Gabby

Pictured above is Gabby and her "sister" Luna playing their favorite fishing game on my wife's tablet. I put sisters in quotation marks because they are not blood kin, but rather are the last of my wife's brood of nine cats. Luna was a Tuxedo and Gabby, a black Burmese. 

We lost Luna to a heart attack a few years ago.  Luna adopted me as her human as soon as she met me. She was my first cat master.  I was a dog kinda guy before her.

Gabby, when I met her, was the cat that didn't speak. She would move her mouth, but nothing came out, unless it was 2 AM in the morning.  Then she would find a toy and walk around the living room yowling at the top of her lungs.

Both cats belonged to my wife. But Gabby was HER cat and Sue was Gabby's human.  I have already told the story of how Sue and I found each other again after 48 years, were both single, got together and after a couple of years, got married.

Gabby and Luna came with us when Sue moved to Phoenix Arizona. And Gabby alone came when we moved to Windsock Ranch.  She stayed with Sue just as she always had.  Beneath her feet in the kitchen, sharing her chair while watching TV, and cuddled close at bed time.  If Sue got up in the middle of the night, so did Gabby, her four legged shadow for more than fourteen years.    

Somewhere along the way Gabby found her voice again. Whatever trauma had caused her to stop speaking before Sue adopted her from Pets-mart was forgotten while living with us at the ranch. 

Happy cat.

Gabby was struck down the day after Christmas by unknown medical causes.  We found her alone, here under my desk, unconscious, but breathing.  She was not responsive, and lasted but 3 hours before finally passing.

Gabby, the cat that didn't speak, who was my wife's closest friend and confidant was silent again. And, it may be cliche, but her silence is deafening. 

Be Well

When Cancer Comes for Christmas (2021)

 

     In August of 2021, my wife Sue had set up an appointment with a new pulmonologist. I had been having some breathing problems since we had moved from Phoenix and were living at about 3000 feet higher altitude. The first meeting went well and a CT scan and some breathing tests were prescribed for the following week.

     The tests turned out as expected. I have what appears to be a touch of Emphysema and COPD. Neither is a new diagnosis. There was however a surprise on the CT scan that required a different doctor and a more in depth scan. An unusual lump on my left kidney.

    I'd never had any issue with my kidneys.  This was a new wrinkle. A battery of urology and blood tests, including MRI with contrast, were ordered by my new Urologist. By the time I got to Tucson to meet the Urologist it was already November.

Surgery.  Definitely surgery.  Everyone was 98% sure it was cancer. Good news? It was smaller than a golf ball and the surgery could be done laparoscopically, by a robot. Well a controlled robot. 

It's all the rage you know.

The only question is when.  Before or after the holidays.

My wife, Sue, and I agreed. "Get it out. Sooner the better," we said. 

The soonest available time was early December. 

The time comes and we drive back to Tucson and check in for surgery and what was expected to be one or two days, if all went well.

It did. Better than expected, so far as the cancer... there was none. Just a really ugly benign growth that fooled everybody. So could I go home now?

Nope. I fell into the clutches of the "Respiratory Guys", who didn't like the way I breath. Not long enough, not deep enough, not fast enough, not slow enough, "you're a big guy... you should be able to suck that ball to the top and hold it there for two days..." there were three of them and they traveled together, always together... "do you ever need oxygen at home or at work? "

"No... and I'm retired.  It says so on that paper you're holding."

"So you had a desk job," they asked.

"No... I was an electrical rigger at a live theatrical venue. I climb into special scaffolding, suspended steel pipes and girders or grids and install special lighting fixtures for theatrical productions and rock and roll shows."

Combined gasp! "And you don't carry oxygen? Do you have an aspirator?"

"Nope. Never needed one. Can I go home now?"

"Well, your oxygen level drops below 90% several times an hour and that has us concerned."

"Maybe I don't need that much all the time. I've been laying in this bed for five days. Is this somehow connected to the surgery?"

"Oh, no. But we may have just caught something."

"Look," I said, "I'm newly retired. I've been taking it easy for a while. I'll admit I'm a bit out of shape, but I just bought a small ranch and I'm sure once we get into the swing of working it, all this will even out."

Two days later I got them to agree that if I make an appointment for a follow-up, and get a Nebulizer machine for home treatments. (it's still in the box).

So I'm home. Four to five weeks of no lifting and I'm back to being busy. It was a scare, but I'm glad this year we were one short for Christmas. Best gift I've gotten in years.

     

    

 

     I haven't posted on here for quite some time. I know this is not a reason to awaken Walter Cronkite from his forever resting place, my contributions to this blog could be generously described as sparse. 

    That is not how I intended it to be as I created and recreated and re-recreated it over the years. Each blog iteration enjoying a burst of activity and then a slide to obscurity in my daily mental cycle.

    I must say that this time has been the strangest as there are tails that I really truly believe I had written and posted that are conspicuous by their absence in the list of stories.

