The air around my part of the countryside has been dusty and noisy with the hum of combines and cotton pickers.  First it was the remnants of a dust storm blowing in from Colorado with winds that pulled tin off of barns and blew a tree down in my yard.   We haven’t had rain in weeks, so the soil is very dry which makes it very dusty in the fields while combining soybeans and picking cotton.

I rode my John Deere to the fields behind my house and took several pictures of the soybean fields being combined by the Wrights. They were working into the night trying to beat the rain.  The outside of combines haven’t changed much over the years expect the addition of cabs with makes it easier to stand the dust.  Now they don’t have to stop to unload the beans into a transport hopper.  Trying to unload a combine into a moving wagon while still cutting the beans and staying in the row takes a lot of skill. The insides now have computerization, GPS and technology which reduce wastage.   As I rode around the outside edge of the field, I noticed that my fuel gauge on empty.  Checking the tank, I only had a little diesel left in the bottom funnel coming out of the tank.  I was sweating all the way home, as you don’t want to run out of diesel.   The last time I did, I thought I’d never get it started again.

On our dairy farm most of the tractors were older models and only the last one Dad bought had a cab on it.  These early models had a lot of trouble with the filters clogging up and the air conditioner breaking down.   My uncle used to ride around with the windows opened until a tree limb broke them out.

Friday Neal, Shane and Todd Isbell were picking cotton, followed by a tractor bush hogging and another tractor with a planter sowing winter wheat.  I took a few pictures and started home and got to thinking there was something new with the cotton picker.  It was making these large round rolls that were scattered around the field.  I didn’t see any of the pods that I’d seen in the past.  I had to be nosey so I turned around, parked my truck on the side of the road and walked into the cotton field and was greeted by Neal Isbell who explained the new technology in cotton pickers.   This one can do the same amount of work in a day as two pickers. It picks the cotton, rolls it and when it gets to a set size; the combine will wrap it in a protective plastic and then drop it out of the back like a hay baler.

Back a hundred and fifty years ago, all cotton was picked by hand and hauled to the gin by mule and wagon.  It would take one hundred workers picking all day to pick ten bales of cotton. This new picker can pick around 220 to 225 or so bales a day.  If measured in the olden days, it can do the work in one day that it would take 2500 workers to do.  Mr. Isbell offered to let me ride inside the picker.  I had my good work clothes on instead of my farming clothes and at first declined, and then took him up on his offer.  The dirt I got on them is the good kind of dirt and will wash out.  First we watched the unloading of the bale from the back of the picker.  They were getting one with each up and down pass in the field.  The new method eliminates the pods which sit in the fields getting wet and dirty lowering quality until they can be hauled to the gin.  The expense of a packer for pod production is also eliminated. A large fork is needed for the back of a tractor to lift the roll on a tractor trailer. He excused himself to go and pick the bales up off the field as the tractors with the bush hog and planter where close behind.  Mr. Isbell said that they were getting two bales to an acre this year.  A good year.

Shane Isbell was driving the picker and held my camera while I climbed up the ten foot ladder up to the cab. I got settled in the spare seat, door closed and we were off.  Shane said that they used to farm a lot of acreage in Muscle Shoals, but sold it for progress and bought property in Cherokee, so they have further to travel each day from home to get to the fields and back to the gin.    He said that his Dad, brother, he and three hired hands work about 3000 acres.   As I watched the cotton go into the spindles I noticed the large fire extinguisher mounted outside of the cab and mentioned that the Wrights had a picker to burn up while picking cotton on property they were renting for my Dad.  He said that it’s easy to start a fire in this dry weather, usually a rock feeding into the spindles causes a spark and a quarter million dollars piece of machinery can go up in flames.

After we made the rounds, I got off and took some more pictures of the loading of the bales on the tractor trailer.  As the sun set over the mountain west of the field, the work of picking, bush hogging, and planting continued into the night.

Farmers don’t have the luxury of an eight hour day.

On the home front, the hooligans found the Santa hat that I used for making their Christmas card last year and somehow snuck it out of the garage when the doors were opened.  When I got home the next afternoon, the end of the driveway looked like someone had bush hogged a cotton patch. White cotton balls were everywhere.  When I walked into the front yard and saw all of these pieces of red material all over I finally realized what it was.  When I started gathering up the pieces, the fun started again.  Come chow time I finally was able to pick of the pieces.

We had a killing frost two weeks ago.  A few of my re-blooming iris had just started blooming and have managed to survive the frost. I picked all of my green tomatoes the afternoon before and wrapped them in newspaper.  It really makes a ham & Swiss sandwich taste better. Coming home in the dark after the time changed back to standard time and not being able to get out in the garden after work is depressing.  Saturday’s temperatures are going to be in the seventies, so I have a long day in the garden planned.

You know that Ray Stevens song about where do my socks go when I put them in the dryer. I kept wondering what was happening to my yard socks until I looked under my desk. When I come in from the yard, I’d sit down at my desk to check my e-mails and FB and was kicking them off.  We grew up walking around barefooted in the summer and my feet need to be free.

