Spring is coming

I'm not planning on much gardening this year; perhaps six tomato plants and three or four pepper plants.  Possibly some radishes planted early, so they'll be done by time to set out the peppers and tomatoes.  We'll see.  I've condensed all my activities, those things I can't give up entirely but no longer have the energy (or youth) to deal with.  Having two calves that almost raise themselves at least gives me the joy of having cows and the pleasure of watching them grow.  I'm pretty sure we won't need more beef when they're big enough to butcher, and I'll probably lose money selling mine (one is the grandson's).  But it makes me happy to have a couple of bovine creatures around, and how to you put a price on happiness?  

I sort of miss my chickens, and yet I'm glad I got rid of them.  They ate so much feed, the eggs they gave me probably cost about $5 per dozen.  Since Aldi sometimes has eggs for less that a dollar, it's hard to justify having fresh-laid eggs from my own hens.  For the past month I've been scheming and plotting, trying to figure out a way to have a couple of chickens that will fend for themselves:  Years ago I had some banties that roosted in the barn and fed themselves on grass and bugs.  Of course in winter I tossed them a little grain, but for the most part, they took care of themselves.  Cliff doesn't remember this, but we put a board or tree-limb or something near the rafters of the lean-to on the barn.  I raised the chicks till they were big enough to fly onto a roost, waited until after dark one night, took them all to the roost in the barn, and that's where they spent their nights from then on.  I guess once they woke up on their new roost, it felt like home.  The rooster turned pretty ornery, though, chasing grandchildren when he got the chance.  One Sunday while I was at church, Cliff got mad at him for attacking him.  He had a club in his hand at the time, swung it at the bird, and killed him.  He says he wasn't trying to kill the poor thing, but....

Of course, this would involve my raising some chicks.  Ah, there's the rub.  We have a little house made for that purpose, but the pesky varmints have learned how to invade the space and find the all-you-can-eat buffet.  The more I think about the difficulties, the less I want chickens.  I guess I'd better stick with my two calves.  So far I don't have any varmints willing to attack a cow.    

I've had my Amazon Echo for a long time, but I keep finding different things to listen to.  I often forget about Tune-in Radio being available on Alexa:  With Tune-in, you can listen to any radio station from anywhere in the world.  I used to have an Internet radio that did the same thing, but once I got Alexa I realized I no longer needed the radio.  Of course, nobody else would need it, either, what with most folks using their phones and computers as radios.  So it's a dinosaur, headed for the trash.  I've mostly been listening to WSM from Nashville.  Yesterday I enjoyed listening to their traffic reports, since I have an Internet friend near there who has a long commute to work.  There were terrible traffic jams caused by rains.  I mentioned to Sonya that I'd thought of her while hearing about the problems, and she answered me with a picture she had taken of the traffic jam.  It was a mess.

If any of my readers remember how we searched for, and found, a popup camper last spring and then sold it in the fall without ever using it, you won't believe this:  I'm looking at used campers AGAIN!  No popups, though.  The reason we never used that one last year is that it just seemed like too much trouble to mess with, setting it up and taking it down, rain or shine.  We need something we can just climb into and go.  Ideally, it would be a slide-in pickup camper, but the newer ones are expensive (even ten-year-old ones) and have slide-outs we don't want or need, and most of the REALLY old ones are gone.  Most of the pull-type campers have those slide-outs, too.  We only need a bed and a potty, very little space.  I am finding a few that are priced right, but we have put off going to look at them because they're all more than an hour's drive away.  I figure the way we're going, we'll be out of the mood by the time we find one that's in decent shape, for the right price, within 45 miles from home. 

Our weather is much nicer lately.  We even got two inches of rain to break the drought we had all winter.  What better way to end these tedious ramblings than to talk about the weather, right?  However, this was a productive entry for me, because I may have talked myself out of two hare-brained ideas in the composing of it:  Chickens and campers!  (Not really.  I'm still scheming.)

 Peace.