On To Another Project

I spent a couple of hours yesterday removing the shredded deer fence that didn’t stand up to the elements and pulling up the last of the T-posts from around the fruit trees. All but two of them came out fairly easily, but those two that didn’t were darned difficult!

It took a lot of pushing and pulling on the posts to loosen the ground around them before I could budge them with the tractor. Even then, one was in so tight that as I was pulling up on the bucket I felt the wheels of the tractor start to lift on one side. Nope, that’s not going to happen. I eased up on the bucket lever to reduce the stress on the chain, and once the tractor was stable, I got off and repositioned everything, before trying it again. That time it finally came out.

I put the tractor away when I was done and drove the Mule back to the house to put the chain on the shelf in the garage. I was standing at the bottom of the deck when all of a sudden both legs started burning like fire and I realized I had stepped into an ant hill. It really wasn’t an ant hill it, was just an open space in the grass with some holes in it where the ants were coming and going from their underground lair. Terry came out and hosed me off, the water getting rid of the nasty little critters, but not before they had done a good job of chewing up the lower halves of both legs. While I went inside to clean up she put some ant killer on the area. They are everywhere around here and it’s a constant battle trying to keep up with them.

After I took a shower to clean up and put a bunch of anti-itch cream on my bites, we had dinner. Terry made delicious Chicken Alfredo for me and a grilled chicken salad for herself. Talk about something that’s yummy for your tummy! 😊

With all the posts and deer fence down around the garden and fruit trees, it’s time to move on to a new project. Today Travis and I will start taking apart the stalls in the barn. We don’t need them since we never plan to have horses and I can definitely use the extra space. It’s supposed to start getting hot again this week, and hopefully we can get most of it done today.

Congratulations Don Steward, winner of our drawing for an  of audiobook of Big Lake Honeymoon, the seventh book in my Big Lake mystery series. The story begins as the busy summer season is drawing to a close in the little mountain town of Big Lake, Arizona and the locals are looking forward to a relaxing interlude before the first snowfall brings carloads of skiers to the high country. That all changes when a nearly nude woman rushes into a convenience store in the middle of the night begging for help. She tells Sheriff Jim Weber that her new husband has been murdered and she was taken captive by the mysterious killer, who seems to have disappeared into the thick forests of the White Mountains, touching off a manhunt for a phantom that cannot be found.

We had 38 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books and audiobooks to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed. After 90 days, unclaimed prizes revert back to the drawing pool for a future contest.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us. When Ronnie Berquist sent me this picture my first thought was that must hurt!

Thought For The Day – To make a mistake is human, but to blame it on someone else, that’s even more human