Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Mom is Top Priority

Can't start on the Nano camper this week. Mom has terrible swelling in her legs and is really weak. Wants to nap all the time and is whiny when she doesn't get her way. I ignore most of it. Mom's left leg is practically useless, but she can stand feebly on it with a little assistance.

With an X-ray and sonar scan looking for bloodclots to help the doctor understand the sudden weakness in her left leg, I'm staying close to her. He put her on a fluid pill to take away some of the swelling in her lower legs. She puffed up a lot the past week.

Well, I have a lot of work piling up, so will have to come up with a plan to get it all done. Two large trees down in the back yard need cutting up and moving. The Nano camper and farm cutting have to be done, too. There is always house work. The garden has to go in in a couple of weeks, too. It's going to be one busy spring around here caring for my dying mother and everything else that has to be done.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Starting on the Nano Camper Next Week!!!

If it's not raining, that is. Going to put in a good floor and floor supports first. Water proof them well and build up from there. Late March and early April are going to be devoted to the Nano camper hull building.

Late April's time will be used to cut up the two large hackberry trees felled within the past two weeks laying in the back yard. Plan to store the wood at the end of the driveway so whoever it gets donated to next winter won't have such a hassle to get to it. Hackberry wood is a medium grade firewood. The dried fruit and seed can be ground up and used as a spice.

Great Plains Rat Snakes are our friends.


I'm in the old washhouse the other night and see a large grayish- brown with dark brown splotchy marking of a snake laying all coiled up in a relaxed mode on top of the refridgerator in there. Yikes! It was a very long snake. I backed up a bit in the dim light. Couldn't tell if it was a rattler or a rat snake. Went back the next morning and it was still coiled up where it had been. I wondered if it was sick. I know little about snakes lounging around habits. It appeared to be a rat snake, so I left it alone.

Today, I go back to check on it and it's gone. I look around and it pokes out it's head from under the shelves and flicks out it's tongue a few times. Telling the snake it had no reason to fear me because rat snakes are always welcomed in any shed or barn I own, positive it sensed no fear phermones in the air.

A little research on the Internet and it's discovered to be a Great Plains rat snake. A docile snake by nature that is often kept as a pet as well as it's cousin the corn snake. They make great trainer snakes for people who want to learn how to handle snakes because they are docile and rarely attack unless provoked. They have curved teeth and kill by constriction.

So, I'm leaving the long snake alone. Rat Boy, as I've named him though it might be a female, is welcomed in all of my sheds as well as black runners, garter snakes, and chicken snakes---all known rat and mouse eaters. When I was a kid, I watched a king snake kill and eat a water moccasin down in the pond.

Friday, March 2, 2012

A Night of Tornadoes

Got the weather alert function on my multi-function survival radio set to ON/ALERT tonight. It's way too hot for early March and that usually means tornadoes or hard straight line winds.

Last April, a tornado got within a half a mile of the house and it severely damaged two oaks in the backyard. They dropped large limbs a few months later. Got them all cut up and waiting by my outside fire pit. If a tornado a half a mile away does that to mature trees, I don't want the dangerous thing in the yard.

Praying for folks tonight in the paths of tornadoes.