My doctor tells me I need to exercise. This is my typical summer off day:

I went to Coldwater Books to deliver some of my prints. After leaving I drove down through Spring Park to get a few pictures.  We really need a geese roundup.   It’s nice to have them in the park, but they’ve overpopulated so that you have to do the cowboy step trying to walk around. Then I drove back up down so I could check on the status of the construction of the locomotive turntable and roundhouse.  This day they were testing the turntable to see if it would hold up a locomotive and still turn.

I went by the Colbert County Tourism office and picked up a 75^th Coondog Cemetery anniversary Case knife for a neighbor and delivered it. Then on to a landscaping supply in Spring Valley, and bought a load of bagged composted manure and mulch for Mom.  At first she started out wanting one, then two, then called back and upped it to three.  I bought eight.  After I got home, she landed up with four.  I unloaded the compost on a pallet I have on the other side of the underground fence to keep the hooligans from dragging the bags all over the lower forty.  I put the tiller on my tractor and tilled part of the garden area and a meditation circle I’m working on.  It has a circle of star magnolias around the outside of the circle and a sugar maple in the center.  When the maple gets tall enough to shade the area, I plan to put a sitting area under the tree.  If you pull in my driveway, the maple is in a direct line at the other end of the property.  I’m debating whether to plant a circle of peonies or daylilies or a combination of each.  I worry that if I plant a circle of peonies and the shrubs get too large, I may have to move the peonies.  They don’t like a change of scenery.  Daylilies don’t mind a move.

I spent a while walking around taking pictures of my daylilies that were in a late bloom. I bought some purple sensation allium bulbs a while back that I needed to plant in my University of North Alabama section in among some yellow daylilies called El Despardo, but, first had to find the flowers.  As I cleaned around old W21 I thought to myself, my doctor says I need to exercise.  W21 was my old favorite shovel.  I used it so much and wore it down so thin it cracked.  I took it by Leon at the Rebel Shop and he said that there was just nothing left to weld together.  So now it’s garden décor along with a broken tater fork and Mom’s shovel my cousin broke the handle.

I parked my John Deere where I was working.  As I pulled up grass and weeds I threw it in the loader.  Levi one of my  hooligans, likes to drive my tractor when I’m not using it.  He had his back feet in the seat and front feet on the fender looking down at the two girls jumping up trying to grab him.  Every once in a while they are able to grab his tail or foot and drag him off and the hooligan ruckus starts.

 As I filled the loader scoop up to capacity, I smelled the distinct fall odor of cotton defoliant agent orange of the south.  Cotton picking and soybean harvest season is almost here.  Corn has been combined and wheat is being planted in its place. Be aware that slower traffic will be sharing the road with you.  You can be up on a tractor before you can sing fly in the buttermilk, shoo fly shoo (at this point you younger folks Google I Love Lucy where she tries to ship herself to Europe in a trunk).  That song never made sense to me.

I crawled up on the tractor and dumped my load on the compost heap and ran to the house to get my camera.  Actually I trotted. Well actually it was a brisk walk.  Well….actually after crawling around on the ground pulling weeds, it was a labored crawl.  By this time this huge spray rig was working on the field in front of the house.  By huge, I mean my 32hp JD 3032E tractor would fit in one of its wheel it’s so big.

I ran back to my tractor, well …..you know, and crawled back up on the tractor and drove down the road and waited for the rig to come back in my direction.  I started taking pictures of the spray rig in the distance and it looked so little. As it got nearer it increased in size until the booms thirty feet or more in length with the chemicals spraying could be seen.  It looked like a giant dragon fly coming at me.

After taking my pictures, I went back to cleaning out my daylily bed and planted my alliums.  As I crawled past ole W21, I thought my doctor says I need to get some exercise.  Another trip to the compost heap; picked up a load of mulch, walking to the barn to get a pitchfork and back to the garden. Got the mulch down, back to the barn to return the fork grabbed the shovel and planted a rhododendron I had purchased on sale under the large hackberry in the back yard and a Hydrangea Delights Star Gazer in one of the beds in the front yard.  Afterwards I walked down to the garden and brought back a couple of hooligan cages to place around them.

The cool spell we had a couple of weeks ago has really started the fall color show. It should be at its peak this weekend when I go on a barn, old churches, cemeteries and house picture taking trip out in the boonies this weekend.  The dogwoods are just loaded with more berries this year than normal.  Hope that’s not a prediction of the type of winter we are going to have.    The hooligans are enjoying the cooler weather, so much that they are coming up lame from chasing each other over and under things.   The hummingbirds have gone south to Mexico for the winter.  It seems they migrated early this year.  A frost will be coming in the next couple of weeks.  The dogwoods are just loaded with berries this year.  Are they predicting a hard winter?

I went down to the compost heap to see if I could find where the yellow jacket nest was that got me a couple of weekends ago and they were still angry. Just hearing my truck set them off and Blackie and Levi were attacked even though they weren’t near the nest.  I must have hit the nest dead center when I turned the pile with the loader as the entrance of the nest is now on the side of the compost heap. I think the best course will be burning the pile to get rid of them.   I really hate wasting good compost.

