Winter in Texas is just getting weirder and weirder. Saturday it was 84 degrees and so humid the sidewalks stayed wet all day, and I turned on the a/c upstairs. By Sunday morning there was a cold wind blowing and it was very uncomfortable to be outside. Today we have had freezing rain all day. Fortunately, the ground is still warm enough that it can’t get much of a hold on the roads, but the overpasses are treacherous. I took some photos just for grins.

It’s not just that ice is hanging under the branches. There is a thick coating of ice over the entire tree. Sometimes, I get free wood when it gets thick enough to break the trees down.

This is a nice look. I wish it looked like this when the water is flowing. In the summer the girl holding her umbrella looks happy as a clam. In this photo she just looks cold.

The water flows over the leaves and into the icycles.

Fall -> Winter --> Christmas lights ----> PIGS!!!!

Certain members of my close personal family made light of me when I mentioned that we have had an extraordinary fall with colored leaves and the whole thing. So, while licking my wounds over the last couple of months I have occasionally stopped to take a photo proving that we really did have Fall leaves. Fortunately, I’ve lost most of them and winter is really, truly here so there is no chance to enhance my collection. Still here is the proof.

This the one that started it all. I took it out in front of our house, looking North. It actually has some nice colors in it, but they are down the street a ways and the low resolution makes it a little hard to see, much less jump out at you.

Yes, I know. It is a pale shadow of the Fall leaves in Utah, but then Utah’s Fall colors are a pale shadow of places like the Hudson River Valley, too. Well, I thought that first photo showed some nice color, but a couple of weeks later we still hadn’t had our first frost and I took this one. It was taken from our front porch, looking NorthWest.

Our tree is blessedly leafless so you can see those bright maples across the intersection. The tree on the right is that most-odd of the conifer family, one of only two deciduous evergreens, a cypress. This is more like it – real Fall colors in anybody’s book. It’s a shame they’re not on a breathtaking mountainside, but hey, we don’t have those round here.

About that same time, I was working on installing cabinets and countertop in the laundry room for a nice young couple over in Murphy and I stopped to take this photo of a Bradford Pear tree.

Yes, I know, the tree is pretty, but noways spectacular. But take a little peek at the valleys in those rooftops. Is that snow? Well, no. This is Texas and we had spent the wee hours of the morning huddled in our hastily-emptied downstairs closet between the leaves from the dining room table, waiting for the tornado warning sirens to signal the all-clear while I fiddled with our expensive, self-winding AM/FM/Weather Band radio that doesn’t seem to actually do anything weatherwise, trying to get a better clue on whether we were in immediate danger of visiting the Wicked Witch of the West or not. That white stuff on the roof is hail.

Well, in spite of our obvious handicaps, we do try to have seasons round here. Not too long after the tornado scare we had our first hard freeze. We got in a couple of ice days after that. We don’t do snow days, we only close the schools when it ices over. Yup, so now all the leaves are off the trees and piled up in that dead-air spot on my back porch, and most everything is all dead looking. But we do get into Christmas lights. You know how there are people who go all overboard with their Christmas lights and computer program them to flash to music by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra? Well, Planet Christmas picks the best display each year, based on videos of the displays. This video is of this year’s winner and it is just up the street a short ways. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szLmAPW39uE Yep, that’s 67 storage cases full of lights. If you look closely you might notice that the lights reflect off the back wall of our local Lowes store. In my new line of work, I average about 2.3 visits to Lowes and Home Depot store each and every day. It’s kind of like Heaven, but costs more.

But the real news of 2008 is that after nearly 2 years with very few pigs out at the farm – only a couple of cagey old boars – we finally have a residence herd of sows and juvenile feral pigs again. I first found sign of them last Saturday morning and Keith and I have been taking turns carefully putting out bait and cleaning off the trails so we can sneak around to check on them without alarming them every since. We want them to get real comfortable, thinking they’ve found the Big Rock Candy Mountain, free food Paradise, Garden of Eden, hog heaven before we commence slaughtering them again. I mean this has been a real loooong dry spell and we don’t want to blow it by blowing any of them away while they are still exploring and checking out the natural pantries.

