I have been looking forward to this for a few days since we hatched the idea to go to Costco in Visalia. We are usually able to knock over a yard sale or two if we stumble into them but haven’t had a dedicated yard sale day in quite awhile. We were not disappointed!

The first yard sales were in Springville. As usual, we harvested incredible blessings! One stop was the first of two “moving sales” and it was “home run” time. We got all kinds of great stuff there. Connie got four cases of canning jars for less than the price of one case at Wal-Mart! They had been used as part of a theme setting for a wedding and had candles in the mouth of some and dried corn in others while the rest were empty.

Another score was a bunch of new burlap bolt cloth for next to nothing. I ended up with two Galaxy mobile CB units for peanuts because the guy at the moving sale didn’t want to mess with them. I’m setting aside a box of CB radios and am testing them and mating them with antennas. The time may soon come when we will need them. Included in the pile was a new-in-the-box Dell printer. The box hadn’t even been opened and I got it for chump change. The list goes on and on. A lot of the stuff we will keep, of course, but some will be eBay and Craig’s List bound.

After cleaning up in Springville, we wended our way toward Visalia hitting any yard sale in our path. At one sale near Visalia, they ended up throwing stuff at us and we didn’t duck. One freebee was a tripod BBQ grill. The tripod grill is a slick device with three poles linked at the top. Then, you suspend a 24” square heavy iron grill from the top with chains, dig a fire pit, and you’re good to go. The guy was in “moving mode” and didn’t want to babysit his wares and it was getting hot so he just tossed stuff at us that was either free or nearly so (an expensive vintage Noritake porcelain china bowl for 2 bucks is dang near free). The back of the van was nearly full by the time we got to Costco. We had to wonder just exactly where we were going to put our goodies now that we were preloaded.

Well, as you can suspect, we had worked up an appetite by this time. So, the only reasonable thing to do was to head straightaway to the “Home Town Buffet”! The place has improved over time so we made sure that we double checked to see if they were maintaining their excellence. In fact, I triple checked, though I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t like other times, though. I didn’t eat until I made money this time. But, I did get my money’s worth, don’tcha know. After a quick siesta in the parking lot (who can move after a buffet?!), we headed to Costco a few miles south on Mooney Blvd.

Shopping was just as suspected so there was a ton of stuff to load. As it turned out, there were a couple of experienced old folks on hand who just happened to be excellent packers so they managed to stack and rack things so that we had a bit of room to spare (albeit a very small bit). Our chariot drove like it had square wheels but we made it home without incident.

So, now we know what happens when you turn two old people loose with a few bucks and a full tank of gas, eh? Stay tuned; things could get...interesting.

RANCHO TOSTADO

Here's a shot of the front of Rancho Tostado looking north from the front yard. Directly behind me is Highway 190 just across a small ditch full of tules. I miss my green lawn!

And the correct temperature is.....102 degrees, a mere 5 degrees short of the forecast. Reckon someone threatened to shoot the weatherman, eh?

Looking south from the front porch. We are continually thankful for the big fruitless Mulberry tree that cuts some of the heat.

From the front porch again and looking SE at the driveway. Most of our flowers look like they've been hosed with a flame thrower.

Here's a shot of our vineyard. They're doing as well as can be expected. I drip irrigate these little guys to keep them alive. We just picked up  some more vines so will be planting them soon. They were on closeout at a local supermarket so we just hauled a bunch of them home along with some nectarines that were less than half off. .

This is looking north again but from the back yard and toward the well house. This area used to be rather lush and verdant. Looks like Achmed and his herd of a thousand goats has passed through here!

Looking north again from the back yard towards the mountain that separates us from the town of Springville. We're actually south of the town but have to travel east first then make the turn north to get there.

 This shot is just to the west of the one above. It shows our "back 40" including a few of our 23 or so orange and tangerine trees. It also shows the fire suppression water storage tank. In the middle of the shot are a pomegranate tree and a plum tree (difficult to see them).  Just above the oranges in the background is our neighbor's home. He's a doctor. Doctor's are our friends.






