It's a bit difficult to see, but the new cut for the spillway at "Success Lake" is at the right-center of the picture. The new road is at the middle of the cut. Click on the picture for an enlargement which may help somewhat.
This is the marina and a good shot of our short-lived greenery. It only lasts for a few weeks then it's gonzo. We get "California Gold" in its place.
Anyway, we like lemons here so this is a picture of one of the two new ones that we planted.
We try to make sure that we have our staples on hand in case of hard times. That includes have a functioning staple gun around when we're in the mood to secure things. This is actually gun number two but, for 7 dollars (at a yard sale), it was just too good to pass up. It has no signs of usage and, when hooked up at home and tested, it worked great. Yes...I have plenty of staples, too.
Well, it’s April. This year is already ripping by so fast that it almost makes me want to watch “Flash Gordon” reruns on “You Tube”. The speed at which the months are flying by is almost incomprehensible. It's only 264 days until Christmas. But, the show must go on. On the whole, I’d rather be crapping fishing.
They say that “April showers brings May flowers” but, for a while, we've only been getting what we call a “mad rain”. It’s really only enough rain to make you mad because it doesn’t even wash off the “Springville Insulation”. It just makes a mess of your car.
Finally, we did get a nice “soaker” rain but it was nothing like the “frog stranglers” in the Midwest. Our orange trees were mighty happy and the neighbors were dancin’ in the streets (at least, that’s what I heard). It did appear that they were so happy that they were making burnt offerings to the gods. It may have only been their BBQ’s going off in celebration at the same time. In any case, we all think that our weatherman is a few cousins short of a family reunion.
Connie Canner Report: The rancho’s remarkable numero uno fantastico canner, cooker, cleaner, baker, sewer, and chicken grandma is doing well and back to canning everything that doesn’t leap out of the way. This is also to say that her wrist has healed up very well. There’s still a bit of limiting of the range of motion but she’s still improving on that, too.
I lost count of the number of jars she’s put up so far but it’s remarkable, to say the least. She even canned some walnuts, turkey meat (to make room in the freezer for other goods that can't be canned), different stews, flour (dry canning), and such. She’s amazing!
She's also "Connie the Baker", too and can whip up some of the best cakes (e.g. carrot cake), zucchini bread, cookies, pies, fresh hot loaves of bread, and other goodies that you can imagine! She’s my sweet Hostess Cupcake (I think I’m probably her Hostess Ding Dong).
Busy Bees or Honey, I’m home: Professional beekeeper and dear brother, Dave Kruse, recently checked our two hives. He advised that we a lot of honey that needs to be harvested. It appears that we’ll have more than 40lbs of that liquid gold stuff! And, it’s “orange honey” which comes from our oranges as well as from the other groves around us. Orange honey is our friend!
But, honey harvesting entails a ton of work. We
have the bee suits, smokers, centrifugal honey separator, strainers, and such but it is a lot of
work. After harvesting, it has to be stored in glass jars. It takes time and a
lot of effort but it’s worth it. Honey will store forever.
We're in the the middle of a big bloom this spring so we'll soon see.
Missy the Melting Dog: It looks like a sled dog can grow on someone. That someone would be me, of course. Even with her puppy-inspired behavior and frailties (like casually chewing my reading glasses to bits), it’s just not possible to not fall in love with this gorgeous and intelligent pooch.
She just needed to be loved and have someone pay at bit of attention to her. She was lonely and needed a playmate, too. So, between Abbie being the playmate and the ol’ dog lover being the attention giver, Missy is settling down and learning to fit in. She’s still a bit rough around the edges but, in time, she’ll be fine. At least she will sit when commanded and not bowl me over when I try to feed her.
The other day (when lots of things happen around here), I was spending some time with her and letting her know that she’s part of the family. It was a beautiful cloudless spring day and the bright sun was providing a little extra warmth.
Missy was reveling in all of the attention and getting lots of lovin’ from her owner who was sitting on a five gallon love-dispenser bucket. This high-spirited lassie had calmed way down and was nestled between my legs while being showered with care. It was so intoxicating that she just melted and slid down into pile of fur on the ground. Her eyes were closed and it looked like she was overdosing on love. She was as gonzo as if she had just had a big hit of heroine.
