It was so windy on Sunday...

Post processing: 1. Remove sensor dust spots with patch tool 2. PW's Boost action at 68%

How windy was it?

It was so windy that all seven outdoor family members took shelter on the leeward side of the barn 

and I got them in the same picture.

It was so windy that George and Alan had to entertain themselves with whatever toys they could find.

It was so windy that I gave in to their demands, served supper a little early,

and ran back in the house to fire up the woodstove, clean the camera, apply more chapstick, 

and drink wine...and not necessarily in that order.

Waiting for supper ~ 11/26/10

"Waiting for supper" pictures are my new go-to subject matter when I've got nothing else to post.

On this day, Alan snacked on dead yucca stalks.

George snacked on a tumbleweed while the shadows played around him.

Post processing: 1. PW's Boost action at 50% 2. Applied woodgrain texture to metal barn 3. Cropped

And Hank stood around doing what he does best ... being handsome.

Saturday encore ~ Thursday morning, a reenactment

Why am I re-posting this one? Because the same darned thing happened again last week...but this time Smooch escaped and was AWOL for half an hour. Will I ever learn? Maybe. The gate is now double-latched.

It was 6 a.m. I woke up, let Smooch out, and went back in the house to brush my teeth and get dressed. Elapsed time: about 10 minutes.

I walked out the back door with Smooch's breakfast in one hand and Wynonna's in the other.

Ooops.



Someone, who shall remain nameless, must not have latched the gate properly between the corral and the backyard.

Smooch, who NEVER shares the same space with the boys because I live in fear of her getting kicked in the head, is right in the thick of things, weaving in and out, running under them, and wondering what the heck they are doing in her yard. Mercifully, the dead lawn was such a temptation for Hank, Lyle, and George that they could care less about Smooch. Alan didn't want to get in trouble, so he stood in the corral watching all the drama. Wynonna was grunting for her breakfast, Willie was baahing for his, and I was having a coronary, until I could convince Smooch to come over to me, whereupon I scooped her up, tossed her in the house, and herded everybody back where they were supposed to be.

Then I made coffee.

The end.

Be thankful this crowd won't be showing up at your table

Confessions of a pumpkin hoarder

I'm so happy you found time to stop by today. Maybe this means you're not responsible for the entire Thanksgiving feast tomorrow? If you are, my thoughts and prayers are with you. I will be heading down to the neighbor's with a few loaves of artisan bread and my latest greatest soup.

I found the soup recipe on Tasty Kitchen last winter, and it is so easy, delicious, comforting, elegant ... ok I'll stop now... because I could go on and on and on about how wonderful this soup is. Here's the link to the recipe. It's called Velvet Pumpkin Soup. I won't bore you with step-by-step pictures and instructions. Basically, you sauté some onions in a pot, add a few spices, dump in some chicken stock, canned pumpkin, and evaporated milk, and you're done. The key to the soup, as far as I'm concerned anyway, is the velvety texture. The recipe says you can puree it in a blender in batches, or not. I've tried it pureed and I've tried it chunky – pureed is the definitely the way to go, except for the getting-the-blender dirty part, when you have to clean the blender and all the vessels and utensils you've dirtied transferring the soup from the pot to the blender and back again. Anyway, I made this soup so often last winter that I decided it was high time to buy one of these:

An immersion blender. I am normally not a gadget person, but this thing has become more of a necessity in my kitchen than a gadget. I may never use my regular blender again. Why disassemble, clean, and reassemble a blender when you can just eject the end of this thing and rinse it off?

I haven't used it to blend margaritas, only because I never thought of it until just now, but I'll bet it would do the trick. It might even mash potatoes. Heck, you could probably stir paint with it if you washed it off real good.

But getting back to the soup recipe... I learned a very important lesson last winter once I started making it, and I learned it the hard way. Grocery stores do not stock the main ingredient (canned pumpkin) year round. It is only available from about October through January. After that, you cannot find it on the shelves - at least in New Mexico, you can't. So if you do make this soup and fall in love with it (and I'm betting you will), start stocking up now.

A girl can never have too much land or too much pumpkin in her pantry. And you can quote me on that.

The best part of owning a gun is never having to use it

I'm not particularly fond of guns. I did not grow up in a family of hunters and never even held a real gun until I was an adult. Guns did not interest me, I didn't have a use for one, and never wanted to own one ... until I moved to the middle of nowhere and had to confront the fact that I might some day need a gun to protect my animals or myself.

Last year, I replaced my .22 rifle (which I could never remember how to use depite the hours of training) with a more practical revolver. In the year or so that my six-shooter has sat on the shelf, I'm happy to report I've not had cause to pull the trigger. And therein lies the problem – I was worried that I would forget how. So over the weekend I went to a shooting range for a little practice.

I'm no Annie Oakley, but if any mountain lions, bears or armed escaped convicts are reading this blog, you are hereby warned that you'd best not mess with me.

Feeling quite smug that I could still hit a target, I came home, pulled out my gun-cleaning supplies, and didn't have a freakin' clue what to do next. (Sorry, KA, it's been over a year since you showed me what to do. I've slept since then.) Yet again, Google saved the day.

There I sat, merrily cleaning my revolver while watching a YouTube video that walked me through it step by step. Have I told you lately how much I love the internet?

Honk your horn if you love wild animals

Me: So, Snapper, what do you think of our new sculpture?

Snapper: I suppose it's ok if you're into that sort of thing.

And I'm definitely into that sort of thing, where thing equals found object. Our new sculpture is actually a Pronghorn horn. I found it right in the middle of the path as Smooch and I walked around the fenceline.

