So the most notable thing about this summer has been the heat. Most days reach at least 100 degrees, and there’s really been no break. We’ve had power the whole time so far, so it’s fine as we can keep house air conditioned, but I have been a bit worried for the chickens.

We’ve tried misters in the past but the chickens didn’t use them. So this year we put an evaporative cooler in the run, which I tend to run as a fan only as it uses a ton of water when it’s doing the evaporation. In addition to the fan, we have a tub of water that we add ice to. They really like this as it is in the flowerbed where they like to hang out under the plants in the dirt.

We had a great time when Rachel and Elizabeth came to visit. Given the heat, much time was required in the pool and otherwise we celebrated Rob’s birthday and there was shopping downtown. Even the dogs were pretty well behaved

Rachel made an egg holder for Rob’s birthday and it’s constantly in use!

I’ve continued to do some art junk, and if you want to view any of that you should just go to my Instagram.

The new chickens have been completely absorbed into the flock. Rock Star is quite a standout as she is very social with the humans. Sometimes in the morning when I’m cutting grass for Pangea she hops up on my back just for fun! The new chickens are lower in pecking order than Isis and Sisi but Zsa Zsa still is at the bottom :( The new chickens are already laying eggs.

I have prepared a project for the Charro Park event (which is an extension of the coloring book for Hays County Master Naturalists (HCMN)) which is a sundial. It took quite a bit of time to prepare because most simple designs you find on-line don’t actually work. Eventually I found one I liked on Instructables which I tweaked. So anyway that event comes up in September.

I’m also helping with social media and somehow on the last call someone mentioned haikus so now I got it in my head to write a Haiku a day and use those hopefully for our HCMN tik toks. The plan is to gather 90 videos and then release them in a cluster.

We’ve seen the ratsnake a few times in the coop. He’s quite mellow and one time I even touched him! I named him and I can’t remember what it was now but something hum-drum like ‘Mel’.

See up top his neck is all stretched from the egg

The trail cam was dead all summer until just recently when there was a racoon and fox. Similarly, bird recordings were kind of steady until recently when it caught a scissor-tailed flycatcher. Birds are already migrating.

At this moment I’m in California visiting Raine and my parents. Rob is home tending to the animals! We hope to eventually setup a house/pet sitter but we haven’t managed to get that figured out yet.

Plus, it will be easier once Pangea lives mostly in the yard. At her recent 2-year-old check-up the vet actually told us she is about ready to live outside (during the day anyway) as she’s already big enough not to be considered prey! So now we are brainstorming how to make this work. Rob’s had some great ideas about how to get the front-yard workable, which mostly means how to keep her from breaking free of the fence. So that’s kind of in the works now and once we set something up we’ll starting leaving here there for a few hours each day! Eventually, she’ll live outside with a shelter and stuff but that will be later stage.

She rings her chime a lot for food, but the vet advised me not to give her too much lettuce because she’d get too much protein, so now it’s hard because she’s disappointed with just grass & hay. She also bangs around in her enclosure and is getting too rowdy for it!!

We had an OK start to the garden, but given the excessive heat and watering restrictions we gave up trying to keep some things alive. In particular, we had a huge vine with little baby sour gherkins but this has been neglected. On the other hand, our basil is surviving and we’ve also got a loofah plant with some quite sizeable loofahs! I’m waiting to harvest until they are drier as I want to use them as “sponges” and/or gelli art textures.

One of our recent HCMN classes was about herps (amphibians and reptiles). Texas has the most diverse group of herps than any other state! Anyhow, one of the master naturalists brought in his many pet corn snakes which was hilarious. We all got to hold one! He also brought in his pet blue-tonged skink (I think this animal is native to Australia).

One time I was swimming and I felt something on my skin and I tried to bat it away and I saw it was a gigantic bug swimming around and I was like WHAAAAAAA! Anyway, after I jumped out of the pool Rob got it out using a net and it turned out to be some kind of Giant Water Bug. Like HUGE sized. I surely hope not to run into one again.

Meanwhile, Rob took a little road trip to Iowa to celebrate some mutual 60th birthdays. They all had a very swell time! Pic below.

We actually harvested our first two peaches this year and they were delicious. The little lemon tree was also growing a few lemons but they started falling off as weee little guys. Then I started to water it more and now there’s one left and it’s still growing!

The second biggest local news after the weather is the opening of the new H-E-B on Nutty Brown Road! It’s like 2 minutes from our house!

More pics below.