NEARING FALL

Well, here I am again. Sorry it's been so long since I made a post. Initially I thought I would update this every day, but it hasn't seemed to work out that way yet. My last post was in August, and it is now late September. Which means...NFL time. Yes! Of course, to watch my favorite team I had to spend some bucks this year. In California it was free since they are a northern California team, but here they have other favorites. So, I had to get NFL Ticket. It's expensive, but how can life go on normally if I don't get to watch the Niners? Especially now that things are finally looking up for them. I suffered through the evil years, knowing we had almost two decades of championships. That's much more than many football fans ever get. I kept telling myself it things will get good again. Every year I had to be more convincing to myself, but now it appears patience has paid off before I got to be too old to see and hear the TV. So glad they had the sense to make Mike Singletary head coach. Well, on to my shenanigans around here.

Note: Did you know, according to Merriam-Webster, they do not know the origin of the word shenanigan? I always thought it was Irish, and probably of Celtic origin. Shows where thinking gets me. Dangerous pastime.

I've mostly been engaged in continual manual labor. I went to college when I was 33 so I would not have to break my back all my life to earn a living. Got tired of that. So, now, here it is 31 years later, and my brief interlude with easy labor is over. I guess the next 30 years is hard work again. The only change is this time I want to do the work. It is such a good feeling to see things looking better around here. All the piles of junk getting cleaned up. I realized at one point that I am cleaning up decades of other peoples stuff. Recently, I cleaned up a big pile of junk which contained several parts from an old car. My Dad thinks from the picture I sent him of the fender it may be a 1949 Chevy coupe, or a 1950 Nash. I figured it was early 50's at the latest, probably 40's when I saw it. What a difference in the way they were made. They used eighteen gauge steel I am told.

Anyway, I found and hauled out both rear fenders, a front door (which was further back in the woods) the gas tank, drive shaft and other miscellaneous parts. The rear axle I couldn't begin to lift, so that stays where it is for now. I also found the gear shift knob, but it was all rusted. At one point I thought I had found another gear shift knob still attached to the shaft for a floor shift, but when I dug up the rest it turned out to be half of a collar from a horse harness. The ball on that was shiny.

Here is a photo (taken with cell phone) of the fender for those who are interested.

Another interesting item was the small building that was collapsed on top of all the other stuff. At one point I uncovered one end of the roof frame. Judging by the size I thought it must have been a storage shed, or a smoke house. Then that little voice that sometimes, or frequently, speaks to us unbidden said, "Or an outhouse." That gave me pause for thought. It was close to the two old houses. Just about ten yards from one, and about 20 feet from the other. The next question was, did it collapse upon the spot where it spent its glory days? If so, how many of the boards partially imbedded in the dirt do I dare dig up?

It was nice finishing up that job. Instead of a big pile of wood, metal, glass, old clothes, etc., there is only a big patch of dirt in among the trees. Perfect place for weeds to grow next spring.

Speaking of weeds, burning spotted knapweed turned out to be not such a good deal for me. I burned a bunch of it in an old rusty 50 gallon drum with handles someone had conveniently welded on. The smoke didn't even burn light gray, or white, like plant material, but burned a medium tone of brown. Doesn't smell nice woodsmoke either. Had a little bit of a disagreeable smell to it. Plus, having to shove my arms into the smoke up to my elbows to feed more weeds into the fire caused my arms to break out in tiny, very itchy bumps.

I wondered why they call it "spotted" knapweed. I never noticed any spots on the plant, but I sure noticed them on my arms.

I had another mild surprise here. When I was working at UCD, our unit published a two – BIG – two volume set on the Weeds of California and other Western States. It took us about three years to put it together. It was quite an undertaking for everyone involved. I have a copy of it since I was involved, but never dreamed I would ever use it much. Well, I have been using it quite a bit here to identify weeds. It also helped me in my battle with spotted knapweed. I didn't realize we had it in California also. It is bad here in Glacier County, Montana. I found it very interesting that Glen County, California was successful in eradicating it. They must have jumped all over right away. They didn't here from what I understand. They say it got started here from a bale of hay that fell off a truck near the town of Babb a couple of miles down the road.

I took our dogs swimming about a week ago. The weather has been very nice lately. Mostly in the 80's. That is the warmest it has been all summer, although yesterday it only got up to the 50's (31 low) and rained most of the day. When the clouds lifted around 3 p.m., the tops of the mountains had snow on them. It was kind of like a magician whipping his cape off of a prop and shouting, "Voila!" Here are a couple of pics of Chief Mountain and Yellow Mountain from yesterday.

Yellow Mtn.

