August in a nutshell

I had a birthday in August. I'm now 43. Sometimes feel much older though. If I knew I'd live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.

Went to a hula party. It was my friend Evan's birthday party but it was the day before mine so I just celebrated early. That's Evan in the coconut bra.

The Freaky Tiki

Lightning struck Spenardo del Sur again. This time it hit a dead tree next to the goat shed. I'm sure the goats were not pleased since they were in the shed at the time - a mere 30 feet away. I watched the strike from a more comfortable distance of 500 feet.

It wasn't until the next day that I saw the damage the blast did to Frankencoop 100 feet away. The east wing of Frankencoop has been closed off for a long time now. The eastern outside wall was in bad shape. I mean bad. The ceiling ain't great either. Got too scary going in there everyday to collect eggs so I sealed it up.

The day after the storm (which only lasted 45 minutes but left an inch of rain and numerous lighting strikes within three Mississippis), I stepped into Frankencoop and noticed that this dresser was face down on the floor.

The dresser helps block the hole in the drywall that leads to the east wing. (On top of the dresser are old feed boxes salvaged from the barn I tore down, repurposed as nesting boxes.)

When I looked through the uncovered hole, this is what I saw:

The lightning had been the straw that broke the camel's back - or in this case, broke my grandma's kitchen wall. The entire door frame, which I'd boarded up when I first started work on Frankencoop, came crashing down which, in turn, knocked the dresser over. The window which had been next to the door actually had fallen out a couple months back. If you click and embiggen the picture, you can actually see the trunk of the stricken tree. It's currently being obscured by the mass of kudzu covering the outside of the wall (or, should I say, where the wall used to be).

I knew the day would come when that wall came down. And that day came in August. I think I really need to finish tearing that old house down this winter while some of the vintage wood can still be salvaged. That means a new chicken coop because the 19 birds currently living there have to go somewhere.

Here's a pic of the tree. It's to the left of the shed. It's just a trunk. It died a few years ago and all the branches had already fallen off. I'm surprised the shed is still standing . The goats have absolutely destroyed it over the last four years.

Celeste and Rosemary mug for the camera.

I was bummed to see that the pine struck back in June is starting to die. I noticed last week that the needles on a number of branches are turning brown. Damn it. I liked that tree.


Other stuff happened in August too but it's late and I have to be up early.

It must be the end of the month

Once again, I'm slipping in under the wire, posting at the end of the month simply because I cannot bear to have an empty month in the archives.

So here's some photos of a pine tree that was struck by lightning - only 100 feet or so from the house. One of the few exciting things to happen around here and I wasn't even home to witness it.

I'd always liked this raggedy old pine because it had somehow managed to be the only tree on this open field to survive the kudzu - although the kudzu did kill the bottom branches. I spent many hours removing all the kudzu from the pine in hopes that it would thrive. I doubt it will survive this lightning strike, though I can still hope.

As always, you can click on the photos to embiggen.


Intense heat turned moisture in the tree to steam and blasted off strips of bark up to 30 feet away.



The bottom seven feet of the trunk was scorched black.


You can see the house in the background.


The tree as seen from the poop deck (aka the front porch).

And then there were thirty-five

Sigh...So Mirabel died, though it had nothing to do with the incident that caused her to lose sight in one of her eyes. She ended up dying of heatstroke - the first of my chickens to die of such a thing.

I found her shortly after it happened. I had been in the backyard pen collecting eggs not long before she died and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Since the backyard birds are usually confined to the pen, I always make sure they have shade and water in there. In fact, Mirabel was sitting in the shade when she died, just a few feet from a full water dish.

She'd only been dead a short time before I found her so I was able to salvage the meat. Since I had Couchsurfers last weekend, this meant I was able to provide a tasty meal of chicken curry to my houseguests.


I've been slowly working on integrating the backyard and front yard flocks. The hens all get along fine but the two roosters, Bart and Pasha, still hate eachother. But it's getting better. They now seem to be able to share the hilltop (and hens) without trying to kill eachother. Today will be the real test as I will be gone for most of the day and they will be unsupervised for the first time.

The fact that the hen with the bad leg is still living on the front porch just adds to the chicken chaos (though she usually spend the daylight hours in the grass behind the house).


