Meet the Neighbors: Part Two

Meet the Neighbors: Part Two 
(the really, really new neighbors!)


A coupe of weeks ago I posted about our neighbors, Martha and Maizie.

Maizie on the left, Martha on the right.

Maizie and Martha were pregnant. Appropriately, on Mother's Day they had their babies. Martha was first, having twins early in the morning. Maizie was a bit of a slacker, having her twins sometime after dark on Sunday evening.


 So meet the babies.
Personalities intact and over in the yard grazing when they were three days old.
Martha's babies have "stick-up" ears.

 Ella Mae with her Mona Lisa smile

 Howard, larger than the others and a larger- than-life personality also.

Maizie's babies have Nubian ears, they hang down. 

Wilmer

and Flossie. 

She's the most delicate of them all. 

Because they are goats they do goat things like butt heads:

Howard and Ella Mae

 And frolic...

And nap...

Briefly.

But most of the time this is what they do:




Welcome babies!

Meet the Neighbors

Meet the Neighbors....


When we bought this cabin, the property had not been cleared for probably ten years. Scrub oaks covered everything. Because fire is a real and constant threat, we did fire mitigation which is basically clearing the land of all the growth near the buildings.

Scrub oaks that have been cut down like to grow back. We've paid to have the yard weed-eated (eaten?) (eatered?) a couple of times but it's expensive and they never do a very good job. It's a lot of land to weed eat and mowers are useless because of all the stumps.  It's been suggested that a herd of goats would do a better job.

Well, guess what?  Last Fall we had goats move next door!

The neighbors.

Also known as the new lawn crew. 

The cut the grass AND fertilize.

Full service. 

These nice goats live on property that has trees and no grass. Our yard has tons of grass. Grass that needs eating.  And goats love to graze. Do you see where this is going?

I invited Martha and Maisy over to visit. And graze.  They came on leashes.

And ate. And ate. And ate. They've been coming every evening.

This is Maisy. She is a Nubian goat. A little more skittish than Martha.  Also a pickier eater. She prefers the plants that I don't want eaten, like the daffodils and the flowering shrubs. Maisy likes to vocalize. "Maaaaaaaaaaaa."

And this is Martha. She is part Alpine goat and part something else unknown. She's very laid back and is basically an eating machine. Bless her heart.
(Both girls are dairy goats. Their owner is going to teach me how to milk them!)

And if you think Martha is a little plump, you are correct. She's pregnant, as is Maisy. They are both due any day now. Next week there will be kids out in the yard, too! I am so excited because there is just NOTHING cuter than baby goats.

And goats are curious. I was holding the camera by my side and apparently the camera strap was irresistible.

 Martha

Maisy

We have other four footed neighbors, up the hill a bit. Also curious but not near as social. 

Alpacas. Not llamas.

The light brown one's name starts with a B but I can't remember any more than that.

Next to him is Gideon and the white one is Summit.

The alpacas' owner went out of town and asked me to just check on them, make sure no one had escaped.  These guys are pretty self sufficient. Hay, water and they are good.  

But alpacas are very skittish. These guys won't even come to their owners unless they are holding a pan of grain.  And Bunny and I wanted to get up close and personal with them. So the owners told us where to get the grain...heehee!

Anyway, Bunny and I went over and visited, grain pans in hand.

Bunny was pretty tickled when they came up to her. Aren't their faces fabulous? Love their different hairdos.

I was pretty tickled, too. (I know, I know, stand up straight.... goodness! awful posture here.)

And lucky. Usually they won't let you touch them but I guess Summit was so interested in the grain that he forgot to scoot away when I put my hand out. Or maybe because I had my tongue out concentrating, he got confused. Hard to say.

While these guys don't come mow the lawn for us (although they would probably like to) they are still entertaining. Occasionally I hear them alarm which sounds like someone is being murdered. The first few times I heard them I ran up the road expecting to see a mountain lion with alpaca parts dripping from its mouth. Nope. Just some silly alpacas playing and making noise. 

I commented on Facebook that the "Alpacas are alarming again" which started the most fun word play ever with two friends. We made it through the entire alphabet. 

The baboons were bleating before.

The cattle are cooing constantly.

And the dogs dug determinedly.

The elephants had eaten everything.

The falcons had forgotten facts.

The goats gloated gluttonously.

The hogs hurled hummus.

And iguanas ignited illegal incendiaries.

The jaguars juggled jaggedly!

The kangaroos kept their kalamata kabobs in the kennel.

The leopards licked lollipops.

The manatees mingled in the muck.

Nancie nibbled on nectarines.

Octopi occupied Ontario.

Pandas parceled packages.

The quail quelled the quibbler quickly.