Chief Mtn. (Smoking his pipe)

To continue with the dogs, we had a nice time at St. Mary River. They both like to swim, and seem to have enough sense not to get out into the faster, deeper part of the river. That being said, at one point a blue heron landed on the shore about twenty yards from my dogs who were busy trying to flush a chipmunk from a log pile. Of course, whether to continue trying to flush the unseen, but I-can-smell-you-in-there chipmunk, or going for the huge bird in plain sight was a no-brainer for them. The bird flew before they got there (I know, you didn't see that coming, right?) and landed on a gravel bar in the middle of the river straight across from where it had been. Again, another no-brainer for them. They plunged right in and struck for the gravel bar. The river wasn't too deep there, but if the bird flew again and landed on the opposite shore I was afraid they might pull a real no-brainer this time and end up in deep water (pun intended). I called them back, which created great confusion. They stopped immediately, turned back toward me, then back toward the bird, then back toward me again. You could tell what they were thinking. "But, but, but...it's right there, Master! Do we have to?" When I told them, yeah, they had to, they were good girls and came right in. About the time they got out of the water, a small flotilla of mergansers came floating rapidly downriver. Poor girls, it was all they could do not to go in after them. The littlest one, Pippa, or Skweeks (her nickname) walked along the shore, keeping pace with the ducks, and alternately looking from them to me, until they were gone.

A wet Pippa-Skweeks

Pippa almost had another wildlife run-in this morning. I took them out about dawn to do their early morning relief work. Pippa immediately stuck her nose in the air and trotted around behind the house. She ducked under the fence onto the neighbors property, sniffed around, and started following the trail of something in the direction of our garage. I called her, but she ignored me this time. I could tell she was very hot on whatever she was trailing. Since there are a lot of coyotes around here, mostly heard and not seen - unlike what we were told good children were as kids, I went after her as this is the time of day they are still out and about. I had to practically scream at her before she finally came back. Our poor shepherd was cowering right next to me thinking I was mad at her. After I had assured Mahkwi (the shepherd) she was

Mahkwi – grande dame of the ranch

not in dutch, and we were back in the house, I hung up my coat, got a drink of water, and while drinking it walked over to the glass doors in the kitchen to admire the snow on the mountains. As soon as I looked out what do I see on the other side of the fence behind our garage? A coyote; standing there looking around, probably thinking, "Drat. I was gonna eat that dog too." Then it trotted casually across our little hill and off into the direction I usually hear them yipping and howling.

Mahkwi pulls sentry duty every evening. Hey, it's in her genes. She goes out on the deck around dusk each evening, and lays out there surveying our packs territory for a couple of hours or so. Well after dark anyway. Anything that comes near (near translated as anything within sight, smell, or hearing) gets warned away.

Mahkwi at the start of her nightly tour of sentry duty.

Another thing the dogs like about living here is their daily grooming. Before we moved, I groomed them about once a week; sometimes less. Here, they get it every day. Why the change? One word – stickers. Pippa comes in covered with stickers every time she goes out. Mostly stinging nettle stickers. They really cling to that wiry hair of hers. As an example, here is what I combed out of her hair after about twenty minutes of running around outside. The longer she is out, the worse it is.

stinging nettle seeds

Mahkwi doesn't get them nearly as bad, and they are much easier to comb out of her. The only problem with combing them out of Mahkwi's hair is that they don't really stick too well to it, with the result that they fall onto the floor and I have to pick up these tiny seeds. They are about 1mm in size. With Pippa some of the hair comes out too, so I can just take them off the comb and throw them out. The dogs don't care though. In fact, I've seen Pippa intentionally roll in the stinging nettle. I suspect she has figured out. She certainly seems to reach her Zen zone when she gets them combed out. Maybe I can write an article on it. Sticker Zen for Dogs.

Turned out to be a good morning for wildlife viewing. After the coyote, about one-half hour later, two white tailed deer went bounding across our place. Actually got to shoot some video of them. It was through the windows, but came out not too bad. If I can ever figure out how to transfer the video on my DV tapes to my computer I'll post the coyote and deer footage to this blog.

The tourist season is pretty much over here. The traffic has slowed to almost nothing. The weather is warm again after the rain yesterday so it is still enjoyable. Some trees are turning yellow here and there. In fact, here is another shot I took while at St. Mary River with my dog posse.

St. Mary River - beginnings of fall

A couple of the restaurants and a store close this week. The store has a gas station, so unless the St. Mary Lodge gas station stays open, I will have to go to Browning (35 miles) for fuel. Better fill my 5 gallon can with diesel. When the colors really pop I'll post some pics. It is after noon now, I guess I should do some more work. I'm going see if I can pull up some wire mesh fencing partially buried under the dirt. It is perfect for horses to get tangled up in. I can't get it out by hand, and can not dig it up, so I am going to see if I can pull it out with my truck. You have to learn to use everything you have available to get things done around here. It's not like cleaning up your back yard.