After a long dry hot spell in the 100’s, we finally had a lot of rain in a short period.  Then the hot temperatures, not seen since the 1930’s returned, this time with high humidity.   The first spell was easier to take since the humidity was low.  We eventually had a little over five inches in a week, but are still over seven inches below normal.

  

I’ve been battling with a Carolina wren that somehow was getting into my barn and decided to make a nest in my tilt trailer that I haul around with my riding mower. Normally I don’t mind, but I had visions of the little birds fledging and coming home total destruction of everything in the barn from the hooligans trying to catch the birds.   Since it’s summer, I really need to use it for hauling things around the yard.

I thought maybe she was coming through the dog door that was dangling by one electrical tie instead of the two I normally have it hanging from.  I need to replace the door, but the company went out of business and a new one is a different size, so it means a redo of the siding of the wall the door is mounted in. I repaired the flap and threw the nest out only to come back two days later to a completely rebuilt nest.  She was either coming in a chewed off corner of the flap or through the bent in the roof. 

Again I threw the nest out and watched the trailer for several days and around in the barn for signs of a third nest. Not finding one, I was smug thinking I had won.   That is until Friday evening when I was closing down the doors, I thought I saw a bird flying around in the darkness.  I turned the lights back on, searched around the barn, but didn’t find anything.  Sunday when I went to the barn to feed the hooligans, I noticed egg shells on top of the bird seed barrel.   I hadn’t won.  I have a recycled gutter tacked to the wall above the stairs that I put small boards and pcv pipe in along with a small flower pot.  Inside the flower pot were two babies and two eggs.  

Now what?  Wonder if there is any way I can slowly move the pot outside without the Mom abandoning her babies?  I hope they decide to fledge on one of my off days so I can shoo them outside.  Crazy wren.

The hooligans are terrified of storms since they were shot.  Monday evening I got a big scare.   I heard my back door knob rattling. Looked around the corner from the hallway and it was Patches with the knob in her mouth trying to open it. It was thundering and she tore a hole in my fairly new vinyl screen door.  I've got a piece of a roll somewhere from replacing the screen on a front window after they went through a window screen after some critter. 

I've been working out in the garden a lot cleaning up overgrown flower and shrubbery beds and mulching.  I hired some one to help and spent two Saturday’s working the bed along the property line. We got it cleaned up, but broke several of the daylily blooms off in the process.  The blooms are at their peak for the next few weeks. I’ve been bringing cardboard boxes home all week to put under the mulch. After two years of neglect, there is a lot of grass and weed seeds for restocking new growth. The cardboard didn’t go far so I switched to the newspapers I’ve been saving up. I hope to finish it up this Saturday, but it’s supposed to be 95. August temperatures.  We’ve skipped spring again this year. 

I plowed up the garden  again so I could start planting for the third time.  I had my seeds in a cup sitting in the cup holder.  But Mary decided to dig around a bald cypress and with the next pass, I noticed this shredded stuff.  I’ll have to make another trip back to the Co-op for more crook neck squash. I’ll have to reorder the pan squash.  I bet I’ll get a good stand of cucumbers and squash in that one area near the tree.

This coming weekend I plan to work in the garden weeding and mulching. I will take time off to attend the Memorial Day ceremony in Tuscumbia. This year is a special year. I recently found out about a great uncle killed in WWI, and buried in France. I'll be posting his story on a new Tuscumbia and Colbert County historical blog a friend and I started recently.  We named it 'The Tuscumbian' after the old theater in town long gone.

The last few days have really been up and down and have put a damper on Christmas. My Sister-in-Law Joy’s Mom died Friday night and the funeral was Sunday. Saturday I went to Helen Keller’s birthplace to take pictures of the Christmas decorations. My sister Linda is in the hospital and I hope she gets well enough to go home before Christmas.   

This after noon, I stopped at the 3 way stop near my house, and noticed a three or four month old kitten looking at me from the ditch.  I rolled down my window and asked what it was doing, and that was all it needed as it came running, then here comes another one and then another.  Last year around this time I had a similar experience with dumped puppies. I saw this one and stopped, got out and called.  It came running and I put it in the back of my truck. Then another one showed up and I repeated the process of putting it in the back of my truck a total of six puppies.  Back to the kittens, I got out, picked up one and the other two are running around my feet, and I’m wondering what I was going to do with them.  The hooligans don’t like cats so taking them home wasn’t an option. I threw the first one in the back seat of my truck, turned around and went after another, while the first one jumps out of the open front door and runs after me.  After doing this round robin routine for what seem like ten minutes or longer, I rolled the window down, closed the door and threw the first in, then the second and finally the third.  Now I’m outside and three kittens are standing up looking out the window. Finally I was able to open the door, hold all three in and get in.  Now I’m sitting in my truck with two cats in my lap purring and rubbing on me and one is under my feet.  I called Sonny & Bob my neighbors who have cats and asked for a cage and cat food. Sonnie said she wasn’t coming out and look at them as she didn’t need anymore cats.  She had Bob bring the cage and food out.  We managed to get all three in the cage and I decided to take them and put them in the drop off cages at the shelter.  I felt like a dog while taking them out of the cage and putting them in one of the shelters cages. They were still purring and rubbing on me. 

