Mr. Crawford Remembered

And a vintage sign removed...

This photo was taken in 2006.

Mr. Crawford's parents had operated a little country store in our neighborhood at one time, and Mr. Crawford inherited the property. One day, he quit his bank job in town and moved into the store building.  He lived a very simple life there, without running water or electricity. In the yard around the old store, he had lots of little gardening spots where he grew grapes and flowers and heirloom tomatoes.

During those years, I worked part-time in another little country store in the neighborhood (also now closed), and Mr. Crawford came to the store every now and then to eat a sandwich and visit with anyone who was there. I passed along to him a big stack of old Organic Gardening magazines that my brother-in-law had given me, and he read (studied!) them cover-to-cover and loved to discuss the gardening ideas in them.

Then Mr. Crawford moved away. He said that he couldn't take the stench of the big new chicken barn across the creek any longer. About that same time, I started working in town. So our paths didn't cross anymore, and I don't believe I ever saw Mr. Crawford again. He passed away last Christmas. I read about it in the newspaper.

Not long after his death, someone removed the Pepsi-Cola sign from the old store building. Maybe the sign was kept by a family member -- I hope so. Or maybe someone took it for their private collection, or maybe, since it was a metal sign, it ended up at a salvage yard. Whatever the case, I doubt it will be seen again by the general public.

I still see the little store building as I drive down the road to and from my home, and it always makes me think of Mr. Crawford. He was kindly and intelligent, and I'm sorry that he's gone on.

Fires along the Niobrara River

Fires in Brown and Keya Paha Counties in northern Nebraska

North central Nebraska is fighting three big fires in Brown and Keya Paha counties, along or near the Niobrara River. As I understand it, all of these fires were started by lightning from thunderstorms. Vegetation  is very dry due to drought, and high winds have been spreading the fires. Today, the temperatures climbed as high as 108° in the area.

The above map from the Nebraska Emergency Management Area shows the locations of the three fires. The largest of these, on the west, is the Fairfield Canyon Fire that has burned about 50,000 acres. The two smaller fires on the east are the Wentworth Fire and the Hall Fire. These fires are 50 to 60 miles north/northwest of where I grew up in northern Nebraska.

The news section of the Radio KBRB website reports that various agencies and organizations are providing support and assistance. The Central Plains Chapter of the American Red Cross, the Southern Baptist Emergency Relief Team, the National Guard, the Rocky Mountain Incident Management team, the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, firefighting crews from over 50 Nebraska and South Dakota communities, and other civic and religious organizations are all working in the area.  One of the roles of the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency is to coordinate these efforts to the best advantage.

The National Guard has sent water tankers and also some helicopters that can carry big buckets of water. The helicopter crews can dump the water onto the fire, or they can lower the buckets to the ground where the water can be used by firefighters. These aerial photos from the Omaha World show how the helicopters lower the buckets into the river to fill them with water.

I am not sure this link will work for everyone, but I am going to include it anyway. This is Lorie Olson's Facebook album of about 250 fire photos from the Fairfield Canyon fire. If you click on one of the little photos, it will enlarge, and then you can click on that photo to go to the next one.

My heart is touched by the Facebook messages of my Nebraska friends who live in the area. They describe how they are playing a part in a huge community effort to fight these fires. They are baking cookies and cinnamon rolls, donating bottled water and ice, lending their cots and air mattresses, and working in emergency shelters and kitchens.

This evening, I received an email from Carolyn Hall whose family owns the Hall Ranch where one of the fires is raging (the fire on the east edge of the map.). Here is her assessment of the situation: "They have backfired along the west, north and east sides of the canyon so if the wind stays in the south today it may burn itself out.  The big question is what happens tomorrow when the wind goes to the northwest??????? More troubling is the Wentworth fire which is out of the canyon and heading northeast.  That will really be a problem when the wind goes to the NW."

These fires are devastating people's lives in so many ways. It's not just grass that's burning -- it's people's livelihoods and futures. Please pray for rain for northern Nebraska and all of the drought-parched Midwest -- rain without lightning.

UPDATE: The fires were finally declared contained on July 28. Destroyed by fire: 75,000 acres, 14 homes, 42 other structures, hundreds of miles of fences, and an unestimated number of livestock and wildlife.

