Late Garden Planting - and a new critter picture

This weekend comprises an inventory of our usual weekends of activity laden joy. I complete a weekend like this with the joy of saying, "Life is Good!"

Saturday we spent more than six hours working on Die Weide. It started with my installing the small gate, which wasn't installed last week due to some missing hardware. Then Inge and I fork turned the portion of the garden and prepped the soil for planting. This year we're only using half the space we used last year because we got off to a late gardening start out here. We planted four rows of corn, six rows of black-eyed peas, three watermelon mounds, two cantaloupe mounds, and eight squash and zucchini mounds. Next week I'll add some leek left over from the house garden and a few tomato plants. That will be all we plant in the Weide garden this year. (Our back yard garden's four raised beds are chock full of goodies already.)

After the planting I installed a board with hooks to hang the garden tools while Inge took a walk down to the pond. There she spotted a dark snake laying across the dam. She told me about it and later we took a walk to the pond together and it was then I spotted the snake in the run-off pool below the dam. Inge had her camera and I took this zoomed in picture of the snake, which we have tentatively identified as a young western cottonmouth.

In over two years of wandering through Die Weide, this is only the second snake we've seen, and neither was a rattlesnake. (The first may have been a corn snake.) But it is fascinating to see any critter on Die Weide!

Today we stayed home and worked the home chores. Mowing and hedge trimming topped my early chore list, knocked out quickly because I chose today to begin a new Weide project in my workshop - a Top Bar Beehive! I found several plans online and as usual, picked and chose the bits and pieces I liked from their plans to create my own bee hive. Today was spent sizing and gluing the main components and next week I'll complete the build with some pictures for your pleasure. I hope that within two weeks we can install the beehive, with bees, out on Die Weide. Gotta get some pictures of that!

Long Time no Wreit-e Weide - catch-up-post

Wow!I have neglected writing here for a long, long time. That's not to say we haven't been enjoying Die Weide, because we have been out there way more weekends than not. The drought persisted until January and Die Weide baked to a crisp as the rest of Texas did in the heat. It makes me wonder if this is not something that will become a frequent occurrence with global warming.

Anyway, it has been incredibly busy out there. My brother, and sometimes Inge, and I drilled the well down about 15' deep before we hit a bunch of rocks that broke up into chunks too big for the vacuum to suck up. So Kenny and I built a bigger vacuum, but he went to work in Houston, and Inge worked most weekends since then leaving me without a drilling crew to make further progress. We will make it though. The compressor drill works great except it is pretty slow chewing through limestone and chunks of flint chert.

Two weeks ago Kenny and I enclosed the shed behind the water tank. I was tired of having to lug gardening tools back and forth and it also can serve as an impromptu tent in a pinch. Now we've got shovels, post-hole diggers, rakes, and other gardening tools right there to work with. Next weekend I'll spend some time arranging the storage space in the shed for efficiency.

I went to Die Weide twice last week. The previous Tuesday I went out to meet a field engineer for Bartlett Electric to find out what it would take to drop power service on the property. As I drove out there I was following a widespread rainstorm that we've frequently been blessed with since January. I decieded to see what the natural pond looked like shortly after a heavy rain and picture above is from the natural pond in the woods and it's the first time I've seen the pond full to the point of overflowing the entire width of the dam. It was beautiful to see and hear and I took a video of it too. As soon as I figure posting on youtube out I'll post it for family to enjoy. The field service engineer, Shawn, and I had a great conversation when we both discovered we're Army Vets. He too is looking to pick up property via the Texas Veterans Land Board. My 12 years of cold war service paled compared to his as he is both an Iraq and Afghanistan war vet with some pretty harrowing tales. Anyway, it turns out that it's not too hard or expensive to drop a line on the property, but they only go straight from their pole to just inside my propery line and I have to run line from the service pole (which I have to install) to the cabin site and the shed. Last weekend Kenny and I built a fence around the garden to keep the critters out. I didn't take pictures of that because we were working our butts off.

Drilling a Well - and Camping and Bird sightings

Drilling a Well - a  hole and a hole.

Doesn't look like much, but this is the beginning of what I hope to be one of two water wells on Die Weide. This first one is next to the water harvesting shed and half way between the orchard and the garden. Although the water harvesting shed will go a long way towards watering the orchard, it doesn't provide enough water for the garden too. I stumbled upon a video on youtube from this site: drill your own well which has a relatively inexpensive way to drill a well to get to relatively shallow groundwater. Several of the neighbors around us have groundwater wells with the water table at 19 ft deep. I expect the table to be deeper as a result of the drought though. I'm planning to drill a 50 ft deep well and case it with 4" PVC. 

After doing some research on groundwater hydrology, I plan to put the 2nd well at the edge of the pasture, much closer to one of the four wet weather creeks that runs through the property. This should be a shallower well according to groundwater hydrology and less likely to dry out. This well will be used to provide stock water for the 2-3 cattle we plan to have and the donkey we already have.

