Back to seven

Tuesday morning the cattle played some more with me, teasing me. They took their siesta in both the south and middle pastures. They picked trees on each side of the gate to rest under. *sigh* But when it came time to go the river to drink they all went via the middle pasture and I was able to close the gate to the south pasture.

While they were at river I decided to rake the loose dirt around the final three holes to be filled from this Spring's tree stump burning. I had noticed that on the way to the river some of the cattle had stopped and took a dust bath from the loose dirt.

To fill in the hole, I stand in it and rake the dirt ringing the hole into it. While at the first hole the cattle came up from the river and when they saw me they all came running over in a stampede. I had thought maybe they were curious about what I was doing, but maybe they thought I had fallen in the hole and needed their help. Such nice cattle.

They ringed the hole all around me and the ones closest to me sniffed and licked me. The ones on the further side of the hole occasionally would partially slip into the hole when either bumped or when they reached out too far when trying to get to me.

After a count and check of Pink (she looks better today, thank you for asking) I told them I would give them some apples. I walked to the hayfield and they all followed me. Once they got to the hayfield they forgot about my promise of apples and went to work eating the grass.

Later in the day I gave them some apples. After that, whenever they saw me in the yard they came to the fence and begged for more apples.

I finished mowing the yarrow weed patches. Finally! When I got home I found my missing pocket gopher trap sitting on my porch step. This is the trap that went missing over a month ago, my missing seventh pocket gopher trap. I had asked the neighbors to the south of me to keep an eye out for it. It is nice to be back to full strength when trapping gophers.

By the way, when mowing the yarrow I noticed pocket gopher dirt mounds in the area of the regular gophers. As the two don't mix this is another sign the regular gophers are either gone or on the ropes.

I spoke with and thanked the wife and she said her husband had found the trap in the caragana bushes when he was watering the yard. She also told me the landlord planned to spray his field next Monday to kill the leafy spurge and other weeds. My suggestions to her and the person who will be putting horses in the field finally got back to the landlord. To be safe when they spray I'll move my cattle from the hayfield in case they want to stand near the fence line.

In the evening I rode my bicycle to the Picnic in the Park concert. Between mowing the weeds and talking with the neighbor I was 45 minutes late to the concert.

The band was Spostah. The brochure said they were fresh bluegrass with hip-hop thrown in. I didn't hear any bluegrass in their music. They were more rock. Many songs were good, especially a couple instrumental songs. The songs where the lead singer rapped for part of the song - I didn't care for. They had varied music styles and often it meant a long gap between songs, too long in my opinion.

The band played fifteen minutes past the 9 pm end and had one encore when they said people were requesting one more song. The sun sets earlier now and it was dark when I got home at 10 pm.