Chemicals, the viewing, Norman news

I spent the morning applying chemicals to our fencerows. The hope is to lessen the growth and thereby lessen the weed eating needed. I will not know for several days if I applied everything heavily enough to make it work but I have high hopes. Now Mama needs me to apply some weed inhibitor to the yard to combat the infestation of a ground cover type of burrs. These are not as bad as the sand burrs but they are certainly prolific. Everyone in the area is fighting them and they seem to be winning. After all, their life depends on it. Sometimes I am reticent to use so many chemicals - even fertilizer - but I do not have the time to dig up the spreading weeds and burn them. That is the only other recourse against their spread that is remotely successful.

Mama got home n a panic this evening. Our neighbors bull and a cow were out on our road. That in itself is not a dangerous situation but keeping them from getting onto the main road that connects to ours is pretty important. They were headed that direction rather than down the road to us. I hurried over to the barn and got a bucket of feed to try to lure them back and just as I was getting far enough down the road to see them the dump truck that makes several trips a day to the quarry just beyond us ambled past me. Wesley, the driver, saw the pair headed for the road and quietly drove past them, got out and started getting them turned around. When the pair saw me they dove back through the fence where they had made their exit. Mama and Ethan Burns, Zach and Alissa’s son who had come home with Mama, drove up the road to check on me as I stood guard at the broken fence. Just when they reached me the owners drove up. Mama had called them to alert them about the wanderers. They are alway thankful about her watch care. This is the same property where our cattle are currently running. Everyone is back where they should be for the night.

Right after we got that done and were finished tending to the evening feeding routine we got in touch with Zack and Alissa and found out they were headed to Victoria’s house. We took Ethan and met them there. Zack took a long time looking inside the house while Alissa, Mama and the kids looked around the outside. Zack does not have the skills to do the work required on the house so his biggest fear is finding the people necessary to teach him how to do it or to do it for him. Those skills, like any other, are learned; but there is always a price to learn, whether it is time or money or both. The bottom line is that this house may be too much for him. When the looming question is, “What do you do with all this ground besides mow it?” there is no interest in developing a farm life. If the acreage is not an attraction, the house is not enough to draw a buyer to the property.

Norman went to see the doctor yesterday but we have not heard if there were any results announced. He is having the same bowel bleeding issues that Grandpa is having. From what I understand he will be going back to the doctor in November for further testing. As for the property negotiations with the owners of the property in Bowie, that is on hold until December. 

No news is good news for now.