Busy, and hand

I'm trying to stay awake as I write this...

Tuesday I heard from the dermatologist's office.  The skin biopsy results from the growth on my hand says it is a spindle cell proliferation.  (https://en.wikivet.net/Spindle_Cell_Tumours)   There are other articles on the internet but I found them to be medically technical.

It can be difficult to differentiate between the different forms of spindle cell tumours, and also to distinguish between spindle cell neoplasia and a fibroplastic spindle cell proliferative response.

The office had the biopsy sent for a second opinion.  They determined the growth is benign and no further treatment is needed. Hmmm.   Once my hand heals I'll see if their slicing the growth off for the biopsy will get rid of this, or whether it will re-grow.

I asked how I could have gotten this.  The answer: bad luck.

Okay...


The cattle are doing fine.  They broke the salt feeder and I had to fix it.

Some people drink coffee in the morning to wake up and get going for the day.  Me?  I go for a 8 to 10 mile bicycle ride in the morning.  Last Friday I passed three yard sales as I rode.  At one sale I got a box of four curtains.  Free.  They need some hemming or something like that the lady said.  I plan to use them in my garage and barn.  I have window blinds on two barn windows.  I had old worn out coats and shirts covering the other two windows.  I can replace the coats and shirts with curtains.

At another sale I bought a clock for two dollars.  Before Tammy I had a print on the wall here.  She had a clock and wanted it there so I moved my print.  I found I liked a clock there.  When Tammy left she took her clock.  Over the Winter I searched for a new clock to hang here.  But I could never find a clock I liked, especially since the more expensive the clocks got the pickier I got to find the 'right' one.  But the price was right for this clock and I like it.  The downside is that it has a loud ticking sound and I haven't tuned it out yet.

I finally took the time to mow the fruit tree and garden area.  The cattle had eaten the grass down but they left tall strands all over as you can see in the following photo. The strands were longer than the mower body and stiff and dry so sometimes I had to go back and forth to get them cut down.

Since I had the mower out I also mowed the entire yard again.  I had been watering the yard around the house and that stayed green and grew.  I raked that up and gave it to the cattle.  The rest of the yard had spotty growth but I mowed it anyway.

Since I was mowing I took time to trim a number of tree branches where the cattle had eaten the leaves off lower branches.  I also trimmed a number of branches on high on a box elder tree south of the house.  This is the one I had cut back in 2009.  (http://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2009/11/owl-ent-tree.html)   The weather did some damage to the tree trunk from the top and the birds continue to carve holes in the trunk.  So the branches growing near the top are dead or dying.  I trimmed them off.  I will cut the trunk shorter later this year when I fire up the chainsaw.

I also trimmed tree branches scraping the top of the metal pole shed roof.  Then I cut the branches higher above the tool shed roof so I can re-shingle it hopefully sooner than later.

The cattle love eating box elder leaves so over several days I dumped the branches over the fence into the hayfield.  A feeding frenzy would ensue.  The next day I would retrieve the bare branches.

Apples are starting to fall from the trees.  They are small.  I feed them to the cattle when only a few are around.  Mama, of course, is the smart one and occasionally peels off from the herd to come drink water and see if she can beg some apples from me. A few times Beulah found out and had a fit.


Each year I resolve to spray weeds in May and June when it is best to spray them.  Each year it is July and August before I get to spraying.  No different this year.  I noticed some Canada thistle starting to have seed pods that look like they would open soon.  So I re-prioritized my to-do list and am now spraying instead of re-shingling the tool shed roof.   The past few years I have hit the weeds hard and knocked them back quite a bit.  However I found in the past if I didn't keep hitting them hard they would bounce back.  So, while the weeds are much less, I am spraying.  Even if this is a poor time to spray I found in past years spraying at this dry time of Summer did have an effect in killing quite a number of weeds.  It just takes much longer for the spray to kill the weed as their metabolism is very slow right now due to the lack of moisture.

The very dry conditions are also keeping the weeds down.  So far the yarrow is almost non-existent.  While yarrow is very moisture sensitive I thought that may be why I'm hardly finding any.  But Tuesday afternoon I looked across the fence at the northern neighbor's field and saw some yarrow.  So my spraying the past few years did have an effect in my pasture.

One side effect of the drought is that in a large part in the areas I have checked, the only green things are the weeds as the grass is brown.

I have sprayed two tanks and covered: the yards, fruit tree and garden area, ditch, NE pasture and three-fourths of the north pasture.  Tuesday it took four hours to empty the sprayer.  Past years I would go through a tank of herbicide in an hour.


A pocket gopher tried to move into the north pasture.  He didn't last long.  Number 8 for the year.

The recent forecast of rain was a bust. Only a little more than a trace.