Spring Rainbows

Apr 21, 2023

Happy Springy Saturday Friends!

Funny things happen to me all the time: Last Friday I was coming home from getting takeout and when I parked the truck I found a tree frog sitting on my hood. It was dark so at first I thought it was a leaf until it moved. Good God. That poor frog! Had it been there when I left? Had it just taken a 45 minute adventure on the hood of my car? Thank goodness it had those tiny suction cup toes!

Also last Friday we had a downpour of rain that included thunder, lightening, and marble sized hail. The crazy weather continued on with no sign of letting up so I had to suck it up and go do farm chores in it:

I was soaked by the time I was done. When we get extreme weather like that, it’s often necessary to mitigate the water that we haven’t yet dealt with. We continue to work on the drainage around the farm but this will be a many years-long process to first figure it out and then actually do the work. This time, the rain came so fast and furious I ended up needing to do some thing about some flooding that was happening in a goat area. There was a foot of water piling up and I needed to get in there and shovel out some areas for it to escape down the hill. It tends to back up because of old leaves and dirt that get caught up in the wire horse fence:

Next up was this little area between the two barns that was mistakenly built in a way that it floods in heavy rain. Sweep that water away!

Then it was time to just enjoy the way the land looks when it’s flooding. We aren’t in the mountains, just a hilly area and when it really starts coming down our pond starts pouring out this outflow pipe and down the hill to the stream down below. I love watching running water, somewhere inside of me I'm still a whitewater kayaker:

And at the end, a rainbow!

All the rain knocked the tulip poplar flowers out of the trees. You rarely even see them, they are kind of hidden amongst the leaves. I was lucky to see find a few after the storm:

The day after the rain brought blue skies and the Polar Bear decided to bask in the sun while I was doing chores:

I love how the goats are loose in the background and Wynter is peering over the fence at them like, “Ok, you have to let me know how you got her to let you do this!”

I love walking with them in the forest and seeing what they like to eat. They seem to enjoy poison ivy which makes me very happy and a lot of the thorny stuff that is a real pain to get rid of:

I put bells on my girl goats and made myself laugh!

The blue tailed skinks like to come out and play in the warm, early morning sunshine at the goat barn. We are always surprising each other as I come and go in the morning:

We found another little turtle, this time it was a box turtle and not a snapping. Much safer :-)

But look at those claws!

The horses are at it again. It’s a never ending job fixing the old brittle fences here:

And:

I found this monstrosity in a hay bale this week:

I shrieked and stood there shuddering, “OMG! OMG! OMG!” I have no idea what it was, maybe a cat? Gag. Animals, both dead and alive get caught up in balers pretty often. This was a very dead animal that was caught in this bale—how do I know? There were no other parts other than this—thank God.

Speaking of monstrosities, what in the world is going on here?? Ewwww!

My sorsies soaking up the morning sun:

I happened to be going through old facebook memories and ran across this photo that I took from the front porch of my Colorado ranch. April is such a pretty time of the year, everything is (usually) starting to green up but the "fourteeners" (mountains that are 14,000 ft above sea level) in the background still have snow. That's Meeker and Long's Peak just below the balloon:

Another facebook memory from back then:

Last one!:

We’ve been seeing the pollen on the pond do this recently and are beginning to suspect a small spring under our pond. I know the neighbor’s bigger pond is fed by several, maybe ours is too?

Just a little shout out to whoever needs to hear this: get your clothes dryer vent/hose vacuumed out! We had ours done and it’s both safer and our dryer doesn’t have to work as hard now. Takes much less time to dry clothes too!

Finally had someone come and cut down all the edges of the pond. What a job! It took two men about 4 hours to do! Still some Sweet Gums to take the mini chainsaw to but it’s looking so much better! He does a great job. Let me know if you’re local and want his info!