The Excellence of the Ordinary

The beauty of the typical

Last winter, I read It's Not the End of the Earth, But You Can See It from Here: Tales of the Great Plains, a book of stories about small town life in central Nebraska. What a good book! I enjoyed it immensely because I grew up in rural Nebraska, because the stories are entertaining, and because they contain truths, wisdoms, and observations about life that resonate with me.

The author is Roger Welsch of Dannebrog, Nebraska, whom you may remember from the series, "Postcards from Nebraska" on the CBS News Sunday Morning television show. He is a native of Nebraska, born, raised, and educated in Lincoln. His primary area of study, teaching and writing is folklore. He's the author of about two dozen books, many of them about rural life in Nebraska. I intend to read more of them.

The following passage from the introduction to It's Not the End of the Earth, But You Can See It from Here: Tales of the Great Plains  has returned to my mind many times since I read it.  I decided to look it up and share it with you.

My academic training and most of my teaching experience was in folklore, so I learned quite early in my intellectual history to appreciate, to appreciate profoundly the importance, the charm, the beauty, and the value of the typical. That's what folklore is. While the university art departments dwell on the exceptional and unique, the history departments focus on the significant and singular, the English departments examine the best, we in folklore are interested in what represents the typical, the ordinary, the everyday.

The ballet is not typical; the small-town wedding dance is. The events of a Harlequin romance or a soap opera are anything but everyday; the gossip and anecdotes told over the breakfast table in the cafe in Centralia are precisely everyday; they are indeed the very definition of "everyday." Is the everyday of less value or attraction than the exceptional? That has most certainly not been my experience. Nor, probably yours. Virtually every homemade quilt you have ever seen, for example, is superior by many times to 90 percent of the art that currently insults the walls of the galleries. We have all at one time or another, perhaps on a regular basis, eaten roast beef, mash potatoes, and gravy in a humble kitchen that put to shame the finest gourmet meal we have ever enjoyed. Medical science still sorts through folk medicine for the truths it may yet have in its pharmacopoeia.

Source: Welsch, Roger. It's Not The End of the Earth, But You Can See It From Here: Tales of the Great Plains. New York: Villard Books, 1990. (See pp. xiv-xv).

Here, Welsch is describing the focus of folklore studies, but that's not what I remembered. What stuck with me was the truth that many great masterpieces never become famous. They're created by ordinary people in the course of their ordinary lives. We should recognize and treasure these common works of art for the precious jewels that they are.

Image by Molly DG. Some Rights Reserved.

And I wish to add that some of the best music is made on the back porches and in the living rooms of very ordinary people -- and in rural and small-town churches, too. I remember with pleasure many examples of fine, homemade music.

Life in New York City, c. 1920

City life compared to country life

The following paragraphs are excerpted from World Geographies: Second Book, Kentucky Edition (p. 74) by Ralph S. Tarr and Frank M. McMurry, published in New York by the MacMillan Company in 1922.


Life in the Great City

"Heart of New York City," about 1908.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,

Detroit Publishing Company Collection

"Heart of New York City," about 1908.
City Hall Park in foreground

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,

Detroit Publishing Company Collection

The contrast between life in New York City and upon a farm is striking. On some of the streets scarcely anything but stores can be seen for ten or twelve miles, many of them being small, but some occupying enormous buildings, and employing many hundreds of clerks.

Families whose homes are in the city do not usually occupy a whole house, but often hundreds of people live in one building. Such a structure, called an apartment building, may be from six to eight stories high, and some are from fifteen to twenty. They are so arranged that one family occupies only a small part of one floor, called an apartment, or flat. Other families live above and below, as well as on each side, being separated by only a few inches of brick or boards. Since land is so valuable, sometimes costing scores of dollars a square foot, there is usually neither front nor back yard.

In the poorer sections of the city the people are even more densely crowded. Some of the children have never seen the country, and scarcely any birds, trees, or grass, except possibly in one of the city parks. In these crowded sections, there are many foreigners from all the nations of the earth.

To escape such a crowded city life, tens of thousands of men live in suburban towns, or country homes, from ten to forty miles from their places of business. Every day they spend from one to three hours traveling back and forth. Some ride upon elevated railways built in the street, two, three, and four stories above the ground and supported by iron columns. Others go by train in the subway, which extends for many miles underground, and even crosses under the rivers to Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Hoboken.

