I Love Our Country Days......

We are on Critter Duty again, although tonight Dean and Sherry did all the evening chores before they left except closing up the hen houses. We went down to do that along about 8:00. By that time all the chickens have turned in for the night. I walked down to the meadow to watch the fireflies for a few minutes while Louis Dean was loading up some wood for our campfire tonight.

The frogs were making a big racket as I walked up to the tank.

Deep throated bullfrog calls mixed in with so many other kinds of frogs.

The noise crescendos and then total silence falls and last a couple of minutes before it all starts over again.

We say it is quiet in the country but it's really not.

The difference is, in the country you mostly hear critters and nature.

In the city, you hear people, cars, trucks and sirens....and some nature.

I'm fascinated by the fireflies. I loved them when I was a little girl and then for many years I never saw them. Now the last several years I am seeing them again. I saw my first one this year on Monday of last week and have seen them every night since then here on the ranch.

I marked the date of the first one in my Country Diary.

I'm still waiting to hear my first locust (cicada) of the season. I have heard them as early as May 8th and as late as June 10th. Summer and I have had a contest for years to see who hears the very first one. In recent years another friend has joined the fun and he sent a message to me this afternoon....

he heard one first! Jerry wins this year but I'm hoping to be in second place. We will see.

As I was walking back from the tank, I spied Henrietta 'Chicken Little.' 

Those two old biddy birds were harassing her so Louis Dean picked her up and held her as I drove the truck up to the camper. She was glad to be back. I had saved out some watermelon rinds to feed the horses so I gave one to her and she was pecking away at it before she climbed up her ladder to roost. We noticed she had gone missing a few days ago and had thought she might have been killed by a coyote. He got one of the ducks last night - Dean said there were lots of feathers around his parked truck this morning. And there was one duck that wouldn't go in the pen last night.

I left some rice cooking on the hot plate when we went down for the firewood.

I heated up the pork roast from last night and poured that good gravy from it over the rice.

It was really good!

I do most of my cooking in the front room using the hot plate, electric skillet, crock pot, or electric griddle. Dean and Sherry also gave us a Nu Wave oven and I used that the other day.

None of these heat up the place like the stove in the camper!

I'm loving my little cooking area! We are improving it all the time!

This is my newest wall!

I spent a few hours cleaning up out there this afternoon and evening.

Art is still out and I intend to paint some more tomorrow and then pack it all up.

This side of the room is once again neat and tidy.

I'll work on the other side tomorrow!

Louis Dean brought up some firewood that Grandson Robert had rounded up for us last year.

Speaking of him, he is planning on coming down perhaps next month when we are here. It's been nearly a year since he's been here.

If I don't tarry, I can get this Thursday journal entry in on Thursday instead of after midnight!!

Now I'm going to take my book, bottle of water, iPad and iPhone and tuck myself in the Girl Bunk.

Louis Dean is already snoozing away!

It's good to be in the country tonight.....