Coyote

I missed last week's posts because school started on Wednesday and I had homework do on Saturday. (online classes are great and terrible.) I am very angry with WCJC right now. I like to get my books together before the semester starts. I got one version of the book from the school and an older (cheaper) version on Chegg, there were exactly three pages that were different so I copied the pages and decided I would take the more expensive book back to WCJC when I went. Unfortunately I forgot my receipt on Thursday, my first day of in person classes, and they won't take the book back after the first week of school (I had to bring it back by Monday). Despite the fact that they didn't have people working there until Tuesday of that week. Their week is apparently 3 1/2 days.  

Whats worse: I totally forgot that the book store closes at Noon on Fridays and missed them. So I decided to mail the book back, the website said they would count it if it was post marked before the end of the week. No word yet on whither it worked or not.

I am also mad at WCJC because the school cut off half of one of the parking lots so I'm having an even harder time finding a parking space than I normally do during the fall semester (there seems to be fewer students in the spring). 

I have several other reasons for hating WCJC, but these are the most recent.

  

Here is a picture of the coyote I saw Monday when I got up. That is my back fence. I took this picture from my back door. He was very frightened and obviously very young. He couldn't seem to figure out how to get home without getting too close to the "scary" horses in the neighbor's pasture. No idea how it got their without passing them in the night. 

Harvey

I live Southwest of Houston. Thankfully we're fine, just a little water damage where the roof leaked and the green house roof got ripped up a little. I heard at least 3 different tornadoes go by when Harvey made landfall, I have a feeling one of them did pulled the shingles off. But other than that we're fine. I know a lot of people cannot say the same...
   I am very thankful that while I spent all Friday and Saturday moving things up off the ground we did not get flooded. Now Mom and I are going to go through everything playing "keep, sell, donate".

 I hope everyone out there stays safe and dry.

Booties

I decided to get creative and try to make up a new pattern for booties. So far all I have is the sole.
  I'm not even sure about the colors. My mom says they look a like a carrot. But at least you should be able to find them if you're in a hurry.
I was going for something gender neutral so I could give the prototype to whichever family member has a child next.

  Why make a new pattern, you ask? Because the other one took too long to make. My cousin had twins a few years ago and I wasn't able to make both pairs before the shower; I ended up having to ship them a week later. I'd rather not have to do that again.
  I've been stuck trying to figure out what type of stich I should make the top part out of. I think I'm going to have to just bite the bullet and make one. I'm leaning towards a slip stich pattern like this pair of socks I made that my mom loves.

Sorry I didn't post for a couple of weeks, I've been working on getting ready for school. Classes start on the 28th assuming we're not underwater. Hopefully it won't be that bad.
      Have a bat-tastic day everyone!

Wire spider

The other day I got bored and decided to see if I could make a spider out of some scrap wire. In my defense my Pinterest feed was full of pictures of them. I didn't like the way the ones I made following any of the web tutorials came out, so I made up my own.

 I think it needs a larger bead for the abdomen, but I like the way the wire looks.  What do you think?

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 If I can find more larger holed beads I might make some to sell.

      Thank you for reading. I will Please have a bat-tastic day!

Watermelon

    Yet another in my series of volunteer plants we couldn't grow when we purposely planted seeds. This time it's watermelon. Earlier in the season, right after we had filled the middle bed with cucumber and pepper plants, we found a clump of unidentified seedlings. It turned out they were watermelon vines that would grow so aggressively I had move one of the jalapeno plants out of the bed because it was covered in vines. Completely covered, I had trouble finding it. 

  The real surprise was that the melons we've eaten so far actually tasted good.    

   Lesson learned: always toss seeds in the garden, because composting pays off in more ways than one.

Here is a picture of one of the five, yes five, small watermelons the vines were able to produce before they died. 

   Side note: I have no idea why the died, but I suspect it was the heat and lack of rain, it's killed just about everything else, despite daily waterings.

