Another day at the ranch

Morning thus far: retrieved the trash can and two days’ worth of mail, made another batch of syrup for the bees, checked the transplanted tomatoes (a few knocked out by the storm yesterday, but overall, not bad), checked the cuke progress (flowering!), watched a super league rugby playoff match from Sunday, fed and watered the dogs, and sliced a bunch of chicken into thin strips to make jerky. For the dogs – because I keep reading bad stories about chicken jerky treats from China, and the jerky at Costco? From China. We’ve not noticed any ill effects on our dogs from that, but making our own is easy enough (plus we know exactly what’s in it: chicken, no glycerin). Now eating and waiting for two new servers to show up so I can build those out and hustle them to the NOC. The day is young!

Revenge of the weeds

The last time I did a major weeding run in the back was when it was desperate for it: the weeds had completely taken over in the back. With some hard, determined work every day, I got it cleared out and back in shape. The only upside to all that work was that the weeds were large and thus easy to pull, including the roots, in large handfuls. The same row in the picture linked above now has eight billion teeny tiny individual weeds that are turning into a major project to remove. In the same amount of time that it would normally take me to clear three or four frames, I have managed one. Only five more in that row to go…

I’ve heard a saying that a “weed is only a plant in the wrong place” or something to that effect. No. A weed is a weed, regardless of where it grows, and if it happens to be growing in my frames, it’s a pain in the ass.

Dealing

Short of hiring a bunch of people to come out and get the property releveled and sloped appropriately to make up for my jerk of a neighbor raising the base of his property at my expense by trucking in huge amounts of dirt (and instead of my jerk of a neighbor doing the right thing and sloping everything to the pond he has at the back of his property), for now, every time we get dumped on, we have to deal with the flooding. We also have to deal with the animals – both chickens and dogs – getting into and drinking the water. All of the animals are happy enough to get ass deep in the water and drink from the lakes that form wherever they happen to have access, neither of which is pretty. Well, I take that back: it’s pretty disgusting, especially if it’s an area that has been shat upon by said animals. But when I look at the big picture and realize I can’t really do anything about it at this point except try to keep them out of those places until things dry out, life is much less stressful.