When I got home, walked in the back door, threw my shoes and stepped in wet. Water was everywhere. I ran and got a bunch of towels and put them down and turned on the light with a wooden yard stick so I could see where the water was coming from as it was standing in the middle of the room.  I started sopping up with the towels under an old late 1800’s tiger walnut sideboard and a felt cold spray under the sideboard.  When I pulled it away from the wall, I saw the hole in the wall where a pipe comes from the water heater in other room.  When I turned off the hot water cut off on top of the heater, the spray stopped. I dried my feet, and flipped the breaker off with the yard stick.  At least I have cold water until I can get a plumber out.  After taking a shower, I’m wide awake now. 

 I wish everyone a Merry and Blessed Christmas from my family and the hooligans.  I might be a little inconvenient, but its minor compared to what some of our service personnel are experiencing and those who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. 

 I would like to share a story how we found out how Santa got into our house without a chimney to come down and this years Christmas card I sent out to my family and friends along with a copy of their letter to Santa on the back along with some of the pictures I took while trying to make the card. 

I would like to wish whoever dumped the kittens out in the cold for the coyotes to have the same Merry Christmas your kittens are having. 

 The Christmas we found out how Santa gets into our house 

My siblings and I grew up on an active dairy farm in NW Alabama.  Dad would get up early milk, bottle it and then head out on his milk route. In the afternoon, they would hit the fields, come home to milk the cows, and come in late, so we didn’t get to see much of my Dad.  It is rare that Alabama gets snow, much less a white Christmas, but this year in the early sixties we got snow on Christmas Eve! 

Christmas morning we went out to play in the snow and there in the snow were two sled tracks, small hoof prints in between the tracks going across the yard stopping short of the basement door.  We also found Santa’s boot prints going to the door.  At last!! We found the answer how Santa got into our house without a chimney!  He came up through the floor furnace!  

Years later we found out that the boot prints were those of my Dad going to the basement to bring out a hidden merry go round, which explained the sled tracks.  The melted out hoof prints turned out to be the dogs following behind Dad. Our parents had spent half the night putting together the merry go round in the kitchen and then had to get up early to milk. 

 This is the greeting inside of the card:

Merry Christmas from the hooligans!  

Mom decided to that we needed to make a Christmas card again this year. After we nixed Christmas bows last year, we thought she wouldn’t try anything this year, but no she decided that we were going to wear Santa hats. We had other ideas. She even got Grandma to help. We kept them busy for a while and gave them the run around, especially when Patches ran off with the hat.  After Mom chased her around for a bit she gave up.

We hope you have a Merry Christmas,

Blackie, Levi and Patches, oh, and Mary. 

Hooligans letter to Santa:  

Dear Santa, 

We’ve been very good doggies this year.  Mom hurt her knee last April, and we tried to help her weed by digging holes around the yard.  Mom said we dug the holes too deep and also dug up the good plants along with the weeds.  She didn’t explain to us the difference between a good weed and a bad one. They all look the same to us.  We kept telling Blackie not to dig around a couple of trees after mice because Mom told us not to last year, but she wouldn’t listen.  Patches ran and told Mom and got Blackie in trouble.  Patches really enjoyed that. Blackie had surgery in October for bladder stones as she refused to eat that nasty food to get rid of them.  Mom had knee surgery the middle of November. She’s been walking around with a couple of sticks under her arms. Grandmother has been feeding us and when we really act like we are starving she’ll give us a little more than Mom.  After all that’s what Grandmothers are for aren’t they?  Anyway Santa, please bring us some chew bones and another one of those tires with the rope on it. We lost the two you brought us last year.  Also bring us another one of those roll around play balls. Blackie left it the front yard and Mom accidently ran over it with her tractor. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ONE AND ALL!!! 

This years Christmas card is still a work in progress, so I thought I'd share last years Christmas card that I sent out to friends and family.  I got this idea that I would make a Christmas card with the hooligans.  I bought each a big red bow and tied one on the collar of Blackie, Patches and Levi.  The idea was for me to sit in a chair with all three sitting in front of me with their bows on and Mom would take the picture. Well I never got a nice picture I could use for a card.  Patches and Blackie almost got into a fight and I grabbed the collar of each keeping them apart until they settled down.  Levi pushed me out of the chair and  the girls don't like him being up on things and started trying to pull him out of the chair much like they do when he jumps up in the back of my truck or my tractor.  Mom thought she could get them settled enough for me to take a picture, but had as much success as I did.  Afterwards I'm going through the pictures and there is not one I could make a nice card with, so I came up with the idea of  doing a collage and a story inside the card, along with a letter to Santa from the hooligans about how good they were during the past year. 

Merry Christmas from the hooligans  

Mom decided to that we needed to make a Christmas card. We nixed the Santa hats, so she decided that we were going to wear Christmas bows. But we had other ideas. She even got Grandma to help. We kept them busy until it got too dark and they gave up. Hope you have a Merry Christmas, Blackie, Levi and Patches oh, and Mary 

Hooligans letter to Santa: 

Santa we’ve been very good kids this year.  Mom was digging in the garden and lost some daffodil bulbs and we found all of them for her.  Wouldn’t you know it she lost them again and also some finger looking like bulbs. We found those for her.  She’s so very forgetful as she lost them another time and we had to find them for her again.  When she is planting in the garden we help her by digging holes for her.    