(With a bonus Q in Spanish:  El quetzal quiere quietud del químico.)

Rockin' rabbits ruminated over the rutabagas.

The sloths are still snoozing.

Tigers tickled the terrified toad.

Unicorns are unilaterally united under the ukeleles.

Vultures voraciously vomit their vitamins.

Wolves want worts.

Xenopus xeroxes the x-rays.

Yucky yaks yodeled.

Zippily the zebras zapped their zippers.

Are your neighbors that inspiring? 

(We also have bunnies and chickens behind us, along with cats across the street and plenty of dogs. But the goats and alpacas are special. That's why they get their own post. )

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!


Because this is a blog and because I have nothing else for today, I will do what all bloggers do in December. (Unless they are better organized, then they do it in November!) I'm sharing the Christmas decor from around the cabin.

Not much this year, guess I haven't been feeling the spirit yet. I wanted to do a pine cone garland again but for some reason the pine cones are just now falling. Not sure what the delay was. And we have not had snow in December. A couple of little snows in November got me thinking that maybe this winter would be like last: snowy. But so far, I think that was just a tease.  Not to worry. I know the snow is coming.


Mostly I decorate the fireplace because a) it could use some decorating- it has the oddest proportions! and b) there just aren't many other surfaces to decorate. The cabin has a tiny living space.  The living/dining area measures 18 feet by 12 feet. My bedroom is bigger than that.


And doesn't this look cozy?

A fire in the pellet stove.

Stockings hung by the mantel with care. 

(That crazy sun making it impossible to take decent pics.)

And some detail pics:

 Love these stockings. They reverse to "Nice".

Antlers make great stocking hangers.

 So do geodes. 

Last spring when the Big Guy was up, he went rock hunting with the neighbor.

Beautiful rocks now decorate every flat surface in the cabin.

My gorgeous Nativity scene.

In Salida there is the Holiday House. 

It is a non profit that accepts donations of gently used holiday items.

They then offer these items on a "whatever it is worth to you" basis.

I took a wicker light up Christmas tree in to donate and came home with this nativity.

The outdoor animals get in on the act.

Kaiser the carved bear wears a bow.

So does the unnamed reindeer.

(Again, that pesky sun, hard to get a pic. 

On this side of the house it is either bearing down or totally shaded.)

Reusing the frames from Halloween:

A little "Joy" on a ledge.

And last but not least, the Christmas tree!   Straight out of "A Charlie Brown Christmas".

 Many many thanks to my neighbor Sue for sending me this tree.

I was complaining mentioning that there was no room for a tree here and she had just the solution.

In the foreground you see the Thanksgiving puzzle, almost finished. 

One piece left,  waiting for Bunny to get home and do the honors. 

I will be so happy to get that thing off the only table in the house.

Outside I have the Christmas trees in the yard wrapped with lights. The neighbor and I wrapped them last year and because the trees are in "cages" to protect them from deer, I just left the lights up. All year. I was holding my breath when I plugged them in again in November. Amazingly, all the lights came on. A tiny Christmas miracle.

This pic is from last year.

One of my favorites.

The lights look the same this year, only NO snow. 

Bah humbug.

Happy Holidays to all.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

And I have to share.

Yesterday Carlos and I were walking down by the Arkansas River. There was a young American Bald Eagle fishing for his breakfast. We walked down hoping to get a closer look and he flapped off. I thought we had missed him but then I looked up. Always look up! He was perched in a tree about 25 feet away, preening. 

So incredibly awesome. 

Of course, my camera and phone were both safely tucked away at home. 

We will go back looking for him.  With a camera. 

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Ugh

UGH...

Just going to take a moment here.

I really prefer to keep things happy. 

But this past week has been ...trying.

I have a neighbor that I've never met in five years. Never seen her, never seen any movement at her house, never seen any sign of her. I know she lives in Denver, her house is for sale, I've never seen her. 

So I confess Carlos and I have been cavalier about walking through their property. There are trails and we walk them. 

Unfortunately, Carlos and I surprised  them and Carlos barked and I apologized profusely. We were wrong. Normally I am very respectful of boundaries, but after five years of zero perceived activity...I got bold.
And she and her husband were ...odd, distant, not exactly friendly.

We think he is a sweetie, 

but I do realize he can be intimidating.

Big bark, big mouth.

The next morning there was a knock on the door. The neighbor was there and advised me that I was never to set foot on her property again.  Okay.
Then she said "Of course, I have a loaded gun and if I were to see someone on my porch, JUST as you would, I would get my gun." 

Really? Your VERY first thought if someone is in your yard or at your door is to get a loaded gun? 

