Cattle, insurance, digging

A difference between heifers and steers:

• last year when the steers were done eating in the evening they would often "wrestle". They would go head-to-head in a contest as to who could push who backwards. Nothing seemed personal about it. After the contest was over they would amble off.
• with heifers it doesn't seem so friendly. I noticed a few times the heifers seemed to be more personal when pushing one another. After the winner pushed the other back she would eye the loser to underscore her feeling. And I see more pushing head-to-side by the heifers in an attempt to win, while the steers tended to go head-to-head.

Insurance:

Today I got a letter from my insurance company, Assurant. It appears they changed their mind and will now treat my cataract surgery as "in-network" and will pay 100% of the cost (minus the deductible), instead considering it out-of-network and only paying 80%. Good, as the cataract clinic is an in-network health care provider to both Assurant and to my PPO health provider. Earlier they both used the argument that as a MT resident anything done in North Dakota was out-of-network. I countered that there is no in-network cataract clinic in my county - which is the size of the state of Connecticut. In fact there is no in-network eye care provider for over 100 miles from where I live. I am glad Assurant listened to reason as it saves me from appealing to the MT State Auditor.

Now if I can get Assurant to pay for my first set of glasses needed because of the cataract surgery. Medicare covers the cost, and other insurance companies do, but Assurant is balking.

Garden:

Our low was only 31 F last night. Far better than the low 20s F of the previous days. The past few days I have been digging my garden. Even with these low temperatures, while I can't transplant my starter plants outside just yet, I should have my garden dug by now. I am about halfway done digging. I still have a number of days left before I finish. That is if I keep at it. Today I only dug for a little over an hour. I rode my bicycle uptown to pay a bill and then took the long way home enjoying the ride.

The digging is going slow due to all the weeds I have to pull. The weeds are partly because last year part of the garden failed and I didn't keep that section weeded. But the weeds are also partly because they are nasty. I kept my strawberry patch weeded last year and now I see it is overrun with weeds. My next project after I get my garden dug.


After two days I was able to find all my pocket gopher traps today. And I didn't let the cattle's water tank overflow. I better go to bed now before I get back on the tired/forgetful path once again.