When the wireless fence was broken we didn’t want to worry her so we went visiting the neighbors while she was at work.  We meant to get back before she got home, but she came home early that day. We just hate that she had to be out in the cold all day Saturday putting a new wire in the ground because of it.  

We keep busy catching mice for her, but for some reason she got upset when we dug up those trees down in the lower forty. We just thought they were in her way while she was mowing grass and really thought we were helping.  And we thought those daylilies and iris that we dug up chasing mice were big clumps of grass that needed to be weeded out of the garden. After all, the best thing in life is to be able to roll in fresh garden soil.  How were we supposed to know that she had just planted those new beds that we were running through and wrestling in?  She had just dug it up and we thought the fresh dirt was for us.   

Those things that we drug out of the garage into the yard, we just wanted to put them in the trash for Mom, but we couldn’t open the lid to the trash can. Honestly Santa.  And if we knew that she was going to send out our Christmas card with all of the tom foolery on it, we would have posed nicely, honest Santa. We will do better next year when she makes us wear reindeer antlers.   

And that downspout we pulled off of the house, it was an accident.  We were shaking it trying to get the lizard to run out, honest Santa.  That screen we tore out, well the lizard ran out and we grabbed it and accidently bit into the screen instead. Those lizards are faster than a Border collie.   

We’ve really been good Santa. When Mom comes home after a long day at work smelling like the hospital Levi rubs himself all over her to get the country smell on her good clothes.  When it’s been raining and we’ve taken a bath in the garden, we are very good to share with Mom and get her wet just like us.   

 Please bring us a large bag of raw hide chews and each of us a big bag of dog biscuits, but don’t bring those healthy ones that Mom gives us each day.  We also want a triple amount of our dog food. Mom had us on a diet and dieting time is over now that it’s Christmas.  Honestly Santa, we’ve been good this year.  

 *****I'll update you on this years card shortly.  I've gotten off of my crutches and graduated to a cane and I start back to work this week.  This past weekend was busy taking pictures at the Plantation Christmas at the Belle Mont mansion.  This event is a fund raiser for the continued restoration of this magnificent home rescued from ruins in the 1980's. Next weekend we have our first Dickens Christmas ya'll celebration and tour of some of the historical homes in Tuscumbia.

Here lately I’ve been feeling like I’m part of an I Love Lucy rerun.  I can’t decide if it’s the Lucy the wallpaper hanger or Lucy the candy maker, Lucy trying to get to Europe inside a steamer trunk or Lucy the grape stomper at the vineyards in Italy.  I’ll be humming "Fly in the Buttermilk, shoo fly shoo," now for a week. First I blew my knee out crawling up on a chair to change a light bulb 3 days before my high school reunion, which included a cookie, lemonade and garden tour at my house.

Since my house was fairly clean of dust bunnies and clutter, I decided to have an open garden.  I hooked up the tiller to my tractor to get rid of some of the grass growing in my garden paths and till the area along the dry creek for some oakleaf hydrangeas.  First along the garden, I thought I was a couple of inches from my summer time water line that runs from the garden to the dry creek. When I turned on the water to water a weeping willow tree I planted, I had a geyser. I had stopped just on top of it and cut it at each end of the tiller.  After replacing a four foot section which included a new faucet, I started digging along the water line rambling back and forth close to the dry creek.  I should have gee instead of haw as now I have a 200 foot section of little four inch long black hotdogs where the waterline used to be.  I wasn’t satisfied with taking out that section; I had to repeat the attack of the mad tiller on another section of the line, only it was a smaller scale this time. This big repair job is still on my To-Do list. Do you see why I recommend cut off valves for each section? I’ve decided that I’m too dangerous with a 31 hp John Deere and a four foot tiller, but not quite as dangerous as the one in James Bond. 

  
After I finished with the destruction, I pulled off the tiller and hitched up the mower. At some point I backed over a tree stump.  Just before I was completely finished, the belt broke.  The rest would have to wait until after the open garden brunch.   Straight line winds did a lot of damage a couple of days before. Power was knocked out for twelve hours. The brunch went just great, except for one stink that permeated the garage where everyone came in.  Blackie had been playing with a skunk.  

Afterwards, my attention turned to replacing the belt on my Big Bee mower.  My JD dealer didn’t give me an owner’s manual with it, so I didn’t know what size belt it needed. I found some information online and called the manufacturer in Red Bay.  It needs a B108 belt which is an 111 inch belt and not to get this one certain brand as it won’t last on the five foot finishing mower.  Why isn’t it called B111?    I called around and found the B108 at the repair shop in Tuscumbia.  I showed the remains of the old belt to the clerk and explained that the company told me not to use this one brand and they said it wasn’t.  As I was coming out of the store, this guy leans out the passenger window of a truck and asked if I planned to put that belt on. I told him that I was going to try.  He said I’m forty years old and it’s nice to see women my age doing thing like that.  I thanked him for the compliment as I was a lot older than that. 