Of the three chicks born this spring, at least two have turned out to be roosters. The jury's still out on the third, though I suspect/hope that one may be a hen. If so, it will be the very first hen born in Frankencoop. Not counting the very first batch of chickens I hatched and raised by myself over three years ago (of which four remain), every chicken born here has turned out to be a rooster. With three full grown cocks in Frankencoop and two at the house, I don't need anymore roosters. Guess there'll be more chicken curry on the menu this winter.

What might not be on the winter menu is a lot of vegetables. In the last month, I've gotten about half an inch of rain. I've watched plenty of storms pass close by - some dumping rain just a couple miles from my place. Lots of stuff just withered and died. For the second year in a row, the corn is toast. Been working overtime to make sure the tomatoes and hot peppers survive. Even the kudzu is starting to wilt.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the old pear tree. So far, this has been the best year for that tree. It's chock full of hundreds of almost ripe pears. I'm thinking about pear wine...

Gonna be another hot one today. Forecast calls for triple digit temps - not a drop of rain in sight. It's only quarter after eight in the morning and it's already 85 degrees inside the house.

The locals don't think I'm crazy

Well, actually the locals do think I'm a little nuts, but not because I claim to have seen a mountain lion over the weekend. A number of them claim to have seen the occasional mountain lion in these parts in recent years. They're not common by any means, but not unheard of.

Just because the Department of Conservation and Natural Resourses says there ain't any don't make it so. People around here probably wouldn't bother calling the state to report one anyway. The state would want proof of one before listing it as an official sighting and the locals are more likely to shoot one with a gun than a camera. Since mountain lions are a protected species in Alabama (how can you protect something that doesn't exist?), the last thing you want to do is tell the government you killed one. Instead, you follow The Three Ss: Shoot, Shovel & Shut Up.

I wandered the woods the following day, looking for any sign of the big-ass cat but found none. I can only hope that it was merely passing through, much like the six-foot rattlesnake I saw next to my driveway last year. While it is amazing to see something that big and scary in your own backyard, one time is more than enough. Not exactly something you want to make a habit out of.


While the snow has melted, the cold temperatures are expected to hang throughout the week. By cold, I mean mid-20s during the night. This is a bit of a problem for me only because I am once again dangerously low on propane. I ran through that last 100 gallons pretty quickly. That's what I get for cranking the thermostat up to 60 degrees.

To put off ordering more propane (at least until I can scrape up the dough for the minimum 100 gallons) I have once again stopped using gas for just about everything except hot water for washing dishes and the occasional whore's bath in the sink. All food is cooked in the microwave or toaster over. Using the coffee pot instead of the superior French press. While this is all well and good for conserving my precious propane, I am not looking forward to my next electric bill.

The heater still kicks on when the inside temp drops below 47 degrees - the lowest setting on the thermostat. No matter how warm the fire heats the house at night, the inside temp drops low enough by morning for the heater to kick on. Last night, I left a bare light bulb burning next to the thermostat to trick into thinking it was warmer than it really was. When I woke up this morning, it was 40 degreees inside.

I don't mind the cold. Hell, just wear a sweater and extra socks. But I do worry about running out of propane. I guess if you actually run out, there's some extra shit that needs to be done when you do finally refill the tank. Not sure exactly what that extra shit is, but it probably costs extra money. I don't have regular money, much less extra money. My only other genuine concern is the pipes freezing up.

I also am expecting a couple CouchSurfers Friday evening so I want to hold onto enough propane so I can splurge on keeping the place reasonably warm enough for one evening/morning, offer a couple hot showers and use the stove to whip up pancakes and eggs for breakfast. (Oh yeah, at least three chickens are now laying eggs. Yay!)

So, the heater has kicked on again - warming the house to almost 46 degrees. It's currently 25 outside and won't start warming up at all for a while (the sun's not even up yet). I have to go watch Gramma Guthrie this morning so I don't want to start the fire back up since I have to leave in a couple hours anyway. Hopefully the sun will warm this drafty trailer up enough to keep the heater off while I'm away. I'll saw up some more old barn rafters when I get home this afternoon and start a fire then.

Finally! A new year and a new post.

Okay, it's a new year and a new chance for me to try to put up more regular posts. Or at least a new chance for me to make up new excuses for not posting.

