that's what bilbo baggins hates

Chip the glasses and crack the plates!

Blunt the knives and bend the forks!

That's what Bilbo Baggins hates—

Smash the bottles and burn the corks!

Cut the cloth and tread on the fat! 

Pour the milk on the pantry floor!

Leave the bones on the bedroom mat!

Splash the wine on every door!

Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl;

Pound them up with a thumping pole;

And when you’ve finished if any are whole,

Send them down the hall to roll!

That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!

So, carefully! carefully with the plates!

J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Hobbit, "An Unexpected Party"

~~~

Another of my favorite and most useful pots has met an untimely demise.

Rats.

No point in crying over spilt milk (or broken glass),

but that saucepan - my last big saucepan - will be missed.

I really must pay more attention to the excellent example of 

Miss Ruth Kellogg:

Miss Ruth Kellogg demonstrating correct posture for dishwashing.
1921-26. Div. Rare & Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

~~~

But while I'm off improving my posture

and searching the thrift shops for an uncommon Pyrex saucepan,

I'll be thinking of Bilbo Baggins.

And here is a nifty little half-minute gem for your entertainment:

a recording of the Dwarves' clearing-up song,

sung by J.R.R.Tolkien!

~~~~~

wordless wednesday

 ~~~~~

sunday in the barn

Why is it that 4 hours spent cleaning and puttering in a barn

is so genuinely satisfying...

 while 4 hours spent on housework 

is just one more futile attempt to get the house clean?

One of Life's Little Mysteries.

The crazy screen curtain experiment is working well.

Better than expected.

Throughout the day, the goats tend to rotate in little groups;

spending time on the sun-heated rocks in the paddock,

then resting in the damp shade under the barn

or in the big, relatively bug-free stall.

And goats of all ages enjoy wearing the curtains,

in a variety of creative stylings.

Azalea helping Lily with her veil.

Lily: Goat of Mystery


 
Azalea, Goat of Sweetness

Campion, Goat of Mischief.

Campion has his sweet moments, too.

Sometimes he even stands still.

Usually it's during the ten seconds right after he wakes up.

His interest in the screen curtains has been mainly focused on

chewing holes in the edges

and trying to tear them down.

It's an exhausting task.

But Campion has a strong Work Ethic.

I have no doubt what the final result will be.

I'm just hoping the curtains will last til Autumn.

~~~~~

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.
~~~~~