Inge brushing her donkey, Herbert

Today I had the pleasure of seeing two new birds on Die Weide. Within an hour of each other to boot! I went out around 10 this morning with my folding chair and a cup of hot tea and had a seat on the back (West) of the property to be still and see what critters showed up. This area always gets lots of deer traffic and Inge and I saw an Armadillo here last week too. Anyway, a pair of noisy small birds were pecking on food on the ground about 4 yards from me when a large greyish bird swooped down to try to snag one of the little birds. I thought, "hawk!" but when I swung the binocs over I was staring eye-to-eye with a large owl! After a minute or so it flew up into a nearby tree and I spent the next 20 minutes studying the owl. Online I found that its grey and tan horizontal striped markings and size indicate that it was a Barred Owl.

A few minutes later I headed back to pack up the campsite, walking slowly along the Western Trail, when a large brown bird flew away from me and I thought, "Hawk!" But it landed on a branch ahead of me and I snapped up the binoculars to see a Great Horned Owl staring back at me. This time I didn't get to study the owl as he flew off as soon as we made eye contact. But there is no doubt that I saw the "ears" on a very large brownish owl head.

Trail Cam Tales

We got our trail cam back in action. For awhile it was taking no photos, but I found out that there was one bad cell in the rechargeable batteries that, even though the camera registered 60% battery power remaining, it wouldn't detect movement or fire the camera. Once I replaced the batteries, it started taking pictures again.

We have a new critter on Die Weide - it's one of the ones that make you go Ahhhh! But I'll save that for later. First I will show you a sequence of two photos and tell you the story behind what occurred in these two brief pictures.

So, what do we have here? We have the tail end of a deer. To give you more perspective, I have my trail cam set up to take a burst of five photos upon detecting movement. Then it waits 30 minutes before reactivating the sensor to take the next burst when something moving triggers it. This was the first photo and the other four frames in the burst were empty. My interpretation, at the 08:26 timestamp, this deer was hauling by so fast that from the time the sensor detected movement and this first photo snapped only its hindquarters was captured as it fled by the camera. Normally I get four or five frames with deer as they are leisurely grazing along. Hmm, so what spooked the deer past the camera?!?

Why it was my friendly neighbor wandering by exactly 30 minutes after the spooked deer. From these two photos I can deduce that my neighbor walked along the north fence approximately 30 minutes earlier (to the left in the frame) which spooked the deer to flee south past the camera. It took half an hour between the deer fleeing for our neighbor to navigate our woodland trail to cross from behind the camera (there were more frames of his passing by). We met and talked the day I retrieved the memory stick and he told me he had been on the property as he was hunting for his missing dogs and that I might find him on my trail cam. Sure enough he was there but I also found it interesting and a bit amusing that my trail cam actually caught a small story here - that of a deer spooked by a wandering human.

And now for that which I enticed you with - (drum roll please) the new critter! Technically it's not new in the sense of a new species as I have plenty of pictures of this particular species. However, as you can now see, it is a "new" critter!

Now everyone say, "Ahhh, how cute!"

But for me an even cooler aspect of this critter is the very next weekend, when I went camping with my brother on Die Weide, I got to see this delightful critter in person! I had just finished turning our bratwurst and was stirring the Ranchstyle beans over the fire pit when my brother pointed behind me and said, "there's Bambi!" So I turned around and saw no more than 10 feet behind me the cute critter bounding away through the tall grass. What a fun thing to see. Every time I get to stay out at Die Weide, I think, "Life is Good!"

Last note and last photo - this is from yesterday's visit to the land. We watered the orchard as usual, brought the neighbors a loaf of home-baked Sourdough German Mischbrot, and swapped out the trail cam memory stick. This photo was on the stick, which I blew up a bit to show an odd sight - a deer with either a pink collar or something like trash around its neck. I think its a collar, though pink seems garish. The deer appears healthy and the collar doesn't appear to hinder it. Unfortunately, the deer never turned sideways to get a better view. I hope the trail cam captures it again.

Tarp Tent Camping on Die Weide

In Die Weide we have a natural place to enjoy, which we have visited every weekend this year to water the orchard and continue blazing trails in the woods. However, I have grossly neglected writing this blog about our thorny paradise. I have writings in notebooks about the land but transposing them to the blog is work that I keep putting off. Today's blog will be about my camping trip last night.

This is my tarp tent under which I have slept on two camping trips since I last wrote in May. I pulled a one-nighter yesterday evening. Inge had to work this weekend so I chose to camp out overnight Saturday evening. Normally I would head out Friday evening but I chose to attend a memorial service Saturday for a co-worker, Rafael, who passed away recently from pancreatic cancer. He was only eight months younger than me. Time passes and attending Rafael's memorial reminded me that my date with meeting Jesus will come in His due time - a time no longer as far off.

After a delicious cornmeal encrusted fried catfish supper with Inge I packed some snacks, drinks, and breakfast supplies to be cooked on my coleman stove and headed out. The sun settled just over the treetops when I arrived at Die Weide and unlocked the gate. I pitched my tarp tent under the picnic pecan using an X-frame from two-by-fours over which I stretched and tied off a taught rope that became the ridge-line for the tarp. After pounding few tent pegs and stretching bungee cords to tarp grommets my shelter stood ready for my cot.