As you've undoubtedly heard by now, it's cold in the south. Everybody is whining and moaning like it's never ever snowed here before. We got less than a quarter-inch of snow (I could see more grass than snow) and life ground to a halt. Schools closed, mail went undelivered, cars spun off roads and I took a leisurely walk in the quiet woods.

I've had four different neighbors call or stop by to make sure I was okay - as if I'm some elderly shut-in in danger of freezing to death. I've slept in my car at 10 below zero in the Canadian Rockies. When it got down to 27 below zero in Anchorage, it didn't stop me from going to the bar. The current weather conditions remind me of Anchorage in late March, early April. This is springtime!

Frankly, I'm a little insulted that people think I need to be checked in on when nighttime temps dip into the low teens. They should be calling me for pointers. They should check on me in the summer when it's 105 sweltering degrees and I'm hosing myself down in the plastic kiddie pool.

The truth is I almost ran out of propane a few days into the cold spell. Thought I had about 40 gallons but it turned out to be closer to 12 gallons. It was three days before I could come up with the money to get more (got an advance payment on taking care of Gramma Guthrie). I turned the thermostat to 50F and stoked up the fire in the fireplace. I stopped using the gas stove and made hot water with a coffee pot.

It hardly qualified as "roughing it." I still had electricity and internet. Just had to wear a sweatshirt and an extra pair of socks. But I didn't tell the concerned neighbors about this. No need to worry them anymore than they apparently already are.


Since my last post, I completed another task in my quest for Authentic Rural Southern Experiences. Along with "drink moonshine out of a Mason jar," "go to a cockfight" and "play dominoes with old men in a shack in the woods," I can now add "hog butchering" to the ARSE list.

I helped a couple locals turn two big hogs into several hundred of pounds of sausage. I was paid for my time with delicious sausage as well as lots of unwanted organ meats, gristly bits for the cats and a giant pile of bones. I also got to keep a couple choice cuts of pork. We even fried some up on a hot plate while we were working. Can't get much fresher than that.

It was quite the experience cooking with all that organ meat. I guess it counts as another Authentic Rural Southern Experience. I love liver but never had to face ten pounds of it. I made lots of liverwurst and pork liver pudding (it's kinda like meatloaf made out of liver). I still have five pounds of untouched liver in the freezer.

The lungs were the weirdest thing to cook. I boiled them in a big pot. They float on top of the water because of all the air inside. Duh - they're lungs, right? But it's just so unappetizing. I had to keep flipping the lungs over to make sure they cooked thoroughly. I assumed they were done when the tiny bubbles frothing out of the main tube turned from pink to white.

Remember those pictures of a healthy human lung compared side by side with a smoker's lung? Raw pig lung looks a lot like the healthy human lung. Cooked pig lung looks like the smoker's lung.

But, Jackie, how does it taste?

I don't know yet. After I boiled the lungs (and a heart), I cut them into pieces and then put them in the freezer. I plan on using them in a Filipino recipe I found on the internet. I didn't taste the boiled lungs before freezing. I figured I'd wait until they were fried up in a pan along with real food.

Post #23 - I wanted rain and I got rain.

It’s been raining on and off for four days now. Supposed to be the same at least through the weekend. The humidity is now so high that it's difficult to keep my hand-rolled cigarettes lit.

A multitude of mushrooms are springing up all over the place. There are even some growing on the back steps just outside the door. A few have sprouted on the small coop the chickens under the porch sleep in. Wish I knew more about mushrooms. Surely one or two varieties must be edible. But I have no idea which ones they would be so I just treat them all as if they're poisonous. But I am tempted to peer over the fence into my neighbor's cow pasture and see if I can spot any of those extra special red mushrooms. Yeah...you know what I'm talking about.

Soon the flies will be here. They always come out after a rain. Lots of bugs come out after rain, but nothing as thick as the flies. Ugh.

The growth in the kudzu is noticeably visible. The grass and weeds have grown too. What’s left of the gardens has perked up a bit but it was too late for a lot of the veggies. Half the kale is dead. The broccoli is still alive but was hit pretty hard by bugs a few weeks back. Keeping my fingers crossed for the two remaining watermelon plants. At least the tomatoes and basil are looking good (assuming you can find them amongst the weeds). I'll be putting a lot of work and faith into my fall crops.