Walkin’ the Dog (Rufus Thomas - Walking The Dog - 1964) : A couple of days ago, it was time to take Missy for a walk around the rancho. She needs to be trained to be "leash broke" so that she doesn't haul the Ol' Rancher face down around the back forty (you can't imagine how strong this pup is!). And, she needs to be familiarized with the approximate parameters of the electric fence she'll soon be facing.
So, her 15' (or so) link chain was loosed from the dog mansion and configured on my hand (so I could hang on) and wrist (in case my hand came off) to keep her from running off if she tried to bolt away. She loved it and wanted to continue the trip to nowhere in particular!
I must say that I was a tad surprised that she caught on so quickly. It wasn't necessary to restrain her all of the time. She was allowed to snoop and sniff just about anywhere she pleased. Abbie accompanied us most of the way. We three enjoyed the walk.
At the start of the walk, we moseyed past "Cabrito", the law tractor which was covered with a tarp. Of course, it needed to be investigated by Abbie the coon hunter and Missy, who's bred for pulling sleds and not chasing game and critters. Nevertheless, it didn't take long for the lights to come on. Both doggies erupted in barking frenzy and began to circle the tractor. The game was definitely afoot. I was getting set for a grand show when both dogs circled to the front of the tractor. At that exact moment, a little cottontail wabbit exited the rear of the tarp and rapidly bounced his way to safety.
All I could do was to try to speak in simple enough English for the dogs to look the other way and see their prey laughing at them as it wandered off. "Git'im! Git'im! There he goes! Git'im!" Abbie, the great black and white hunter, and Missy, the sled dog, refused to abandon the track their nose had encountered. To them, the wabbit was still under the tarp. *SIGH*.
After a while, it became apparent that the game had been called off due to the opposing team having left the field. So, the tour around the place was resumed.
The Bunny Hop or Wabbit Wabbit. Who's got the the Wabbit?: As we headed away from the tractor and up the driveway and toward the back end of the property, Abbie abandoned her escort responsibilities and bailed toward the neighbor's big back yard to the west of us. It wasn't long until I could see her bobbing up and down through the high grass at high speed chasing a....wabbit. Yep. It was the same cottontail that had escaped a few minutes earlier. They were quickly out of sight. So, after a good laugh, no thought was given to the matter because there a lot of places for a small rabbit to ditch a dog out there. Missy and the Mister ignored Abbie and walked for awhile longer then headed back to the doghouse.
The next day, Abbie didn't bother with her breakfast. She just turned her nose up at it. She's a real "breakfast dog" so, when she didn't eat, I knew something was up. But, my little girl dog is so well fed that there was no reason to be concerned so that was that. She'd eat when she was hungry.
About noon the next day, you can't imagine what showed up next to the patio gate; it was the carcass of a half-eaten rabbit. You can't say that I was surprised because Abbie is a huntin' dog, after all. It sho' nuff explained why she had skipped breakfast and dinner the day before.
Chickening report: Well….the Ol’ Chicken Dude can’t seem to find the time to trap his dirty birdies and hide them in the coop for a couple of weeks. It’s not like it would take all that much time. It’s only a matter of setting up a cardboard box, a 24” stick of some kind, and a 10’ length of string/twine and that’s about it. You just toss some chicken feed under the box and wait for the stupid chickens to get under the box: pull the string and the box drops down and you have a baffled bird in a box.
The idea is to retrain them to stay in the coop again. They got into the habit of avoiding the coop because of Missy being so into free chicken dinners. The plan is to have her muzzled and on the electric fence (basically a shock collar that limits her range). When she is trained to ignore the chickens like Abbie was, then all will be well at here at rancho pollo. Both dogs can wander about and the chickens can range in safety.
The good news is that our three layers are doing just that. As of late, they found a great place to lay their delicious cackle berries. It's the smallish plastic wheelbarrow on our back porch. It's partly filled with flower pot excelsior because Connie the Planter was overhauling her flower boxes and planters and stored it there. The hens dig it. Even our new bird, Feral Fawcett, has joined the egg wagon. It keeps us from having an Easter egg hunt every few days, too.
