The Rabbit Pond

Well, no major announcement to my immediate family around these parts, but we bought some land! Back in June! Did I not mention that? What with every thing else going on?

Anyway. We bought 60 acres northeast of Troy. It has a five (-ish) acre fish pond on it. On Friday we caught 10 big fat bream in about 3 minutes. The pond has lost a lot of water over the course of the drought. You can see the exposed bank behind me there on the right. The vegetation line is where the water used to be. This picture is from late July and the water is even lower now. The fish feeder has since been removed from the dock, and one good thing about the water being so low is that we can get out there and do some dock repairs/small child safety adjustments (railing!).


We also have a creek. Well, technically, we have two. We have the small unnamed one that feeds the pond (and is really more of a swamp), and we also have a creek that flows through the property on the east side. Little Buckhorn Creek to be exact. Here is a certain small-ish type person to show it off:

The creek has part of a historic dam on it (the other part presumably blew out in a flood at some point in the past), and further down it has a beaver dam on it. We've seen him (her?) out and about. They can get up to 75 lbs which is as big as Lindy. I think this one is getting close. I saw it come out of the pond and go across the pond dam one evening. We also have a bobcat that I have not seen, but Tray has.

This picture is on our property looking north toward our gate, so this is the first area you come to driving in (only turned around looking back at the gate). That black speck up the road is Lindy. To her right is an open area with lots of pretty flowers, and then immediately to the left of the foreground is another open field.

The picture below is just to the right of where I was standing taking the picture above. Tray picking a few wild grapes off a small vine for Penny to eat (she loves them - especially the seed spitting part).

These are kind of in reverse order, but let me take you back into time. This is Penny running up the road from further south in our property to get to where I was to take the grape picture. Oh, and Artie too.

To the south of the two small open fields is a patch of piney woods. I love piney woods because there is very little understory. You can walk around without walking through stuff. And the ground is so soft and cushy from the pine straw accumulation.
This is the edge of those woods coming into the "big field." Note the cedar trees. No buying a Christmas Tree this year!
On your way into the big field is a massive grapevine covered in grapes. We've been eating on them for weeks now. I made a huge batch of jelly - some of the finest I've ever made. These are some seriously good grapes.
This is the gang seated across from the vine just eating and eating and eating grapes. Everytime we go out there Penny asks us to stop to pick some. We usually stop and get some down and then carry them with us on to the pond. And then at some point during the trip she'll request to walk from the pond back up to the vine so she can get some more. It's actually a long walk. I usually end up carrying her at least part of the way back.
And this is the "big field." When you come around the corner to it, the beauty can take your breath away. Right now it is covered in wildflowers. There is yellow and purple as far as you can see. And I know as the leaves turn colors, it's going to be even more pretty. The wood line you see in the background is the creek buffer.
If you go on around that curve, the road cuts through the woods going toward the pond. Here is Penny with her walking stick there.

Finally, here is Penny in the hammock under our pole barn on the hill above the pond.

I've got loads more pictures of the place, but hopefully that'll give some idea of what it is like. We have enjoyed it so much already, and we haven't really been out there all that much. It has been so hot and dry that we haven't wanted to, but now that the weather is cooling off we've had much more reason to head out there. We camped out under the barn this past weekend, and fully intend to camp there again this weekend. We love, love, love having some of our very own land. It makes all those years (and still counting) of relative "depravation" - no new furniture or decore and no eating out or cable tv - so, so worth it. We have sixty acres (!) and a creek and a pond (and a bobcat!) to call our own. Maybe we'll build on it one day, or maybe not, but for now it's just so wonderful to have land. Our land!

Goodbye, Jake

This has been tough to sit down and write. A little over a week ago now we lost our Jake-dog. He had been in declining health for some weeks with what was probably chronic kidney failure. He was only 8 years old. As it was with Catfish, it is particularly hard to lose a pet at such a young age. We certainly did not expect to lose him so soon. I'm having trouble writing this is no small part because Jake was Tray's dog. Jake followed him everywhere like a shadow. He was cool with me, and protective when I was pregnant with Penny, but mostly I was "she who brings food when Daddy's not here."