Too bad I didn't plant more sunflowers. Those have done best of all - growing up to eight feet tall with dozens of flowers on each plant. They will make the chickens very happy (if the ants and wild birds don't steal all the seeds first).

Speaking of chickens (aren't I always?): More baby chicks hatched today. Last I checked, three had broken out of their shells with three or four eggs still unhatched. If the chicks can make it through the night without their mother accidentally stomping on them, they'll be okay - at least until they have to face the dangers of the outside world. There should be one more batch of babies before the season is over - Mama Graybie is expecting more chicks in mid-August.


On another happy note, I'm having my house professionally sprayed for ants on Monday. One of the select few people in Alabama that I've told about this blog owns a pest control company and offered to spray for me. He wants to try out a new pesticide and I will be his guinea pig. This is good news indeed!

Post #19 - How dry I am

It’s not looking like I’m going to make that goal of 41 posts by my birthday on August 7^th. Oh well, it won’t be the first time I didn’t reach a goal I set for myself. But at least I got this blog jump-started again and that was the original intent.

An old friend who’s been spending the year wandering aimlessly around the Lower 48 unexpectedly found himself in Alabama yesterday and is hanging out here at Spenardo del Sur for a little while.

Watched storms pass by all day and not one of them rained on me. I don’t even want the rain for my gardens anymore. Fuck, most everything died anyway after two months with hardly any rain. At this point I just want enough rain so I can safely have a fire to burn my garbage.

I don’t have garbage pickup so I have to burn, compost, recycle as much as I can. But it's been too dry to burn it and it's starting to pile up. Being summer, I can’t just leave it laying around. I’m not worried about it stinking because it’s mostly just paper & plastic, but it only takes the tiniest crumb of food in there to attract those damned ants. So I have to store the trash in the big freezer until I can burn it.

Did I mention the ants that have been invading my kitchen during this hot, dry summer are not regular ants? No, they are the evil sons of bitches known as fire ants. They will sting you. They are evil and they are everywhere. Sometimes I think this big hill I live on top of is nothing but one giant fire ant mound.

I’ve been pretty diligent about keeping the kitchen clean but they will still manage to march straight to the one tiny speck of food left in the sink. The wall behind the stove is dotted with little strips of black electrical tape. Every time the ants find a new way in, I cover it with tape. I even had to cover up one of the electrical outlets.

I’ve poisoned and killed all the ant mounds on that side of the house but it has done nothing to stem the flow of marauders. I suspect they have built a mound underneath the trailer and I will have to poke my head into the dark & spidery crawlspace to take a look for it.

Gimme some rain, dammit!

Hopefully the laptop power cord I ordered shows up tomorrow. Then I can start posting pictures again (and stop using this slowpoke computer from the late 1900s).

Post #10 - As if there wasn't enough already on my plate

I have a hundred projects going on right now.

It seems like I've been painting the bathroom forever. It's mostly done but I still have a bunch of trim and hard-to-reach areas to finish.

I'd pulled a couple boxes of my grandmother's old papers out of the closet and started sorting through them. The livingroom is littered with piles of bank statements, phone bills, letters, greeting cards, receipts and other 20th century ephemera. Everything I choose not to keep goes in the shredder and then onto the floor of the chicken coop. (All those colorful greeting cards and envelopes have given Frankencoop a very festive feel.)

The gardens are in disarray. Non-stop rains in May kept me from planting as much as much as I wanted. Non-stop sun and 100-degree days in June killed about half of what I had managed to planted. Blueberries dried up on the vine. Peaches shriveled and dropped from the trees. Even the wild blackberries have turned to dust. Locals are saying the deer are eating more than usual from their gardens. One neighbor lost an entire 1/4-mile row of peas the night before they were to be picked. So far the deer have left me alone. They probably can't see my veggies because of all the weeds.

Mowing kudzu is an ongoing chore. The kudzu is the only thing that doesn't seem to be affected by the drought. The goat shed is in dire need of repairs. Frankencoop needs a lot of work too.