Well, Virginia; it looks like another month has blitzed by here at Rancho Tostado without being noticed ("rancho tostado" being the Mexican colloquialism for "burnt alley"). Connie and I were so busy that we forgot to check the calendar and let a perfectly good month slide by without getting to use much of it as a day off. I think we were able to squeeze in a couple of short naps, though.

 I suppose that isn’t a huge complaint. After all, all work and no play does make for some great yard sale deals, eh? In fact, just the other day while out and about on the job we stopped at a “moving sale” (our favorite type) and purchased a few things (you just knew I was leading you here now, didn’t you?). It was later in the day and the weather was quite warm (102 deg. is pretty warm) so we didn’t want to stand and melt into the nice man’s yard and leaving him with a big mess to clean up, don’tcha know. So, we didn’t dally. However, he advised us to check back later in the day on Sunday (the next day) and he would make us a deal. OK…we can do that. He may just as well have said, “Y’all come back and I’ll throw money at you and…by the way….please don’t duck”.

 The next day was a long one. We had to pick up folks for church, have church, drop off folks from church, and attend to two computer clients prior to actually going home. When we finally did get close to home at 4 PM, we remembered to stop back by the moving sale that was still being conducted in the mucho heat and mucho humidity. As we got out of the car, Connie and I saw a lot of stuff that we had wanted from the day before still waiting for us to haul it off. In fact, it appeared to us that no one had even been to his yard sale at all since we left! There was a ton of really good stuff still remaining! We discussed what we thought we would offer him and arrived at the 100 dollar mark. This “lowball” figure was because we really didn’t want to be moving tons of stuff in the heat and it was going to be hotter yet during the remainder of the week. UGH.

 When we got there, the gentleman was taking a nap (like we had wanted to do in a really big way) and was awakened by his Australian shepherd who faithfully went in to fetch him. He came out and was glad to see us. Without solicitation he said, “Why don’t you just buy everything?”. He said, “I’ll sell it all to you for 100 dollars”. I immediately said, “Sold! Your yard sale is now officially ended”. My! That was easy!

The next day he advised that he had a shed that needed to be emptied so we bought the entire contents for 20 dollars. Looks like there are way over 100 DVD Movies, an antique clock from 1896, and other goodies! The story gets better; he said that he need to empty the house out and sold us just about everything in his house for another two hundred bucks!

 We haven’t catalogued things yet but it looks like we should at least feel a bit guilty for being so blessed. Naw. We got over that temptation rather quickly.

 Some of the things include a Black and Decker vacuum food sealer (which makes a nice addition to our other sealers), a nice low-mileage Rival toaster oven (I’ve wanted one for awhile), a new campfire camping grill, hand tools (shovels, hoes, etc), miscellaneous hardware, table and chairs, two aluminum ladders, bric-a-brac, misc stuff, junk, and what all. It looks like some of it will go to eBay, some to Craig’s List, and some for our October yard sale. We certainly will keep a lot of the other goodies for the ranch hands.

There was even a late model HP workstation computer in the storage shed that I upgraded and just now sold (a few days later) for 200 bucks. Just the one item paid for 1/2 of our investment. Well! Bless my bippy! Where I come from they call that "Such a deal!".

Speaking of yard sales, recently, we found ourselves at a yard sale in Hooterville (the colorful term of endearment for my backward hometown of Porterville. Even the entire city counsel walks around backward at City Hall). I saw a 32” LG flat screen TV on a table. I asked the nice lady what the story was concerning it. She advised that it would only stay on for less than a minute then it would shut off. The price was a piddling ten bucks so I snatched it up and hauled it to Minnick’s Computer Services where it soon had the back cover off. Ol’ Ran, never a TV repair man, Googled the matter and came up with a definitive clue: the power supply had an issue. Come to find out, it had a single “blown” 1000pf 16v electrolytic capacitor. No worries. I ordered a bag of those off eBay for 8.00 and waited for the ship to come in. When it did, I de-soldered the old cap and soldered in the new one. I glued the set back together and set it on my table where I had the 26” monitor parked. It works like new! The total cost for the big beauty was ten bucks plus a 16 cent (YEP!) capacitor! I am now officially spoiled and will never again be satisfied with my dinky 20” monitor!

