Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving

I received my new Ipad Mini yesterday; it took three days for it to get here from China.  Amazing!  The oldest grandson bought my old Ipad for $100, which is the amount Apple would have paid me for it.  I am enjoying my new toy immensely.  It does things my first generation model didn't do, so I am still learning.  I was a little worried at first because it doesn't "zoom in" the way my old one did, and since this one is smaller, I really need to be able to make some things bigger.  With the help of Google, I found out how to zoom the Mini, which took care of the only complaint I had.  
We are "on watch" here in the boonies:  Bonnie could calve any time, an event which is always eagerly anticipated.  She has only had boy babies in the past.  Will number four be her first heifer?  Also, we are watching Babe to see if she comes in heat, because if she doesn't, it means Shorty Red-the-bull got the job done three weeks ago.  So far, it's looking like the young bull somehow managed to climb Mount Everest, because both Babe and Red are only interested in eating hay.  If nothing happens in the next couple of days, we will assume she is bred and write her down on the calendar to have a calf August 8.   
This has been a year of amazing "miracles".  No, not genuine miracles I suppose, since no laws of nature were set aside.  Let's just say incredibly fortunate surprises, things I wouldn't even pray for because they seemed impossible, and I figured God's gonna do what God's gonna do anyway.  Wait, let's call these things unexpected blessings.
 There's grandson Arick's Great Dane, Titan... his dog, but we love him as though he were ours.  Last spring he developed a pronounced limp and the vet confirmed, with X-rays  what we feared:  Dysplasia.  This is a condition that supposedly never gets better on its own, and we all decided to enjoy him as long as he was able to have fun and then bid him goodbye.  Some of my readers told me they had dogs in the past that "got over it", but I was skeptical.  Today that Titan bounces and runs and makes a general nuisance of himself with his unbridled energy.  He has no limp at all.  
Speaking of limps, I was so sure my heifer, Jody, was going to get progressively worse and finally became unable to walk that I made an appointment for her to be butchered.  Cliff said give her a chance.  Today she has no limp.  
And then there is the accidental alfalfa.  We asked for clover seed at the MFA.  Cliff planted it as though it were clover seed.  When it came up, it was alfalfa; they had given us the wrong, much more expensive, seed, and it wasn't what we wanted.  As the drought this year progressed, clover in our pastures stopped growing and actually dried up.  The accidental alfalfa, because its roots go many feet down into the soil, kept growing and provided pasture for the cows all summer and hay for this winter.  We couldn't have planned it better if we had tried.    
Three things for which I am thankful during this Thanksgiving week.  Oh wait, the Ipad Mini... make that four things.

5 comments:

  1. Sounds like you got lots of good things to be thankful for, all right! (happy smile)

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  2. You have been richly blessed ! Wouldn't it be something if the calf was born on Thanksgiving Day!

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  3. Cool about the mini! I bet you're having fun with it. It's good to reflect on thankfulness this time of year. I'm working on it.

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  4. I hope those "unexpected blessings" just keep on coming for you!

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