Walking, riding, driving and a table waiting to be occupied.
Here it is May 1st, which means there’s only ten days felt before we leave for France. In the meantime, we have finals to study for, backup watering systems to finish, salsa dance on Friday and work. The kitties were lying around reflecting this afternoon as was a band’s tour bus that I moved my car for so it could take my usual parking spot this afternoon.
We worked on the property all day yesterday, which included putting in soaker hoses on the rose beds where it’s hard to check the dippers, and to have as backups since we can only get irrigation waster every three weeks now. We finally got all the branches picked up from pruning the fruit trees — I think the branches double when you cut them, I took down the last of the chain-link fence that was now in front of our neighbor’s wood fence, and no longer needed. I pulled up several metal posts we had holding up trellis at one point, but since we are reconfiguring the beds, they needed to come out. I went ahead and set up the swamp cooler, although it might be a little early. Springtime is really difficult on our property because it still freezes almost every night and it was 82 F this afternoon. The new water hose will probably crack a few times before it stops freezing. After I got all the other stuff done, I went down and dug out 75 feet of our main irrigation ditch and built up the bank on the south of the ditch in an attempt to keep the water from running into the access between us and the neighbor. The digging was difficult because there are mostly tree roots under the ditch.
Puck was very proud of the results of his roll in the dirt when I got home. He trotted up proudly and posed like a king, asking me to photograph him to show everyone, pardonnez mon Français, how pucking dirty he got. Speaking of French, my fluency in French expletives improved greatly last night while I snaked out the drain. I had to go at it from the clean-out below the sink, the drain in the laundry room, and the clean-out outside (twice each), and then plunge the sink before I got the sink to drain freely. On the bright side, I got finished in time to photograph trois tulips in the twilight.
René discovered a chip that he thoroughly enjoyed. His feathers are growing back in after molting and over-plucking after his beak was cut back so he could use it. Yet he still doesn’t know how to properly groom himself, so I have to give him showers and brush his wings. We’re trying to get him to learn grooming from our other bird, but it’s slow going. You can read the history of René (formerly known as Joey) at http://photoofthedayetc.com/2012/12/30/joeys-big-adventure/.