Thursday, 21, July, 2005

BLOG MOVING TODAY Time to change your bookmarks. The blog is moving to a better site and will be using better software. The new site is: http://www.largocanyon.com/blog/ As of 21 July, it has yet to be formatted, so don't be suprised by the "look". Also, this software makes it easy to allow multiple bloggers to contribute to the site. If you would like to post an update on what "YOU" are doing, just let me know and I will tell you how. Don't think that everyone doesn't want to know what you are up to! 10:35:39 AM    comment []

Wednesday, 29, June, 2005

Fighting the Software Thanks for the encouraging words. I really should just move it off of the Radio site to something that has better user support.... sigh.... Okay, gossip headlines: Toni moves her horses to Aztec tomorrow where she is working as a water truck driver. No current volunteers.. but we could use a good one or two for a month. I just put a roundtrip ticket from Durango to Seattle on my credit card so my brother can go visit Donna. They've been communicating at least twice a day since she left. Now they've got this internet phone thing, so if you want to call us on the internet, it's all set up. Of course we have to be on line. Kory is bringing my new horse tomorrow. I had decided to back out of the deal, then Donna said that I simply must have a Canadian Warmblood. She offered to even pay for it. Crazy woman!! Well, I scraped up the cash myself. Is it wonderful to have a friend that would buy you a horse? Everyone should be so lucky as to have someone like that in their lives. Got bucked off my mustang again. I only have a few bruises and some little lacerations on the back of my head. Apparently the idea of a human in the saddle was too much for him. He bucked, I went off, and he fell down. He is back to wearing cardboard boxes until having something on his back is "no big deal". The concept is definitely not agreeable to him at this point. John wants me to buy an inflatable naked woman doll and put it on the back of the mustang instead of the cardboard box, just to wake up the passing truckdrivers. Mike and Audrie are buying a house in Socorro, NM and getting ready to sell their place in Tucson. John went out to Illinois and helped our future neighbors, the Griffincrests, buy a trailer to move their stuff in. They are selling two houses and moving onto their new 4000 acre ranch on Carter Mesa. Compared to us, they will truely live in the boondocks. John is on his way to Barstow to pick up the 6 carts he bought on Government Liquidators.com. They will become donkey carts. Lylbun moved into the trailer at Gobernador. He won $4500 at the race track, but quickly lost it to his ex-wife, The Extortionist. Phil has been working as the Monday cook at the Navajo City Roadhouse. If you want some good chow, stop by there on a Monday. Donkeys and mule are doing well. I have been keeping the paddocks free of manure to try and control the flies. They create about a wheelbarrow full of ready-to-compost materials every day. I ordered some fly parasites, little wasps that lay their eggs and feed on fly larvae that should come in the mail on Friday. The fly traps are now about 2 inches deep in flies - zillions of the little buggers. If you want any flies for fishing, just drop me a line. Well, that's all the gossip for now. Your comments let me know that you appreciate reading my blog. That appreciation is what keeps me willing to fight the software to get it done. Yrs, JRW 1:40:38 PM    comment []

Wednesday, 08, June, 2005

Yesterdays News from when Blog wouldn't work We got up to a real mess on the porch. Some critter had torn open all the bags of stuctolite that I had moved outside in my cleaning frenzy. Who would have done it? Well, Hecate had a structolited nose. So when it came time to work, well, all that structolite needed to go somewhere, so we decided to put it on the walls. We took out the airless sprayer and sprayed concrete adhesive to the adobes to get the stuff to stick and then started layering on the frosting. It reminded us of last year's stuccoing project. But between the time we found the structolite catastrophe on the porch and the time it was in the mixer, we had a couple of guests. Banjo Clyde and Ken showed up out of the blue. We invited them in for some of Phil's cranberry pancakes and coffee. Turns out that Clyde and I had a number of mutual aquaintences and had lived in the same house in Las Trampas New Mexico back in the 1970's, he before me. Small world. Now Clyde teaches film making in Eureka, California and Ken does maintainence at Bandolier National Park. It was really fun to have such lively intelligent folks just drop in on a whim. We sent them off with instructions of how to find some good rock art and the fossil beds west of here. All in all, I'd have to say that it was a day we didn't really plan for. Yrs, JRW 8:36:44 AM    comment []