Speaking of eggs, we now have a few dozen eggs that were preserved through "water glassing". Using that method, eggs will keep up to a year or so. It's really simple and easy and not at all expensive. E-mail us if you would like to know more about it: ranchorelaxoeggs@gmail.com.
Tired!: We've been driving the Camry as of late for a couple of reasons. One is that it gets decent gas mileage (which is greatly needed now that gas prices are outrageous and getting higher yet). The other is that the Coop DeVille has the trailer hooked up to it so that we can haul trash to the dump and also so we can haul stuff to the hangar where we can sort and price it for the yard sale next month.
The trusty little car has given us no issues in years so it was very interesting when we pulled into church last Sunday and the right front tire was flat. Thankfully, we had a spare. There was no hurry to get a replacement since the spare was in excellent condition.
Ah, but this is Rancho Relaxo and you just never know what's going to happen, eh? A few days later, while in town, we pulled into the church to drop off some stuff. Lo and behold, another tire was flat! Come to find out, because we hadn't driven the Camry all that much, the tires were weather worn and were separating.
Not wanting to experience a third flat, it was off to a local tire place where we had them mount a nice new set of 195x70Rx14 "Kelly Springfield" tires. All is smooth and well again. No more flats (and that's flat out good news)!
It's about thyme: We love to have spares and backups around here. That includes spices. A quick check of our pantry would show that we could probably accommodate all but a 5-star restaurant. Heck; we even have enough chili powder and cumin to start our own Mexican restaurant.
But, when Connie the Canner was trying to can some beef stew, we ran out of thyme! We then checked all of our spice supplies a couple of times and just couldn't find any! Trust us; that won't happen again!
Getting to the hub of the matter: When, in the course of human events, you are bound to run across certain issues pertaining to your wheelbarrow; what are you to do? You fix the thing. So it was with our nice and necessary wheelbarrow when one of its tires decided to go flat. Well.....actually.....it had some help going flat.
Last October, we tossed a couple of sacks of concrete into "Clyde", the wheelbarrow (as in Clyde Barrow), in anticipation of resetting our steel wagon wheels on one side of our driveway. Some miscreant hooked a rope to them and dragged them down the street so it was incumbent upon us to solidly re-establish them.
However, despite the fact that the wheelbarrow was covered with a tarp, it somehow got wet when it rained. The bloody thing was flooded. UGH. That meant that there were more than 120 pounds of solid concrete in it. That much concrete presented too much stress on one of the pneumatic tires so it went flat and destroyed the tube. Great.
The tires were already about 8 years old so not much thought was given to the matter. In fact, it didn't matter so much that we are just now getting it fixed (I mean, just what are you going to do with a 120 pound solid chunk of concrete, anyway?).
The next trip into town saw us bringing home a nice shiny new tire, tube, and wheel with which to remedy the tire tragedy and remove the eyesore. But, this is Rancho Relaxo and you just know that things got....interesting.... rather quickly.
After pulling the cotter pin, the old wheel was slipped off and the new one was popped on. Uh.....the axel was magically too short so the cotter pin couldn't be replaced. Great. The opposing wheel and axel was gently tapped so that they were snug against the cotter pin in hope that it would slide just enough to allow the other cotter pin to be inserted. Still "no go".
So, after a bit of pondering and eyeballing the matter, the bearings on the wheel hub were (gently) knocked out (they're just "press fit"). After that, the hub was circumscribed at 5/16" and a hacksaw was employed. In a few minutes, the saw job was completed, the cut was de-burred, and the bearings were re-fit. The wheel was slipped on and the cotter pin was inserted without further ado. It was exactly the right fit without any slack in the axel.
Well....there you have it: another short episode of the long happenings at Rancho Relaxo: home of Rancho Ran, the world's foremost authority (the previous one died): home of the Yo-Yo Twins, home of a retarded duck, home of Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-kook): where the air smells, where alliteration reigns supreme, where being modern is optional, where there are no slaves to fashion, where the eggs are always mostly fresh, where things can get...interesting, where it’s all news to me, and where...you just never know.
