Soon after Paige left, Rob spent a long weekend visiting friends and family and I stayed put. I made a pound of noodles for dinner the day he left and ate it for the next 4 nights in a row. As soon as he returned, we celebrated Rob’s birthday by having dinner at Pinthouse Pizza which was fun as we hadn’t been there for a long time.

While our default outing is for beer at Suds Monkey Brewing, where we are now members, we occasionally try out other breweries and restaurants. We met our friends, Pat & Bob, at Salt Lick where we had BYOB and barbeque while we caught up on news from Riverside Farms Road and other important matters :) I can’t believe we didn’t take a picture- next time.

I recently lost it when we were at Suds Monkey and a gal that works there was wearing the exact same dress I recently ordered from Amazon!! She likes hers so much she’s ordered like all the patterns and I swear there are probably 20 of them. Naturally we now share a special bond lol…. and she likes to treat the pups to large treats!

Our members-only baseball cap from Suds Monkey! Rob getting our large mugs :)

We attempted to get the dogs their second bath at a groomer’s but we had to bail. Last time we brought the dogs in with muzzles on as we didn’t know how they’d react, but when we picked them up the groomer had removed the muzzles and so it seemed like it must have gone pretty well. So this time we dropped Stony without a muzzle, and sure he was nervous, but whatever. Well, turns out that instead of putting him right into the bath, the groomer put him in a kennel first, and when she wanted to get him out he growled and apparently acted threatening enough that she wasn’t sure if it would be safe so she had to call us and we came to get him! Ugh! We don’t think he would bite but anyhow next time we try we will drop them off with muzzles.

I’ve started steeping lemon balm & ginger as well as the red shiso, and both of these are now added to our cocktails. With the health benefits they offer, I figure they not only cancel out the alcohol cons but probably give us total immortality lol.

It’s always anyone’s guess how my bread will turn out each week, not to mention the occasional sourdough buns I make (for hamburgers). Fortunately, though, they usually come out well enough to eat. Last night’s buns came out the size of a giant squid’s eyeball = dinner-plate size. I also had a new condiment idea for hamburgers: gout antidote whisked into a mustard aioli spread on one of the buns.

With whole wheat flour, buckwheat flour, rye flour, & bread flour. Belgian Beer. Chia, caraway, and fennel seeds.

July has been unseasonably cool and rainy which is great. I mean we are in the 90’s but still normally it is hotter!

Some guy in Dripping Springs posted in social media about some young mini pigs he is going to sell soon and then I started thinking gee maybe we should get a mini pig? It would probably be easier to prepare for than a tortoise really. But then I’m like, no, we need to focus on the original goal of a tortoise. We have periodic conversations about our next pet. These require a lot more prep so we need to stew on it more.

We sort of ignored the garden for entire seasons, but it turned out nicely as we are STILL pulling onions and leeks from last fall!

Big accomplishment with the pullets is that we finally decided to force them into the coop at night with the older ones. First night required chasing, second was similar, …but after the third night or so all the chickens were just heading on in voluntarily!! So we have retired the tractor for now. As far as daytime behavior, they sort of all hang together but the pullets are often put in their place by the others with a little peck and a short chase. Seems normal. And Zsa Zsa has grown up to be very large with her wattle and comb appearing. So she seems most likely to be laying eggs soon-ish. But who knows, the Americaunas just look different and they are actually older than Zsa Zsa. Anyway, we have placed bets on when we’ll see any eggs from them. I’m betting on second week in September! But we have no idea.

I generated a graph of trail cam sightings by lunar phase which I felt showed a slight bias toward darker nights, but honestly shows us nothing. However, it was fun to post it in Nextdoor where I had loads of comments, including good ones such as someone pointing out that if I tracked individual species against moon phase I’d probably find a stronger correlation!

I also drew a map of the neighborhood through the eyes of a dog-walker and basically every section has a name now. It was fun to make. The only thing I forgot was Jackrabbit Junction. I can share it below but you have to zoom in to read it and also things may not make sense to you if you don’t know the neighborhood. Many references are to the resident dogs.

We recently had solar panels put on the roof, which is so cool, but we are still waiting for them to be “turned on” because we are waiting for final inspection. I gather from local news a lot of folks have been putting up solar (the winter storm contributed) so there’s kind of a backlog.

Panels mounted on front of house, but you can’t even see them until you’re up close due to trees.

So let’s just say you had a raised garden bed that was full of grass and weeds. And then let’s say you took a flame torch and burned it down to the ground. How long do you think smoke would rise from that garden bed even if you sprinkled some water on it? Well, I can tell you that it exceeds 24 hours.

With the COVID variants getting more concerning, and with vaccine immunity waning over time, I’m thinking we may be in for more quarantine-style living.