Slowly by surely I am trying to get organized with Lightroom, my new photo software. Does learning new software count up there as a stressor along with changing jobs, spouses, or health issues? Here are some random photos taken over the last month while doing chores.
Our new signpost on the way to the barn, in case visitors are unsure of where they are. Not really. It is on the way to the barn but was constructed by my husband for the memorial service we had here for his dad. Our birthplaces are at the top, followed by parents’, siblings’, and our kids’ birthplaces or current locations.
Speaking of the barn I call this Dog Toy on the Roof.
Wood from a tree my son took down for us.
Brewer’s Blackbird feasting on mulberries.
I think I got this ID right–Western Kingbird.
This is Hot Lips making an announcement.
Ginny hoping to be called into service.
Did I mention when I got the tractor stuck? This is a dry field, or it’s supposed to be. There must be a leak in a pipe and this corner is sopping weight. I was mowing foxtails and made a tight turn to do a thorough mowing job as far into the corner as I could.
Do you see that the mower on the back of the tractor is right up at the fence on one side and the bucket is resting on a fencepost. There is no way to maneuver this thing out.
Dan spent about an hour jacking and digging…
…and jacking and digging, each time trying to wedge another board under. Every time he’d remove the jack to wedge in another board the weight of the tractor rested on the fence post which creaked ominously. The boards that the jack was on kept squishing down in the mud, but eventually he got the wheel up to almost ground level. Still, there was no way to drive the tractor out without some help.
My 2-wheel drive pick-up was called into service and Dan chained it to the tractor. When he put the tractor in gear the truck gave just enough assistance, pulling sideways, so that the tractor wheel got out of the hole and onto dry ground.
I irrigated this weekend. The sheep were just moved off the paddock to the right and when it dries up enough they will go on the one to the left. Can you see the difference? It took only two days for them to eat that feed.
One of their favorite plants is Birdsfoot Trefoil. It is a legume which means it is one of the plants that converts nitrogen in the air to a form that can be used by the plant. It is actually not the plant that does that but the bacteria that live in nodules on the roots of legumes.
Clovers are also legumes. This is a variety of white clover.
This morning I noticed just a few of these flowers. I can’t decide if this is a variant of the white clover or is a different species. The leaves are similar. I’ll have to do some more checking.
Do you see how most of the other plants have been eaten and this one has not been touched? The sheep avoid plants that are toxic to them. This is Narrow-leaved Milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis). Not only is it a favored species for the monarch butterfly but according to a 
These are Narrow-leaved Milkweed flowers in various stages…
…and a close-up.
Field bindweed (Convolvulaceae arvensis), also known as morning glory. It is, according to a 
Soft Chess or Soft Brome, a non-native annual grass.
Medusahead as it is drying out. Medusahead covers thousands of acres of California foothills. It is not normally found in irrigated pasture, but it is in the easternmost paddock here which sometimes does not irrigate well. I have reclaimed part of that paddock, but I continually fight this plant. I find patches of it in other areas of the pasture and, although this is not an effective control technique, I pull it up by the handfuls as I walk by, coming back to the barn with it stuffed in the pockets of my overalls. It is a nasty plant that is “…among the worst weeds: not only does medusahead compete for resources with more desirable species, but it changes ecosystem function to favor its own survival at the expense of the entire ecosystem…Because grazing animals selectively avoid this plant, and because medusahead thatch tends to suppress desirable forage species, infestations often develop into near-monotypic stands.” From the 
I have ID’d this one as Blunt Spikerush (Eleocharis obtusa), not a grass, but a sedge that is found on poorly drained soil and marshy areas. That’s my pasture…poorly drained soil. There is a lot of this sedge in the middle and south end of three or four of the paddocks. It looks like foot-tall grass, but that is why it is important to actually look at what is out there. This does not make good forage.
A rather artsy shot of Buckhorn Plantain, found throughout California…
…and a photo in which you will probably more easily recognize it.
Dottie brought a car-load of supplies. She put indigo in a tea strainer and we watched the water turn color. We also noticed a metallic sheen on the water and weren’t sure what to do about that. We forged ahead…
…sampling with cotton fabric that Dottie had brought with her. The metallic stuff showed up on the fabric but it seemed that we could wipe it off easily.
So we went ahead with the dress. When dyeing with indigo you don’t want to stir up the dye bath because indigo dyeing relies on a chemical reaction as the fabric comes out of the dye and reacts with oxygen. If you introduce oxygen into the dye bath you lose some of the effectiveness of the indigo.
When you bring something out of an indigo bath it is green at first.
As it reacts it turns blue. Usually you rely on several dips to darken the color, but this one came out fairly dark the first time. However, we saw unevenly dyed areas where I had been too careful about lowering the dress into the bath and the dye didn’t get into the folds. There was also that metallic stuff in spots. I decided to hose the dress off (no pictures at this point) and see what it looked like. Not good. Very splotchy and not in a good way. So I tried again, this time stirring the dress in the pot with my hands. It was more important to get an even dye job than to save the dye bath for later.
Here is the final product. But we weren’t done. There was another step and that was a surprise to me. First though the dress had to be completely dry, so that step was going to have to wait until later.
No, one of us didn’t grow an extra hand. Dottie came with a friend who took some of these photos while we were working.
Chris built one 8-foot and two 10-foot tables for the use of the wedding party. He also made assorted game pieces and a very cool guest sign-in board.
Chris getting advice from his sister.
More advice. Stout tables.
Some of the bridal party who helped the day before. They were all there–what a great group of friends Chris and Meryl share.
Table inspection by the resident cat…
…who, having done his (her?) job, needed a nap.
Wedding rehearsal. I didn’t get all the guys in the photo because I was seated in my mother-of-the-groom chair.
The girls minus the bride.
Meryl’s parents hosted a dinner the night before the wedding and here are my three beautiful daughters!
This is one of several Brewer’s Blackbirds’ nests in the barn. This one is on a convenient shelf just over my lambing calendar. I’ve read that Brewer’s blackbirds eat seeds, grains, and insects.
However, our blackbirds do quite well on the mulberry tree that overhangs the ram pen and is loaded with mulberries right now. 
This bird hatched on April 30. Anytime we walk in the barn, the parents harass us relentlessly.
This photo was taken two days later on May 2.
May 6.
May 8. They grow quickly.
This is May 9. The first baby is 9 days old.
May 12. Out of the nest. There is a day or two when I find babies out of the nest. The parents are frantic. Maggie needs to be restrained because she is truly a varmint dog. She things that anything small and alive is fair game for her.
We took another trip in 2013 and again in 2015. I still have this truck.
…although last Christmas the Explorer wasn’t adequate to get up the driveway. (That could have been because, knowing we were going to sell it, we hadn’t got new tires.)
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