How different all this is from the country, where only two or three houses may be seen at a time! Where sunlight and fresh air enter one's home from all sides of the building! Where there is plenty of room to play, with green grass, large trees, and singing birds in the yard! No wonder that people living in great cities are anxious to visit the country, the mountains, the lakes, and the seashore, during a few weeks in the summer.

Monday washday in New York City tenements, c. 1910.

Library of Congress, Prints &Photographs Division,

Detroit Publishing Company Collection

A Creek Not Forded

Time to turn around

I took a backroad in northwestern Todd County today, and came upon the creek in the photograph above. I've crossed it before in the summer when the weather was hot and dry, and the water was only a few inches deep.

Today, I didn't have the nerve to ford it. The water was nearly still, but the creek was much wider than usual,and I was afraid it was deeper, too.

If my low-sitting little car stalled in the water -- well, I could imagine some unpleasant scenarios. I would probably get wet, muddy, and cold. I would have to climb all the way out of the ravine before my cell phone might work, and if I had to walk back to the nearest house, it would be a couple of miles.

I cautiously backed my car uphill to a slightly wider place in the road and turned around. It took several maneuvers because I was afraid to get the wheels into the muddy ditches. Finally, I was headed in the opposite direction, and before long, I was back to the same highway I had left 20 minutes before.

No progress toward my destination was made on that sidetrip, but I learned a little lesson about creek fords in winter.

Good Weather for Butchering

A cold spell is ideal

Dennis mentioned to one Mennonite neighbor that we hadn't seen the other Mennonite neighbors working around their barns and sheds for several days. We thought that perhaps they had gone on a trip to visit relative, but it turns out that they have been busy with butchering a beef. Our informant told us that this spell of very cold weather is perfect for butchering.

Most "English" farmers around here would take an animal they wanted butchered to a meat processing plant like Hampton's Meats in Hopkinsville. However, some of the Mennonites and Amish prefer to do their own butchering. It's a way of being frugal. Why pay others to do what you can do yourself?

After we learned what the activity of the day was, I remembered that several times, these neighbors have given us a little package of their freshly ground hamburger shortly after Christmas. The meat was neatly wrapped in white freezer paper and frozen.

Most of the Mennonites in our community have electricity to power their freezers and many other things around the farm. Those who choose to live without electricity usually have propane-powered freezers. The Amish also use propane for their freezers and refrigerators. So the butchering may be done in an old-fashioned way, but the preservation of the meat is quite modern.

Backyard Wildlife

Highlight of my day so far

Driving into our yard a few minutes ago, I startled some birds out of the apple trees and off the ground under it. I saw a mourning dove, two blue jays, a cardinal, a red-bellied woodpecker, and a brown thrasher. I enjoy seeing the various birds that live in and pass through our yard. That's one of the nice things about living in the country.

I've noticed that we seem to have a large population of rabbits this year. Every time I drive into the yard at night, the headlights of my car freak out several of them. I think the big piles of brush that still remain from last year's ice storm have provided extra habitat, and the wet summer gave them plenty to eat.

Let's Cook

1950s 4H recipe book for beginning cooks

In 1959, I joined the Rose Scouts 4-H Club and signed up for my first 4-H project: Let's Cook. To complete the project, I had to prepare each of the following, two times:

Cocoa and Cinnamon Toast
Fruit Desserts (Ambrosia or Apple Crisp)
Raw Vegetable Plate and Sandwiches
Cookies and Lemonade
Hamburgers

As you can see, the cover art on the Let's Cook booklet  is slightly misleading. None of the recipes in the booklet required the use of a rolling pin.

The girl looks cheerful, though. She's dressed for the job. and she knows what she's doing with the various utensils on her work surface. Utensils were very important in Let's Cook. They were listed in every recipe right beside the ingredients.

I was 8 years old, the summer that I completed the Let's Cook project. My mother was in the hayfield most of every day, mowing. Grandma Nora was staying with us to help with the cooking and housework and to watch my sister and me.

In the afternoons after the dishes were done, Grandma Nora and I had some fun and excitement with the Let's Cook booklet. I had fun, and Grandma tried to keep me from getting too excited.

