Sunday, July 29, 2007, 04:37
Wait Up!
I know it's hot and humid when our Springer Spaniel, Charlie, doesn't want to go for a walk.
The other day, since it was so hot and miserable, I thought he would enjoy going for a short walk up the dirt road. There are trees on both sides of the road, so there's shade most of the day.
I headed out the driveway with Charlie right on my heels.
As I walked down the hill toward the dirt road, I glanced back. Charlie was no longer behind me.
I looked farther back, and there he was . . . sitting in the shade by the mailbox.
"Come on, Charlie," I said.
The dog looked at me, ears drooping, eyebrows hunched up on his forehead.
"Don't you want to go for a walk?" I said, patting my leg.
Charlie refused to move from his spot by the mailbox. The expression on his face seemed to say, "Are you out of your mind? It's *hot* out here."
"Well, okay. You can stay there then," I said.
I turned around and heaved a deep sigh. Wouldn't you know it. I was trying to take the dog for a walk, but he wouldn't come with me. I had left Pixie in the house. With her long, thick, Sheltie coat, it was definitely too hot for little Pixie to come for a walk. But Charlie needs to get out and stretch his legs. If he lies around too much, then he starts limping from the arthritis he has developed after having Lyme disease five times. I'm really hoping the new vaccine that the vet clinic is using now will mean that Charlie is finished with Lyme disease.
I headed down the hill. At the bottom of the hill, where the dirt road starts, I turned into the neighbor's field driveway. And here I thought I was going to get to go for a walk in the shade. I didn't want to walk in the field. It was directly out in the sun and would be much hotter than walking down the dirt road.
I glanced back.
Charlie was no longer sitting by the mailbox. He was galloping toward me, ears flapping, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.
As I walked along the road going into the field, Charlie trotted along happily, stopping here and there to sniff.
We walked as far as the shale pit the neighbor started digging this summer. When I was a kid, the spot where the shale pit is now was a dandy hayfield. Or a cornfield. Or a soybean field. It depended on which stage of crop rotation it was in at any given time.
Charlie and I walked around the shale pit. And then we headed back toward the road. By this time, I was sweating bullets and was glad we weren't very far from the house.
Charlie continued to trot along happily. He didn't look as though the heat was bothering him at all.
Go figure. When I was planning to walk the "same old" walk up the dirt road to the neighbor's driveway, it was too hot for Charlie to go for a walk. But when I turned into the field, where we would be walking right out in the sun, it wasn't too hot for Charlie to go for a walk.
When we got back to the house, I put Charlie in his kennel in the basement where it was cooler and where he could rest more comfortably.
After we get past the worst of the summer heat, I will have to make a point of taking Charlie on more cross-country jaunts. He gets such a kick out of romping through the fields and woods.
Well, actually, so do I. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
Saturday, July 28, 2007, 04:31
More Jelly
I know what I'll be doing part of the day on Saturday. Making chokecherry jelly.
Friday evening, I wanted to get out and do something but something that wasn't too strenuous. I think I've picked up a virus of some kind. I know there's a bronchitis-type virus going around in this area. I've been coughing and generally just feeling under the weather.
Anyway, Randy and I -- and Charlie -- went out picking chokecherries. We didn't have to go very far, only a quarter mile down the road to a spot in the powerline right-of-way. We ended up with 5 quarts of chokecherries. Every few years, the power company comes through and clears the right-of-way, and then a few years later, the chokecherries grow back up.
Those are the best kind of chokecherries to pick. The trees are small, so it's not too difficult to get at the chokecherries. It makes a very pretty dark purple jelly. And boy, does it have flavor. I've always said, too, that I ought to try making cough syrup out of chokecherry. It's astringent enough that I believe it would numb a sore a throat.
Friday evening was lovely. After hot and humid temperatures all week, the weather was finally a little cooler. It was still 90 degrees Friday, but with a lower humidity, it wasn't so unbearable outside. Thursday night, storms rolled through. Started out with very strong winds that blew some trees down in the area and broke branches off of others. I had to drive 30 miles to a meeting, but the storms were pretty much past by then. We ended up with 3/4 of an inch of rain, so that was really very good.
More Paintballs
After Randy discovered Tuesday morning that the church had been paintballed, we discovered road signs around our house had been paintballed the next night. Our mailbox, too.
Now, the funny thing was -- when I went to check on the horses before I went to bed Tuesday evening, Kajun was acting awfully strange. He didn't want his hay or a treat of grain. At first I wondered if he was suffering from colic, but he didn't act like colic. He was hard-eyed and wary and very upright, the way he is when something has frightened him. I thought maybe a raccoon had been banging around in the barn and perhaps that's what had upset him. Eventually he started eating hay, so I was fairly certain he was not suffering from colic.
It was only after we discovered the paintballed signs and mailbox the next day that I put two and two together. Kajun is frightened of anything that vaguely resembles gunshots, and I would imagine the sound of the paintballs hitting signs and a metal mailbox would be a sound that would bother him.
And if that's the case, the little hoodlums were out with their paintball gun while I was still up. Too bad I hadn't gone out a little earlier than I did. If I had, I might have had some opportunity to see the vehicle, and with an extreme stroke of luck, get a license plate number.
We certainly would like to know who paintballed the church. And I think a judge would order community service if the church council requested it. The grass around the tombstones at the cemetery can always stand to be trimmed. And I'm certain we've got plenty of those little blunt-nosed children's scissors that the kids use in Sunday school with which they could trim the grass around the tombstones. And if we asked the other church members, I bet they could come up with a few odd jobs, too. The LP tank, for example, could stand to be gone over with a Brillo pad. There's nothing like a nice, clean, shiny LP tank to brighten up a place. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph