Night

Just came in from putting out some more hay for the horses......When it was so hot last summer, I got into the habit of waiting until late in the evening, after dark, to feed the horses... plus the wind usually lays after sundown, and you can tell what the night will be like...do you need to put up the old mare and the young one, or leave them out for the night? I like to leave them out if at all possible...does a horse good to be able to move around. Sometimes the night is so beautiful, especially if the moon is full with silvery light everywhere. It is easy to imagine an Indian encampment on a night like that. The way my land slopes slightly toward the creek, in my mind's eye I can "see" all those teepees of long ago that would have been stretched out in the valley from my place down to the creek. The night is peaceful and calm, as the few near neighbors are inside their homes. The silence is broken only by an occasional hoot owl, the nightbirds, and the horses munching hay. About nine or ten o'clock, the coyotes start running in the pasture right behind the house and up and down White Rock Creek, chasing a deer or a rabbit.... just as they have done for centuries. It is thrilling to hear them howling, yapping, and yodeling ....true shades of the Old West. One night a few years ago, I had burned some scrap lumber down by the barn. It was a really cold night. I got one of my old handmade quilts from the house and was sitting wrapped up in it on the ground by the fire. I had part of the quilt over my head, like an Indian. The night was dark and still. It felt good to be by the fire.  The coyotes were howling all around. I was thinking  how "Western" it all was, when I sensed something right beside me. Two of my horses had come up and hung their heads right on my shoulder, one on each side, as close to me as possible. The firelight shone our our faces. It would have made a great picture for a Western greeting card. We stayed that way for a long time, enjoying the companionship and the night, until the fire went out.

A Little Moisture

It has finally rained a little..just enough to make some good old MUD! Only got three-tenths of an inch at my place, but it was a good slow, sinking-into- the -ground rain. I finally broke down and watered my St. Augustine grass, the irises and cannas..never had to water them in the winter before.....the St. Austine grass came from my parents' yard, planted in the 1950's,....I have had the flowers forever.... they came from my great-grandparents yards before the turn of the century..they are native Texas plants that have survived droughts before....but this drought is something else. Hay is extremely hard to find, and what you can find is very costly. A lady at the appraisal office was telling me that her son works at the West Auction Barn, and they are deluged with huge numbers of cattle...another month or two and the market will fall drastically.....it has held for the time being, but a lot of cattle are being dumped. Sheep and goats, too, and horses, as cannot afford to feed them.  Eventually, meat should go down in price as a result of too much supply.  With every cloud, there is that tiny silver lining.  

New Baby with Old Names

Whew! A lot going on in the last few weeks. I went to Normangee the evening of the third of January...spent the night with my son, Bobby, his wife, Spring, and their two children, Cobey, four, and Callie, two. Fun at their house, as always. Jimmy and Esther had to be at the hospital the next morning for the cesarean birth of their fourth child....a boy, this time, to go with the three sweet little girls, September, Summer, and Sunday. Esther's sister, Virginia, "Ginger", and I took charge of the girls while Esther and Jimmy tended to the birth of their son. All went perfectly, and by afternoon, Noah Elijah Powell had come into the world. I had dreamed (Twice!) that their baby was a boy with black hair.....long before the doctor confirmed he was a boy....and guess what? He has black hair, not red like his dad and one of his sisters. Everyone wanted to know how I knew that!  (My mother used to tell me beforehand what color my mares' new foals would be and if a boy or girl, so I guess it runs in the family.)  Little Noah is named for three of his ancestors....Noah is for my son Jimmy's father, William Noah, who was named for his maternal grandfather, Noah Speed Williams; and for my grandfather, Samuel Elijah, called "Lige". Little Noah had a bout with jaundice, but is doing fine now. His mom and dad are doing well, too. Jimmy is 39 years old, and Esther is 43, so the chance of having a baby with problems was very high. To say the least, Little Noah was a HUGE surprise, a wonderful gift from God. My son is just astounded, and pleased as punch that he has a son, as they thought they would only have the 3 girls. But all is well that ends well, and actually, this is a wonderful BEGINNING. Now, if they can only keep those three adoring  older sisters from spoiling him rotten!!

Wildfires and Cows

Smoke from the wildfires up around the Fort Worth area was in the air this morning when I went out to get the morning paper. I was careful to look all around, just in case something was on fire here. It is so absurd that California is washing away, and we are burning up (literally) from being so dry! I went to Cranfill's Gap last week to see my sister, Sue, and her family, and to get some more of that wonderful alfalfa hay from my friend, the lady horse trainer. Picked up a small nail in my front tire, so we drove over to Meridian to get the tire fixed and visit with my little brother and his family. As we came off the mountain into Meridian, we could see a huge blackish cloud that looked like smoke. Turned out it was the little town of Cross Plains burning up from a wildfire. Back in the 70's and '80's, my cowboy husband and I would meet our horsetrader friends from Lubbock at Cross Plains, as it was about the halfway point from their places to ours. I remember a neat and friendly small town that now seems to be tragically burned up. My sister and I spent part of the day checking her cattle. It is so dry and has been for so long, that all the livestock have had no pasture or grass since last summer. A lot of the cattle ranchers are culling their herds, getting rid of some of their animals, as the cost of hay and feed is so prohibitive. Sue has several hundred head of cattle and leases a lot of places for them, so we had a full day. Getting out and opening all those gates is what keeps you young! We loaded a little "ranny " (a very young calf without a mama) into the trailer and brought him to the lot behind Sue's house, so she could feed him.  The calf that brings the best money at auction is called a black-baldie (black with a white face), and he is a black-baldie. His mother, a weak, really old cow, had been down, contracted pneumonia, and couldn't get up, so her calf was about to starve. Here we two old cowgirls were, out in a big pasture, in the dark of night, and in the cold, trying to get this poor old cow to eat and drink and give her a shot of medicine, while fending off the sixty or so other cows, their calves, and two huge bulls, all at the same time! So typical of the life of a person raising livestock. Reminded me of the many, many times throughout the 55 years I have had horses and a few cows, goats, deer, sheep, etc., that I have been out in horrific weather, trying my best to help that animal. All you can do is your best, and let God do the rest.... sometimes with great results, and sometimes not. The key thing was that you did go out there in those awful circumstances and do your best. My Daddy would have said doing things like that builds character. If that is the case, all of us who have done so must have a lot of character built up! Besides, they don't call me A Little Ranch Gal for nothing!!!!!

A New Year and a New Baby

Happy New Year, Ya'll!  I am getting my things ready to go to Normangee, Texas, for the impending birth of my SEVENTH grandchild, a boy. His pleased parents, who have three girls so far, are thinking of naming him for his grandfather, my ex-husband, William Noah, and calling him Noah. I told them that William Noah was named for HIS grandparent, his mother's father, Noah Speed Williams. This was many years ago, as Noah's mother, Sara Ethel Williams, was born in  1902. They also like the name Elijah as a possible middle name. I told them that my grandfather, my mother's father, was Samuel Elijah Ellison, nicknamed "Lige", so that would be naming their new son for TWO grandfathers on each side of the family. Lige was born in 1886 and died in 1948, when I was two years old. I never knew him. He was a handsome, red-headed , charming Scots-Irishman, a school principal who spoke five languages fluently, as well as a Texas farmer.  My oldest son, the parent of the soon-to-be-born baby boy, is the spitting image of him, so it would be fitting to name their child for Lige. What a wonderful way to start out the New Year, with a new life. Ain't Life Grand?!?!!!!!!!!!