Grandma had her own ideas about some of the techniques in the book. She wasn't too adventurous. She didn't approve of sifting flour, cocoa, and such onto a square of waxed paper; she insisted on sifting it into a bowl. She didn't see any need to squish a stick of butter into a measuring cup, when she already knew it was half a cup.

The booklet had a short list of procedures for washing dishes. It didn't seem very important to me, but Grandma thought dish-washing was part of every recipe. "Cleaning up the mess is half of it!" she told me, again and again. Grandma's been gone since 1980, but when I'm working in my kitchen, I still hear her saying those words.

The oatmeal cookie recipe in Let's Cook became my favorite recipe to bake for a year or two. Then I discovered that I could make the cookie recipes in my mother's cookbooks, and I forgot about the simple little recipe in my 4-H booklet. Mama was more adventurous about letting me experiment in the kitchen than Grandma was, even though she wanted me to clean up my messes, too.

In the next ten years, I completed six more food preparation and preservation courses in 4-H. I still have their booklets, too. but Let's Cook is the one that I remember with affection.

"Cooking is an adventure. It's fun to put together shortening and sugar and flour and turn out yummy cookies. It's exciting to see how meat and vegetables and salad become supper on the table... "


(Opening sentences of Let's Cook, an undated, unattributed publication of the University of Nebraska Extension Service, circa 1959.)

Backyard Nature

Wild ageratum and more

Wild ageratum (blue mistflower, Eupatorium coelestinum) is blooming at the edge of some shrubbery where Dennis hasn't mowed closely this year. It pops up every year somewhere around the yard, always in a spot out of the lawn mower's reach. The butterflies like it.

This clump of ageratum is particularly lush. Some of the shoots must be three feet tall. I think it has enjoyed the rainy summer.

Ageratum blooms along the road ditches this time of year, too. It's a sure sign that fall is at hand. It's a member of the aster family, and like many of its relatives, it's a late bloomers.

More backyard nature

While I was working in the shed late this evening, a baby frog hopped in. I thought it was a cricket at first. It was tiny but its hops carried it high into the air -- sproing, sproing! I wanted to put it outside, but it was fast and I couldn't catch it. Finally, I herded it out with the broom.

Just minutes later, a young toad came in. He was craftier than the little frog. He hopped behind some boards where he was perfectly safe from capture. He's still in the shed. I'm going to look for him tomorrow morning.

It was dark outside. I don't know if the little frog and toad were attracted by the lights or by the bugs that had come to the lights.

I finally decided to quit and go to the house. I turned out the lights and started to close the door. Across the driveway, I heard a large animal blow air in a startled whoosh and run away. I couldn't see it, but I know it was a deer that had come to eat fallen apples.

Now the coyotes are howling, and it sounds like they are across the road in the cornfield -- not really very far from my open window. I've heard them close to the house like this several times lately. I suppose the rainy summer has provided plenty of food for them, too.

Their yips and chortles make me feel a little uneasy. I'm glad the cats are inside.

Melon Months of Summer

One good reason for hot weather

I don't like hot summer weather, but melons do, and I like melons. In fact, melons are one of the few things about hot weather that I anticipate happily.

When I had a bigger garden, I grew melons myself. I had my best success with cantaloupe, mainly because it's easy to tell when cantaloupe are ripe. Several years, I grew more cantaloupe than we could eat and Dennis took gave them away at work. This made him quite popular through the melon months of summer.

My favorite cantaloupes to grow from seed were Burpee Hybrids. They are just too delicious for words.

I didn't have enough luck with watermelons to decide that I liked to grow any particular variety. My biggest problem was knowing when to pick them. If I didn't pick them too green, I waited until they were too ripe.  After a few years, I decided I had better luck picking a ripe watermelon at the produce stand.

One summer after I gave up growing watermelons, a watermelon seed sprouted in my compost pile. The vine meandered out into the garden, and I decided not to pull it up. It grew one big, delicious melon before frost. It was one of the best watermelons I've ever tasted.  It must have been the compost. Somehow, I managed to pick it at the perfect peak of ripeness.

In one of my first gardens, I grew some honeydew melons that were particularly green and sweet. I picked the first one and we really enjoyed it .