Is it just me or is there something the matter with that train of thought?  I assured her that would NEVER be my first thought.
She dismissed that with "Well, you have a dog."

I'm praying it will be another five years before I see her. Also praying her house sells SOON.

(And the Hubs had a great response. While she was standing on MY porch telling me she would greet me with a loaded gun if I were on HER porch, he suggested I should have said "You're right. Hang on. Let me go get my gun." Hindsight.)

 .........

Friday night, Bunny left the house in the baby Hummer to go to town. 

A few minutes later I get a call from the car (thank goodness for the Onstar Satellite phone) and all she said was "you need to come down the street". I can hear someone yelling at her and I kept asking if all was okay and all I get is "I'm okay, come here" and more yelling. I hop in my car, head to the main road and pass a gentleman (using the term loosely) with no shirt on (huh?) and he waves me down. "Is that your daughter in the blue jeep?" Ummm, not exactly....but maybe.   

Then he yells at me about how reckless she was driving and how she almost killed both of them and I was RESPONSIBLE for her and somewhere along there I quit listening because truly, my 16 year old was obviously in some sort of trouble that I didn't know anything about.

Onto the main road, I see the hummer sideways on the side of the road,  Bunny in tears and some stranger pulled over talking to her. Her front tire is flat. All over. The back end of the H3 is in the bushes. There are skid marks in the dirt.

Looks to me like those skid marks start on the far right side of the 

road. Which would make it hard for her to have been the one in the middle.

But I wasn't there. 

I wasn't there. I don't know truly what happened. It's a narrow dirt road with gravel edges. She says he was coming up in the middle of the road, he said she was in the middle. She swerved to miss him, hit the gravel and spun. He stopped long enough to yell at her and then left.  She was very very fortunate. She missed a tree, barely. She didn't flip. She didn't roll down the embankment. The kind stranger offered to move the car for her over to the edge. A car that heavy doesn't handle well when it is driving on the rim.

It was only flat on the bottom.

And the sides, and the top.

And maybe a tiny bit twisted.

As much as I love Onstar, it wouldn't work on our county road.

I drove Bunny home and called Onstar. The neighbor across the way came over and suggested I also call Colorado Highway Patrol, just in case. (This was AFTER he made sure everyone was okay. He had passed the injured car leaving the house, turned around and came back to check on us.) Considering how angry the nasty neighbor was, that sounded like a good idea. 

Heading back to meet the highway patrol, that nasty man was also there. He called in the troopers, too. Another bout of yelling at us, even though I was doing my best to not interact with him . More tears from Bunny. 

And then there were rainbows. Seriously.

When we first arrived at the scene, waiting for Highway Patrol,

the rainbow was just forming.

Then it grew...

And grew. 
Notice the second rainbow that arrived on the left. 

We were intrigued by the fact that the second one was a mirror image of the first. 

I thought they should both be Red,Orange,Yellow,Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet,

but the second one on the left was opposite.

And thank you to scuba lessons for teaching me Roy G. Biv.

Rainbows were followed by the nicest highway patrol trooper ever. 

Nasty neighbor yelled at him, too. Yelling at the law is never a good idea.

Bunny got a ticket for failure to control her vehicle on a mountain road. And a nice explanation of what she did wrong and why she needed to slow down and pay more attention.

Nasty neighbor apparently was advised to come apologize to us. He KIND OF did.

And the trooper said something that made me want to hug him. (I didn't). 

That there is a human element here. She's a young driver, inexperienced and this was a learning moment. Thankfully no one was hurt. No cars made contact. He cited her for the tiniest infraction he could. And assured her if he were called out on another incident on this same road, things would be entirely different. But take our blessings, learn from them and carry on. 

We really needed a bit of kindness at that point.

Grace.

And lest you think we live in a backwoods filled with degenerate hillbillies, strains of banjos playing Deliverance every time the door opens, let me set you straight.

There is the neighbor across the way who has changed our water filter under the cabin when the water disappeared, who plows our drive when it snows and told us how proud he was last year that we made it through the winter. (He admitted to being skeptical that we could handle it.) He is also the one who came back and checked on Bunny when he saw her car on the side of the road and then again Monday morning.

Another neighbor came with her gun the day that Bunny came home to an empty cabin, door standing ajar. I was in town and fairly certain that the wind was the culprit. But Bunny wasn't setting foot inside until someone checked the place so she called the neighbor. That sweet woman came, Glock in hand, and she checked under every bed, in every closet, and even in the basement until Bunny was convinced all was safe.

There is a lovely couple up the hill that sends Christmas cards every year. They stop by and give hugs and check on us every time they come up. They have also offered their yard for Carlos to run in...bless them.