The dry weather has also made the ants organize search parties into the kitchen. No matter how clean I keep it, they keep patrolling until they find some crumb on the counter or a dirty fork in the sink I didn't wash right away. Somedays, I mop the floor twice. I follow their parades to locate the tiny hole they're coming from so I can plug it up. But they just find another tiny hole. Last night, they started coming through a wall socket. They're like an unstoppable zombie horde. I'm worried my kitchen will be completely covered in electrical tape before the summer is over.

I'm having to store my garbage in the freezer. It's been too dry to burn it but, if I leave it out, the ants will get into it. Fortunately, it rained today so I can burn the garbage tomorrow. Hopefully the rain will also get the ants to let up a little.

Anyway, all this crap (and more) is going on. Everything is a mess but that's okay because I'm basically a hermit so nobody has to see it. Or so I thought...

My parents called last night to tell me they're coming for the weekend - THIS weekend. My father has decided to go to his high school reunion on Saturday - the first one he's ever attended. They will arrive Friday.

So now I have to drop everything and whip this place back into parent-friendly shape. They are going to flip when they find out they can't watch TV. I lost all the network channels in the DTV switch. I only get half a dozen PBS stations and couple Jesus channels now.

Post #2 - RAIN!

For over two weeks, it has been hot and dry. Daily temps usually passing a hundred degrees. There has been no rain. The gardens withered. Even the kudzu started wilting. The sun on your face like a big warm kiss from Satan.

But now it is raining! Sweet, glorious rain!

I hardly got anything planted this year because it wouldn't stop raining in May. Three damned weeks of nothing but rain. And what little I did get planted has been struggling in this heat wave. And I've been struggling to haul enough water to keep the plants alive.

To help beat the heat, I splurged on a $15 plastic kiddie pool from Mal-Wart. Combined with the beach umbrella I got in a trade over the winter and several gallons of water from the garden hose, I have created a sweet little oasis in the front yard. If I'm gonna be trailer trash, I may as well go all the way.

I'll post a photo of the oasis soon. It's currently dismantled due to sweet, glorious rain.

Instead, here is a photo of my cat, Sundae:

Grasshopper - It's what's for dinner.

Sorry I'm not writing more

I just do not have the focus to write these days. Oh, I jot down a lot of notes, but I'm lacking the discipline to sit down and mash it all into a semi-coherent narrative. I blame it on no weed. Weed may not make me a better writer but it sure as hell makes me a more prolific one.

Someday soon, I'm going to post a long piece on the absurd uselessness and absolute Nazi pigfuckery that is the Randolph County justice system Seriously, community service is some fucked up shit. The strip search incident alone is worth at least 1500 words.

And the worthless court referral program, a.k.a. re-education camp, is worth another 1500. I can't believe I had to explain to the "teacher" that you don't smoke the leaves of the marijuana plant. Sigh...

In other news:

High winds blew the roof off what was left of the old barn. This was a good thing as there was no way I could've taken that roof off by myself in less than a year. Mother Nature removed it, oak rafters and all, in less than five seconds. One of these days, I'll post photos of the barn deconstruction project.

I also contracted with a local timber company to remove about 400 tons of trees from my property. They paid me enough money to catch up on my bills, pay the reinstatement fee for my driver's license and get my old car back on the road. There will even be enough left over to buy groceries and maybe new contact lenses and a haircut.

Also: One of the cats got run over by a car, I found some Native American stone tools, the goat kids are still cute, baby chicks are due soon, I get my license back in three weeks and the corn is already an inch high.

So, dear readers, bear with me while I slog through this dry spell. I swear, I will update this blog more frequently in the future. I just couldn't let April pass without a single update.

Goodbye Gimpy, goodbye rototiller

My alpha rooster, Gimpy, disappeared yesterday. Don't know what happened to him. No doubt, something ate him. Last remember seeing him just before noon as I was leaving for a house cleaning gig. He failed to show up when I locked the chickens up around 4:30. Searches yesterday afternoon and this morning turned up no sign of him or his demise.

We may have had our differences, but Gimpy was a good rooster who was very protective of his hens. He ruled the roost with an iron claw.

This leaves three roosters in Frankencoop (as well as Caleb, who lives under my porch). One of the Frankencoop roosters will now get a reprieve from the stew pot. Until now, I had planned on eating my two youngest roosters, Sanchez and Babyman. In the interest of genetic diversity, one of them will now live to see next spring (barring further intervention by Mother Nature).