When I went to the garden to pick the next ripe one, it had a hole chewed in the side of it. I was disgusted, but I cut off the damaged side of the melon, and we ate some of the undamaged side.

My garden intruder liked his taste of honeydew, and decided to have some more. He wasn't a bit careful about just eating the ripe ones, either. After he damaged a dozen or more, I finally caught him in the act. It was a turtle. I took him up the road a mile, and we had no more holes in the honeydews after that.

Nowadays, we buy melons at the grocery store in early summer. Then, about the first of July, our Mennonite neighbor starts selling homegrown cantaloupe at his produce stand.  I bought a couple of cantaloupe there last week, and I'm going to stop by tomorrow on my way home from work and get a couple more. The watermelon will be ready soon, he says. I'm glad to hear it.

Our neighbor's produce stand: Homegrown cantaloupe and 

flower baskets outside. And inside, tomatoes, cabbage,

squash, zucchini, and bunches of big green onions

Fire in a Pile of Hay Bales

Spontaneous combustion of hay

Our neighbor had some bad luck last week with a large stack of big round bales. Apparently the hay was not dry enough when he baled and stacked it. A few days later, the stack of bales ignited.

Our volunteer fire department responded and sprayed the bales with water. The farmer pulled the bale pile apart with a tractor to allow the bales to cool. The smoke from the fire could be smelled for a mile or more, and the bales smoldered for several days.

Hay fires like this are all too common, and they are usually caused by baling and/or storing hay before it is fully cured (dried). The hay can also self-heat and combust if it becomes wet in storage.

The problem is that bacteria and mold grow on wet hay, causing it to ferment and producing flammable gases and heat. Also, as the hay dries, it goes through a natural chemical process called "sweating" in which it releases moisture and heat.

In a stack or pile of hay, the heat from fermenting and sweating cannot escape. The internal temperature can increase to the point that the hay will blacken, smolder, or even burst into flames.

The hay is spoiled even if it just warms up and turns a little brown. It loses most of its nutrients, and of course, livestock prefer not to to eat it.

This sort of combustion can occur in a hay pile of any size. Some of us have seen this in small scale with green lawn clippings or a compost pile.

This farmer lost a lot of hay, but at least he didn't lose a barn. I remember a barn fire that was caused by wet hay bales when I was a child. I was with my mother when she noticed smoke coming from a neighbor's barn and alerted him. The men from nearby ranches gathered and fought the fire, but the barn burned down. (This was on the Ray Ranch at Rose, Nebraska, in the late 1950s or early 1960s when Jay and Martha Hixson were running it.)

Read more on the web:
Cooperative Extension System bulletin "Spontaneous Combustion in Hay Poses Danger"

A Lazy Gardener's Garden

Mulch is the answer.

This is my 17th (or 18th?) garden in Kentucky. I've only had the garden plowed once. All the other years, I've dug it up myself with a garden fork. I do recommend a fork for digging, rather than a spade. It is amazing how much easier it is to dig with a fork.

I have considered getting a rototiller, but it seems an extravagance that would just take up room in the shed. I would probably only use it once a year.

Mulching out the weeds

You see, I don't waste time and effort in cultivating soil I'm not going to plant. I put some kind of mulch over every part of the garden except the beds where my plants are growing. I like to keep the weeds and grass down with mulch because I am not fond of hoeing.

This year, I covered my entire garden with two large sheets of black plastic. The plastic is held down around the outer edge with some large cut stones we happen to have from a couple of old chimneys. I used scissors to cut large holes in the plastic where I wanted to make this year's beds. 

In each bed, I dug up the soil very well and enriched it with a humus/manure mix and a little lime before setting the plants. In a few weeks when the plants are bigger, I will mulch around them with straw. The rest of the garden (everywhere but the beds) is still covered with the black plastic.

I've also used newspaper as a mulch with good success. I put down a layer 6 to 8 sheets thick and covered it with enough straw to hold it in place. Some years, I've bought end-rolls of newsprint from the newspaper office for mulch -- 6 to 8 strips thick, weighed down with a little straw.

Work in the spring, and relax in the summer,

I work pretty hard for a few days to get the garden set up and planted, but after that, it doesn't require much effort. I wander through and look for tomato worms and squash bugs and pull up any bindweeds that are winding their way up the tomato cage legs.

