Running water on a wild weather day

A crazy day. First off let me say I have to come up with a way to remind me that I have the water running to fill the cattle's water trough. Yes, again I forgot I had the water running. Multi-tasking and I don't work well together. Yup, I am a guy. I had 20 minutes before the show "The Apprentice" started and I rushed to feed the cattle hay and also get the outside digital rain gauge off the fence as the indicator showed the battery was low (the gauge didn't read the recent moisture).

I noticed the cattle had rubbed against the open gate dividing the corral and somehow got the hook that holds the gate open out of the barn wall. I couldn't find the hook in the snow/graupel and decided to put in another one. Seeing the water tank could use more water I thought I'd run the water as I attached the other hook. It would be only a few minutes, and how could I forget to turn the water off?

After I got another hook that required a wrench to install I found the original hook that required a hammer. Ran to the tool shed to get the hammer. Put the old hook back in the barn wall. Got the rain gauge and got in the house in time to watch "The Apprentice" from the beginning (I missed last week's episode).

After "The Apprentice" was over I went outside and saw water running across the lawn. Augh!

Like I said I need a way to remind me the water is turned on. The hose runs a distance from the well and not from the house. Since the end of the hose is in the water I can't see or hear the water running.

Maybe something similar to Futuregirl's little handiwork to tell if the dishwasher has clean or dirty dishes. Her web site explains the reasoning behind making it (yah, those annoying husbands! ) and how to make them.


I am not feeling creative now so it is going to take some time for me to come up with an appropriate indicator for my water situation.

The rest of my day? I checked the burning tree stumps and found that both stumps had burnt into the ground, and not just the one I had predicted. The one I thought wouldn't burn completely all burnt, and the other was still smoldering. I also checked on the SW pasture burning stump. It was still smoldering from under the ground, although I now had to get close to see the smoke rising from the hole.

So, done with burning tree stumps for this year? Well... no. I started to fill the dirt back into some of the earlier burnt stump holes and found two cases where parts of the stump had been hidden under the dirt on the side. *sigh* Also when checking the pocket gopher traps I came across two more stumps barely peaking above the ground (like icebergs) in the south pasture. *another sigh* Here I thought I was done with stumps in the south pasture.

I need to get digging on my garden so I'll have to deal with these stumps another day. I did dig around them to help them dry out for easier burning later.

I forgot to mention that I also burnt a large ant hill last week. Big red & black ants had made a hill almost a foot high from pine needles. Pine needles burn. No more ant hill. It is now a hole in the ground.

The weather today was all over the place. While not warm (our high temp was 54 F), it felt fine then cold then fine. I was zipping and unzipping my coat far more than I cared to. Sun, rain, graupel... over and over. Every so often I had to duck under a large pine tree until the moisture passed by. Most of the moisture missed me as the current weather pattern is west-to-east, which means the mountains get the moisture with little reaching the valley floor. Some cool looking blue clouds dumping a blue/white mass of rain/graupel when the clouds hit the Rocky Mountains. With the various rain clouds we would get sudden short intense bursts of wind. When the wind accompanied the moisture I stood on the leeward side of a large tree trunk to stay warm.

I planned on digging more of my garden but the weather discouraged that. In the house, after watching the local weather forecast and before supper, I fell asleep for a while. (These late nights catch up to me! ) I remember hearing the wind, feeling a little cold as I was on the loveseat by the window, and also hearing rain against the window.

Once I was able to wake myself I discovered it was more than rain; the ground and short areas of the grass were white from snow or graupel. Water was running off the roofs. The temperature was 34 F. To the SE a very large and very dark blue cloud slowly moved away. To the north and northwest there were lighter clouds with breaks. The snow on Big Mountain's ski runs glowed white and the remaining mountains seemed to glow white even though not enough snow fell to make a difference that could be seen at this distance.

Good thing I hadn't fed the cattle their supper hay yet. I waited for some of the snow/graupel to melt before going out to feed them. A few were out and about with the rest smartly sitting in the shelter of the loafing shed. Their breath were two columns of white as they breathed out their nose. From some of the heifer's bodies steam rose. Rising steam helped me avoid fresh cow pies.

Is this late spring? What month is it? May? Really?!