September

Whew! I really didn't think I would make it all the way through August but we have finally arrived at September. I'm thinking of wool skirts and sweater sets like the school days of old but it's in the high 90's around here, at least for now.

Our watermelons are over and done with but I was thrilled with how many we were able to grow and ultimately eat! And, yes, we will be planting them again.

We went nearly two months without a functioning mower so the grass got really long.  Even now our old mower is in the shop and as of last week they hadn't even looked at it yet. So, we bought a new one. If they can get our old mower working again we can play dueling mowers until we get caught up. In the meantime, we still occasionally come close to loosing an animal or two in the tall grass.

I took Sadie out one day recently to feed the livestock and she saw a vulture on one of the sheds.  She went ballistic trying to get through the fence to run him off.  Can you see him in the picture above? If not here is a close-up view...

We lost a llama in August.  Smokey was the oldest llama we had at nearly 18 years old.  He died of parasites. It breaks my heart when these guys put on such a brave front that I don't pick up on the fact that they are sick until it's too late.  I worked on him for days trying to keep him going long enough to fight the blood loss of all those parasites but couldn't make it happen in the end.  That leaves us with just one llama, Shiraz. 

Shiraz is stately and beautiful and I love him, but llamas don't do well by themselves.  They really need a buddy to be happy. At this point, we decided we did not want to buy another llama. So Shiraz is going to my friend Nancy Naron who lives just up the road from me. Nancy is the same person who bought Tucker from me a while back. Shiraz will have a happy life with Nancy's other llama Maggie on a wonderful piece of property with rolling meadows and large trees. It's good but it's sad, too.

All the rest of the animals are rocking along.  The dogs are going great as are the cats, the goats and the pony.  Now we can usher August out the door and get on with our lived in September!