The mulch around the plants helps keep the soil moist, so a good soaking about once a week is all they need. Mother Nature often takes care of it for me. (If I could just teach her to pick the tomatoes and bring them to the house, I could really take it easy.)

Sometime after frost, I pull up the plants. It is best to pull up any plastic at that time also, as it will probably start disintegrating over the winter.

These ideas certainly won't work for everyone or every situation, but they work for me.

A Late Garden This Year

Finally planted

At last, we've had a stretch of sunny days. The farmers have been planting corn and making hay as fast as they can. I've also been busy in my little garden and have nearly finished planting it.  Thank goodness -- I was starting to wonder if I would have a garden this year.

So far, I have planted:

9 Better Boy tomato plants
3 Bell Boy pepper plants
3 King Arthur bell pepper plants
1 Sweet 100 cherry tomato plant
3 hills of Armenian Yard-long Cucumbers
2 hills of NK Dark Green zucchinis
9 marigolds

I have two jalapeño pepper plants and six more marigolds to set out, I still want to get one more cherry tomato plant, and I plan to plant some clumps of dill.  I like the way it smells. It reminds me of my grandma's garden.

The marigolds are for Keely, who would think my garden incomplete without them. She likes their spicy fragrance. This year, the marigolds are all yellow because I got a good deal on a flat of them at the Mennonite greenhouse in Fairview.

A small garden

I used to grow a much larger garden, but I don't have that much time and energy now, and it's unnecessary anyway. This little garden will produce much more than Dennis, Isaac, and I can eat. We'll be begging people to take a few zucchinis home with them and hauling bags of tomatoes to town to foist off on Keely.

When I had a bigger garden, I did a lot of canning. I have packed up most of my fruit jars and stored them in the shed, now. However, I am thinking about making and preserving some salsa this summer -- thus, the jalapeños.

We like corn, watermelon, canteloupe, squash, and all the other fresh veggies too, but if I grew all of them, I'd have a big garden, not a small one! We'll buy them from the several Mennonite produce stands that operate in our area.

And this year, since it will be July before the zucchini and cukes begin to produce and sometime in August before we have tomatoes and peppers, we'll be buying them at the produce stands for a while, too.

Gardens from other summers:

Tomatoes Someday
Dill Flower
Fields and Gardens Are Being Planted
My Vegetable Garden
Living off the Fat of the Land
Zucchini, Anyone?
Flats of Flowers
Planting the Garden with Mama

Modesty on the Clothesline

Hanging out the laundry

A lady told me about her recent vacation in San Francisco. She was shocked, she said, to see underwear hung out to dry on balconies above busy streets. She guessed she was old-fashioned because she would never pin her underwear to a clothesline and put it on display to the world. It wasn't modest.

This amused me a little because this lady is no shrinking violet. She spent a number of years driving 18-wheelers all over the nation with her husband. She's a plain-spoken person without airs, and she's about 15 years younger than me. Of all the things that she might have been shocked at in San Francisco, I wouldn't have predicted underwear on clotheslines.

When I thought about it, I couldn't remember seeing any sort of underwear hanging on the clotheslines at Mennonite and Amish homes. I can say with certainty that they hang cloth diapers outside to dry, but beyond that, I'm not sure.

When I used a clothesline faithfully for a number of years, I hung out the whole family's underwear. I usually hung the undergarments on an inside line, behind the sheets or towels.

We live in the country. The clothesline was barely visible from the road, but someone who drove into our yard might have seen the laundry well enough to identify individual pieces. To be honest, I wasn't too worried about it.

I asked Isaac (my 19-year-old son) what he thought about underwear hanging in plain view on the clothesline. He says that if he ever sees anything like that, he's going to lodge a complaint with the board of governors immediately. He also says that the only good weapon for fighting something like that is satire. Whatever, Isaac.

Laundry day at a Mennonite home

The View From the Hilltop

Early spring in Christian County, KY

I went with Dennis this afternoon to haul some wood he had cut and split. He's been working on a huge  hickory tree that Hurricane Isaac took down in September, 2008.

Now, two long sections of the tree's thick trunk are left. Dennis says that he probably won't cut and split much more of it because the slices of trunk are just too heavy to manhandle. He's going to look into selling the logs.