I hope everybody has a great New Year!

eashurst@tx.rr.com has a new email address

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Sweet Potatoes

We were invited to have Thanksgiving with Uncle Bill and Aunt Barbara, and our assignment was sweet pot.s. Liz decided to participate in the T-Day Turkey Trot in downtown Dallas that morning, so the assignment to peel and cook the spuds fell to me. It was not an onerous chore, so I popped out of bed and turned to. In my rush of enthusiasm, I didn't even check with Miss Fannie Farmer, whose book has instructions adjusted to the meanest of understandings. Since my task was given to me as peel the spuds and cook them, I peeled them first. I know - we often do it that way, but the CORRECT way is to scrub them, cook them, and THEN peel them. You let them cool a little after cooking and then the peels will slip right off. I read this little gem of information as my sweet spuds were cooking, so after they came off the stove I checked. Sure enough, there was a distinct layer of peel still on the spuds. We still had time, so when Liz got back from her stroll down turkey trot lane I was trying to find an easy way to get the rest of the peel off. Liz says she doesn't bother getting it all off, and it tastes OK - just not as smooth and sweet as what's inside. I made a pact with myself that next year I will remember to cook first and peel later, but then I had this sinking feeling of having made that resolution before.
What we made was a sweet potato souffle from an internet recipe:
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1950,148174-244197,00.html
Liz found it while researching for interesting wedding foods and when we made up a test batch, we all thought it was outstanding! Josh says it tastes like sweet potatoes with ice cream mixed in.
Dinner at the Benac's is always an excercise in bedlam, but we had a good time. There was lots of great food. Afterwards the Cowboys won their game, so that was a nice topping on the T-Day cake. Sadly, Ruthie had to watch A&M go down in defeat later in the evening.
I left Benac's with Joe to help him get his PTAC kit together for his big debut Friday (today) when he and Josh are doing all the PTAC units at a Red Roof Inn in Irving, as a test to determine whether they do a good enough job to qualify to do a boatload of motels in that chain. Joe borrowed a brush, two rechargeable drills, two levels, two canvas tool bags, and five Sharpie pens. And maybe some other stuff. Aren't you impressed that I had all that stuff to loan them? I was.
This morning, Sterling wanted me to put a new roll of tape in the dispenser in the art drawer. Then he wanted to keep the empty roll, and ultimately he taped the colored version on his nose to become a piggie. So then Winter did too, but Ginger just made a pig face.

Fall is finally here

We’ve had a remarkably nice fall to date. Of course, I always like Fall best of all the seasons, but this one was great. We finally had our first freeze (low temp. was 32 degrees) about a week ago and it was slightly chilly for a couple of days, but now it’s back to beautiful, again. This is a photo of the trees on our street. We usually don’t see so much color at one time, because just as the trees are turning color we either get a good, killing freeze, or high winds. We are forecast to have a few more nice days, then over the weekend the high temps. Will dip down to the lower 50’s. We might even get another “freeze” on Sunday. Yes, winter is on her way.

We are having a low-key Thanksgiving, going to Liz’s brother’s house for T-day dinner and watching the Cowboys. Wedding plans are consuming us more than anything else, because we plan to get it mostly settled before December, so we can then stress about Christmas, instead.

Clear Sky Handy Men is hard to measure just now. I’ve been getting lots of good leads. Of course, some don’t turn into actual income, but what’s happened here lately is that people don’t want to start a project until after Thanksgiving. I’m sure Christmas will slow work down a lot as we get closer to it. Still, I have several large jobs to do next week that have been waiting for the turkey to die, and I have a helper lined up. Maybe I can actually make some money for a change.

Jessica is a fine photographer, but she took one that is kind of amazing. I wish I had a copy of it full-size, but this one will do. It is my granddaughter, Ginger, and her pet (for 2 or 3 days) frog.