 Part of being busy this month is the fact that I’ve conducted 7 funerals in as many weeks. Two of them were for close relatives. Most know by now that my brother, Steve, died on July 3^rd. His funeral was on the 12^th. Then, my aunt, Bobbie Helen, died a few days later and her funeral was on the 25^th. One of the funerals was for the husband of a lady who had been a member of our church many years ago. We had his funeral on a Wednesday. Three days later, her only son died at her home. His funeral was about a week later.

 If that isn’t interesting enough, the mother of one of the men in our church just died and it appears that I’ll be conducting an 8^th service. I’ve conducted more funerals in less than two months than in the previous several years combined. And, we have reason to believe that there may yet be others in the not-too-distant future. Let us pray not.

 An old song asks, “Whatcha gonna do when the creek runs dry, honey?” Our creek, the Tule River, for the second year in a row, has dried up and is at “zero flow”. That’s unheard of. We don’t have time to “sit on the bank and watch the crawdads die” (same old song) but we can pray for rain. Our area is dryer than double-toasted roofing tile. This is not a good thing.

 People’s wells are drying up too. Some of the farmers/ranchers are having their existing wells drilled down to the 300’ and 400’ levels. Having to pump water instead of getting it from the rivers/canals is costing a fortune (the utility companies are dancing naked in the streets with glee). As an interesting side note: the Valley floor has sunk more than 3’ since the time I was in high school. This isn’t not a good thing either.

 The old folks at Rancho Relaxo still have water at around the 40’ mark that we can tell. It has something to do with the water table at our specific location. Not sure of the specifics but we’re quite pleased with that fact. Our irrigation/ditch water (that comes from the Tule River) is being rationed at the rate of “four on; four off”. We can trickle a bit of water so as to keep most of our trees and garden damp but can’t keep the lawn greened up because we don’t have the pressure to run a sprinkler. I’m going to overhaul the system and see if I can maximized water flow to our dirt. I’ll probably do this ….on my next ….day off. Uh-huh (I just checked and the water pressure is up a bit so there is hope).

 As an emergency option (options are our friends), we had our ditchwater routed to our main water system at the pump house and fire suppression tank. If a water crisis happens, and there is water in the ditch, we can throw a couple of valves open and have river water on tap. It will be filtered through three course filters and then a full residential filter. There won’t be any chunks in our water. As a last resort, we also have access to our 3,200 gallon fire suppression water tank. We would likely have to boil that stuff but at least it wouldn’t have crawdads in it.

 The summer heat has been brutal on Connie’s green beans. She was looking forward to something other than brown beans but she lost the bet. She finally threw a sun screen over them and the newly planted ones seem to be doing well. The tomatoes seem to be thriving but not like last year. We’re going to overhaul the entire system after this growing season (on my day off, no doubt).

 The okra is a tough ugly mess. It has turned into OSB probably because of the heat. It's so tough that we're thinking about using it as 12ga shotgun ammunition. It would really hurt the Taliban if dropped from 16,000' too. So, I may be looking at a contract with the Air Force soon.

We really can’t much use it in or for anything. However, I boiled the heck out of it (not much heck left in it so far) and used the product as a thickener and flavoring agent. Tastes great too.

 One thing we’re doing with the veggies we grow and that other’s give us from their gardens is to make soups to can. Connie has given me the honor of whomping up a few recipes for stews and soups that can be stowed for winter stores. I can do that! There was some closeout whole chickens at Smart and Final the other day so, at half price, we simply had to cart off a few of them. They ended up in large pots full of vegetables made with savory chicken stock brewed by the chief knife slinger, Ol’ Ran.

 OK….enough for now. I have to get back into the saddle and rope another sick computer. Don’t touch that dial (you don’t know where it’s been!).

Rancho Ran and Side-cook Connie the Canner