Friday, August 13, 2010

But they promised!

Yesterday, the weather-guessers told us that today, Friday the 13th, would be our last super-hot day; then the cool-down.  I checked weather.com this morning, and it looks as though they've decided they were off by a day.


Oh well, at least there is relief somewhere in the future.  


I was surprised to see one of my re-blooming daylilies actually re-blooming!  Isn't it pretty?  


These little posies were crowding it out a bit.  I had a ten-cent packet of seed, and lots of empty places in my flower bed since taking out those strawberries; this is a flower that should have been planted in the spring, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to see what happened if I planted them in July.  


Oh, remember my ill-fated trumpet vine?  The one I was almost afraid to plant because it might take over our whole forty-plus acres, the one that got mowed as soon as it started to thrive?  
Bonnie-the-cow has developed a taste for trumpet vines.  Until she discovered this, there were long parts of the plant vining along the fence in both directions.  The only reason the plant has been spared at all is that she can't get to the part on this side of the corner post.  You know how pregnant ladies get those strange cravings.  Actually, if I didn't have her confined to the two lots here by the barn, this probably wouldn't have happened.  She gets bored, you know, being stuck up here by the house.  
I wonder if I will live to see that trumpet vine bloom.
If Bonnie were a balloon, she'd be ready to pop at this point, and the same goes for her udder.  The large udder is what worries me:  It appears she is going to be a high producer, which puts her in greater danger of getting milk fever.  This is why I'm such a nervous wreck, wanting to get this whole thing over with.  I even wake in the night and check on her, because if she goes down with milk fever it will mean an emergency call to the vet.  I only have to worry about that for the first few days after calving; after that, there's no more danger of that particular problem until her next calf.  


I once had a chihuahua that had puppies; they were about three days old when she started acting lethargic.  We took her to the vet, and I told him, "If I didn't know better, I'd think she had milk fever."  
"That's what she has," Doc Findley told me.  And Cliff had to give her shots every day for awhile; I can give a cow, calf, or horse a shot if I must, but I just couldn't bear to give tiny little Trixie a shot.  

2 comments:

  1. Donna - I also did not think that the possibility of milk fever could go beyond a few days after calving - but - my Molly cow just had a mild bout of it and her calf is 6 wks. old. I gave her a small amount of calcium combo stuff from the vet via a shot and took the calf off at night and only milk in the morning - hopefully this will work - wow - scary though.

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  2. I have had a trumpet vine for 3 years now and it still has not bloomed. It has grown well and tops the roof of my shed, but no blooms. I guess I can only hope for next year..

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