Thursday, Joe called and told me he was going to a Facilities Managers Show at the Market Hall in Dallas. So I decided to tag along, thinking that I might learn something, and probably could gather some nice "trash & trinkets", which is always fun. At first I was just tagging along, but I registered as Clear Sky Handy Men, not as Varsity Contractors like Joe, so I got all the sales pitches separately. I was pleasantly surprised that 2 of the exhibitors told me that if I'd like to do installs for them, they could sure use me. That's exciting and I WILL follow up.
At the end of the first row there was a big exhibit by Sunbelt Rentals, which is located in the Lowes stores. They had some big lifts and heavy equipment on display so it took me a few minutes to place them. They also had a big wheel, kind of like a roulette wheel, but homemade. They had Joe spin it and he won $60 in coupons, which I thought was way cool. Then they let me spin and I gave a gentle little spin thinking I might get the same thing. As it slowed down, all the Sunbelt guys started talking and saying , "he might make it" , "it's coming up", "I think he's going to hit it" , and stuff like that. I was surprised, because they hadn't been that interested when Joe spun. Turns out what whey were excited about was that I was sneaking up on a slot labeled SURPRISE, and I did land on it. As a result, I got to choose between two Bosch tools and take it home. I was really dumbfounded! Bosch makes high-end tools - very expensive, but extremely well-made. I chose the circular saw, even though I already have a pretty good one. But this one is way better! So now when I get to the point of hiring help, I can keep my good one in the shop and have one for work.
Joe and I got through the last booth at about the same time as the show ended, so we also got lots of trinkets.

After the Show, Josh and I went out "hunting". We got there too late to do much serious hunting, but we sat out and watched the woods for a while, then lit a fire and enjoyed foil dinners with feral hog hot-links in them. Next morning, we did some serious target practice. Josh is a good, natural shotgunner. I was throwing clay pigeons and he was breaking most of them. Then we shot my carbine, and then a 30-30 I've had for a few years and that I had big plans for. I have previously offered all of my kids a gun if they wanted one. So far Mark and Joe are the only ones to take me up on it, but Josh hadn't had a chance. I told him he could have that 30-30 if he wanted it and he thought that was grand. I told him a bit of the history of the Win 94, and that they are no longer being manufactured. It is fun to see him so pleased.

Fall is a very nice time of year. I noticed a few years ago that we live in the Monarch butterfly fly zone. For the past couple of weeks I've been watching them move constantly south-west on their way to a particular tree in Mexico. I've noticed that if I mention that they are migrating past us, people give me a deadpan look, like they're wondering if they've just run across an unwashed, evil scientist working on a nefarious destructive device. Oh well, I've always been interested in all things nature - way more than "normal" people.

I enjoyed being a scout leader but hikes with scouts were frustrating, because they clashed so horribly with my inclinations when hiking. I want to hear and see birds, but the scouts are always yelling at each other about something trivial and city-ish, which means you never hear anything, and seldom see wildlife. I like to stop and watch a bug or spider or other critter, but scouts are only interested for about 1/2 of a second before moving on, fairly often right over the top of what I'm trying to show them. I find an owl scat and they think it's disgusting to look at poop. I tell them I see a racoon and if they move really slow and quiet they can see him, too, and they all come rushing and pushing and wonder why it is gone.

Fortunately, I am blessed with exceptional grandchildren who will listen when I have something to tell them about, and will mostly obey my request for calm, slow movement. Of course, the rabbit that lives just outside our door is just too much. I'll tell them to move slowly and very quietly and not get too close, and they do it. For about 5 seconds. Then one moves forward a little and one of the others will rush forward a little more, and the others follow suit and in a flash the rabbit is bounding past the neighbor's house with Sterling right on its tail and little Ginger not far behind.

We had a cold day on Tuesday and the monarchs have all hurried past us, or froze.
Josh and I are planning to go camping tommorrow night and I am looking forward to a very pleasant time. The cool weather is good for discouraging mosquitoes, and for pleasant sleeping. The wild hogs are getting a bit desperate for food, so they're likely to come check out the feeders. My camo trailer is full of cobwebs, but is still intact and a pleasant place to spend a cozy night. Life is grand this time of year.