Both Caleb and Cornelius are "chicken house" roosters - refugees from factory farms. I don't know what breed they are - people around here just call these large white birds "chicken house chickens." Gimpy was a game rooster from my very first batch of chickens, hatched in the spring of 2007 (of which four hens remain). He is the father of Sanchez, a young cockerel who bears a strong resemblance to Gimpy (minus the bum leg). Babyman looks more like Barabajagal, my all-time favorite rooster who fell victim to a fox six months ago.

Sanchez


Babyman

Another casualty here at Spenardo del Sur was my rototiller. Recent high winds toppled a 60-foot dead pine tree. It snapped at the base and landed squarely on the rototiller, squashing it like a bug.

That's my tiller underneath the blue tarp.

The tree missed the storage shed by less than three feet. That would've been a horrible mess. I've got hundreds of glass jars and bottles in there that I've found on the property.


The only damage to the shed was a few small dents from a branch that hit the roof. They were small enough that I was able to push them out with my thumb.

The Truck o' Death strikes again!

Three weeks after running over Lemon, the Truck o' Death has claimed another victim. This time it was an adorable fourteen-week-old gray kitten.

I was getting something out of the truck and the kitten jumped in. I picked her up and set her back on the ground. Just as I was closing the door, she jumped again and got caught when the door slammed shut.

Unlike Lemon, death was not instant for the kitten. She flopped onto the ground, tail twitching. She'd occasionally try to drag herself forward but I think one of her front legs was broken. She was also having trouble breathing. There was no blood but it was obvious that this was really bad.

I put a little food out for the other cats to distract them while I went and got the rifle. Yep, that's right. I shot a kitten. And even though it had to be done, I still feel horrible about it.


Tropical Depression Fay ended up dumping more than six inches of rain on me. Things have barely dried and the Hurricane Gustav rains have already started. At least I got some mowing done today. I have a feeling the next couple days are going to be pretty soggy.


The laptop is on the fritz again. Back to using the vintage computer with Windows 98 so no photos today.

Rainy days & Mondays

There's been plenty of rain in these parts for the last couple days. Around four inches by now. According to the radar, it looks like today will be more of the same.

Normally, weather systems here advance from the west. Since I have an almost 180-degree view to the west from my house with visibility of about 40 miles, I can see approaching storms long before they actually reach me. But this whirling dervish known as Tropical Storm Fay (or Tropical Depression Fay as she's called now) has been sending storms from the south and east. This keeps me much more dependent on watching the radar online.

Of course, by the time Fay reaches this far inland, she's lost a lot of her oomph. There's still quite a bit of wind but nothing like what the coastal areas have seen. I've had a few empty buckets and scrap pieces of tin travel across the yard. The free-standing hammock had to be taken down lest it catch the wind like a sail and take flight.

Other than that, the only real damage came from my tomcat who jumped into the cab of my truck looking for a dry place to sleep. I had rolled the windows down during a lull in the storm. I rolled them back up when it started to rain again, unaware that Spalding was inside.

About six hours had passed before I went to the truck to get something. Spalding ran out as soon as I opened the door. It only took a fraction of a second for the smell to hit me. He had sprayed somewhere inside the truck and now it reeks of cat piss. With the constant rain, I can't even roll the windows back down to air it out. Sigh...just one more step towards my inevitable fate as a crazy old cat lady.



Tornado warnings are starting to be issued. I heard the sirens a little while ago. One of my neighbors drove up and asked if I was listening to the radio. Funnel clouds spotted nearby - about ten to fifteen miles away.

Just to be on the safe side, I threw a couple important things in a bag next to the door: cash (my life savings of about $50), ID, camera, tobacco and my external hard drive.

This metal box I now call home is no place to ride out a tornado. If I do have to take cover, I'll make a run for my neighbor's unfinished house close to where our properties border each other. It's just basement walls. It was built a few years back - he only had the money to do that much at the time. Someday - who knows when - he'd like to finish the house. But for now, it's just three concrete walls that we both think of as the tornado bunker.

If a tornado comes, you'll find me in the lower left-hand corner