The mosquitoes are bad all over the Valley as I heard on the news today the mosquito control person for the County said that if you can count a hundred mosquitoes in a small area, that is an infestation. Oh yeah! I counted more than 100 mosquitoes. How about several hundred buzzing around my body.
Repellent is not a solution as they will fly into my inner ear or my eyelids.
They got my cut finger again. Earlier in the day I was carrying a shovel and a gopher trap when the mosquitoes were pestering me. I reached with the hand holding the shovel to brush them from my arm and part of the shovel hooked my cut and re-opened it. *augh!*
I did quick work on the south hayfield fence as I couldn't take it anymore. The wire gate needed work as the neighbors or their horses (before they got rid of them) abused my gate. I also found a spot in the fence where the neighbors wrapped one wire above another to create an opening to get through the fence. *Grrr!!!*
Persistence pays off as I finally got another gopher from the NW corner of the hayfield. These are the difficult-to-catch gophers as they are so wary. I had two traps. At one trap the gopher plugged the opening with dirt to avoid the trap. The other trap, which has sat there a week now, got the gopher.
I spent spent some time today talking with my neighbor Jim. He has the two cattle he is raising for beef. They had eaten his grass down so well he got a large bale of hay to supplement their feed. Fortunately the inch and a half rain we got Tuesday and Wednesday has gone a long way to perking up the grass. It was starting to crunch and lay when I walked in the hayfield.
Jim and his brother-in-law are seriously getting into the scrap iron business. Good, as they will give competition to the only other scrap iron business in town. They have been keeping very busy starting this past Spring after they were laid off from hauling logs.
As we spoke a good sized eagle flew near us. A hawk followed the eagle as it flew over my NE pasture then stayed behind as the eagle glided over my north pasture and to the river. It was graceful and beautiful. I didn't have my camera with me.
I have noticed a lack of hawks this year. Many of my trapped dead gophers are left to rot. Other years they disappeared within hours. Of course after telling Jim this I found only a leg of a gopher in one of my traps.
Did I mentioned before, that last week I found the dead body of a pheasant in my north pasture? No idea how it died. It looked like it just keeled over.
I had another flat tire on my bicycle last night and fixed it this morning. Too much crap on the road.
I went uptown Thursday to get groceries and run other errands. Man, it was crazy. The roads were clogged with vehicles. Several grocery stores had full parking lots. I never saw that many cars in the parking lot except when the store had a one-day sale with insanely great deals on food items. With all the cars came lots of accidents. I was delayed briefly by one accident aftermath north of town. The news tonight made mention of all the accidents in the area today.
I still haven't built my gate for my fence rebuild. I spent time today looking at Lowes and Home Depot for hinge ideas. I have some lag bolts, but they had nothing that would work with them as what they has was for chain link fences. I have a few other ideas and may have some extra hinges at home.
Instead I fixed thegate and inner fence by the water trough. The time heifer #20 got into the hayfield and the herd stampeded in the corral to follow near her, they tore out some boards by the inner gate. When I fixed that, I also added a few boards to the inner fence over the water trough to prevent future heifers from crawling in the water trough.
When I got done I realized the fence work looked crappy. It looked patched and did not fit in with my new nice pole coral fence. When I have time (ha!) I plan to tear it down and rebuild it to match better.
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