Rain, raising things, Becky

When I got up yesterday morning I was a little disappointed to see that there was no standing water anywhere. All I could see was that the sidewalks were wet. It was supposed to have rained pretty hard through the night; although I slept through the entire storm. I did not find out until much later that we had gotten an inch of rain. I was surprised because there was so little evidence of it anywhere. All of the rain had soaked into the very parched ground. I believe it has been four weeks since we have had any rain at all so there were cracks in the ground more than an inch wide; plenty of places to hide an inch of rain.

The weather pattern shifting to cooler nights is a welcome change here. The days will continue to be in the nineties but the nights will fall into the fifties at times with the average being the low sixties. Winter will soon be upon us. That is always a welcome change although, once again, I am not totally ready for the cold weather yet; at least not as far as getting water to all of Mama’s animals through any hard, freezing weather.

The thirty baby chicks Mama got recently are growing fast. They are at that awkward stage when they are no longer cut little fluffy chicks but are starting to get their wing feathers which makes them look like some type of missing link. Mama fools with them daily and she tells me they are calming down but I don’t see it yet. As far as noises, next to reptiles, they are about the quietist animal we have raised.

The baby guineas are very noisy cousins by comparison. While we had the guineas at the stage where the chicks are now, we had to darken the garage through the night to get the two of them to be quiet. The older of the two would make something between a chirp and a squawk with the same intense volume as Rosie’s bark. Even when they were relatively quiet we could still hear them at the other end of the house. But that is what they are for – to make noise whenever they feel threatened. They will be our alarm system for the barnyard. I just did not know they got started that early in their development.

Mama and I love to grow things and right now we have our hands full with the chickens, the guineas, the pigs and the calf. Victoria will have her hands full next week when Mama and I will be gone for three days as we go to Hot Springs, AR to see Becky. She is scheduled to be induced on Monday morning and so far we have no idea what to expect because it is difficult to interpret her news about the pregnancy.

The last I heard she was telling Mama that she is at thirty eight weeks but the baby is at thirty five weeks. I am not sure how that works but math was never her strength. For some reason she believes the baby quit growing at week thirty five and if that is true, that is not good news. But with Becky, we can never really be sure. And there is no one close to her to tell us what the doctor may have said.

She called Mama in a panic yesterday to tell her that she had bits of broken glass on the floor and her vacuum was broken and she had a baby coming this morning. (She babysits.)I do not know what she expected Mama to do but Mama told her to call around and see if she could borrow but she told Mama that everyone she knew had broken vacuums too. Mama told her that if she was in a good church, these little problems would be much easier to deal with. She called back late yesterday evening to tell Mama that she had found someone in the volunteer fire department – a lady that continues to invite her go to church with her – was going to lend her a working vacuum cleaner so she could get the glass off of her floor. Her being so isolated is probably our biggest concern; especially after the baby comes.

God supplies so many of our needs through the church family I cannot imagine life without them.