Ranch Gossip

We've been bad bloggers. ( I say we although the Mark, of Tj and Mark, has been absent from here for quite some time.) I think we are just all blogged out. Life on the ranch has its routines and nothing seems to be quite fresh enough to blog about anymore. Perhaps it is just a slump I'm in.

We have been busy though. This week we went to our pen pal tea party. Each year we are pen pals with selected students from a local school and at the end of the year we get to meet them. Mine had drawn some lovely pictures for me. I plan on framing this one as I like the incongruity of the barb like brown leaves with the cheerful flower.

My starts have been potted into larger containers. These are flowers.
These are vegetables.
These are supposed to be zinnias but something nipped them right off. Bad bug or slug.

Dead gopher. We are inundated with gophers. Our whole back area (can't say lawn, it is really just a holey field and orchard) is full of them. I feel bad for the little diggers. They are so industrious and resourceful and happy munching on our growing potatoes, but they have to go. I've posted signs stating that their lease is up and they need to move out, but so far there haven't been any who listened.
Molly has been helping me with the gardening. I have her penned up separate from the other horses because she is very herd bound and each day I have been riding and working with her trying to smooth down some of her rough edges and I have been letting her graze a bit in our back yard, I mean field. I have to admit she has been trying at times, I think we are really just too much alike (bull headed) but we're making improvements. I haven't called her a bad name for the last 2 days and she has only given me a few dirty looks. If looks could kill I'd be dead.

Mark picked up a camera at Costco that has better zoom that my old one. I like the zoom quality, but haven't got the settings right yet as my photos don't have the same crispness or color as before. Here is a valley quail I believe. Although it could be a mountain quail, I get them confused.

Perhaps you remember Tate, Eric's friend who often lives on the ranch with us cutting firewood? Well, Tate moved on to greener, and MUCH larger pastures, as he is cowboying for a big ranch now, but his parents came up to celebrate their 26th anniversary this week. I think they had a good time.

Just as the flowers are beginning to burst forth across these hills the buck's antlers are beginning to sprout too. Now if I could just sprout some new ideas for our blog, or the other writing I have been working on.....