Our friend the Factor was visiting again recently. He likes to get out of the city and come get a dose of fresh country air (sometimes it's not so fresh septic tank smell) three or four times a year.
I benefit from his visits because he kindly offers to do any little odd job around the house that I need done. Remember the coop door he fixed last time he was here?
So I asked if he could put a pulley on the little back door to the chicken coop. It has always been a bit of an awkward stretch for me to reach it and lately the latch had been getting stuck.
And, is if by magic, it was fixed.
Many thanks to him and his skills.
Someone dumped trash on our county road recently.
I drove by it for about a week. It appeared to be a school folder of work. I thought maybe the person who "lost" it would come by and pick it up.
The longer it was there the bigger mess it was making. All the paper was scattering down the road.
So I decided to do my good deed for the day and go out and pick it all up. I was prepared to name and shame the person who had dumped the folder, if I found a name on anything.
But as I got closer to the main pile of paper, it turned out to be a bag of unused school supplies. It was actually two bags of school supplies. Thankfully one of the bags was still intact. It was the pack of lined paper that was scattering down the road.
I also picked up other random pieces of trash along the road, like water bottles, Dr. Pepper cans, and Sonic bags.
It only took about thirty minutes to fill up my trash bag with things. But now the county road looks better.
I managed to save a few seeds from the okra and, surprisingly, the Christmas beans.
After reading a little on what to do, I left a couple of okra pods on the stems until all the other okra was finished and we cut them down. The trunks were so thick I needed help.
I had previously tried saving the seeds inside ripe okra after I'd cut it, but they shriveled up into nothing. So later I could see that growing and drying on the vine was the correct way. They looked just like the seeds I'd planted.
I'm clearly not good at estimating (if I had I would have guessed 50 seeds), so I actually counted the okra seeds and came up with 211 seeds from the two pods. This will last me a lifetime probably, since I won't be planting much okra in future.
The dried pods looked like spiky fingers. If I ever need to make a scarecrow, I'll know what to use for the hands.
And the Christmas beans were a total surprise. When I pulled up all the cream pea vines, I noticed one small bean plant underneath that had a few dried pods. Inside were full grown beans. So I thought this was the plant's way to say it was giving me another chance and to try again. I'm going to try planting in the early spring next time.
We inherited a sweet little dog recently from our oldest daughter and her expanding family. She had originally bought him as a puppy at Canton First Monday soon after we moved here so that makes him about five years old now.
At the time, the family collectively agreed that Frankie was a good name for the Chi-Pom-Pom (chiahuahua pomeranian pomeranian mix). If you know Guv'nor and his love for the Chelsea Football Club you might remember that one of their star players a few years ago was Frank Lampard. And the phrase "come on Frankie my son" has often been heard around the house during matches.
So we got Frankie several weeks ago, about the same time as Daughter was going off to college and Son was coming home. And since we already had a dog and a cat around the house, one more wasn't going to be much trouble. Plus Frankie is definitely an indoor kind of dog which the other two aren't. Son quickly adopted him and they both look after each other. He is a sweet little dog even though he barks at every little thing.
The other day I was at home by myself and about midday I realized it had been particularly quiet. As you know our dogs bark at everything. So I stepped outside and called Frankie. No response. He usually barks and comes running.
Then I thought, maybe he's inside asleep somewhere. So I walked around the house calling for him, upstairs, downstairs, in all the rooms. No response. It was very odd for Frankie not to come running.
So I went back outside. I walked all around the house calling his name, clapping my hands. I walked out to the chicken coop. In and around the garage and carport. No response.
The only conclusion I could make was that Frankie had been snatched up by something. He might have run into the woods after something and the something got him. Or he might have been running around in the yard and a hawk swooped down and grabbed him up. He does only weight about eight pounds.
So I gave up and carried on with my day, hoping he'd turn up eventually. All I could think of at the time was, I don't even have a good photo of him.
Later that afternoon as I was about to go feed the goats, I thought I'd drive around and look for Frankie while I was out in the Mule.
Then there he was. Sitting and waiting on the Mule seat. I'm guessing he had been there all day. I sometimes feed the goats in the morning, and I sometimes take him with me. So while I was out doing chores in the morning, he must've run and got in the Mule to wait for me. Only problem was, I didn't go out that morning.
Poor Frankie. He'd been waiting all day for me. He was pretty happy to see me. And I must admit I was pretty happy to see him, too.
I'm still not sure why he never barked when I was outside calling him. I must have walked right past him and never thought to look in the Mule.