We stopped at the landowner's house for a few minutes.  I took this photo of the view he enjoys, while he and Dennis were talking. The landowner is retired and he lives alone. He has a small herd of cattle, a horse, and a dog.

The tree Dennis has been cutting up is in the horse's pasture. The horse doesn't like the noisy chainsaw and log splitter, and he stays as far away as possible. The commotion doesn't bother the dog, though; he always comes down to say hello and see what's happening.

The Neighbor's Shed

Storage space

The dried plants are hollyhock blooms. Soon they'll be used for seed.

A Good Sense of Direction

Internal compass, fairly accurate

I've had a good sense of direction since I was old enough to remember. I usually have a strong opinion about where north, south, east, and west lie, and I'm usually right.

Sense of direction is probably a skill I learned from my parents. I grew up in rural Nebraska where section lines and county roads are laid out in a checkerboard of square miles, aligned to the compass. I heard my parents speak of directions every day of my childhood -- the north wind, the cows in the pasture west of the creek, and so on.

Or, my cells may be blessed with a generous measure of magnetite and a genetic ability to respond to it. Magnetite is an iron oxide ( Fe₃O₄,), and it's the most magnetic substance known on earth. Man and many other mammals, including bats, have magnetite in their cells. Tests that expose bats to strong magnetic fields seem to show that bats navigate partly by responding to magnetism. Cows seem to orient themselves to magnetism, as well.

In a study of bird navigation, scientists exposed migrating birds to strong magnetic fields and then released them at night. All night long, they flew in the wrong direction, but when the sun came up, they did a 90° turn and headed in a different (correct) direction. This suggests that migratory birds are guided by magnetism, but they also orient themselves to the sun.

The position of the sun is an important indicator of direction with me, too. When I lived south of the equator for two years, I was constantly befuddled about north and south. Shadows fell to the south instead of the north, and cold weather came with strong south winds. The directional clue-gathering that I do subconsciously in the northern hemisphere was a mental juggling exercise in the southern hemisphere because the sun was shining on the wrong side of me. Thank goodness for maps!

Nor am I good at right and left orientation. If I ask for directions and someone describes a series of right and left turns, I have to write them down. I cannot remember the instructions, and I can't form a mental map of where they are leading me.

In Kentucky, most of the roads aren't straight. Country roads wind around the hills following ancient animal paths used by the Indians and early settlers. Major highways may be straight enough, but minor highways are just un-straightened, black-topped country roads. In most of the towns, the streets aren't oriented with the compass, and the blocks aren't reliably rectangular in shape. Roads radiate from the towns like spokes from the hub of a wheel.

However, I still drive around here with a good sense of the general compass direction in which I'm proceeding. At least the shadows are on the right side of the trees. Just give me a map, and I can find my way anywhere.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Related: A website about topographical disorientation (getting lost so easily that it is a serious handicap)

The Days Are Just Packed

And the nights are a little chilly.

My 82-year-old neighbor lady and her daughter have returned today from ten days in the Holy Land. Their arrival home releases me from the responsibility of caring for their seven dogs, twice a day. (The son did come out from town for dog duty on the nights that I worked late.)

I feel a great sense of relief! If I didn't think it would hurt my back, I might leap up and click my heels.

The last few days of November

November has turned cold while the ladies have been gone . I've knocked ice out of the dogs' water bowls on several mornings. This morning, I found a miniature drift of snow on my windshield.

November has only eight more days and Christmas is just a month away. People are beginning to shop earnestly. We've been busy at the store where I work.

Shoppers and shoplifters

I try to serve the customers as quickly as possible with a cheerful attitude, and to treat them as I like to be treated. Simultaneously, I try to fulfill my employer's expectations and guidelines. When things go well, these two sets of interests intersect or, sometimes, even converge, and everyone is very pleased.

We also have some people in the store who are shoplifters, not shoppers. Shoplifting is a perpetual problem, but there is an increase during this time of the year. A few steal because of true need, but most are motivated by vanity or greed. Sometimes they steal to resell.

I'm better than I used to be at sensing bad intent, and I alert the security people if I am suspicious. Our store prosecutes shoplifters and requests maximum penalties. I'm glad we do.

Many sides

Like so many things in life, the Christmas shopping scene has its seamy underside. I understand the metaphor well because I sew. I know how imperfections can sometimes be gathered and hidden in seams that don't show.

