RANCHO COOLIO JULIO

This is a (very) small sample of our latest harvest. In fact, the beans are a third picking! The crook necks are as large as we got due to some goof ball rancher who is armed with the wrong colored thumb.

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This big boy will be used by Connie the Baker to make a mock apple pie! Her mock apple pies are amazing!

A heap of green! 

These beauties (to the left and below) are now ripe and we're harvesting and eating them all the time! They are a special variety of plum and they are marvy! 

This is the new sign for our church! Friend and brother, Charlie Morrill, a professional sign painter, overhauled it for us.

Sometimes it's just pretty around here. 

Look at the price on these strawberries! This is at our new "Aldi's" market. We go there often. "Aldi's" is our friend! 

This is Warner Philip Howden's first birthday! We went to Torrance to both celebrate his birthday and to visit one last time before the Howdens move to Houston. 

Here's dad and mom Howden, 
Dan and Trixie, helping 
Warner Phillip enjoy his
birthday cake.

Here's some of the happy Howden kiddos enjoying the party. 

Just another cool gorgeous sunset
in coastal southern California.

Well…it’s July….2019! If that doesn’t just make you want to teach your grandkids the “Monster Mash” (it'll catch on like a flash!)! How can it be that we’ve torn through one half of another year?! Are we at the end of the roll of toilet paper or what?!

 Moving along…..

It’s time for the “Rancho Relaxo Report”. All’s well here at the Ranch except for the same few screwy things that always seem to happen. All in all, though, we’re are prospering and in health even as our soul is prospering.

Cool, Dude: our weather is remarkable, to say the least. It was 56 degrees this morning and it will only be about 95 degrees for a high. The other day, it our high was 88. The plums were late to ripen up but that's hardly a price to pay for magnificent weather. 

A grand (kiddie) time: it was grandson, Warner Phillip's, very first birthday so the old folks loaded up the Coop de Ville and headed south to Torrance. The weather was even nicer their. I think the high for the first day we were there was about 68 degrees. I can live with that! 

The party was a big hit with lots of good things to eat and young Warner received a pile of gifts. It was good to see other family members like Connie's daughter, Brandi, and her son, Cade, who flew in from Seattle for the gig. 

And, it was held outside in the beautiful SOCAL weather. The old folks got a bit too much sun but they still had a good time. 

The bash was at about noon-ish the second day (Saturday) so that left us with lots of time to visit and look around town (as in...go yard sale'ing!). Visit we did but sale'ing we really did! 

We always clean up at yard sales. But, sometimes you get three "7's" in a row. That means that you end up with a deal that leaves you with a grin so big that, if you weren't stop-drilled at the ears, the top of your head would fall off. That happened on this trip! 

We went to a number of sales but there was one place that had a box of ten brand new sealed cases of DVD's and CD's. The total retail value was easily over 200 bucks. Connie and I then added a handful of other smaller items to the box that was now worth a lot of dough. Time to check out. 

The guy pointed around in the box and pondered and said, "How about 75 dollars?". Now, that there is a really good price. But, I reckon I had a haggle on so I said, "How about 25 dollars?". He said, "Well...how about 50 dollars?". I pulled out my wallet, opened it, and hauled out all the cash in it, stuck it in his direction, and said, "How about 36 bucks and I won't take my wife to breakfast today?". He grinned and took the money!! Zowie! Jackpot! When we got home, we figured that we made off with at least three hundred dollars worth of goodies! 

When the day was done and we were back home (at about 6 PM or so), we still had to crank out the bulletins for church and get other things ready to go for Sunday morning. It was a long couple of days but we did have a good time. 

Gaining yardage: the rain and a bit of irrigation have turned the lawn into a mess of green things that are all mixed together and pretending to be grass. So, it’s time for the Lawn Ranger to saddle up his riding mower, Ol’ Greenie, and git after it (“Hi-Yo, Greenie, away!” - Silver was taken. Sorry about that, Chemo Sobby). Alas, riding, bumping, and flailing around on a lawn tractor is not my forte. But, it’ll have to be done or we’ll lose the dog in the grass…again…and people will think that George of the Jungle just moved in.

If push comes to shove or the riding mower croaks (and we’re reduced to a push mower), good friend and brother, Gary Laird, will come to the rescue. He’s a professional and always leaves us proud of our yard.

We also need to whack a tunnel through the big Mulberry tree whose canopy overshadows the driveway. That’s always fun. The three antennas on top of the Coop de Ville get fouled and mauled by the limbs if that doesn’t happen. So, the limbs have to be cleared away but that’s just another chore at the ol’ ranch.

One antenna, two antenna, three antenna, four: one antenna is for the scanner which is tuned to the police, fire, EMS, and aircraft frequencies. That’s a carryover from my time in each of the above services (though not a fireman, I was stationed at a number of the “North Central Fire District’s” stations in Fresno County when the company I worked for was contracted to them for paramedical services). Plus, it’s sort of nice to be able to follow what’s happening around the area when something heavy goes down.

Another is for my Yeasu VHF 2 meter Ham transceiver. The third is for the Chicken Band (CB) radio that I’ve recently decided to haul around for grins.

It’s all part of a preparedness mode that I’m in. Having a CB radio in the car when you travel out of town is actually a pretty good idea. You can always listen to the truckers when there’s something happening or amiss on the highway. Having one has served me well in times past. 

We also carry portable FM handy talkie radios which are invaluable for short range communications. These little guys are cheap (about 15 bucks each), effective, and very very easy to use and are at least as handy as a new Crescent Wrench. I say this because, though I’m a ham radio operator, Connie isn’t. So, they are easy enough for her to just push the button and talk and she doesn't need a license to use one.