Tray always tells the story of meeting Jake. Little known fact: Jake's actual, original name was Bentley. "Bentley" was a Christmas morning gift dog. The couple who bought him soon realized that a lab puppy needs a lot of attention and in the absence of it will chew your house to shreds. They decided to find a new home for him. Tray went to check him out. All the adults were standing in the kitchen talking, "Bentley" came running around the corner, leash in mouth, and ran right up to Tray as if to say, "ok, take me home now." We renamed him Jake and he's been part of our family ever since.

He was a cute little puppy with very sharp teeth. He aggravated Lindy to no end. The way he lapped water out of his dish was one of the most adorable things I've ever seen (babies included). He knew how to fetch a stick on the very first throw. I had to teach Lindy to fetch, to sit, to stay, even to swim. Jake just knew how to do those things as a matter of instinct. The only thing he wouldn't do is jump into the back of the truck. He wouldn't even jump into the backseat of my Civic (which is inches off the ground). We'd spend entire afternoons trying everything we could think of to encourage him to jump. We built elaborate jump practicing stations out of tree stumps and boards. Finally, finally one day he could do it.

He was the best cat-defender around. If ever Catfish or Mullet escaped the house, Jake would always attempt to corral them and/or herd them back inside the house. If we ever let the cats out for a supervised walkabout, he'd hover right near them because he knew they weren't supposed to be outside.

When we first moved to our house in Woodville, Jake's foot got injured somehow. We never did find out what happened despite repeated searches of the yard. He was in surgery for several hours to repair it, and it was a very near thing that he got to keep his foot. The vets had him in one of those e-collars to keep him from chewing off his bandages. He made it clear that he wanted the collar off, and we took it off, but he never attempted to chew the bandage even once. He allowed me to wrap his foot in a plastic bag every time he had to go out for a bathroom break so his bandages wouldn't get wet in the grass. Once the bandages came off, he never tried licking the medicine off. He was a very patient dog.

Penny always liked hugging him because he was so soft. Lindy and Artie are both wire-textured. Lindy's kind of like an otter: slick and short haired. Jake was fluffy and almost more like a golden retriever than a lab (even though he was AKC registered pure-blood lab). Several people mistook him for a golden retriever. He was definitely more golden colored than your usual yellow lab. He was a good hugger.

He was quiet, reserved, thoughtful, lovable, friendly, snuggly, wild-and-crazy on cool fall mornings, and Tray's best friend. We will all miss him very much.

Lions

A quickie before moving on to other things: Penny worries about lions. We'll be talking about what animals might be in the woods or in the swamp or something, and she'll always add, "and lions?" And I'll say, "No, lions live in Africa." Or we'll go to the park and I'll say, "we can see some squirrels," or something similar, and she'll worry, "will there be lions?" Or like one day we were taking a walk in the woods and heard something. Penny asked, "what made that noise." Tray said, "maybe it was a squirrel." I said, "maybe it was a bird." Penny said, "or maybe it was a lion." It's just so darn cute in it's ridiculousness.

Corollary: we were listing swamp creatures one day when we passed over one on a drive and she asked me if there were piranhas in that water. I told her that I sure hoped not.

Aviation Museum

Prior to Penny's birthday we would ask her what she wanted to do for her birthday. Being a fan of Cars, she would ask to take a ride in a helicopter (like Mater). We'd told her that there was a helicopter museum nearby that we'd take her to (it's down at Ft. Rucker). Well, of course she got sick, and taking her to the museum took on even more of an urgency for us -- like we wanted to do this thing for her since she'd been through so much. So, these pictures and video are from a week or so after being home. It was pretty much one of the first things we did after she was well enough to do stuff. iPhoto tells me they are from August 1. You can tell in the video that she was still a bit "peeked." Nonetheless, she had an absolute blast. I wish we'd had the camera out when she first walked in. Y'all, the look of sheer awe on her face was priceless. It was like she almost didn't know what to do with herself. She crossed her arms in like a, "I'm so blown away, I don't even know what to do with my hands," kind of way. We were trying to take pictures with our phones here and there, but didn't get many good ones. I don't think the effect came through, but seeing her like that was so worth the trip. She very much enjoyed playing in the helicopter that they have open for you to climb around in. They also have another one upstairs that you can get in and "drive". That's the video that is attached. Afterwards, we stopped at Dairy Queen and got an ice cream cone (a rare treat).