Ok, so you may have noticed that the posting schedule was a bit – irregular for a while; sorry about that. I took a quick trip with Alexis, to California, to be with my folks, visit a friend, and drop Alexis off to visit her dad – while my blogging intentions were good, and I had planned on posting last Friday, when I went into Starbucks to use the wifi (my folks live in the boonies as most of you know and, while visiting with them, I don’t have cell phone service, nor is there anything but dial-up internet <gasp>), I ran into several people from my previous church and didn’t end up typing anything but a title! Once I returned to Arizona, we had Patty and George visiting, and we were off having too much fun with them after I was done working and… I didn’t post. I tried to make it up by posting on Tuesday about our cute little Roman, and now I’m back on schedule for a while. In the interest of full disclosure, this off schedule thing could very well happen again because my folks, along with my niece, Rhiann, and my Aunt and Uncle from New Mexico will be here during Holy Week through to Easter (Would anyone else like to come and visit for the holiday? Just let us know and bring a dish to share! Hey, we might have more hands to help out with the P.O.W.W.O.W. that Saturday!). We’ll just see how that goes. Enough with the excuses~ let’s get on with the update!

This week, Sue and Dustin really ramped up the ditch diggin’! George helped for a bit as well; some vacation, huh?! They ended up having to do the last 100 feet or so by hand, because it was too close to existing pipes to use the back-hoe. Sue is having an electrician run electricity to the Dinky House and is getting it permitted and everything. The inspector came on Tuesday and pronounced the ditch good to go. It is so much easier to work with the county here; getting projects permitted and approved- it’s such a different experience than working with the County in San Diego. When the original owners built the house, they signed something that said they could waive inspections! Oh my goodness, do you believe that? The draw back to that is, there are no real plans on record, so we don’t really know much about the electrical or water schematics. Anyway, now that the ditch has been dug, and it goes way out into the field, Sue is thinking that we should run a water line out there. That is a most excellent idea, because it will allow us to utilize more of that field below the Dinky House, get water to the area we’d like to use as a Garden, set up some drip line for the trees out there, all without having to drag the hoses all over the place! You can see just how far the ditch runs, if you follow the hillock in the photo- way out into the distance. That is the biggest project going on here right now. The electrician came yesterday to begin running the wire, but today – unfortunately – the wind was blowing so badly that there really wasn’t any way to be working outside without being sandblasted.  So, next week it’ll be done and there will be electricity into the Dinky House!

We had a great time visiting with George and Patty while they made a side trip from Tucson. Monday, Sue went with them up into an area called Carr Canyon; they ended up taking a rather scary dirt road all they way up to the top of the mountains. They had some amazing views of the valley, helps you see why Sierra Vista’s branding tag line is Extraordinary Skies. Uncommon Ground. While they were up there with the birding “hoards”, George was able to see a bird that is rarely spotted this far north: a Tufted Flycatcher. He also saw a Buff Breasted Flycatcher, which – I understand – are more common, but fun to see never-the-less. We’re quite the birding paradise it seems. George says that people come from all over the world to see the birds that we have here. I had no idea that you could get e-mail alerts on your phone to where certain birds were sighted, but that’s a real thing, and once they receive a notice, people just hop on a plane to find that one species of bird. Amazing.

Tuesday we got together with them again, in the after noon… after working George a bit more… and met at the cabin in Ramsey Canyon to walk the Nature Conservancy land. Unfortunately the Conservancy was closed (Closed on Tuesdays and Wednesday), they’ll have to save that for another visit! While we were at the cabin, we were visited by a flock of Turkeys (no, not a rafter of Turkeys; that only refers to a group of domesticated Turkeys… go ahead, look it up!). There were about 22 of them! The dominate male was on display almost the whole time we were there, and still displaying when we returned. He must have been very tired at the end of the day. He was huge and very impressive. Later on, towards evening, as Sue and I were getting ready to go back home, several Coues deer wandered up to check out the low hanging bird feeders for an easy meal. They are so used to people that they weren’t even spooked as we walked out to the car and drove away; they just kind of looked at us like, “Where ya goin’?” We didn’t try to take any photos of them, but perhaps George and Patty will share a few now that they’re home.

What else has gone on? The Ducks and the Chickens and little Roman continue to grow and grow and grow! The chicks love to snuggle up with the ducks; they just plop right down on top or between them in the evening. So funny to see.   Little Roman is still by himself, but is quickly catching up with everybody. We continue to hold him/her every day and hope to keep him quite friendly, that way he/she won’t end up protecting the flock from us!

Also, Sue noticed that the all-in-one Almond Tree has set Almonds already! It is simply covered with them. This weekend I hope to have enough time to find the bird netting I brought with me. Something tells me, however, that it was in a Rubber Maid storage container that was rather blown around in the summer… the netting may have gone with the wind. We’ll see if we can save the almonds from the various critters and we’ll keep you updated on all the growings on here.  Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!

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Today’s Weather: Honkin’ windy! We had two days of really severe winds. Tucson had it even worse than us, and – I understand – that Vegas had it the worst. Currently we’re just a little breezy, but quite cold, our outdoor thermometer says 52° but it feels a lot colder. Low is predicted at 37°. Tomorrow is supposed to be cloudy with a high of 59°. It would be nice if we had some rain.

Egg Report: We had 8 eggs today.  Poor chickens were cooped up all day due to the winds. They get rather bored during the day, so I scattered scratch into the hay to give them something to do. Yesterday we had nine, that typical number once again – same as Wednesday.