    We've been living here at the Windsock Ranch for very nearly a year. We intend to celebrate the anniversary on January 2nd 2022 as the day we got the keys and dropped our first load of belongings in the house. That's four days from now. 

    There are lots of stories that happened in the past year.  Underground water pipes bursting, our 22 acres of desert greening in the first rain after a 3 year drought, my eldest son came to live with us on the ranch permanently, new flooring in several rooms of the house, electrical repairs, door repairs, and roofing adventures not unexpected in a 30 plus year old adobe house in the Sonoran desert.

    Many of these were documented and supposed to end up in videos on our ranch YouTube channel. That too did not happen.   

    The biggest story has yet to be documented in words or videos just came to a conclusion last week. Its a story that will get its own entry here. The next entry. It through our entire household into disarray.

    But today is a marker of its own. Today is the one year anniversary of the start of our move into the house and the naming of the "Windsock Ranch Arizona."

    And we're awfully glad we're here.

 

 

 

"One good rain makes up for 1000 sprinklings"

Dry Dry Dry

Our pecan orchard has had a hard life. Originally planted as a project for a youth farming group by the previous owner when she was very young, I'm told that there was some sixty trees at one time. 

Sadly, the project ended and over the years the trees were neglected and about 30 have been removed.  The family did not care about the pecans that were produced and allowed the neighbors to come in and pick their fill.

I talked with the former renter and he did not irrigate the trees at all during the driest year on record last year. 

As I said about 30 trees still remain. With a lot of work, my son and I have repairs the old PVC pipe buries about 24 inches under the dry desert soil and most of the trees leafed up to show that they were still alive. Even the grass was very sparse.

But no amount of irrigation was going to bring them all back. Welcome June and July. By my measurement (using a Walmart rain gauge) we received about 5 1/4 inches of rain. Nearly 2 inches of that was during a single storm.

As the photo below illustrates, the trees and the grass are now thriving. I'm planning to discourage any fruit (nuts) this season and perhaps the next. The trees need to get hearty before we can expect a harvest. Even a small one.

 

 

 

Orchard in the rain

 

But everything is growing. So much so we had no choice but to go out and buy a riding lawn mower. Trimming weeds and grass which had previously taken me just an hour or two with a weed wacker before, now takes 2-3 hours with a 46 inch riding mower.  But now we are cutting about 4 acres in the orchard and around the house keeping the desert at bay.  A full 50 feet away from any structures.

 We know that this rain will eventually come to an end, and all that green will turn brown.  We are in the desert after all, and in the late summer and fall deserts tend to dry and burn. Keeping all that green in check will keep the house, workshops, and orchard safe.

As for the rest of the 22 acres, that is a different story.

Be Well.

Pecans by the bushel, some day...

 

 

  When we bought our property, now referred to as Windsock Ranch Arizona ( I actually had to register the name) it came with a little orchard.  28 trees are standing, but they have not all produced leaves as yet.

Pecan trees.

I was never much for Pecans. Not on cakes or in candy, and in very rare situations pie. Pecan pie.  A southern dish as sweet as any candy I have ever tasted. 

How do you care for 28 pecan trees? I don't know.  

How much water? Not a clue. 

How much and what kind of fertilizer? At a complete loss. 

How do you keep bugs off organically, birds away, keep the gophers out? I don't know.. shotguns?

As a farmer with an orchard, I'm a good woodworker.

I can tell you that they don't even bud leaves without water much less nuts.  So the orchard needs irrigation of some kind. The orchard came with no instructions. None for the care of the trees, and none for the plumbing.  

 Little things like: Where are the pipes? How do they work? How old are they? 

These things are important to the operation of an orchard, I would guess. I don't see myself watering an orchard, even one with only 28 trees, with a garden hose.

Up until 3 weeks ago, the orchard lay bare. not a leaf nor even a bud to be found. We've had no appreciable rain in the four months that we have lived here.  Snow? Yup, about a 1/8th of an inch. Hail? Lots of that too, but you would be surprised at how little water there is in a coating of hail. Rain? Officially about .04 of an inch.

Now there is one other pecan tree that is the last of an orchard that was on the other side of the house. Its current neighbors are some version of mulberry trees. The mulberry trees, I was used too as I had four of a slightly different variety in Phoenix, needed water. So I bought a couple hundred feet of drip hose and gave them a soaking. The pecan tree, as well as two other mystery trees nearby got watered by virtue of their close proximity to the mulberry trees.

A week after the first water application, everything had leaves and buds. Including the pecan tree. This worried me for the still naked orchard. So I took what I thought would be an afternoon and seriously investigated the orchard irrigation system. I found the main valve in the orchard and two branch valves. One had froze the past winter and shattered. The other seemed to be working.

So I turned on the main.  The broken valve sprayed all over bu I managed to get it under control temporarily. The secondary valve to the east trees opened and sent water to the two eastern rows of trees.  

As I walked the rows I found that there was a 3/4 inch feed line that led to a "bubbler" head at the base of each tree.  About half worked, some of the rest did not until I messed with them a bit.  Two others were small geyzers shooting water up a for or so. The water ran about an hour while I took stock of the parts I thought I needed. But after that first water run, those first two rows were budding.

