between the storms

We've had some massive thunderstorms lately,

with another due any minute.

There's thunder rolling right now,

and the goats are all tucked in.

Again.

But Saturday...

Saturday was perfect.

It was a Perfect Summer Day.

Clear, not humid.

Sunny, not hot.

And breezy.

Better than breezy...

there was a good, steady wind.

Very unusual.

Blowing from the North (of all places!)

As soon as I had finished the morning chores,

I changed my clothes,

Because the baby goats loooove me

and Piper and I headed for the pond.

~~~

A tangle of yarrow was blooming by the gate.

Don't you love yarrow? Such delicate leaves.

The tall stalks had been flattened by torrential rain the previous night,

but were slowly lifting up their heads again:

Achillea millefolium

In a little sunny patch along the woods road,

I smelled Comptonia and stopped to take a snap for you:

Comptonia peregrina

Something flew past my face, 

and  landed on that little maple sprout above the Comptonia.

Can you see it?

How about now?

~~~

On such a glorious day - especially on a Saturday - 

and the first truly nice day in weeks,

I expected to find lots of other people,

and possibly dogs, and horses,

enjoying the woods.

But to my astonishment, Piper and I were very lucky.

There was no one else around, and no need for a good dog to be on a lead.

Piper explored and rolled and sniffed and splashed

and ran loops around me while I took pictures.

Of this plant, for example. Do you know it?

Medeola virginiana

I remember this one from my childhood rambles.

"Indian Cucumber" is what we called it.

It has an edible root, but it is tiny.

I recall eating one, once, about a hundred years ago.

These days, maybe if there were thousands of these plants in one spot,

I might be tempted to eat some...

Nah.

I'd find a cucumber in my garden or at a farm stand,

and leave the wildflowers to grow.

Because look how magical:

~~~

The wind was so strong and steady, it actually kept the biting bugs away.

It was nothing less than miraculous.

So when Piper and I walked back to the car,

I stuffed our usual post-walk snacks into my backpack,

grabbed one of the small cushions

(my car is full of various back-supports),

and we turned right around and walked back into the woods.

I chose a spot on a slope at the south edge of the pond,

with the wind blowing straight at us.

(There was one mosquito. I laughed at it.)

Piper and I sat down under the trees and shared a picnic.

We had crackers and cheese and a banana and water.

It was excellent.

This was Piper's view: 

And this was mine:

~~~

 Perfect.

~~~~~

a little catch-up

Well, I'd hoped to get some great snapshots to accompany this post.

I've been trying ever since the camera came back from the shop.

Here's the problem:

when you aren't able to get pictures until kids are several weeks old,

most of the outdoor shots look like this:

So I did something I rarely do: I used the flash. 

I stepped quietly into the barn whilst the "new" kids were playing, and managed this:

Which is not much of a picture, but at least you can see two kids:

the solid black girl on the left is Vinca.

The black-with-brown-trim boy on the right is Dara.

Even in the barn and with a flash,

getting a decent picture of these kids is tough.
For example, the moment they noticed me sitting there,

here's what happened:

LeShodu's kids were born exactly one week after Lily's kids.

And exactly one day after my camera went for a swim.

These will be LeShodu's last kids before retirement,

and I really wish I had been able to document their first days.
As I watched Vinca and Dara learn to fly,
roughly 2,000 times I thought sadly,
"the lovely blog readers are missing the best bits!"

Because now, as you can clearly see,

these kids are so grown up

you can't really call them adorable anymore, can you?

Vinca fortifying herself

for a confrontation with Mean Auntie Violet:

Dara overcome with excitement during his first
meet&greet with the owners of the buck:

You'll just have to try to imagine that they used to be really cute.

~~~

And finally, here's a deliberately obscure snap of their mama, LeShodu:
Matriarch of my little herd, and President of the
Cloud Harvest Cashmere Dramatic Society.

LeShodu is in the middle of a sudden and hormonally-driven hairloss.

She feels fine and is eating well,
but looks quite shocking.