We've been freezing the rinds and giving them to the chickens as a nutritious and cooling snack. Because it is too hot.

Thanks again for reading. I hope you have a bat-tastic day! 

Fourth of July Jack-o'-lantern!

I did not post last week because of the 4th of July and a root canal that started on Wednesday afternoon and still isn't finished. Apparently, I have twisted, calcified canals. Ugh.

  Anyway, right after I picked the pumpkin, I found this hole in it like a worm had chewed into it. I put clear nail polish over the hole, hoping it would smother the little bugger if it was still in there or at least prolong the pumpkin's shelf life. It didn't work. The hole just got bigger. I doubted the pumpkin would last until October, even without the worm. So, here it is: Forth of July Jack-o'-lantern!

  You know, I couldn't find that stupid worm. We ended up mulching the seeds, they were shriveled and flat, no good for roasting. I don't have much hope that they will sprout. But we finally grew a pumpkin.

   

    Thank you for reading, and have a bat-tastic day!

  

It's too hot!

Ringo is in the house right now. Normally he is an outside cat, but he's been looking very poor lately, acting like he wanted in side, and we thought that some time in the AC would help him. 

   It hasn't been that hot, mid 90's, but the heat index has been over 100 for a few days. (You know it's hot when an afternoon shower just makes it sulty.)

He's really lost a lot of weight and just looks like he's suffering. He started looking better for a couple of days when it wasn't so hot but it didn't last.

   

   I decided to bring him in today when I saw that he had pink gloop in the corner of his eyes and wasn't very frisky. He doesn't get along with the inside cats, or most cats really, so we set him up in my room. He started looking better within an hour or so. The other cats better watch out! He might be able to go out later tonight or tomorrow.

   A few of the other outside cats have been looking bad so we might have to rotate them inside so they can cool down as well.

   We are going to get more proactive about putting ice in the cats water, at least twice a day from now on instead of once a day.  Mom's going to start tossing ice around where the cats like to lay, to try and cool them down. Unless that seems to annoy them, of course. 

   We have been dumping ice in the chickens water and spraying the run with cool water nearly everyday for while now, but I didn't think we would have to worry so much about the cats since they have so many trees to lay under. I guess that just go to show that you need to watch everyone in the heat.

  Thanks for reading, I hope you have a bat-tastic day and stay cool. 

P.S. Happy 4th of July!

Summer Pumpkin

My mother and I love pumpkins. Every October we buy a pumpkin for each of us, roast the seeds, and carve faces in it for Halloween. 

  I'm not ashamed to admit that I stopped by Walmart on my way home from school on the day after last Halloween to buy a couple of one dollar pumpkins, or that I filled my trunk with pumpkins a few days after that when we went to Kroger and saw they were giving away leftover pumpkins. Or that I have a few bags of roasted pumpkin pieces in the trianglular shapes used to carve out Jack-o'-lanterns in the freezer, because the chickens were tied of pumpkin and I didn't think the mulch could handle any more. (Side note: the meat from carveing pumpkins tastes just as good as smaller pie pumpkins to me.)

  For several years we tried to grow our own pumpkins from seeds, but after a couple of years of buying seeds and, at best, only getting a few vines on which the female blooms would rot off, we gave up on trying to grow our own pumpkins.  

Que this year, in which somehow we must have missed one of the delicous seeds, and it not only grew into a vine but did what the store bought seeds could not: produce a pumpkin! A pumpkin in in the summer. It's a miracle!

  As always thank you for reading and have a bat-tastic day!

Absence

    I'm sorry it's been a long time since I posted, and I don't think I will be posting on a regular schedule anytime soon, but I am going to try to get back to work on Bats Bizarre. I have been going through a lot in my personal life over the past couple of years.
    There have been a lot of changes in my life since my last post; I have gone back to school. I am half way to an associates degree in general studies.
   I don't really want to talk about the other issues right now.
     Well that's it for now, have a bat-tastic day!