We have fabulous new neighbors on the corner that are always up for an adventure, always have a glass of wine for me and even left flowers on the porch to welcome us back last August. They love Carlos like their own, have spared a dead deer vertebrae from their yard for him to chew on and will always let the big dog in or out if he needs it and I am away.

Sweet flowers to welcome us back.

There's the family that came out onto the road to see why the car was pulled over and then asked if we needed help changing the tire.

And there is the kind stranger who stopped and consoled my 16 year old baby while she was stuck on the side of the road with a popped tire. I didn't get his name even though Saturday morning while I was taking pics of the road he passed by again and stopped, again, asking how she was doing.

All kind, helpful people.

Thank goodness.

Grace. 

Take a Hike

Take a Hike: What's the Difference between a Hike and a Walk?


I've often wondered what the difference is between a hike and a walk and so I looked it up.

Guess what?

No definitive answer.  The best I can find is hiking is not done on pavement. Walking is.

That means when I've been taking Carlos for our morning walks we are really hiking because we are on dirt roads. Yay us.

Anyway, Sunday I went with my neighbor Sue and her daughter Lauren for a little hike.  Right along Highway 50 near the cabin is a bat cave.  The cave is grated over now- an attempt to stop the spread of White Nose Syndrome in bats.  But still, there is a trailhead and we wanted to walk (hike) up there and it seemed easy enough.

See the bat cave up there at the top? 

Ha!

Sue leads the way.

We started out innocently enough on the road. 

Quickly it became ....

rocks? 

The three of us probably should not be allowed out to hike.  We parked and headed down what looked like a trail.   Lauren went a bit ahead of us. Quickly we realized the trail was really just the wash out from where it had rained.  We carried on. Lauren got further ahead, earbuds tightly tucked into her ears.

We trudged along, a sort of path, sort of just a divide between the rocks. Some places there were just rocks.

Is this a trail? 

Not really.

I thought Lauren headed up the mountain. Sue thought Lauren had gone around the corner. We went straight, around the corner and no Lauren.

On we hiked.   No Lauren.

After a bit we admitted this was not a trail, we were half a mountain away from where we wanted to end up and Lauren was no where in sight.

We called for her. No answer.

We discussed that at least she was wearing bright yellow shorts. Search and Rescue could easily spot her.

We backtracked. No Lauren.

We got back almost to the car. No Lauren.

We waited. Sue and I climbed a bit straight up towards the bat cave. Certainly that wasn't how we were supposed to do it?   But there were vestiges of some stairs. Maybe it was.  We needed gloves, though, to try that climb.

Scanning the mountain.

No yellow shorts.

Finally Lauren comes bopping around the bend.  She had found a trail. It led no where near the bat cave.

We headed home. No one really got lost. But we never made it up to the cave.

Monday Sue stopped at the Forest Service and found us a map for trails. The bat cave trail I "KNEW" was there is gone. Once the cave was grated over, the trail was abandoned. That explains why we couldn't find it.  But when it was there, it was straight up.

Tuesday we are going on another hike. Waterdog Lakes.   Maps have been procured. We've got info.
We are going to discuss good hiking practices. (Stay together. Stay on the trail.)
If there isn't a post on Thursday- please call out the rescue team.

Back to School, Back to Colorado

Back to School, Back to Colorado.

What? 

Monday was Bunny's first day of school. She was registered for school in Texas. 

However, somewhere in between the High School personnel not being able to understand me because I was speaking English and the registrar asking me if Bunny had been in Special Services like "you know, Gifted and Talented or Pregnant", a decision was made.
(BTW, Yes to Gifted and Talented, No to Pregnant.)

Bunny started school in Colorado. We got here Sunday.

 Bunny in her ever important "First Day of School Outfit".

You're never dressed unless you're overdressed. 

The drive up was so easy and uneventful that I could not believe it. No lightning strikes. (Last year's drive here.) No traffic. No trauma.   We even made an unscheduled stop at the Cadillac Ranch to see the "planted" Cadillacs. 

And still got here quicker than expected. 

(Thank you, Ann, for suggesting I alter my attitude towards the drive from hateful to anticipatory.

Some strangers, some Cadillacs, Carlos, Me all at

Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo, Tx. 

Carlos is so happy. 

And Tuesday is Belle's first day of college classes. 

I don't have a First Day Official Outfit photo but I am hoping her first day of college goes better than her first day of preschool.

Belle, not so sure about this school idea.

A feeling she never has quite gotten over....

And me? 

Looking for a job since this time I will "do it like I mean it". 

And... I find it interesting that in less than 24 hours I have chatted with 4 neighbors here, including meeting the two new goats next door, Martha and Maynard. 

That is three more neighbors than I communicated with all summer in Texas.