Hot time in the country

Just a quick note. The wind is blowing, does it ever stop? And of course it started up when I was replanting a few things. I have to go out when the wind blows and put covers on everything so the wind won't dry them out and if the wind isn't blowing, I have to go out at night and do the same thing so the critters won't eat them. I had three corns coming up (my third planting) and some little bugger ate two of them. Gadfreys, it's easier taking care of a two year old!!!!
It was 91 degrees in the house yesterday. No air conditioning, ya know. Not enough power. I looked at a portable swamp cooler yesterday while I was at Lowe's. Too bad the car insurance bill was due. There went all the extra cashola. Oh well, I am learning to deal with the heat. Last night I went to bed with wet hair and that helped. Today, I put the dogs in the laundry sink and got their bellies wet to cool them off. A couple of them are throwing up and I think it's because they are too hot. They are definitely off their feed. Anyway, today I have the house closed up, windows shut, blinds down to see if that helps the house to stay cooler. I hate living like a mole. Pa doesn't mind the heat at all. He can be outside all day, working like a steam engine and it doesn't bother him. I'm usually ok if it stays under 100 but being outside in the sun can lay me low in a matter of minutes. I drink so much water and ice tea, I feel like I am drowning. Time to get the Gatorade out!

My Poor Truck!

Pa somehow got my back fender caught on the trailer and ripped the crap out of it. You know how much I love my truck! 

 It was an accident so I couldn't get mad about it. Just heartbroken. I told him to cut the bad part off which he did and straightened the rest out as much as he could. We only have the insurance we have to have since the trucks have been paid off for years. So it will never get replaced.
I ran into Saint Johns to get water for the garden this morning. Pa is making dinner tomorrow night for our friend Daisy Mae since her husband isn't home. I bought some frozen strawberries so he could make his famous strawberry jello dish. Are you sitting down? I paid $5.19 for a 24 ounce box of frozen strawberries!!! Isn't that unbelievable? No wonder we are broke at the end of each month.
Besides gardening, I have been making cards to have them ready when Pa's sister orders more. Below are some of the ones I made. I need to find something else to make to hang on the wall or something.
Pa saved a life yesterday. He was out by the storage containers and heard a weird sound. He looked all around to try  to locate the noise. He saw a bird in a tree nearby looking down at the ground so that's where Pa looked. One of our resident snakes caught a baby cottontail rabbit. It had chomped down on the poor little thing and was beginning to coil around it. Pa freed the bunny and it ran off and the snake went back under the container. Darn, wish I had my camera out. You don't know if you should feel sorry for the snake losing out on a meal or happy because the bunny gets to live another day.

 Isn't this little dress card cute? I think it is one of my favorites.

 This is a bowling shirt card. I bought the pattern for this. I usually make my own patterns.

 I like this one too.

 I was on a black and hot pink kick.

 This ones says "A pair of shoes can change your life".  Cinderella

 I love this little hedge hog.

 Hard to tell here but the butterflies are 3D. They have acetate butterflies on top of the paper ones. Then I used alcohol ink to decorate the acetate.

 Wild hair! I have that problem every day.

Yeah Vegas! I actually bought a powerball ticket today. First one since we moved  here. Wish me luck! If I win, I am going to buy up a lot of properties around here and put a well on our property and on Daisy Mae's property also. Oh, and fence everything in. (Just to piss off the local rancher)

One Positive Thing about forest fire smoke

 It makes a beautiful sunset.

 There are some clouds mixed in there also.

 These pictures were from last week.

 You can't tell from this picture but the sun was blood red one morning.

 At the beginning of last week, this is what the smoke looked like from our back yard. It's about 50- 60 miles away. I took pictures from all directions from our back yard.

 around in a semi circle I go!

 That's a lot of smoke!

 It was drifting to I 40 near Gallup, New Mexico

 What is Pa doing on the roof?

 Something ate the leaves off my grape vine so I grabbed a mesh bag that was holding oranges and tied it around the grape vine. That will teach the little suckers! Our friend Tom had a few plants destroyed in his garden due to a rabbit digging under his fence and sampling a few tidbits. Then the next night, something ate a whole row of tomato plants in my garden. Aren't tomato leaves poison? Hope the little bastard died a miserable death. Luckily I had more started in the house so I planted them last night and put some protection around them. I think birds are doing the damage in my garden. Out of 50 strawberry plants, I now have 10 left alive. I dug them up and transplanted them into one of my raised beds. The scallop squash died and I replanted some seeds and they are coming up. I've planted cauliflower three times to  no avail so I am giving up on that. Out of 6 cabbage, only two are alive. Pa's Aunt Jo sent him some Black Diamond watermelon seeds from Oklahoma. They have a 90 day maturation so he planted a bed of them yesterday in the back yard. I think we might get one or two of them before frost.
  Oh my goodness! I bought two cantaloupe from Safeway the other day. Regular price $5.97 each , on sale for $3.00 each. They are called Tuscan cantaloupe and they are the best we have ever eaten. I saved some seeds and will plant them next year. Can you believe that price? I paid $1.88 for a head of Romaine lettuce at Walmart. Green peppers were $1.29 each at Safeway. The prices here are unbelievable. What's worse, we have to drive 120 miles round trip to get those "good" prices. Prices at the little IGA in Saint Johns are higher and the produce is terrible.

