A Rainforest Summer

Jul 27, 2024

Happy Saturday friends!

Tired of the heat? Fall, winter, and spring in North Carolina are lovely! Who wouldn't want to be swaddled in a cable knit sweater, wrapped in a blankie, with a hot apple cider, sitting near a smokeless Solo stove for warming the feeties and surrounded by like minded women and all of my animals! Women's Groups will continue in the fall! Text me if you're interested: 720-635-7015.

AND! 56 more days until fall!

But in the meantime, it's a rainforest summer here in North Carolina.

I sometimes almost always forget about one of the joys of summer in the south: rain. For awhile there it was over the top hot and dry. We watched the pond get lower and wondered if the whole summer was going to be dry. Coming from Colorado, dry in the summer feels scary. The grass was scorched and the little mowing we had to do was a dusty mess.

But then the rains came and it really hasn't stopped for a few weeks now, ahhh, relief! On Thursday morning I Love Lucy and I were walking in the woods, exploring all the nooks and crannies, me with my camera, her with her nose. It was still cool-ish but very humid as it had just rained. I was talking quietly to Lu because that's how you talk in a wet forest 😊 I stood up from taking photos of mushrooms to see this:

Do you see her? We were only about 75 feet away from this pretty one:

I Love Lucy was busy snuffling a hole and never even knew she was there.

The mushrooms are fabulous right now:

Next to these amber colored mushrooms I found this tiny frog:

Look at its little hands!

A couple of days later the same mushrooms were all frilly:

I found another tree frog stuck to a window and like all the others, it has Polar Bear hair tangled in its feet:

And then I found the Polar Bear stuck to the floor😁:

Speaking of the Polar Bear, she seems to finally be gaining some weight again now that we've added raw eggs to her diet. Although she might have lost a pound or so after B-Rad removed this from her neck:

Aarrrrg! I found it, but I begged B-Rad to take it off because it was so huge! What in the world? I've never seen a tick like that. Into a baggie with alcohol it went, never to suck on another living being. Shudder, gag, ew ew ew!

Back to pretty things please Julia! Ok! Check out handsome Wynter:

We finally got a drier day at the beginning of the week and could get some mowing done. B-Rad mowed the upper pasture and parking area and then I went out. I managed to get the girl goat's pasture done and headed out to do the lower pasture. I was carefully navigating next to a pile of tarp covered wood, watching my front wheel closely so I didn't run it over...totally forgetting how far the mowing deck behind me stuck out.

Horrible noises and then silence.

Damn it all to hell, I had totally run over the edge of that tarp, it wound up into the blades, and the whole thing shuddered to a stop. Suck, suck, suck. Ugh. On top of that, because it had turned itself off, I forgot to turn the key to the off position so it turns out I trashed the battery too. Sigh.

After that, more days of rain and the grass grew overnight. We closed the girl goats into the barn (with access to their smaller pasture) and out of their larger pasture. I think Rosemary and Parsley were saying, "Why? Why do you hate us?":

So the boys could graze it. Wynter and Jaffee:

Jaffee and Sweetness:

I found a fairy ring in the lower pasture:

And these two just randomly poking through the grass:

One day late this week I took ManChild up to Vicious Fishes (a taproom nearby) for lunch at his favorite food truck, NC Burger. As I was passing neighboring farms I saw a woman on a riding lawn mower, mowing her wet grass in the rain and thought: Well seriously, what are you going to do? It really hasn't stopped raining long enough for it to dry out! 🤪 We have spots on the farm where the grass is a foot tall or more! When we got to the corner we saw this next storm coming and I wondered if she was going to just mow through it:

Which of course caused more:

And these Red Chanterelles (no I haven't tried them yet, I'm too chicken):

MEMORIES:

We used to get the craziest rainbows on our Colorado farm:

Little Onya June's birthday was this week. She crossed the rainbow bridge in 2018 when she was 16 years old. A ripe old age for a Border Collie. She was the best I've ever had:

ManChild was 8 here:

THE MEMES:

I saw this whole thread on Facebook this week about the horrors of those hand dryers in public restrooms—for the noise and the grossness. Laura E, this is for you!

So true:

My Nichole reads my newsletters and she's going to be all, "Oh gross Stepmonster, you're talking about my dad!" I can hear it already lol. Too bad missy, your dad is the best😍