Our ever-friendly neighbors, Kenneth and Derrellene, stopped by with their passel of dogs and we chatted the sun down - mostly drought talk as that impacts us all this year. Darkness quickly settled over the pasture after they left and I set up my folding chair, cooler, and poured myself, "eine Krug Bier." I offered a salute and the first sip of Bier to Inge's mother Kunigunda, as she enhanced my love of good German Bier. She took us to places with fresh from the keg mugs of foam-capped, "liquid bread." "Mutti" always raised a toast and said, "Die erste Schluck ist die beste!" (the first sip is the best) then quaffed half the mug followed with a twinkle in her eyes and a huge foam mustache smile.

I love the nights here on Die Weide. The last time I camped here the moon only dimly lit the pasture with a fingernail sliver reflection. Last night though, the moon phased more brightly as "waxing gibbous" - a bit more than half full. I sat by the Picnic Pecan on Die Weide which resides in the pasture with copses of woodlands only paces away. The moon's glow paints the nearby copse of trees in patches of pale and dark grey and lights the tall grasses of the pasture in silvery tan hue. For some minutes the high pressure system that commands our drought caps the pasture with an absolute stillness. The heat of the day persists in this stillness building a sheen of sweat on my skin and twitching and itching my nose with dry dusty-drought scent. The stillness carries sound and from the southwest someone plays a mixture of country and rock music that I can hear with sing-along clarity, but so far away as to be quietly pleasing. Dogs bark in various directions punctuated by a donkey's long, loud, "braaee-huh, braaee-huh". Nearby, insects serenade me with chirps, chirrs, and whirrs and I begin to think the night's sleep will be uncomfortably warm until I hear treetops in the distance rustle and soon the picnic pecan whispers behind me passing the breeze over to tussle the hair on my arm and neck and wash the heat from my skin.

Later I gathered my walking stick, on which I have carved a face, and set out to explore Die Weide at night. The half-moon lights the way as I step-pause-step my way slowly to the path we've carved in the woods to the pond. Tonight, though the pond isn't my destination. I only seek to find a place within the woodland boundary where I can sit and listen for the rustling of critters in the woods. At first I sit upon the ground on the path, but that proved a thorny seat. And my solution to that problem lead to this haiku lesson learned which will end this blog entry.

Sturdy walking stick

placed as seat on thorny ground

prevents prickly butt.

Water Harvested!

My daughter blamed our water tank on facebook for the drought in Texas because it hasn't rained since we put in the water harvesting shed. However, last Wednesday and Thursday we had some storms roll through and we anxiously looked forward to seeing if the Austin rain also hit our land east of home. And as we drove up, we were overjoyed to see, WATER!

Our rain gauge recorded 8/10ths inch of rain (our neighbors had 9/10ths). The tank shows 125 gallons of water, but there was about three inches already in the tank from two times we got a trace of rain. As nice as this picture is, we won't see it like this in the future because we wrapped the tank in a black cloth to inhibit the growth of algae.

Paucity of Precipitation

For those who follow Die Weide I owe an apology for not writing in a while. We have been out to Die Weide every weekend, but the hours I've been working the past month have resulted in a dearth of energy for writing the blog.

And we move the the critical dearth on Die Weide - a paucity of precipitation. I saw a weather report last week where the meteorologist stated that of the six or seven rain events since January, none has produced more than two-tenths of an inch of rain. Indeed, only one produced more than one-tenth of an inch of rain. So there, upon Die Weide stands a shed with a water harvesting tank that has only collected enough rain to water the orchard trees once. So our last four or five weekend visits have consisted of filling water barrels and coolers at home and watering the orchard and garden by hand. Thus, my writing of Die Weide wouldn't have consisted of much beyond, "this week, we watered the garden and orchard." 

Two weeks ago we had a change of pace in that we invited Mom, Janice, and Kenny out for a BarBQ. Below are a couple of pictures of that family outing. It is great to see that Mom has recovered enough to be able to travel out to Die Weide and enjoy an outing.

Last week Inge and I watered the garden and orchard and hacked a path through brambles next to the creek. The pond still has water, but the level is dropping very rapidly. If we don't get rain soon, we will again have a muddy hole in the creek - the state it was in during the drought last summer. Here a couple pictures of a very primitive garden. Also, even in a drought, we manage to find a few wild bluebonnets on Die Weide.

Orchard Maintenance with Dog Following

Die Weide Bluebonnets

This week Inge and I watered the garden and orchard and for a change just went exploring. I set out with camera and notebook to try to identify a few trees on Die Weide. I will write later of my findings. Here again are garden pictures Inge took today. Note the corn is growing nicely.

In this photo, there are six tomatoes, four store bought tomato plants and two that spontaneously grew from compost leavings in our back yard garden. We have so many of these wild tomatoes that I chose two to move out here. Note how vigorous the wild tomatoes up front appear compared to the greenhouse tomatoes in back! If it looks a little rough it's because we used leaf litter as mulch.