 This is what Pa was doing on the roof. A friend of his gave this weather vane to him a few years ago and we finally have a place to put it.

We will be the envy of the neighborhood. Of course since we have no neighbors, not too many people will see it. On Saturday, the annual meeting for our property owner's association will be held. I'm not going since I will get boiling mad. Pa is tho. The new officers were handpicked to run which isn't fair. But nothing about our POA is fair. Unfortunately, altho there are laws about HOA-POA in Arizona, there is no one to enforce those laws. The Attorney General's office told me to vote them out if we don't like the way things are run. But with one of the officers controlling most of the votes, that's impossible. We spoke to an attorney about this but it would take lots of money to sue and get things straightened out. Some of the full time residents were interested in a lawsuit, but no one wanted to help with the financial side of it.
That about catches up with what is new in our little spot of heaven. We haven't had any smoke for a few days because the fire is going in the other direction so if you want to visit, now is a good time. The fire is about 20% contained now and the residents of Eagar and Springerville were allowed to return to their towns. I really admire those firefighters, putting their lives on the line to try to save everyone's home.

Fire

Thanks to all of you who have called  to see if we are safe from  the fire raging in Alpine-Greer. We are safe but have been getting lots of smoke covering the ranch. The fire is 40-50 miles away. Our neighbor had ash covering her porch and sometimes we can't see very far due to the smoke. Last night on the news, they were talking about Springerville getting ready to evacuate. It is 40 miles from Saint Johns and we are another 20 miles from St Johns. This is so sad because the area being burned is so beautiful. We were planning on going there this fall to cut firewood for the winter. Well, there may be no firewood to cut! There are 2300 firefighters fighting this fire and they haven't even begun to get it contained. It is the third largest forest fire in the history of Arizona. So please pray for the safety of the surrounding towns and the firefighters. A couple of buildings have been lost but so far no one has been injured. We've been having winds, yesterday 45mph and that isn't helping the fire any. My poor garden has been beat to death. I planted some extra tomato plants on Sunday and by Monday night, they were dead from the wind. The strawberries are struggling to survive. They haven't put out a single runner.
I'll keep you posted about the fire.

Sleeping With a Pack Rat

and I don't  mean Pa, this was an actual pack rat! Ok, maybe he slept somewhere else but he was stuffing dog food under our mattress. Lots of dog food fell out when I made the bed. Then the next night, Pa was sitting in his recliner and put the foot rest up and more dog food fell out. We set a trap with dog food in it and the second night, we caught the little booger. I now put the dog dishes on the counter at night. We used to have a big container of dry dog food out for the dogs to munch on at their leisure during the day when we lived in Vegas but that is impossible here with our mice problem. Poor dogs get fed once a day now, plus snacks. I bought some electronic mouse thingies yesterday and have them plugged in three rooms so we will see how that goes.

There is a huge fire in Alpine which is about 50 or so miles away. It has burned 40,000 acres so far and they haven't even begun to get it under control. We can smell it here and it smells like the fire is right next door! We are getting lots of smoke here at the ranch. The sun was blood red this morning. You can see the smoke in the picture. This was taken from our back yard.

I got the rest of the garden planted. I needed some wind/sun shades and ran out of old sheets to use. I got out my extra large t shirts that I use to sleep in and used them. Pa has all sorts of raggy tshirts but didn't want to part with any of them. Anyway, the next day, the rhubarb I planted died due to the wind. And so did the Heinz tomatoes. All of my golden bell peppers dried up and there is only two green bell peppers left out of the original 6. When I watered today, I discovered my scallop squash is hanging on by a thread. Next year I am not going to start plants inside. They are just too weak to survive. The plants I planted directly in the ground are much stronger. My corn is about an inch high. The strawberries have a couple of leaves on each plant and are blooming already. I pinch the blooms off to make the plants stronger. Gardening in Arizona is really weird! The peas are going like gang busters, something is eating the leaves off the green beans. The lima beans never came up so I dug around and can't even find the seeds so replanted them. The romaine lettuce finally decided to pop up.

Pa rebuilt the stand for the water tank for the garden. This is out of steel. The wooden one was ready to collapse under the weight of 250 gallons of water. Today he is changing the oil in my truck. That's about it for now! I ran out of internet broadband so had to wait till today to add to the blog.