black sweat pants, stickerbur dance.

Farm life is beginning to be easier, but only after three years of being here. Every evening, Mike and I sit and ponder this fact, ponder life or the universe or other stuff, but of course, that involves sitting outside with the goats, or with the dog and various chickens scratching around and sometimes a peacock checking us out. Today, all the creatures want to be around us - especially since we have chips and my homemade salsa, but most particularly, the corn chips. Corn is a universal food, loved by all and eaten by nearly evrything on the planet in one form or another. It's very popular with our breeds. I just wish I could grow it successfully.

But that's another story.

Farm life is good because of the fields of gourds and literally tons of vegetables which happen to be mostly tomatoes and peppers at the moment (with errant gourds growing in and around them, as well) . It's a good life, too, because the animals are all pretty healthy.

We have the growing of tomatoes down.. that we have. It's the weed populations and it's why the black plastic didn't work and it's what we need to do next year that's eating us -- and all the bugaboos that we have to work out next year. All these improvements from last year creates a mysterious mix of success that we have and continue to have, but yet, never really have totally. For example, had the weeds not taken over, had the gourds ALL germinated properly, had we had the sprinklers set right.. you know the drill... something can always be done a bit better.

But it's always an adventure.

In the Texas heat - mild for this time of year, it's eighty degrees outside but feels 100 with the humiidty-rampant air that sucks the last breath out of you and leaves you wringing out your shirt in the yard to dispense with the water/sweat accumulations.

Today, I planted about a fourth of the first part of the 'acre' of gourds again today while Mike repaired fences. The germination wasn't what it should have been and the blank spaces in the field need to be filled in. I know that in Texas, you don't plant anything past the first of July and expect it not to fry in the summer heat, so I'm running out of gourd-growing time.

I also added compost to many of the existing gourd plants that seem to be a bit puny. Hopefully, they'll come around before it's too hot and begin their long, long vines that will stretch, eventually, across the full acre. We have great compost, piles of it, in fact, but it does no good if it's not sitting on top of some plant or the other.

I have been feeling the effects of the steroids that are used to combat poison ivy (Dexamethazone) and frankly, have lost a large part of the last two weeks because I've been so out of it. The drugs make me crazy, make me pant and panic a lot, tend to make me feel 'drunk' and make me act like someone I'm not.

The nurse I called on Friday felt like I needed to go to the hospital emergency room in Bastrop because I simply ca told her how the drugs were screwing me up. She had already told Mike that I shouldn't drive and should not do anything else, for that matter, except drink lots of fluids. I called the doctor's office simply because I could, for the first time, do this without wanting to bite their heads off for what they did to me.

I drove home the back way on Friday -- and barely, really, made it without killing someone or myself. Or maiming someone since I know I'd go to jail if I did anything more.

But alas, the effects of this fiasco are almost over. I will never, ever call the doctor on a weekend. Somehow I think they were punishing me because I interrupted their dinnertime and thus gave me these potent steroids for retribution. You don't want to mess with their dating time.

Anyway, back to the farm. We seem to have a bead on the goats' health and that's important. And it's Father's day, so Mike's on the phone with his dad, no doubt regaling him of all the things of the farm, since Mike's dad lived on a farm in his youth.. and soon it will be time to make dinner. And then relax for the rest of the evening. Or finish the second DVD of the Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring long version. Both my parents passed away in the last ten years, so there's no need to call anyone. Game over, obligation over. I miss them both, especially my father. Take care of yours. It's an important lesson to learn, but you don't have to learn much. Honor those who brought you to this world and love them for who they are, not for what you think they should have been.