Monday, 06, June, 2005

Fly Patrol Largo Canyon, NM -- Spent my "free time" cleaning out the donkey pens today. It was a job I had been shirking, especially since Tony had totally shirked cleaning the pen her two mares were in, which now is Tobys pen. Where its a thin veneer from the donkey over a deep layer from the mares, the dung was pretty thick. I got down and examined it in it moister spots to see if flies were breeding in it. Sure enough, where its dark and moist, there are tiny maggots living boisterously. Now, what I thought was really interesting was that the brown headed cowbirds that have move into our livestock scene, spend their time picking through just the spots that are damp enough to have larval flies. You could probably control fly reproduction just by watching where the cowbirds were spending their time and then drying that spot out by fluffing it up. My fly traps are working well. They are each about an inch deep in dead flies. Thousands of flies buzz around inside looking for the escape hatch. I keep them baited with a yeasty solution of sugar and liquid drained off the feta cheese. If I had another scrap of screen, I would build another. They are amazing to behold! The lady from the wasp company in Quemado, Texas, called me today. Her company sells bags of tiny wasps. Actually they are larval wasps and they are living on the bodies of larval flies. They sell them for $15/bag and you need a bag every month or so. You sow the larval flies into your dung heaps and the wasp parasites feed on any unlucky fly larvae that are born into the heap. Something about her voice put me off though and so instead of just ordering a bag, I asked her to send me a list of the wasp species in her parasite mix. She could have just read them to me over the phone, but she played like latin was unpronounceable and said she would just send a list. I just wanted to know if her mix was more than the easily raised but less effective Nasonia vitripennis. I want Muscidifurax raptor , the most effective parasite and the most difficut to raise. Somehow these folks in Quemado have figured it out. I will call them tomorrow and order a bag. After Phil's birthday (June 9) and my June trip to Chaco, the next big thing coming up is the meeting of the Spanish Trail Association in Las Vegas. My question is: Should John and I go back to the Drive Up Tunnel of Love to once again renew our wedding vows??? He's chuckling in response to the question. Yrs, JRW 11:11:10 PM    comment []

Sunday, 05, June, 2005

Winding through the knots. Largo Canyon -- The home-grown well pulling machine worked pretty slick. They had that pump out in under an hour. Meanwhile I put a pump in, into the little feng-shui fountain sitting in the corner of the greenhouse. If things are quiet you can hear it gurgling from the alcove. I moved a desk into the alcove to keep my seeds and garden journal on. The hostel wing is all tidy. Why, the residents, would hardly recognize it! Pulled the recliner out of Clay's room where he had its location marked in chalk on the floor incase any of us tried to come in and snatch it. Where is that guy? My horse swapping endeavor is keeping me entertained these days. Some folks in Gallup, NM, have a really pretty pinto filly. She's going to grow up to be a really big horse as her mother is Canadian warmblood. I started out offering to trade 1700 adobe bricks for her. The owner, Jennifer, didn't just tell me to get lost, but we have been going back and forth over what they need (removal of about 100 tons of horse poop), what they want (a giant adobe barn), and what I can commit to (what ever John lets me). Kory, her hubbie, is a farrier, so he will come out Wednesday afternoon, trim our equines hooves, and see what we can swap. Those people have almost 40 horses in their yard! Gee, that makes me look benign. I could probably sneak over to their place and steal that filly and they wouldn't even notice for a couple of weeks. Well, I better go to the kitchen. Promised that I would make some fresh pesto tonight for dinner. Maybe we'll eat that first tomato of the season too!?! Yrs, JRW ps. Your morning glories are winding their way through the first knot. Yep. Believe it or not. 7:12:40 PM    comment []