Should I feel annoyed?

I shouldn't let it get to me but I was annoyed much of the day.

First, the rain situation. After being warned all week about the big rains that were coming on Friday - and even having flash floods advisories in effect - nada. Officially we had a trace of moisture, and that may have been because of a couple drops of rain.

Here is a radar image I captured mid day. That was as close as the rain got to Kalispell. The 10 pm weather said Missoula got over 2 inches of rain. 2 inches!! Kalispell... a trace.

The rain was so close to here. In the evening I could see the edge of the heavy blue cloud bank to the southeast. Overhead - it was mostly clear.

I was so looking forward to the rain. With this rain I would have been set for the rest of August concerning the grass and the cattle.

So much for the weather forecasters. Bah!

Since it didn't rain I decided to move the cattle from the hayfield/middle pasture to the south pasture in order to give the hayfield a break for a few days. Before doing so I decided to check the south pasture's fences around the river. I've been maintaining my neighbor's simple fence along the river bank between my south pasture and my "thumb" of land. Now that the river level is down I decided to check if time and river erosion affected the fence. Most of it was good, especially the section I reinforced last year when the cattle made a jailbreak in that section. An older section needed some help and I sharpened one of the ends then added seven boards as posts and did some nailing on the barb wire strands.

My big island fence looks good and it doesn't appear the deer broke any sections of it. I did notice that a short section on the thumb could use a simple (2 strands of barb wire) fence. Either I have not noticed it before, else this overflow channel is filling in as this section's river depth didn't look as deep as in the past. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and I decided to build a fence here in case the cattle get any ideas. Back home again to get barb wire and some boards to use as posts.

I supposed I should be grateful the temperature was cooler than normal and it was cloudy as this heavily treed and brushy area can get quite warm when working. The mosquitoes were out even though it was in the afternoon.

Walking through the south pasture I noticed the Canadian Thistle weeds are much farther along than in the other two pastures. Quite a number of the thistle had seed heads with many seed heads looking close to being ready to open. *Argh!* I puzzled why the thistle in this pasture is farther along and came to the conclusion it is because I've not sprayed these weeds and they are more mature than the other pastures' thistle. Usually I only have time to knock the tops off this pasture's weeds so they don't go to seed. I am going to try to change that this year.

Now that the cattle are in the south pasture I am going to miss them sleeping in the hayfield just south of the house. With all the hayfield to chose from it was nice to see them bedded down each night when I signed off the computer and went to bed.

Walking into the corral I spotted an animal running from the large round hay bale to the south chain link fence. The animal squeezed through the fence and ran into the hayfield. It looked to be a gopher but they are all underground now. I didn't get a real good look at the animal but I saw the grass move as it ran. It took me a few moments to get through the fence then go to where I last saw the grass move. No sign of the animal nor any signs of a gopher hole. It is a mystery as to what the animal was. It definitely was larger than a mouse.

Sue Ann stopped by Friday afternoon to get her can of bear spray that she had left in my car after our last hike. Her son was coming Friday evening to visit for a week and Sue Ann wanted the spray for when they go hiking.

I had to ride my bicycle to the gas station to get more gas for my lawn mower. I noticed my neighbor - Clyde - with all the apple trees was out working in his garage/shop. I stopped and asked if I could have the apples that fall on the ground like he gave me in the past. The cattle love the apples and so do I as they are better than mine, though I do like my transparent apples. We ended up chatting for well over an hour.

To add to my annoyances for the day my bicycle computer reset on me and the mileage count went back to zero.

By the time I got home it was starting to get dark. Now that it is August it gets dark before 10 pm. Less than a month of summer left.

So much for my planned work items for the day. The only thing on the list I accomplished was to bake a loaf of banana bread.