These are considered to be of enough value to mount a smallish fourth antenna on the van. In doing so, you actually double the range of the small 2W radios (don’t pay attention to their advertising which claims that they produce up to 5 watts. That isn’t going to happen and would pull your small battery down in a couple of minutes anyway). The mag-mount antenna is actually on hand. I just need to decide if I want more wires dangling around inside the car. 

It’s interesting to have an antenna farm on top of your vehicle. On one road trip back east, Connie and I stopped at a truck stop in Texas (for all you old C&W fans: “Truck Drivin’ Man” – Jimmy Fell 1954) for fuel. A lady approached me as I was pumping and advised that she had been following us for about 20 miles or so and wanted to know if we were storm chasers.

You "Villains" out there (that would be "Porter-ville'ens") may want to know that the large field in the background is where the old "Porterville Drive-in" (aka "The Passion Pit" and "The Sin Bin") was. My guess is that there will be a huge apartment complex going in (ala Fresno where they have a bunch of those huge complexes sprinkled about). 

Rats! Well, when you live in a rural area, vermin seem to be part of the landscape. You can choose your shoes but you can’t choose the flora and fauna around the house where you park your shoes (you heard it first here). So, you just know that your patience will be tested from time to time by some sort or size of critter who just can’t wait to munch on something that you own (and without your permission).

Such was the recent case when our faithful, frolicking, friendly, bark-a-saurus, Abbie the Wondering Dog, found her way onto the back patio. Now, this is an area which is usually off limits for her. This is because of her proclivity to surround a refrigerator and bark until the hidden mouse or rat dies of boredom or she drives her owners to distraction and they forcefully haul her from the patio.

But, being her usual insouciant and rebellious princess self with no concern about obedience, she immediately cornered a shelf on the other end of the patio. She then commenced loudly and vehemently to announce her intention to contravene the plans of the varmint that her nose discovered (and her huntin’ dawg nose always knows!).

Not wanting to listen to her bay all day and not having enough energy to wrestle her off the porch and away from the “tree”, my lightning-fast mind figured that it would be better to just pull the shelf away from the wall and watch the fur fly.

Fly it did! With a slightly-less-than-mighty-tug, the shelf slid out (remembering that my Superman cape is now an apron). Quicker’n a cat can wink its eye, Abbie ripped in behind the shelf, snatched a big ol’ rat, and was proudly hauling her prize off the patio! Abbie – 1; Rat – 0.

A gardening we shall go: the garden boxes are doing fairly well despite my attempt to help things grow by adding too much nitrogen at the wrong time. *SIGH*. That’s another sure sign of not having a “green thumb”; you think you know what you’re doing but you’re the one that ends up being full of fertilizer and things don’t grow quite right.

All complaining aside, the maters are coming along nicely. It wouldn’t be a shock to anyone around here if some of those big green babies soon disappeared from the plants and ended up fried and at the dinner table. If that happens, there will likely be an obligatory mess of fried taters (taters and maters are my friends!) and maybe even a big pot of beans and ham hocks (I think the pressure cooker is startin’ to fidget a bit). All supplies and ingredient are on hand.

The leeks are ripe but I need to know what on earth to do with all of them. I first thought they were just green onions but that notion was quickly dispelled when they grew too big. Leek and potato soup comes to mind so that may happen soon.

The potato crop seems to be doing just great! From what the experts on the Internet say, they can be stored in the ground for a while after they ripen. You just dig them up as you need them. Having a potato crop will be a first for Rancho Relaxo.

The zukes are not disappointing us so far. They must have somehow evaded the eradication attempt and are producing some nice healthy fruit. Connie the Canner has already started freezing some of them (she shreds them first) and will likely can a ton of them later.

The oregano patch is thriving but we can’t seem to put Italian food on the menu. Not sure what that’s all about. Reckon that, if we plant some basil (we have the seeds), we'll no longer have an excuse to avoid making spaghetti.

The yellow summer squash were a bust this year. That was the fault of we know who. They just got too much nitrogen which caused growth but little fruition. What little fruition there was ended up being miniature and/or malformed. The largest ones were about half the size of normal. Next time, I hope to learn how to grow things by being less helpful.  

Goin’ green: Connie the Canner recently put up about a dozen quarts of our home-gown green beans. We’re both stoked about that! Love them green beans! If that doesn’t just knock your Stetson in the creek, a neighbor just brought over a huge bag of his home-grown green beans and a bunch of sweet corn (neighbors are our friends!)! So, she’s busy canning another mess of them.

But, wait, folks! There’s more and more! Since the last crop of green beans was harvested, the garden box has been cleaned and dressed (and the fertilizer left on the shelf) and another round of beans have been planted! Then, two large 36” planter boxes/tubs were each planted with a different variety of green bean. There’ll be no green bean shortage at this ranch!

The bell peppers are about ripe so there’ll be a harvest in about a week or so. Since one of the plants died a mysterious death (but which looked a lot like a gopher attack) another plant has taken its place. Also, we recently came by a sack containing about 40 pouches of various kinds of seeds (one dollar! Yard sales are our friends!). Some of them were bell pepper seeds so a few more plants were set in. With our glorious autumn weather, we can actually plant this late in the year and have no growing issues until December!

That was one of the reasons I made the impulsive purchase of a starter okra plant. It'll be mature and producing scrumptious okra long before the weather gets cold. There will only be the one plant and it will produce more than enough for our gumbo needs. 

There you have it: another episode of what's happening at Rancho Relaxo, home of Rancho Ran, the world's foremost authority (the previous one died) and Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-cook): where the air smells like a pressure cooker full of beans: where things can get...interesting, and where...you just never know.