Related figures of speech come to mind. Most people have good sides, bad sides, and sensitive sides. Some have wild sides, and they could cross over to the dark side. On the lighter side, people enjoy laughter. Optimists look at the bright side and don't worry about the flip side.

And then there's the sunny side. This morning, when I was doing the dog chores, I paused for a moment on the south side of the shed. A stout wind was blowing and the temperatures were below freezing, but the shed blocked the wind and the sunshine was warm.

Keep on the sunny side,
always on the sunny side.
Keep on the sunny side of life.
It will help us every day,
it will brighten all the way
If we keep on the sunny side of life.
- Ada Blenkhorn (1899)

Music, lyrics, and info

Seen on the Roads

Large mammals of the Kentucky countryside

Deer season started last weekend in Kentucky -- that is, deer season with modern guns. (We also have bow-and-arrow season, crossbow season, muzzle-loading season, etc.)

As I drove to work before daylight on Saturday, I saw several pickup trucks parked along the roadside. The drivers, I assumed, were in their stands out in the woods, awaiting the dawn with high hopes that a deer might cross their gun sights.

When I got home that night, Dennis mentioned that he'd seen a Mennonite man in a red hunting vest, bicycling down the highway with his gun in a sling over his shoulder.

I had a similar story to relate. I had also met a Mennonite man in hunting garb, bicycling down the highway. He had a little wagon hitched to his bicycle and in the wagon, he had a dead doe. He appeared to be headed for the tagging station at Fairview.

I have no interest in hunting and I don't like venison, but I am thankful that some people do. We have so many deer here that they are a menace on the highways. Dennis and I have had three collisions with deer within Christian County and another deer accident in southern Illinois.

The Kentucky Farm Bureau Insurance Company has been running radio ads, urging motorists to be especially watchful for deer this month. It's mating season, so the deer are unusually active, and hormones have overpowered their brains.

I kept that warning in mind this week as I passed through areas where I frequently see deer. Last night, I drove through one of those areas about 11:00 p.m. Just after I crossed the river and passed the Mennonite cabinet shop, I caught a glimpse of movement in the ditch. "Deer!" I thought, as I stepped on the brake.

Then I saw white legs and wild eyes in my headlights. Several Holsteins bounded out of the ditch and onto the road in front of me. I came to a stop and wondered what I should do. The cattle probably belonged to the Mennonite cabinet maker, but all the lights were out at his house.

In my headlights, I saw at least a dozen Holsteins. When one fell onto the pavement as she lunged out of the ditch, I decided that I could not drive away. For the sake of the animals and the safety of other motorists, I had to try to waken the farmer.

I backed my car several hundred yards to the farmhouse and left it running with the lights on as I pounded on the door. In a couple of minutes, a light came on and a slightly-frazzled Mennonite man opened the door. He had pulled on his shirt and trousers to answer my knock.

I apologized for disturbing him, but he assured me that he was grateful for the warning. He said he'd telephone his brother because the cattle might be his brother's yearling heifers.

When I got back in my car and drove toward home again, there was not a Holstein in sight. Maybe they ran back to the pasture they came from, frightened by their experience in the greater world. Maybe the brother came out of his house and found his heifers waiting for him in his front yard.

Whatever the case, I went home with a clear conscience. I hope the farmers found their strays, and then got some rest during the remaining hours of the night.

Gas Price: August 20, 2008

Price of gasoline in Hopkinsville, KY

The price of regular unleaded tonight at Murphy's (the WalMart gas station) was $3.469 per gallon. That beats the $3.529 per gallon that I paid last time I put gas in my car. I hope the lower prices hold for a while.

The propane truck filled the tank at our house a few days ago. It took 100 gallons, and the cost was $249.00. $2.49 per gallon -- ouch! We'll be burning as little of that as possible. Thank goodness for the wood stove.

I heard a news item on the radio a few days ago that urged everyone who is heating with propane or natural gas to get their house winterized and to work out a levelized payment worked out with their gas company. We are planning to get some more insulation in our attic before winter.

The propane guy didn't even bring the bill to the door as he ordinarily does. He tucked it under the gauge, closed down the dome on the tank, and left. He's probably tired of talking about the high cost of propane.