Since I didn’t have the manual I again turned to the internet found a belt diagram and went out to the barn to put the belt on.  After weaving the belt around all of the pulleys the belt was too long. They sold me the wrong belt I thought to myself. Actually I told the hooligans who were impatiently waiting on supper.  So back into the house, look up the belt diagram, and back out to the barn and went over the belt placement again.  Well I have it right, but the belt is still too long.  Back into the house get on the internet, but this time I copied and pasted the diagram into a Word document and printed it out and went back to the barn. It was getting a little warm, so I moved my truck from the front of the door and back to the house garage so I could bring the tractor and mower out into fresh air.  When I got back to the mower, I was lacking the belt diagram I had printed out. I checked out my truck, not there, retraced my steps, still no diagram. Back into the house to reprint another diagram (glad I saved it) and back out to the barn I’m standing there looking at the diagram, looking at the pulleys with a too long belt, saying to myself “I have it on there right. Finally I noticed I had one turn wrong and corrected it.  Now the belt is too short; I could hold the spring pulley with both hands, but didn’t have a third hand to slip the belt over the last pulley.  I saw my neighbor Bob out in his garden, so I drove up to his place and asked for help putting it on.  I mowed for one hour and the $43 belt broke. After talking to a clerk at one of the auto supply companies, I found out the belt I was sold was not as good as the one the manufacturer told me not to use.  A local company looses my business as they wouldn’t make it good.

I ordered a belt on line on Monday from a company in Memphis. Friday after I got off work I called Mom and my belt still wasn’t in, so I checked with the Club Cadet dealer. The belt they thought would work was about an inch too short after my neighbor Bob and I worked on it for a while. Back to exchange the belt and landed up returning it as they didn’t have one an inch longer.  I called the company I ordered the belt from on line the next Monday. It hadn’t been shipped yet and the lower forty now hasn’t been mowed in over a month.  So I spent my off day driving three hours to Red Bay and back going to the dealer for two belts.  Normally it doesn’t take that long, but I took a side trip to the Coon Dog Cemetery on the way back.  I haven’t been there since I was a child and it’s the world’s only cemetery for coon dogs.

When I got home I found my trusty diagram and needed to figure out how not to bother my neighbor Bob again.  I tied the spring pulley to a tree and pulled up slowly until it was pulled back enough to slip the belt over the last pulley.  With the grass being so tall, I thought it best to sharpen the blades. The middle blade was so wavy from hitting something, maybe the stump, that I had trouble sharpening it.  Wonder what else was inside the stump?  Blades sharpened, one flap bolted down, and I must have gotten distracted as I didn’t close the over flap. Now I’ll have to buy another wing nut and washer.

Rest of the hooligans update; I mentioned earlier Blackie was playing with a skunk. Patches apparently was bitten on the hind leg by a snake. I noticed it last week and she just had 2 little holes.  Saturday morning she had an infection in it and kept licking at it.  When I got the purple medicine out she wouldn’t get near. When I called her she would only get as close enough to let me touch her nose. I called Mom over and between the two of us we grabbed more than just a nose and sprayed her down.  Yesterday she was so busy chasing after a rat in the shed, she wasn’t paying attention to me and I was able to grab her and spray her down. She kept licking off the purple stuff, so I also put some peroxide in a spray bottle and boiled it out with that a couple of times and switched back to the purple medicine.  Dad used to keep a bottle of that stuff which wasn’t as watered down looking in the milk barn.  We had to go to school a few times with that stuff on us when we had an accident.  Levi, while the girls have been chasing mice and rats, he’s been on guard duty watching me while I worked in the yard dividing and transplanting some of my iris and daylilies.  It’s a tough job, but some one has to do it.

 I’ve included some of my late blooming flowers. I just wanted to say a big thank you to GRIT for publishing my iris picture on page four of the July issue.  It’s my first picture ever published, and I’m just tickled pink about it.  Check out my garden blog of my top twentyfive favorite iris this year.

Patches continues to play the game who is smarter dog or human and so far the score is 3 to 1 in favor of Border Collie.   She has been getting out at night and waiting for me to let her back in when I leave for work. Border Collie one, human zero.  Actually it could easily be two to zip. After my last story in which I thought her dead, Mom and I trimmed her neck to make better contact with the collar.  She stayed in for a few days and was out again Thursday morning.  That afternoon after work, I tied her up and took off the fence collar and trimmed some more hair from her neck. She has to be tied up when I take the collar off as she knows the collar is to keep her in and she won’t let me put it back on her.

I put her collar back on and turned her loose.  She kept looking and smelling the hair on the ground for several minutes like she was going to cry. The next morning she was still at home and I thought yes, I win that one.  Just as I walked into the lab, my neighbor called and said she was out, but didn’t have time to stop and take her collar off and get her back in.  She must have tried to follow me to work. Miss Priss two, Mary zero.

