Riding the Range

Squirt and I went on a little jaunt this afternoon. He’s not crazy about riding in the car, but he prefers it to staying home alone. We thought we’d see how the crops are doing and admire my favorite weed, Queen Anne’s Lace. There was a wedding in my hometown several years and a very talented florist from Memphis used Queen Anne’s Lace lavishly in the floral arrangements. It is considered a weed around here, but it is truly a lovely weed.
Here the Queen Anne’s Lace appears to stand guard around the cornfield.














Several years ago I tried my hand at tea roses and I battled black spot all summer long. I stayed scratched up from working with the thorny beauties so that was the year that I decided daylilies were real pretty flowers. Plenty of those grow wild around here too. These lilies are literally growing out of rocks that line a ditch we dug to help control a water problem. I already knew that a little bit of water in the wrong place goes a long way, and how you direct the flow of water has been the source of difficulty between neighboring farmers for centuries. Hope I don't have a lesson to learn about water in the wrong place again anytime soon. The recent water lesson will be enough to do me for the rest of my life.

Then we stopped and had a look at the grandchildren’s horses. Squirt growled viciously at them but they didn’t pay him a bit of attention. On occasion we’ve had calves that were small enough to get under the fence and out into our back yard. Squirt fancies himself a border collie, I guess, because he runs them right back to where they came from. When he barks because the cows come too close to the fence to suit him, they run away too. I told the farmer that leases our pasture that he might want to consider giving Squirt a job. He’s a pretty good cow dog. His worst problem is that he thinks he could successfully tackle a coyote as easily as a cow. We have to keep him on a short leash starting as dusk.










The last thing we visited before coming in for the afternoon is the old cemetery on the farm. I have always been hesitant to go over the fence to take a better look at the tombstones because I’m so afraid a snake might be in the weeds. If you don't know about copperheads, I can tell you that you don't want to surprise one. They are the most aggressive snakes going. Back to the tombstones - I have seen them well enough to know that some of the dates of death are back in the 1800’s. I guess I ought to investigate a little more history of this farm. My father bought it and moved out here back in the 1970’s, so its history is a mystery to me.