All toll, the four rows of trees cost about $300 in 3/4 and 1/2 inch PVC parts and almost week with me digging up burst pipes and replacing "bubbler" heads. The earth in the orchard, like most of the ranch, is very clay heavy. Muddy and sticky to dig once wet. Tools and parts are quickly caked in clay slowing daily progress and as the pressure increased from repaired pipes, new leaks appeared. But except for the last leak, its done. Late in the season, now all four rows have leaves.  Not all the trees, but most.

I know the system I fixed is wrong for trees. I know I'll have to make changes this fall when the trees go dormant again. And I'm pretty sure that there will be few if any pecans this fall due to the late start.

But next year we're going to have to have a plan for a couple of bushels of pecans.

Be well.

 

Not the weather I was expecting

 

 

When we moved from Phoenix to southern Arizona, we knew that there was a difference in elevation of a couple of thousand feet but it was southern Arizona, not Nevada.

The video above is of the THIRD hail storm in one day, each larger stones than the one before and thunder to boot.

No Sir, not what I expected.

Be Well

They don't go "Meep!, Meep!"

Elmer

 After we arrived at Windsock Ranch, that first day with our dreams and our trucks full of stuff packed over the course of two years or more, we dismounted and had a look around.

I soon realized that this was the first time I was really looking at the property. The trip from Phoenix was all of five hours. If you believe the computer driven maps of any brand, you will note, that depending on the time of day they report any where from 3 hours and 15 minutes to 3 hours and 45 minutes trip time.

I am here to tell you that the machine making such a prediction is not driving a bouncy 26 foot truck and is not controlled by a 66 year old set of kidneys and bladder.  

Its five hours. Trust me.

The trips we made down here prior to our purchase were pretty rushed on the ranch. We came with lists of things to ask about, see, test, photograph, and measure. But more than 2-1/2 hours on the ground and it quickly became a test of mine and my wife's driving fortitude with a 15+ hour round trip day.

So this was my first time with less pressure. The sun was going down soon and we would spend our first night in a relatively empty house, unpack the truck in the morning, and head back for another load tomorrow.

I was walking about the main house when I spotted this fellow. This is Elmer. He is , based on distant observation, a grown roadrunner. A Greater Road Runner, specifically. I assumed a male as I believe no self respecting female would choose such a ridiculous perch. He is actually perched five feet off the ground with his butt pressed up to the glass window, tail pointing to the sky.

My son, my wife and I found this a curious, but fascinating posture and let him be for the night. He seemed to take no notice of us what so ever.

The previous owner, nor the tenant had any knowledge of the bird and he was gone by daylight.

We continued our trips north and south several more times and each time, just before sundown our little roadrunner would be on the window ledge. Always the same window and never seen coming or going. He never so much as turned his head to watch us scurrying about with armloads of boxes and bags in the dwindling sunlight.

And so it went on. Weeks into months, sundown until sunup, our little good luck omen (as my son called him) stood his nightly vigil at our window. 

Even though no one observed his arrival nor departure, I began to admire his choice of windows. That particular window is exposed to sunlight from dawn to dusk. It is completely surrounded by burnt adobe brick, warmed all day by his arrival, and his corner is most often on the lee side of the wind. The glass on the exterior is perforated with a hole the size of a BB and so the double pane insulation has escaped allowing the heat from the house to warm the outer glass. I don't know how he discovered this particular spot, but as window seats go; this was a gem.

I came to calling him Elmer, much to my wife's amusement, for no particular reason. I would pass him with armloads of trash headed for the dumpster nearly every sundown. And I became accustomed to addressing him, "Hello Elmer" As I passed. He remained as stoic as ever, never acknowledging my greeting nor my passing.  He never even blinked when one night I pulled out my phone and snapped this picture of him crouching against the wind.

One of the chores remaining for the previous owner was to replace the septic drainage field. The work was to be completed before we moved in, but was delayed due to weather. I didn't mind much because that put me here to observe the project.

For Elmer on the other hand, it was the last straw.  One evening it would have been time for him to arrive and the driveway was filled with pump trucks, crews milling around, and a backhoe still digging noisily in the yard until dark. This was obviously too much. After months of putting up with our comings and goings at all hours of the day and night, he did not occupy his spot at the window that night.

Nor has he returned. If I would have guessed my time with him was limited, I would have put more effort into acquiring a professional like portrait of our first boarder.

The ranch has many such daily and nightly guests. We're getting to know them all. The two pair of jack rabbits, two pair of white winged doves, several pairs of cactus wrens, a complete city of gophers, loggerhead strikes, an owl or two that hoot all night long, and a hive of honey bees under one of the storage sheds- which have been very passive, but have to go. 

All of these and more greet me in the morning and evening coming oddly close at times for wild critters.

But I miss Elmer and his aloof but watchful eye outside my window as I slept at night.

Goodnight Elmer

Be Well.