If I posted a more revealing picture,

I expect I would hear from her attorneys.

Then I would have to sell the herd to pay my legal costs.
LeShodu does not always think things through.

But she does make nice babies.
~~~~~

after the rain

kale

Yesterday afternoon, the sky suddenly became dark. Very dark.

I hastened out to the paddocks to shift the goats back up from their browse areas.

squash

The hastening had to stop as soon as I was inside the fence.

I may have mentioned that goats hate change?

Well, they hate hurrying even more.

When you are working with goats, 

there is one sure way to slow things down:

try to speed things up.

Amsonia

A pocketful of oats helped shift everyone fairly smoothly.

Done! Gates latched. Sweat dripping into my eyes.

(Not because I was working hard. Just because I was outside.)

The thunder was getting louder, but the rain hadn't begun.

So I spread the five waiting trugs of mucky hay

on the terrace garden, and quickly weeded the corn.

Then the rain started, so I headed inside to update Piper.

I was sure she would be worried.

She was sleeping.

So I went out on the screenporch to watch the storm.

spiderwort

Wowza!

It rained and rained and rained.

This was quite refreshing, as it has been so very horribly hot.

Hot and muggy. Day after day.

So hours of heavy rain gave me hope

for all the things we say about rain here:

"The gardens really needed it!"

"It will settle the dust!"

"The pollen will be washed away!"

"It will clear the air!"

Especially that last one, because lately, stepping outside in the morning

has felt like the moment before you step out of a hot shower.

comfrey

Well, after going out at 6 AM for chores this morning, 

I can report:

"The gardens really needed it!"

~~~~~

wordless wednesday

~~~~~

experiments

It's been very hot here lately, and hordes of biting flies have joined the countless mosquitoes, making time spent outdoors both mind-meltingly steamy and a ceaseless battle against welt-producing nasties. Yesterday I decided to experiment with reducing the number of insects that fly into the new barn.

Last year I tacked up a set of "instant screen door" panels in the little goat shed doorway, and felt they helped keep the deer flies out. So at the end of the season, I bought a couple more sets on sale, in anticipation of the day when the new little barn would be built.

Yesterday, I cut those panels into half-lengths and hung some in the upper doorway of the feed storage side of the barn and others in the lower doorway of the big communal stall. I left the center of the lower doorway temporarily unscreened, though, so the goats could get used to the curtains and I could see whether or not they would decide to tear them down.

Initially there was a lot of nosing and chewing and pawing at curtains,

but soon Lily and Azalea and Campion seemed quite relaxed:

while Tsuga appeared to be collecting data:

"Hypothesis: there are fewer insects on one side of the screen.

Methodology: I'll put just one ear and one foot outside and compare.

Hmmmmmm."

Twenty minutes later:

 "Phase Two: I shall now extend just one hind foot."

I'm looking forward to Tsuga's analysis of her data.

I just hope I won't have to wait for her to publish;

those peer-reviewed goat research journals are notoriously slow.

(I was about to write "Probably the editors spend too much time browsing,"

but I realized it would have been an unintentional pun,

which is so much worse than an intentional pun!

Whew. Narrow escape, there.)

~~~

Twenty-four hours later, all the curtains are still in place. Of course some bugs are still flying in through that big opening - the one that Lily is treating as her own private checkpoint - but I've noticed that, once inside, the bugs become focused on trying to get back out, mostly through the upper doorway of the feed area which is pretty completely covered by the hanging screens. Bonus! Now when I go into the barn I spend a minute or two using a little jar with some sticky liquid in the bottom to quickly tap those deer flies and horseflies off the screen and out of the equation, permanently.

I actually got goosebumps as I typed "deerflies and horseflies."

The body remembers those bites!

So, not a perfect or total solution, but it is a definite improvement!

And that's what we shoot for here...improvement, not perfection.

"Ahem! Speak for yourself, please!

I'm not looking for progress or perfection...

I'm looking for results!

Quantifiable truth!

And ultimately, tenure!"

Oh, don't worry about tenure Tsuga. You've got it.

~~~~~