When I got home from work she still wasn’t around the house. The morning storm had tripped the ground fault outlet, and if the fence is off, Patches is off.  A storm was brewing, so I kept calling her and then fed Blackie and Levi.  After the storm passed she was laying by the back door.  We went through the chaining up routine again, and I changed the battery in her collar and tighten it up just a tad and turned her loose.  I told her the kitchen was closed and gave all three a biscuit before closing down the garage door.  I felt so guilty not feeding her.  The next morning she was at home, and I gave all three a biscuit in order to ease the hunger pains.  While I worked in the yard she hardily let me out of her sight, and at lunch time she started camping out by her food bowl in the barn.  I fed them before leaving to help with the Helen Keller Festival and gave her a little extra. Sunday she was still at home. For now Border Collie three, human one.

Our animals have us trained so well, just think about it.  Even the little hummingbird with a brain the size of a pinhead has us humans trained well.  Those of us who put up feeders have similar stories of empty feeders, and the birds going from window to window looking for us to let us know they want something to eat, and we’ll go and put up a fresh feeder.  Several times I’ve tried to sit out on the screen porch with a cup of coffee reading the morning paper only to have a hummer flying back and forth fussing at me about an empty feeder until I get tired of the noise and put up a clean one. 

 Cats will come and meow at you until they get fed.  Some will only use their litter box once and if not cleaned promptly use the carpet somewhere in the house. Their human owners have learned to make sure that the box is kept clean.

The hooligans have taught me that they have to get a biscuit before retiring into the house for the night. I get the biscuits and make them sit in a circle around me before handing out the biscuits.  They comply just to make me feel like I’m the master of the house. Levi is usually the first one that sits in the circle and will poke one of the girls who takes her time to sit like he’s telling them, "Hey we won’t get anything until you sit."

Does your dog bring you a leash asking to go out?  They have you trained well.

This weekend I volunteered at the Helen Keller Festival which took place at Spring Park, the landing site of the first settler of Tuscumbia. 

Thirty five million gallons of water a day flow from the spring at the base of Spring Creek. Part of the water is pumped up the hill and flows down as one of the largest man made waterfalls.

It’s a neat little park that has a little train, roller coaster, merry go round, a pavilion building and bridge built by the WPA.

Various concerts, non-commercial made arts and crafts and demonstrations. The concert by Jimmy Wayne seemed very popular with the crowd. The funds raised by the festival go to the upkeep and restoration of Helen Keller’s home. Next festival coming up is the W C Handy Festival in July.

Just as I was getting smug over the Patches breakout situation since she’s stay home for the last two days, Mom calls me at work and says one of your children is laying in my flower bed. Now the score is Border collie 4, human one.

After a colder than normal November and our first white Christmas and ten inches of snow January 10 which stayed around for over a week, I was ready for the 63  forecasted temperature for the last Saturday in January.  I wanted to get my tractor ready for work. 

That morning I made a trip to the John Deere dealer in Leighton and picked up a couple of oil filters for my tractor. On the way home I swung by a landscaping supply company in Spring Valley and picked up a truckload of composted manure and unloaded it down along the creek behind the wireless fence out of arms reach or should I say teeth reach of the hooligans.  I’ve learned the hard way not to leave bags of manure where the kids can get to it unless it’s in a spot where I need it scattered.  One evening I was closing the blinds on one of the windows, and I noticed my 3 playing thug of war with a composted cow manure plastic bag in the front yard. Worried that they would ether eat it or scattered bits of plastic all over the yard, I turned the alarm off and went outside, picked it up and threw it in the trash.  I thought I had just forgotten to throw away the one I emptied earlier.  The next morning it was dark when I left for work, and everything seemed normal.  However when I got home, there in the middle of the driveway was the contents of the 40 pound bag I have put in the trash can the night before..  They had drug it from the flower bed where I intended to use it and ripped it open in the middle of the driveway.  They were complaining they wanted supper, but I made them wait until I had shoveled and brushed it all back into the flower bed where they needed to dump it in the first place. 

 After unloading the truck my attention turned to changing the oil and lubricating the JD.  I cranked up the air compressor and attached the grease gun and only greased one plug before running out of grease.  I turned the compressor off and dug out a new tube of grease, took out the empty one out of the gun and placed the new in the gun.  After pulling the tab off of the other end I noticed I hadn’t gotten it in all the way and couldn’t get the gun screwed on because of it.  When I tried to push it in a little bit more I accidently push the leaver at the other end of the tube and shot several inches of  grease out of the tube into the loader bucket before I could pull the plunger back out. After getting the mess cleaned up I got all of the grease plugs lubricated, at least I hope.  When I find my owners manual, I’ll make sure.  Not being able to get the owners manual on line from JD without having to pay for it is the only thing I don’t like about my tractor.  If you spend that kind of money buying a tractor at least they could let you download the manual or give you a CD. It would be cheaper to do the CD instead of paying the printing costs.  

