Tuesday, April 08, 2008, 14:15
Comcast Alert
Just a note to let you know that if you have a Comcast e-mail address, I have been experiencing enormous trouble in the last few months with all e-mail messages sent to Comcast addresses bouncing back as undeliverable.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Tuesday, April 08, 2008, 14:05
Snowy Monday
It snowed all Monday morning. Quite hard, in fact. Hard enough that it was difficult to see the end of the hayfield a quarter mile away. But once again, the snow melted almost as fast as it fell, so it did not accumulate very much. By late afternoon, the snow had all melted.
By contrast, parts of western Minnesota received more than two feet of snow out of the storm system. I'm glad we didn't get two feet. Randy has already taken the chains off the tractor tires!
After I had finished feeding the horses Monday morning, I decided I had better check the air in my tires. I had another "tornado interview" scheduled in the afternoon, and I wanted to make sure that my tires were in good shape. In spite of new valve stems and whatnot, the tires still do not hold air very well. Never have. Not in the last 10 years that I have driven the little teal-colored GMC Sonoma. I have to check the air and fill the tires about once a week.
When I had finished filling the tires and had put the air compressor back in the basement, I was going to take Charlie for a walk around the hayfield. Pixie was outside, too, and depending on how her leg feels on any given day, she might or might not come out in the hayfield to wander around for a while.
I got as far as the barn and looked back. Charlie was sitting by my truck, staring longingly at the basement door.
"Come on, Charlie. Don't you want to go for a walk?" I said.
Charlie got up and slowly and reluctantly came across the yard.
I was a third of way down the hayfield when I looked back again. Charlie was sitting by the garden watching me. I continued walking, and when I turned around at the end of the hayfield, Charlie had come a third of the way. When he saw that I had turned around, he turned around, too, and happily trotted back toward the garden.
Usually when I walk around the hayfield, Charlie is content to trot all over the place, sniffing and snooping and enjoying himself. But not on Monday morning when it was snowing like crazy.
By the time I arrived back at the house, my fleece jacket was wet with snow. I put Pixie inside (she had not come out into the hayfield but had elected to stay up by the barn). Then I started to walk around the house. Charlie beat me to it. By the time I had reached the basement door, he was waiting there to go inside. He trotted into his kennel and settled down on his blankets with a happy sigh. I could tell what he was thinking: "now *this* is the place to be when it's snowing outside."
During the winter if the temperature is right around 30 or 32 and it is snowing, Charlie doesn't mind being outside. There have been many times when I have tried to get him to go in his kennel under such weather conditions, and if he doesn't want to go, he refuses to follow me around the house to the basement door. But now that it is spring, and April is well on its away, Charlie clearly does not want to be outside in the snow.
Not that I blame him. I don't want to be outside in the snow in April, either. It's APRIL, for crying out loud!
I did see a tiny sign of spring, however, Monday evening when I walked past the corner of the barn with Kajun's hay. One miniscule tip of a bright, red rhubarb sprout (less than the size of my little finger) was poking up from the brown remains of last year's rhubarb.
LeAnn R. Ralph