Tuesday, March 26, 2013

You know what they say about good intentions...

A couple of years ago, I decided to create an eponymous blog to support the column I write for my local newspaper, The San Saba News and Star. Although I had positive experience with Blogger, for some strange reason I decided to try a different blogging platform--BAD IDEA. It was so unwieldy that I ended up with very few posts before I gave up.

Since then, I have had a lot of people outside the local area become interested in the column so I wanted to have a place they could easily access it. And there is still the original reason I wanted to have the blog--to post the pictures that the newspaper can't print, and to give additional information, such as links to websites I mention in the column.

My intentions right this second are to post this week's column tomorrow, concurrent with newspaper day in San Saba. Then I intend to post several of the past columns with any associated pictures. After that, I intend to keep current on posting the bi-weekly columns, select a few more archived columns to post, AND to post other entries during the weeks between columns. We shall see. My intentions often do not come to fruition as planned. But…we are headed into the "slow" season of my family's business, which usually means I have fewer interruptions and crises.

In the meantime, I want to share a few pictures I have taken over the last couple of days:
A day's eggs

These were the eggs I gathered from my henhouse yesterday. I love the colors of eggs and sometimes take photos so I can refer back to those colors. The light blue of that whopper egg in the middle is the color of my kitchen walls. The other reason  I took this photo was to show the relative size of that whopper egg. We have been getting those regularly in the past few weeks. My son thinks it's our hen Cinni who is responsible for those. Poor Cinni! She isn't just a whole lot bigger than this egg! We cracked it this morning and it was a double-yolker. I keep waiting to get an egg-in-an-egg like this guy.

I like to hang clothes on the clothesline for a few reasons: I'm a tightwad; I like the way they smell when they are line-dried; because I can (no deed restrictions on the ranch); it's environmentally-friendly; it's mostly easier on the clothes; and because it's what my farm/ranch ancestor women did. I also like being outside with all the sights and sounds of nature rather than standing in the house in front of the washer/dryer combo. I had been needing a new clothespin bag since my old one, made from an old pair of my son's jeans, needed to be retired. I was having a hard time convincing myself to buy one when I know how to sew. I found several ideas on the internet and was planning to do one from the Martha Stewart website, when I was cleaning out my bathroom cabinet and found this little tote bag that had come with some Biolage shampoo. I was about to throw it away when I realized it was the perfect size for my clothespin bag. I took the handles off, used a CD to draw the circle on the front, cut out the circle, folded the cutout part in half and sewed it in the bottom half of the opening, then zig-zagged and trimmed the opening with some rick rack I already had. After that, I sewn the top opening shut, leaving an opening for this pants hanger I had. My son squished the top of the hanger to close it up and make it fit the clothesline a bit better, et voila! A pretty, double-recycled clothespin bag that cost me exactly NOTHING!

Finally, I love this time of year! Even in the absence of wildflowers in this droughty year, the colors of the budding leaves are beautiful. Here is a photo of the blackjack oak in my back yard.