 Next my attention turned to changing the oil.  The John Deere 3032E I bought replaced a 20 hp Yanmar that I had for over 12 years.  With my bad back I wanted to put a loader on it to help with the lifting but it wasn’t a 4WD and decided against it. Several years ago I came up with an idea to help me remember which direction to take the filter and oil plug off and the wrench size to use from one change to the other.  I have black and white Elmers Painters pens for labeling the take off direction on the end of the oil filter and also the date.  I also label the tractor with an arrow right above the oil plug to indicate the take off direction when I change the oil.  These pens are found the craft and hobby stores and come in a narrow and medium point.  I like the medium for labeling the filters and making large plant tag labels in the garden.  The fine tip I use on the small plastic labels for pots such as orchids or African violets. For making plant tags the black ink is more permanent.  I’ve had trouble with other colors especially the blue wearing off in the weather. 

After the oil finished draining I got my filter wrench and tried to get the filter off. Well the wrench was a little bit too small.  I called Mom next door and asked her if she had kept Dad’s wrenches and she said she had.  When I walked over to her house she handed me a radiator clamp.  I called the other two neighbors and they weren’t at home, so I made a trip to the auto store in Tuscumbia.  I’m glad I took my wrench with me as when I told him I needed one just a little bit larger, he had a whole wall of various types and sizes.  Just as I got the old filter off and the new one put on it started to rain. 

 Spring is fast approaching.  Last week’s storms have brought daffodils, Lenten rose, tulip magnolia trees, flowering crab apples and Bradford pear trees into bloom seemingly overnight.  Last fall I planted several new varieties of daffodils around one side of my former vegetable garden that I’m converting to daylily and oriental lily beds. I found out that the composted manure is made from chicken litter which is great for fertilizing bulbs.  In the bottom of each planting hole I put a little of the compost and cover the bulb.  The next day I found every bulb sitting out beside the hole it used to be in, so that afternoon was spent replanting those.  The next day I found them out of the holes again. Come the next day they were not only out of the holes, but tossed into the beds.  I’ll find out this spring if I got the same varieties back together or not. Some how I have a feeling I’ll be doing some more digging. 

If you would like to read some of what the kids  got into last year, check out the hooligan’s letter to Santa I posted on Christmas Day on my personal blog. 

Tues is the last day to vote for Levi in the Bissell MVP photo contest. He’s trying to win $10,000 for an animal charity of his choice.  

 Want to know how important you are to your dogs?

Just come home from a long day at work and arrive just a few minutes after your Mom has given each a big ole ham bone.

You’ll come down to earth very quickly. No tail wagging, not a glance at you, no nothing. 

One of my neighbors has a large black and white cat named Noah. Noah is not saintly by any means. His daily routine consists of walking in front of the house in the field across the road looking for my three hooligans. If they are in the front yard, he walks back and forth, rolls, get ups and walks back and forth again and rolls again just teasing the dogs. The hooligans in the mean time are having a hissy fit barking at him.  If they are in the lower forty, he goes down the dry creek and sits on the bank just on the other side of the underground fence. Somehow he knows that the dogs can’t get him and he just sits there grinning at the dogs like a Cheshire cat.  Occasionally the collar batteries are weak and he lands up in the top of a tree. 

 Another critter which likes to play with the hooligans is a squirrel.  It likes to run around in the front yard and if the hooligans spy it, will run up a wild cherry tree just on the other side of the wireless fence, and hop from there to the trees along the creek. I had to replace a section of the fence and moved it back about 15 feet to avoid cancelling out of the signal to the collars by the old wire. Since I moved it, the hooligans can get to the cherry tree and have damaged a nearby native azalea in the chases.  It now has a hooligan cage (as I call my tomato cages) protecting it.  I hope I can free up some for my tomato plants this spring. I’m not sure what the squirrel is after, but I’m missing some of my flower bulbs.   The other day the hooligans had it treed in one of the birch trees in the front yard.  It was as high as it could go and hanging on for dear life.  Patches tried to figure out a way to climb up the tree and did manage to get off the ground a little. Come dark it tried to come down, but was chased back up to the top. 

  Taking the picture you see of me above was an adventure with the three hooligans. A photographer friend who was to take it had the flu, and Mom was elected and had never used my camera before. I set it on landscape and was going to sit on my John Deere and have her take the picture.  The first thing that happened was Levi jumping up in the seat with me and laying in my lap.  Then Blackie and Patches decided they wanted to drag him down off of the tractor. At some point he decided to push me out of the seat trying to get higher and away from the girls. I should have put the camera on the sports section as most of the pictures turned out fuzzy.

 Weather here has been nice with temperatures in the 60s and 70s.  Thursday night severe storms brought the daffodils, peach & plum trees out in bloom. I’ve been out in the yard moving daylilies, weeding and mulching. The hooligans have been covered with what looked like pine tar.  It took a while to figure out what they had gotten into.  I purchased sawdust from a local lumber yard for mulching and one of the loads was fairly fresh.  The hooligans are full of pine tar from playing king of the hill on the saw dust pile.  They chase around and drag each other off of the pile and apparently have ground the sap from the sawdust into their fur.   

 Levi’s photo has been accepted in BISSELL'S MVP Photo Contest gallery!  His picture is now available for the whole world to enjoy, and will be entered into Voting Period. 8, Voting starts Wednesday March 2.  Please consider voting for my camera ham.  A rescue of my choice will get $10,000. 

 To vote for Levi:

BISSELL'S MVP Photo