Buck photo courtesy of Arizona Game and Fish

Here are some fun facts about the Pronghorn that roam the range around the 7MSN:
•  The Pronghorn is the only animal in the world with branched horns (not antlers) and the only animal to shed its horns, as if they were antlers. The horn is a hollow sheath over a bony core that rises from the skull just above the eye. A buck's horns are up to 15 inches long. Each has a distinctive prong on the front, which gives the species its name.
• Pronghorn are found only on the plains and grasslands of North America.
• The Pronghorn is the fastest land mammal in the world.  It can sprint as fast as 60 mph and can sustain a speed of 30 mph for miles.
• A Pronghorn herd travels as one, not leaving a single animal open to attack. The herd runs in perfect unison in a very tight, oval-shaped formation, much like a flock of birds.
• Pronghorn cannot leap fences, as deer can, so they crawl under fences instead.

Can I just say that my heart skips a beat every time I see a Pronghorn? I'll stop whatever it is I'm doing and just watch (and take pictures, if I'm lucky enough to be wearing my camera). It's a privilege to see something so wild and beautiful, and I will never tire of it.

Smooch: No way, no how am I posing with that thing on my head.

Clearly, Smooch and I do not have the same taste when it comes to art. We found this horn several weeks ago, and I've been meaning to show it to you. I had forgotten all about it until yesterday afternoon, when I looked out the living room window and noticed George and Alan chasing something across the pasture.

As the moon slowly sinks into the west

11/21/2010 6:39 a.m.
Nikon D80
Shutter Speed: 1/60
Exposure Program: Shutter priority
F-Stop: f/5.6
ISO Speed: 1000
Focal Length 135 mm

Saturday encore ~ Mon petite fleurs and a few thoughts on Photoshop

Daffodil, Rosebud and Snapper do not get their fair share of time on this blog. I will try to do better in that regard. In the meantime, here's a post from November 2009 to assuage my guilt.

The feline bouquet was arranged for dinner.

Daffodil sat atop the washer, looking like the prim and polite pile of purr she pretends to be:

Rosebud relaxed on the dryer, with her one big ear and one little ear (a story for another time), 

staring soulfully into my eyes.

Snapper (officially Snapdragon) snarled while he waited for me to snag his dinner and stop snapping pictures:

The lighting was perfect, and the felines were looking their expressive best, save for the yucky white appliances, the electric cords, and the not-so-flattering paint color on the walls behind them.

Enter Photoshop.

Applying textures in Photoshop seems to be all the rage these days, so I thought I'd give it a try. I like what this texture* does to these images. Almost makes me want to repaint the laundry room.

Photoshop is to today's digital photographer what the darkroom was to yesterday's film photographer – a tool to make a good photograph better, or to express or enhance one's style. I use it all the time, if for no other reason than to remove the specks that show up in the sky because I neglected to clean the camera lens.


*Texture is courtesy of Jessica Drossin Photography , via the MCP Actions site. Thank you, Jessica and Jodi.

Clara's leap of faith

Raising chickens is sort of like raising kids.

You've got to let them stand on their own two feet...

Support them in their decisions...

Encourage them to do the right thing...

and believe in themselves.

But you can't be too nice...

...otherwise they'll walk all over you.

Where'd they go?

99% of the time, Hank, George and Alan are within eyeshot of each other. 

Hank insists. He can't stand to be without his herd.

But every once in awhile, like when Hank has his head buried in the hay tub and can't hear George and Alan leave 

over the sound of his own munching, he loses track of his boys and has to go looking.

He calls and calls for them, demanding that they come back to him right that very minute...

but they don't, and it makes him crazy. George and Alan have no respect for authority.

Me: Hank, they're over here!

Hank: Over where?

Hank: I knew that.

I've created a monster

When I first made Paco's Favorite Treats back in July,

little did I know I was creating a monster...

Post processing: 1. Lightened using duplicate layer and Screen blending mode; 2. PW's Warmer action at 60%; 3. PW's Boost action at 65%; 4. Crop.

...a cookie monster, that is...

...actually three cookie monsters. They cannot get enough of these treats.

Me: Hank, you had yours. Now quit with the stinkeye.

Alan: Theeth things are tho thewy.

Alan: Ith thuck on the woof uf my mouf.

George: Maybe if we ask her nicely, she'll serve them with a glass of milk next time.

Outwitting the Porcine Princess

About a month ago, Lucy and Ethel moved the chicken coop from the garden to Wynonna's stall in the barn so that the girls would have a warmer and less windy place to roost for the winter. Since then, the pig and the poultry have been getting along just fine, if you can call totally ignoring each other getting along.

Late last week, I heard some particularly loud squawking coming from the barn and went to investigate. The Porcine Princess had invited herself into the coop for lunch, dumped over the feeder, gorged herself on Layena pellets, and made a general mess of things. Bull in a china shop – pig in a chicken coop, same idea. Wynonna suffered no ill effects from eating the chicken feed, thank goodness, but I knew I had to do something quick to prevent her from crossing over into the land of plenty ever again.

After a careful review of all my options, not the least of which 

was building a separate chicken wing onto the barn, I went for simplicity:

I screwed an old piece of wood to the bottom of the door frame.

Wynonna's short little legs can't climb over the plank, but the hens can still hop in and out.

And as long as I pay attention (yeah, right), I won't trip over it when I go inside.

Wynonna is less than pleased. 

I regularly find her standing at the doorstep, contemplating her next move.

I think she's smart enough to realize that if she tries to climb over, she would get high-centered.

But she's also smart enough to outwit me. If there's food involved, she'll figure out a way to get it. 

I wouldn't be at all surprised if she trains one of the chickens to bring the food to her.

Oh, Wynonna, you're such a clever creature. 

It's part of your charm, and I wouldn't have it any other way.